You might not want to hang on for the slow development over the two videos, but it is instructive. It starts off as a very typical-sounding speech by a dictator. (BTW, I understood more than I expected.)
Notice how the posters of him and Elena that the crowd are waving are of them about 30 years younger. That tells you something. At about the 2:35 mark the crowd changes, and it is an eerie and beautiful moment. He has lost them, and he seems to know it and be uncertain.
He and Elena rally, and tell the crowd to be quiet for the next three minutes, and seem to get them back. The cheers for them return. You can skip through the speech on this Part 1 and then Part 2 in one-minute intervals if you like. You can hear and see, if you look at the crowd, that there are fewer people clapping and cheering, less motion on the posters on standards as it goes on. You might listen to the crowd and think "He won them back, dammit. They are intimidated back into silence again. The moment has passed." I can't tell what he thinks at the end. Perhaps it's easier to see how unenthusiastic they are when you know the ending, how dependent on the party members and paid mob by the end.
He was overthrown the next day and executed on TV three days after that.
If you read The Hole in the Flag you encounter the idea that the Securitate,the secret police, had long prepared for this moment and installed their own replacement under the guise of revolution. The judges remained communist for a generation after, the elections were between various kleptocrats, and the young and ambitious left for Western Europe.
And yet. The economy has improved and still improves. Corruption is down, crime is down, some economic emigrants have come back now that they can buy some land with their cash, and things are clearly better. My sons will never move back, but some relatives of theirs have. Even crony capitalism, inefficient and corrupt capitalism, seems to be a big step up, doesn't it?
1 comment:
May God have mercy on his soul.
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