In June 1982, in the intervals of several celebrations, the Conducator chaired the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee. It substituted Nicolae Ceauşescu’s writings for Marxism-Leninism, which was no longer mentioned.42
The cult probably attained its height in 1985, as the country celebrated twenty years of the Ceauşescu Era with concerts, festivals, conferences, ceremonies, all meticulously rehearsed and flawlessly executed. All hailed Ceauşescu as the ‘most beloved son of the people’. In every city, exhibits of his collected writings were organised.43
Ceauşescu’s portrait, displayed in party and state institutions as soon as he returned from Korea in 1971, was now everywhere. By law it had to hang on the walls in schools, factories and army barracks, as well as at border checkpoints. Ordinary people were also obliged to display his portrait on public ceremonies, state anniversaries, mass meetings and official visits. By law his portrait had to appear on the first page of every textbook, while every primary school textbook had to display a colour photograph of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu. On the express instructions of the Conducator, it was to show the First Couple ‘surrounded by pioneers and falcons’, meaning students in the uniforms of the two party organisations that were compulsory for children aged four to fourteen.44
Television was limited to a single channel that broadcast for only two hours a day. Half of the schedule was routinely devoted to Ceauşescu’s activities and accomplishments. Under personal supervision from the Conducator, to mark 1985, special programmes were produced, including ‘The Ninth Congress: The Congress of New Breakthroughs’; ‘Twenty Years of Socialist Achievements’; ‘The Nicolae Ceauşescu Era’; and ‘Science during the Nicolae Ceauşescu Epoch’. Similar policies governed radio broadcasting, with praise of Ceauşescu aired throughout the day.45
The front pages of the tightly controlled newspapers invariably reported on Ceauşescu’s many achievements. Bookshops, by law, had to showcase his speeches, which had expanded by 1986 from a modest two volumes to an impressive twenty-eight weighty tomes. News kiosks presented smaller selections of his works. Music stores offered recordings of his speeches.46
Every minor decision had to pass by the Ceauşescus. A simple change in street name had to be sanctioned by Nicolae, who would write ‘de acord’ in the margin. When two football teams played a match, Elena decided whether or not the game should be shown on television. Every detail of the cult was determined by the Ceauşescus, including the number of times their names were broadcast each day. But there were no statues. Like Hitler and Duvalier, Ceauşescu refused any statues in his honour, with the exception of a large bust in his home village. When artists asked him if they could incorporate his image in a monument to be built in Bucharest entitled ‘Victory of Socialism’, he repeatedly declined.47
Ceauşescu had something much larger in mind. Years earlier, Pyongyang, with its straight boulevards and immense government buildings, had offered a vision of communist utopia: a truly modern city devoid of any trace of the past. When an earthquake devastated parts of Bucharest in 1977 he saw it as an opportunity to raise a new capital on top of the old one. The systematic destruction of the city centre, dotted with centuries-old houses, churches and monasteries, began in 1982. After a couple of years nothing but a naked hill was left, which in turn was flattened to make way for the Palace of the People, a pharaonic project that kept tens of thousands of workers busy around the clock. It was never finished. A Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism, 3.5 kilometres in length, ninety-two metres in width, was built, flanked by apartment blocks inspired by North Korea.48
Two kilometres away from the palace, in a different district, a Museum of National History was planned, although only the façade was ever erected. On the edge of the capital an eighteenth-century monastic complex was bulldozed to provide room for a new Palace of Justice, a project for which the ground was never broken.
Keen to remodel the country along straight lines, Ceauşescu’s hand reached far beyond the capital, in a project termed systematisation. Begun in 1972, this initiative entailed the wilful destruction of thousands of small villages, with their inhabitants forced to resettle into shoddily built apartment blocks, often without working lifts or running water. The project petered out with the energy crisis in 1979, although lack of funds was never an impediment for Ceauşescu. Even as Romania’s economy crumbled he revived systematisation in 1988, earmarking between seven and eight thousand villages for destruction.49
One hamlet thrived. In Scornicesti, site of a nationwide pilgrimage, precisely one cottage was spared the wrecking ball, namely Nicolae Ceauşescu’s birth house. The village boasted paved streets, new homes, a large stadium, a model factory and shops with seemingly endless supplies.50
The Securitate quelled every expression of discontent. Carrying submachine guns, they could be seen standing on every street in the capital, and at regular checkpoints every fifteen kilometres or so in the countryside. A network of spies and informants covered the country.
People did what was required, without much conviction. In 1985 the French ambassador was struck by a society which was perfectly regimented, stripped of ‘any sense of spontaneity in the expression of feelings towards the leader’. At mass rallies those who stood in front, enthusiastically acclaiming the leader, were often security agents dressed in workers’ clothing. Ordinary people further back merely went through the motions, as loudspeakers produced the required volume by playing tape-recorded cheers.51
People sang the leader’s praises in public, but cursed him under their breath. One observer noted how pedestrians would stop to applaud him when he appeared in public to inspect a building site. The moment he was gone, the insults began. John Sweeney, a British journalist who visited the country in the summer of 1985, observed that ‘the whole country was locked in a mute, passive sulk against the regime’. Yet he too later acknowledged that none of the foreigners writing about Romania at that time fully grasped the sheer misery of ordinary people, since their every step was closely monitored by security agents.52
Ordinary people may have detested the regime, but they were unlikely to rebel. The party enrolled four million members out of a population of twenty-two million, meaning that roughly one in six people in some way benefited from the regime, with their fate linked to that of Ceauşescu. They served him well, and he sustained them in turn, providing generous benefits that set them apart from the rest of the population.53
Paradoxically, though, it was the Soviet Union that made a popular uprising most unlikely. Ceauşescu had spoken out against sending troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, thereafter crafting his image as the man who had dared to stand up to the Soviet Union. He periodically snubbed or insulted the Soviets, but Moscow tolerated his antics since he never constituted any real threat. He remained a rigid, doctrinaire communist. Ordinary people knew very well that the Soviet Union was still the vigilant guardian of socialism, and that under the Brezhnev Doctrine the Red Army might very well cross the border to suppress an upheaval. Their fear of Brezhnev surpassed their loathing of Ceauşescu.54
The rise of Mikhail Gorbachev cast Ceauşescu in a very different light. After the proponent of perestroika laid out a vision of democratisation in January 1987 the Conducator began posing as the defender of ideological purity. He rejected political reform as a mere delusion, vowing to follow the ‘correct road to communism’. Instead of relaxing economic stringency he demanded an even greater ‘spirit of sacrifice’ and promptly imposed further austerity measures. These made his ramshackle economy even more dependent on the Soviet Union.55
As the West embraced Gorbachev its leaders ceased to ingratiate themselves with Ceauşescu. Invitations dwindled. Visitors were few and far between. Foreign journalists became more critical, emboldening dissidents at home. In March 1989 six elderly statesmen published an open letter attacking the leader’s cult of personality and the pervasive surveillance of the population. The signatories included Constantin Pirvulescu, now ninety-three
years old. He was detained, interrogated and placed under house arrest again.
Ceauşescu’s own health was declining. He was suffering from diabetes, left untreated for many years because he was too paranoid to trust anyone, including his own doctors. He had faith only in his wife, but she, too, was paranoid, and also ignorant. Both were convinced that destiny had chosen them to lead their country to greatness. Detached from reality, living in splendid isolation, surrounded by the sycophants and liars they had promoted over the years, they had come to believe in their own cult.56
In November 1989 the Fourteenth Party Congress dutifully elected Ceauşescu yet again as leader of the Romanian Communist Party. He took the opportunity to castigate the revolutions that were bringing down communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In June the trade union Solidarity had won the elections in Poland, leading to the fall of the communist party a few months later. Gorbachev had not intervened. In October, Hungary adopted a package of democratic reforms that effectively ended communism. Again, Gorbachev remained quiet.57
On 17 December Romanian troops fired into a crowd of demonstrators in Timisoara, where the government had ordered the arrest of a local pastor preaching against the projected destruction of dozens of historic churches and monasteries. The violent crackdown triggered nationwide protests. On 21 December, Nicolae Ceauşescu appeared on the balcony of the party headquarters in the centre of Bucharest, flanked by the entire apparatus, to address a mass rally organised in support of the regime. For once the assembled crowd failed to cheer him. Within minutes, people at the back began whistling and jeering. He raised his hand, demanding silence, repeatedly tapping the microphone. The unrest continued. Ceauşescu looked stunned. His wife leaned forward, lecturing the crowd: ‘Stay quiet! What is wrong with you?’ Ceauşescu decided to plough on with his speech, in a hoarse, frail voice trying to placate the demonstrators by offering to increase the minimum wage. But he had faltered. With the fear gone, the rally turned into a riot.
The speech was broadcast live. As soon as the transmission went blank, everyone recognised that a revolution was unfolding. People everywhere joined the protests, attacking government premises, tearing up official portraits of Ceauşescu and burning his propaganda books. Ceauşescu ordered the Securitate to fight to the last man. Throughout the night they shot at demonstrators, but were unable to stem the tide.
The following day the army joined the revolution. As angry protesters began to lay siege to the party headquarters, Elena and Nicolae Ceauşescu were forced to flee by helicopter, landing in a field outside the capital. Later that day they were hunted down and placed under arrest. On Christmas Day Ion Iliescu, head of the National Salvation Front, a spontaneous organisation formed by communist party members who had turned against their leader, hastily organised a military tribunal to try the Ceauşescus. After the death penalty was delivered, the couple were led to a freezing courtyard next to a toilet block. Ceauşescu apparently sang the Internationale. The First Lady screamed ‘Fuck you’ as they were lined up against a wall and shot.58
8
Mengistu
On the outskirts of the ancient capital Axum, where in 1937 the Italians dismantled and carted off a huge obelisk as spoils of war, burned-out Soviet tanks still lie abandoned across dusty fields. In other parts of Ethiopia, too, one can find rusty memorials of a civil war that claimed at least 1.4 million lives. For almost two decades the Horn of Africa was ravaged by a revolution that overthrew the emperor in 1974.
Ethiopia was an ancient empire that had embraced Christianity in ad 330, a few decades after Rome, as ports along the Red Sea served as a sanctuary for believers in exile. The faith served as a centralising force. At the end of the nineteenth century Emperor Menelik II expanded the empire, transformed the country into a modern state and led his troops in a victory against Italy. The Battle of Adwa against the Italians ensured that Ethiopia was never colonised, except for a brief period from 1936 to 1941.
Haile Selassie, crowned in 1916, wielded absolute power for almost six decades, a record for any head of state. Lion of Judah, King of Kings, Elect of God, he incarnated divine will. Authority, in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, had to be powerfully exerted from above, and by all accounts he was an autocrat, using his clout to keep the empire together – often by force. His image was everywhere, on coins, paintings, stamps, postcards and photographs, his name used for schools and hospitals. Unlike other branches of Christianity, the church in Ethiopia never attempted to regulate the production of icons.1
Outside Ethiopia Haile Selassie was worshipped by the Rastafarians, who saw in him God incarnate, the returning Messiah leading black people to a golden age of peace and prosperity. But he resisted any kind of social reform, and in the decades after the Second World War became increasingly unwilling to adapt to the modern world. In 1973 a devastating famine revealed glaring poverty in the countryside. Countless villagers starved to death. Prices of food and oil shot up in the cities, leading to widespread protests. Discipline among the military crumbled, as several army units mutinied. In February 1974 unrest spread to the navy, the air force and the police before finally reaching the imperial bodyguard on 1 March. In order to placate the army Haile Selassie appointed a caretaker government, tasked with giving the country a constitutional monarchy.2
A group of military leaders popularly known as the Derg soon took over. Derg, an Amharic word for ‘committee’, was the short name for the ‘Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Bodyguard, Police and Territorial Army’ established to investigate the army’s demands. In reality it was a junta, composed mainly of low-ranking officers representing different military units. Senior officers were kept at arm’s length, tainted by their association with the emperor.3
In July the Derg dismissed the prime minister. They then abolished the emperor’s Crown Council and proceeded to arrest his personal staff one by one. All the palaces were nationalised, together with every enterprise owned by the imperial family. On the evening of 11 September the Derg aired a documentary on the famine on state television, interspersed with scenes of royal extravagance. This destroyed what was left of the imperial image. The next day Haile Selassie was deposed, shoved into a Volkswagen and whisked away from the palace.4
The Derg, under the slogan ‘Ethiopia First’, initially appointed a widely respected general as their shortlived figurehead. Aman Andom was an Eritrean, who favoured a negotiated settlement with the Eritrean Liberation Front, an organisation that had gained a new lease of life from the collapse of the empire, and demanded independence for their people. Eritrea, a vast and formidable maritime province with vital ports, extended for hundreds of kilometres along the Red Sea. Without it, Ethiopia would have no access to the sea. The junior officers of the Derg insisted that troops in the region be reinforced in preparation for a major offensive against the secessionists.
On 23 November Aman was relieved of his duties. The Derg used the opportunity to eliminate their most outspoken opponents. In a mass execution up to sixty of the country’s former civil and military leaders were summarily shot. Aman died in a shootout with troops sent to arrest him at his residence.
In his place the Derg appointed General Teferi Banti, a hardliner on Eritrea. A more pliant figure, on public occasions he appeared accompanied by two of his vice-chairmen, Atnafu Abate and Mengistu Haile Mariam. Their first act was to introduce a new penal code, which allowed the Derg to court-martial anyone for speaking against their slogan ‘Ethiopia First’.5
Of the three men in charge of the Derg, Mengistu was probably the least prepossessing figure. There were rumours about his birth, always considered important in a feudal society. Some claimed that his mother, a servant at court who died in 1949 when Mengistu was eight years old, was the illegitimate daughter of one of the crown counsellors to the emperor. Others, pointing to his dark skin tone, alleged that he came from a slave family in the south. Whatever the truth, his family did not belong to the Amhara, the ruling people from the central highlands
of Ethiopia. He was brought up in subservience in a noble household, in the shadow of the imperial palace.6
Mengistu had minimal education and followed his father into the army a few years after his mother passed away. He attracted the attention of General Aman Andom, who took him under his wing. From errand boy in the general’s office he climbed through the ranks to become sergeant. After graduating from a military academy, he was assigned to the commander of a division in Addis Ababa, but he had a rebellious streak which alienated his superior, who described him as a firebrand. In 1970 he was sent to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in the United States for several months, acquiring additional training and a rudimentary knowledge of English.7
Although he preferred to remain in the background, in reality Mengistu dominated the Derg. It was he who sent troops to his former mentor’s house, and he ensured that the revolution turned bloody with the Massacre of the Sixty. It was Mengistu, again, who proclaimed ‘Ethiopian Socialism’ on 20 December 1974. Within months dozens of companies were nationalised, while all land was declared public property. Feudalism, Mengistu proclaimed in a mass rally, would be permanently relegated to the museum, as a ‘new order’ was being created. Some fifty-six teachers and students were sent to the countryside to ‘spread the revolution’.8
The Derg ran the country from the Grand Palace, a sprawling complex of residential quarters, halls and chapels on top of one of Addis Ababa’s seven hills, its red roofs contrasting with the glossy green of surrounding eucalyptus trees. They met in the Throne Hall, where the emperor had held important ceremonies and royal banquets. In a building nearby Haile Selassie spent his last days under house arrest. In August 1975 he died in mysterious circumstances, apparently from complications of prostate surgery, aged eighty-three. A persistent rumour made the rounds, alleging that Mengistu had a pillow placed over Haile Selassie’s head. Years later it was revealed that he had the emperor’s remains buried underneath his office, placing his desk right above the corpse.9
How to Be a Dictator Page 22