“The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”
–Karl Marx
I’m watching a man die. I’m watching his wife die as well. They are bundled in their winter furs, caps and thick overcoats. They are warm, even in the hour of their death, though their country is freezing. I hear the first round of shots, then the second. AK-47 assault rifles are not quiet, but they are effective. The camera pulls in to survey the bodies. Both have collapsed upon the concrete. They already look dirty, dusted over, gone.
The woman has landed on her right side. She is barefoot. Her coat has blow open in her fall and blood streams from her head. She looks clumsy and uncoordinated. Floppy. The man has fallen backwards upon his legs and they are bent up beneath him, as though he might be stretching. Yet, he is lifeless, his head turned up in an awkward cock. They are quickly examined, covered with canvas, and left. They are two flaccid heaps, empty, save for the thick line of blood creeping from beneath the tarp.
“Man. I am so glad we won the Cold War,” an older friend tells me, when discussing my latest curiosity.
“I am so glad,” I say, pausing, considering the slight morbidity of what I am thinking, “that I can watch what those two had coming.” This is a sick thought, I acknowledge, but the Internet has given it to me freely, on display for my taking, a modern museum.
The Internet is a funny beast this way. With one click of a mouse I easily drudge up the final hour of two monsters, unimaginable breeds of humanity, inhumane liars until the very end. They are on display on my computer screen, over two decades later, like monkeys behind glass in a zoo. They talk to me, to the camera. I am not supposed to have seen this, I think.
Those two, Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu, ruled Romania with iron fists, palms, fingers, and hearts. Ceauşescu was both Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party and President of Romania between the years 1965-1989. He was eventually charged with the genocide of the Romanian people. They said his most hideous crime was “suppressing the soul of the nation.” This is a poetic notion and yet it is true.
He was a dictator, a vampire, they said, a cancerous totalitarian spreading his soot and filthy politics through the minds of the Romanian people. “We are in the dream in the mind of a madman,” they said. Their country was a kaleidoscope of claustrophobia and paranoia, an experiment in psychological warfare.
Under Ceauşescu’s thumb, wired phone lines and constant blackmail made even the most together families turn wary of each other. The head of Romania’s secret police alleged there had been ten million microphones in a country of twenty three million. Fratricidal foes hid behind every corner.
Amidst the starvation of their people, the Ceauşescu’s indulged in nightly feasts, menus that featured expansive spreads containing eggplant au gratin, pickled mushrooms, rolled ham, stuffed salmon, stuffed Parisian melons, lamb chops, veal medallions, chicken filets, goose liver, stuffed cabbage, crepes with fruit and cheese.
Their indulgences and their abuses were endless. These are tiny slivers of examples.
No wonder the people finally revolted. They had nothing left to lose. It took 7 days to burn 45 years of communism to the ground.
“Shooting with blanks is like a rain shower,” Ceauşescu told the head of his secret police, when ordering the disbanding of a protest that grew thick and stocky in Liberty Square in Timisoara. The protests, which began December 17, 1989, were peaceful. Thousands of men, women, and children banded together in opposition, until soldiers were ordered to open fire. People were injured slipping and falling upon the blood of their own.
On December 21st in the Republic Square in Bucharest, Ceauşescu held a rally, still convinced he held the majority support of the people.
I find this video. I watch his movements and his disbelief when he learns this is no longer true. He is dead behind the eyes, stoicism embodied, as the crowd turns and chants, “Down with the dictator, down with the bookmaker, death, death, death.”
When Ceauşescu leaves the podium at Republic Square, the crowd surges into the Central Committee building, tossing thousands of books from the dictator’s balcony. They light them all on fire and burning pages fly threw the air. They sing songs forbidden under Ceauşescu. Arise, Romanians. Dance of Unity.
I watch the 90-minute trial, the last hour and a half leading up to the execution, even though I already know how this story ends.
They sit, husband and wife, in a tiny room with white walls, cornered by their accusers, who just days before, pledged allegiant to the couple. They sit behind two brown folding tables on white plastic chairs. Nicolae reaches to hold Elena’s hand at one point, his voice, crackling with anger. To the very end he calls the accusations, the genocide by starvation of the Romanian people, “a barefaced lie,” suggesting that the revolts of the last few days only prove that treason has replaced patriotism. He bangs his fist angered, striking the air with brute force.
Elena sits quiet, at first glance with the countenance of a reserved older lady, hardly the bedfellow of a political mastermind. She lays her head in her left hand.
At the end of the trial, Nicolae throws his cap down on the table, distressed, disgusted with the outcome, indignant at the lack of respect.
Their one final request, to be killed together, is granted. “We have the right to die together. Together, together, together,” Elena yells. Those that torture together, die together, bound together in sin.
When the guards attempt to bind their former leading family, the Ceauşescu’s struggle, slapping the binding ropes away. The tension is frantic and the couple looks like frightened children. They do not die honorably. “Please get your hands off me,” Elena says. She yells, “Shame! Shame on you! I brought you up as a mother,” but it is clear nothing can save them now.
In some ways it is too simple, too easy, to find this bit of history online. I am exhuming bodies I never knew, hands I never shook. In this way, the Internet is an unburied time capsule, replete with information, opinions, facts and fictions alike, and still I wonder, where does this get me? What good does this do? But I still press play. Again and again. Every video I find. I have no aversion to the violence. I almost relish in the justice of it all.
I am inexplicably drawn to this, compelled to read and write, something that here and now, holds little relevance. Except this isn’t really true. It is relevant, but I can’t put my finger on the when, the where, and the why. So I watch, the traditions of dead generations, weighing on me like a licentious nightmare.
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