Romania Journal
by Peter Rashkin
August 4
We leave tomorrow. Last minute things to tidy up before we go. Call airport shuttle. Pack.
I like to travel light, but not this time. A fair amount of camera and video equipment, a ton of film and tapes, a care package for a friend's mother. Some gifts.
Thanks to the great contacts I made in cyberspace, we probably won't be schlepping a lot of stuff on crowded trains. Calin and Alex will be our hosts and guides, and I think they both have cars. Have you heard people complain that the Internet is sapping true personal contact from society? I say nothing is further from the truth! The Internet opens channels between people. At least it has for me.
So I'm going with extra baggage, and not only cameras, baseball caps and peanuts. I've read a ton in the past couple of months, so that a country I knew nothing about is now vivid for me. I know I will see the beautiful Carpathian Mountains, old castles and monasteries, a rich peasant culture not yet absorbed by the MTV/McDonalds global monolith. And I expect to have some interesting conversations with people who, having emerged from a brutal police state only a decade ago, in the poorest corner of Europe, are halfway around the world from me figuratively, experientially and physically.
Two issues, among others, intrigue me: communism and the cold war, and nationality.
About communism, I always felt that the cold war was bunk and was used to whip up an hysterical popular support for an ongoing war-based economy. Yeah, there are bad commies, but look what we did in Vietnam and El Salvador. There are bad commie regimes, but what about Pinochet's Chile or the Argentine junta on the right? What about Indonesia? Aren't the right wing dictatorships just as bad? If you can at least theoretically have a free-market society with a respect for human rights, can't you have it for a socialist society?
The FBI followed my folks around because they thought they might be commies. Frankly, I've always been more afraid of the reactionary right than of the left. The Romanians I've been meeting don't seem to share that view. The big bad wolf of communism is dead. A few capitalist dogs pose only a minor threat.
Nationality. Nations. I don't believe in them. People on earth. Animals on earth. Life on earth. That's what I believe. Nations are inventions of the kleptocracy to manipulate, dominate and exploit the mass of people. Forget nations.
But I'm going to Romania with my lady and my daughter. No arrangements necessary. I'll waltz in like I belong there. Calin will meet me at the airport. But if he wanted to visit me here in LA, it would be an entirely different story. It would be very difficult for him to get a visa unless he had a bunch of money in the bank and, I've heard it alleged, a tidy some to pay for the privilege. So, nations exist after all.
What insights will my visit to Romania provide on these and other issues? Check back here to find out. If possible, I'll try to post a report from Sighetu around Aug. 18. If not, I'll be updating this page during the week of Aug. 22. Come back then and see me.
La revedere,
Peter
July 28
This morning, I spent an hour with Dr. Nicolae Constantinescu, Consul General of Romania, at his West LA office. A gracious and dignified man, as pleasure to talk to. He is a surgeon and an academic, one year into a four-year stint in the US.
Several times I said "I have read that..." and he replied with an emotive "You have read, but I lived it!"
July 26
Spoke today Joana Sturdza, who defected in 1980. Joana told me she was in prison in the '60s. I asked her why. "Everyone who wasn't an idiot was in prison," she said.
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