9 Responses to “Remember Romania?”

1. Sergey Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 3:27 pm

   One phrase in this interview made me cringe:
   “Driving from even a relatively backward country in the European Union into the remote provinces of Ukraine is like falling off the edge of civilization and into a land that was all but destroyed.”
   Does not he know that Romania was Hitler’s ally in WWII and so was saved from devastation by Nazi, while Ukraine was literally “a land that was all but destroyed”?

2. Assistant Village Idiot Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 4:07 pm

   Sergey, that’s a pretty one-sided interpretation. I can win that debate with you, without having to go back 70 years to make my points. It is rather pointless to get into arguments over who in Eastern Europe got screwed over more, however. Different circles of hell is all.

   Thank you neo. I have just written a series on my travels to Romania 1998-present and my adoption of two sons from there, so this link provides some help for me. Totten expresses the contrast very well. We did medical clinics out in the villages, including Rom villages, which were indescribable.

3. Sergey Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 4:32 pm

   When Hungarians claim their European heritage, I believe them: they proved it by national uprising in 1956. But when Romanians place this claim, I am very sceptical. Chaushescu regime was so backward and vicious that no enlightened nation can produce and support it.

4. Gringo Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 4:59 pm

   Sergey:
   Chaushescu regime was so backward and vicious that no enlightened nation can produce and support it.
   The same could be said of the USSR, also. As AVI points out, there is little point in getting into that kind of argument.

   Yes, the Ukraine was “all but destroyed,” first by the induced famine in the 1930s and by WW2. I had some contact with the Ukrainian diaspora. Family friends of my grandparents’ generation had a friend who was of a refugee family from the Revolution. A friend of mine was in his class one year. I knew a couple who had been sent as slave labor from the Ukraine to Germany during WW2, and were able to get the the US. I knew them from my workplaces.

   If you have an argument, take it up with Mr. Totten.

5. Barb the Evil Genius Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 5:33 pm

   Some of my Transylvanian Saxon relatives fled Romania when it was still a dictatorship, with little more than the clothes on their backs. I still remember my great-uncle sending them household goods, like towels, to help them get started over.

6. expat Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 6:31 pm

   Thanks neo,

   I can remember watching the executions on TV. I hope these strories about communistic brutality continue to be told. The Che and Fidel lovers can’t be allowed to set the narrative. I have a neighbor who was in one of the forced labor camps after WWII. You can still see scars in his eyes when he talks about the hunger.

   I am trying to work myself up to read Herta Mueller, but I know I have to be in the right mind to handle it.

7. Michael J. Totten Says:
   March 8th, 2010 at 7:29 pm

   Thanks, Neo, and also to everyone else here.

8. sergey Says:
   March 9th, 2010 at 4:04 am

   Gringo, you misread my point. I completely agree that USSR was no better than Romania in many aspects, and that Ukraina was destroyed twice – first by Stalin and later by Hitler, in both cases by polices bordering to genocide. My point was that those signs of westernization and pro-western sentiments reported by Michael Totten are actually fake and misleading. Those people with whom Michael talked were sincere, but delusional. The belong to this tiny educated minority which desperately hopes that their nations can be rapidly modernised by adopting european norms and institutions. But actually this mission is impossible. All these sentiments and parlaments are no more than cargo cult, like these straw-made watch towers made by aborigens of Pacific islands after WWII. Eastern Europe, including Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Georgia, are not modernizing, but dying out. They have zero chance being integrated into EU, and, quite possibly, in two decades will cease to exist as sovereign countries, becoming de facto Russian protectorates.

9. Assistant Village Idiot Says:
   March 9th, 2010 at 1:45 pm

   I partly agree with Sergey on that. I think the Czech Republic, Poland, probably Hungary, Estonia, and Slovenia, can all become European counties in some full sense. The others, including Romania, have some chance but have a great deal to overcome, not just structurally but psychologically. The addiction to government rescue which we see as problematic in Western Europe is far more pronounced in Eastern Europe. The market economy still scares them – as it should when many of the judges are communist appointees and much business is done via corruption and nepotism rather than merit. The young and talented are getting jobs in Western Europe and many will stay there permanently if they can. This means that the remaining citizens include all the dependent, unmarketable, and corruption-connected. That’s not everyone, of course, but it is an enormous weight for the others.

   These countries often also have low birth rates, meaning that there is no hope on the horizon. There is also sectional difference: Transylvania can become western, but I am less sure about Wallachia and Moldavia. And right now, those are a package deal. Similarly, the Western portion of Ukraine could transition to becoming European, but the Eastern section is more like Kazakhstan.

   Still, the average Romanian and Hungarian at least does have considerable fondness for America.

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