In the News

5 May 2009
by Doreen Carvajal and Stephen Castle
New York Times

Wojciech Grzedzinski for the International Herald Tribune

Luis Cerdan Ibanez, owner of an Agri Plus pig farm, inside a sty in Wieckowice, Poland.

CENEI, ROMANIA—For centuries—from the Hapsburg Empire through Communist dictatorship—peasant farmers here have eked a living from hogs, driving horses along ancient pocked roads and whispering ritual prayers on butchering day.

Old customs and jobs are dying and the air itself is changing, however, transformed by an American newcomer, Smithfield Foods. Almost unnoticed by the rest of the Continent, the agribusiness giant has moved into Eastern Europe with the force of a factory engine, assembling networks of farms, breeding pigs on the fast track, and slaughtering them for every bit of meat and muscle that can be squeezed into a sausage.

Wojciech Grzedzinski for the International Herald Tribune

Pigs on an Agri Plus farm, a subsidiary of Smithfield, in Wieckowice, Poland.

The upheaval in the hog farm belts of Poland and Romania, the two largest E.U. members in Eastern Europe, ranks among the Continent’s biggest agricultural transformations.

It also offers a window on how a Fortune 500 company based in Virginia operates in far-flung outposts. Smithfield has a joint venture in a Mexican hog farm located near where United Nations scientists are investigating a potential link between pigs and the new strain of influenza in humans. With the exact origins of the virus still in doubt, Smithfield emphasizes that the disease has struck none of its hogs or employees.

But Smithfield’s global approach is clear; its chairman, Joseph Luter III, has described it as moving in a “very, very big way, very, very fast.” In less than five years, Smithfield enlisted politicians in Poland and Romania, tapped into hefty European Union farm subsidies and fended off local opposition groups to create a conglomerate of feed mills, slaughterhouses and climate-controlled barns housing thousands of hogs.

It moved with such speed that sometimes it failed to secure environmental permits or inform the authorities about pig deaths—lapses that emerged after swine fever swept through three Romanian hog compounds in 2007, two of which were operating without permits. Some 67,000 hogs died or were destroyed, with infected and healthy pigs shot to stanch the spread.

In the United States, Smithfield says it has been a boon to consumers. Pork prices dropped by about one-fifth between 1970 and 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, suggesting annual savings of about $29 per consumer.

In Eastern Europe, as in American farm states where Smithfield developed its business strategy, the question is whether the savings are worth the considerable costs. The company says it is “sensitive to our neighbors’ concerns” and that complaints are often from disgruntled residents left behind.

But Robert Wallace, a visiting professor of geography at the University of Minnesota says Smithfield’s global rise is part of a broader “livestock revolution that has created cities of pigs and chickens” in poorer nations with weaker regulations. “The price tag goes up for small farmers.”

In Romania, the number of hog farmers has declined 90 percent—to 52,100 in 2007 from 477,030 in 2003—according to European Union statistics, with ex-farmers, overwhelmed by Smithfield’s lower prices, often emigrating or shifting to construction. In their place, the company employs or contracts with about 900 people and buys grain from about 100 farmers.

In Poland, there were 1.1 million hog farmers in 1996. That number fell 56 percent by 2008, as the advent of modern farming methods transformed agriculture, according to the Polish National Agricultural Chamber.

Two years ago, Daniel Neag housed 300 pigs in the empty stalls of his windswept farm near Lugoj, in Romania. Since 2005, membership in his breeder association plunged to 42 from 300. The secretary treasurer tends honeybees.

The impact on the environment is even more marked. With almost 40 farms in western Romania, Smithfield has built enormous metal manure containers to inject waste into the soil. “We go crazy with the daily smell,” said Aura Danielescu, the principal of a school in Masloc, who closes her windows tight.

Smithfield farms in Romania’s Timis County are among the top sources of air and soil pollution, according to a local government report, which ranked the company’s individual farms No. 13 through No. 40. The report also indicates that methane gases in the air rose 65 percent between 2002 and 2007.

Taxpayers footed part of the bill; Smithfield tapped into millions of euros in subsidies—from a total of €50 billion available in the E.U. last year—that are meant to encourage modern farming balanced with care for the environment.

In a similar chain of consequences, separate subsidies mined by Smithfield helped support the export of cheap pork scraps from Poland to Africa, where some hog farmers also are giving up because they cannot compete.

Smithfield representatives strongly defend their methods. They say they did everything they could to quash the Romanian swine fever outbreak, and they contend the lack of licenses was an oversight. “We have learned not to assume that a government’s awareness of our plans and operations is the same as permission to keep moving forward until we have obtained all necessary permits,” Charles Griffith, a company lawyer, said in answer to written questions.

Company officials also point to heavy investment in poor parts of Eastern Europe and a commitment to reinvesting profits locally. Mr. Griffith highlighted among Smithfield’s contributions the “acquisition, renovation, and construction of meat processing plants, swine farms, feed mills, and cold storage facilities,” and support for “networks of independent farmers that are contracted to shelter and feed pigs to market weights.”

For all that, some villagers in the new hog country say they are dazed. “For them, it’s like dealing with primitive people in the bush, where only power and strength is important,” said Emilia Niemyt, the mayor of Wierzchkowo, a Polish village of 331 people that has pressed complaints about odors. “They fulfill the idea of conquering the East with the methods of the Wild West.”

ASSEMBLY LINE OF PIGS

When the East beckoned in 1999, Smithfield exported a vertical integration strategy, copied from the poultry giant Tyson Foods. The chief promoter of that strategy was Mr. Luter, whose family transformed a 73-year-old meatpacking operation into a behemoth with almost $12 billion in annual revenue.

Every stage of a hog’s life—from artificial insemination to breeding genetic characteristics—is controlled. A handful of employees tend thousands of hogs that spend their lives entirely indoors, under constant lighting, to spur growth. Sows churn out litters three or four times a year. Within 300 days, a pig weighing roughly 120 kilograms, or 270 pounds, is ready for slaughter.

Smithfield fine-tuned its approach in the depressed tobacco country of eastern North Carolina in the 1990s. In 2000, money started flowing from a Smithfield political action committee in that state and around the United States. Ultimately, more than $1 million went to candidates in state and federal elections. North Carolina lawmakers helped fast-track permits for Smithfield and exempted pig farms from zoning laws.

As Smithfield flourished, the number of American hog farms plunged 90 percent—to 67,000 in 2005 from 667,000 in 1980. Some farm states grew wary. When Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina in 1999, torrential rain breached six pig waste lagoons, prompting the authorities to impose a construction moratorium on new pig farms using lagoons.

Missouri, too, pressed Smithfield to install technology to reduce odor. In Iowa, Smithfield lobbyists fended off efforts to force meatpackers to purchase hogs on the open market instead of using only their livestock.

Facing more restrictions in the United States, Smithfield took its North Carolina game plan to Poland and Romania, where the company moved nimbly through weak economies and political and regulatory systems.

Today Smithfield is the biggest pork producer in Romania, where it owns an enormous meatpacking plant, almost 40 hog farms and croplands sprawling over 50,000 acres. In Poland, the company employs 500 farmers to raise hogs that are bound for its Communist-era slaughterhouse, Animex.

Smithfield declined to disclose the total of subsidies it has collected. Romania pays a levy of around 30 euros per pig raised suggesting that, by producing 600,000 a year, Smithfield was eligible for 18 million euros in special national subsidies intended to improve the leanness of hogs. Though the company said late Tuesday that not all its pigs qualified for the subsidy, it did not say how many are. Newly released Romanian data show the company collected almost €300,000 in cropland subsidies last year and more than €200,000 in special funding for new European Union states. In Poland, Smithfield reaped more than €2 million for its subsidiary Agri Plus.

“Subsidies are money,” Luis Cerdan, chief executive of Agri Plus, said. “It improves the profits of the company.”

But Mr. Griffith, Smithfield’s lawyer, characterizes total benefits as tiny. Even more so, he said, “when you consider that we have not taken any cash out of these operations and have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future.”

HELP AT HIGH LEVELS

When it first arrived in Eastern Europe, Smithfield courted top politicians in both Poland and Romania, the latter a particularly poor country of 23 million with a weak government and under constant E.U. pressure over corruption.

In the post-Communist disorder, it is essential to know your way about. In Bucharest, Smithfield turned to Nicholas Taubman, a wealthy Republican businessman who was the U.S. ambassador to Romania during the administration of President George W. Bush. Mr. Taubman escorted Smithfield’s top executives during meetings with the Romanian president and prime minister and president.

“I’m from Virginia and they’re a large corporation and I know them very well,” Mr. Taubman said, noting that he had also helped Ford Motor, which had an easier time in Romania because it had the support of a government minister.

Once the top leaders in Romania showed their support for Smithfield, developments fell into place; about a dozen Smithfield farms were designed by an architectural firm owned by Gheorghe Seculici, a former deputy prime minister with close ties to President Traian Basescu of Romania, who is godfather to his daughter.

Further help came from a familiar front: Smithfield’s lobbyist, the Virginia firm McGuireWoods, set up a Bucharest office in 2007 to liaise between Smithfield and the Romanian government. In many ways McGuireWoods was the perfect choice; it had also represented Romania for three years to press its NATO-membership campaign.

Mr. Basescu, the president, was not shy in acknowledging the company, which he praised at a joint news conference with President George W. Bush at a NATO summit meeting last year. Smithfield was also very visible in its appreciation: It contributed €20,000 to pay for Romanian ceremonial uniforms at the summit meeting, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Mr. Taubman said that access was vital. “It’s extremely difficult to do business there unless you have someone like the prime minister or someone in the prime minister’s office who reaches down to whomever is concerned and says this is what to do,” he said.

As straightforward as that may seem, lobbying on the part of a big firm from the United States—the superpower that East Europeans seek to please—raised some eyebrows.

“We understand public diplomacy and political lobbying,” noted Steen Steensen, an agriculture expert at the Danish Embassy, whose country has also expanded hog farms into Eastern Europe. ‘’But we trust that the business and commercial channels operate in a normal and fair way.”

“Smithfield’s dominance and manifest aggressive approach is worrying,” Mr. Steensen said in one agricultural report.

ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS

The connections in the upper reaches of government meant that Smithfield could weather protests from local communities. The company was fined €9,000 for spilling manure on a local highway while transporting waste from a leaking container; €35,000 for a leaking bin that seeped hog waste into soil; another €35,000 for four farms operating without permits in Arad County; and €18,500 for not preventing water pollution.

Some villagers, however, concentrate on the advantages. “I have land near them and there’s no problem,” Dorin Mic Aurel, mayor of Masloc, said. Smithfield is the biggest taxpayer in Masloc, contributing $27,000 yearly that helped bring running water to the village.

But Smithfield found it hard to overcome fallout from the swine fever outbreak that struck Cenei. At the time, hog corpses lay in heaps, and residents remember chaotic efforts to shoot and burn them. That particular strain affects only hogs, but scientists have found elements of swine viruses—one from Europe or Asia, the other from North America—in the genetic code of the new influenza A(H1N1) virus.

When Ioan Ciprian Ciurdar, deputy mayor of Cenei, said that the stench from nearby farms was overpowering, Smithfield responded that a heat wave was to blame.

Mr. Ciurdar said that he had visited the farm with a colleague who snapped photographs until a security guard demanded the camera and destroyed the pictures. “If you’re an owner,” he said, his voice rising, “it doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want.”

Smithfield contends that “it is impossible to know” why the pigs got sick, while noting a breakdown in the supply of government-supplied swine flu vaccines. But several officials on both sides of the debate believe that Smithfield was overwhelmed by its own industrial machine and its ever multiplying pigs.

“Thousands of piglets were born,” Mr. Seculici, the architect, said. “There was no place to put them because the new farms weren’t finished. Nobody admits this, but this was the cause of swine flu. They were forced to improvise.”

Smithfield acknowledges that it placed young pigs on farms under construction, but insists that doing so had no impact on health.

“It was done too fast; that caused a lot of problems,” Mr. Taubman, the former U.S. ambassador, said.

When it came to cleanup, Smithfield again turned to special E.U. subsidies, requesting $11.5 million in compensation. But the local authorities—those with the power to dole out the money—balked at the demand, outraged that the epidemic was taking place on unlicensed farms which they accused of lax biosecurity measures.

A special mission of the European Commission confirmed some of their complaints, finding that Smithfield had failed to submit regular reports on the deaths of its pigs and that employees moved freely between farms despite suspicions of swine fever.

“Although we acknowledge these dysfunctions, this does not mean that our farms were operating outside the purview of Romanian authorities,” Mr. Griffith, a lawyer for Smithfield, wrote. “Our farms were operating openly and in regular, day-today contact with those authorities.”

“When we discovered that a number of our farms in Romania were operating on an emergency basis without all required permits,” Mr. Griffith said, Smithfield acted “to obtain all required permits.”

Blocked from collecting the money, Smithfield turned to Valeriu Tabara, head of the Romanian Parliament’s agricultural committee. With support from other politicians, Mr. Tabara pushed for an amendment that would enable animal owners to be compensated for disease-driven losses regardless of ignoring proper biosecurity measures.

Smithfield is uncertain if the amendment will be beneficial to the company. The revision, Mr. Griffith said, “would generally not apply retroactively to our claim.”

Mr. Tabara has no doubts, however, saying that “Smithfield is in the category of companies that have registered losses.”|

A STRUGGLE ACROSS CONTINENTS

When Mr. Neag, the former hog farmer, strides his land, only two animals trail him: battered mutts.

He is a cereal farmer now, like many other former hog farmers who complain their annual incomes have fallen by about half to €5,000.

“I didn’t think they were the enemy like someone who comes to take the bread from our mouth,” Mr. Neag said, recalling the arrival of Smithfield.

That lament echoes as far away as the Ivory Coast.

Patrice Yao’s pig farm in Abidjan, near a local prison, is part of a cluster where farmers like him and Basile Donald Yao are trying to survive despite a flood of cheap frozen pork from Europe.

“My farm isn’t working,” said Mr. Yao, 27, who owns about 45 hogs, compared with 100 three years ago. “The Europeans are sending all their cheap meat to our market.”

The Animex packing house spokesman, Andrzej Pawelczak, declined to identify where the Smithfield pork products were sent in West Africa. But in Polish Farmer Magazine he identified the countries as Liberia, Equatorial Guinea and the Ivory Coast.

According to Polish agricultural officials, Animex collected more than €3 million in export funds.

In the face of that, Ivorian farmers cannot compete. Fresh local pork sells for under $2.50 a kilo, while Europe’s frozen offal is a bargain in bustling markets at $1.40.

Mr. Yao said that many pig farmers have left, in search of work. Like Romanian ex-farmers combing Europe’s construction sites for work, he is considering becoming an export himself.

“I’ve already got my passport and when the occasion presents itself I am going to leave,” he said.

“I dream of leaving for Italy or Spain. There is nothing here for us.”

14 April 2009
by Ellen Barry
New York Times

Tomas van Houtryve for The New York Times

A woman burned a portrait of Lenin after protesters took it from the Parliament building in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7.

CHISINAU, Moldova — If the residents of Chisinau ever forget that they live on a fault line, they can count on Christmas to remind them.

For two years running, the city’s 30-year-old, Romanian-educated mayor, Dorin Chirtoaca, has erected a Christmas tree in time for Dec. 25, when the holiday is celebrated in Romania and Western Europe.

And both times, the 67-year-old, Soviet-educated president, Vladimir Voronin, has ordered it removed, because Moldova officially celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7, in keeping with the Russian Orthodox calendar. The dispute has taken on a loopy, Keystone Kops character, with reports of fir trees detained by the police in the forest or “abducted during the night by unknown persons.”

The New York Times

Both Romanian and Russian influences are felt in Moldova.

As the world learned last week, though, the divisions within this society are dangerous and deep. In a way, Moldova is grappling with the same challenge as Georgia and Ukraine—trying to join the West after decades of Russian influence. But Moldova’s narrative is complicated by its history of domination: over the last two centuries, the territory once known as Bessarabia was ruled by the Russian czar for 106 years, then by the Romanian king for 22 years and then by the Soviet Union for 51 years.

After nearly two decades of independence, Moldova’s citizens are still at odds over the basic question of who they are. That division boiled over last week, when a huge anti-Communist demonstration turned violent. Its participants, in their teens and 20s, say they are desperate to escape a Soviet time warp and enter Europe. But many of their elders feel more affinity with Russia, and see the protests as a plot by their western neighbor Romania to snatch away Moldova’s sovereignty.

But Claus Neukirch, deputy head of the Moldova mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said he did not believe that the demonstrators sought unification with Romania.

“It is rather a movement eager for recognition that the two countries have the same roots and the same language—and that Moldova is part of Europe and not part of Russia,” he said. “Bessarabia has been on this fault line through all of history.”

What Moldovans think about Romania and Russia depends entirely on whom you ask, even among the 76 percent of the population that, according to the 2004 census, identify themselves as ethnically Moldovan.

Vyacheslav Turcan, a burly 39-year-old taxi driver, gets misty recalling his service in the Soviet Army, which he said taught him “culture, decency, respect—how to carry myself.” For him, the Soviet era was a time of predictable plenty, when Romania was the poor neighbor, reliant on Moldova for shipments of potatoes.

Now, Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, with remittances from workers abroad making up 36.5 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the World Bank. Mr. Turcan has joined the army of foreign workers, driving a cab in Russia. He has faith in Russia as an ally in a time of crisis; Europe seems untested and unreliable. Ask him about Romania, and he darkens.

“They’re Gypsies,” he said. “They occupied Moldova before, and they want to occupy us again.”

Vasile Botnaru, a journalist, has a different perspective. He was 13 when he stumbled across Romanian books in his father’s attic and realized, to his astonishment, that the language was so close to Moldovan that he could read it without a dictionary. Everything he had learned in Soviet schools—that Moldovans were ethnically and linguistically distinct from Romanians—was wrong, he said.

“Willingly or not, this history that they had hidden began to come out onto the surface, like oil on water,” said Mr. Botnaru, 52, who now works as a reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “I understood that we had a shared history.”

As the Soviet Union entered its final years, a movement to reconcile the two countries burst into the mainstream. Moldova’s Parliament switched to the Roman alphabet, and Romanian replaced Russian as the state language. Clocks changed from Moscow to Bucharest time, and the government introduced a new flag virtually identical to Romania’s.

Unification with Romania became a high-profile political cause. Its splashy figurehead, Iurie Rosca, spoke beside huge maps of a “greater Romania” that included most of Moldova.

But the notion was anathema to Russian-speaking Moldovans, the Soviet-era elites who made up about a quarter of the population. And in 2001, after a decade of unruly capitalism had left the country bankrupt, there was a swing back to the old order. Voters elected the Communist government of Mr. Voronin, who promised to restore the Soviet-era safety net and join a union with Russia and Belarus.

“Moldova must hold out in Europe as Cuba is holding out on the American continent,” he told a rally celebrating Lenin’s birthday shortly after his election, Interfax reported. “We will hold out to the end as Cuba is holding out among imperialist predators.”

Since then, the reunification movement has faded to the margins of political life. Arcadie Barbarosie, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy, an independent research organization, said only 15 percent of Moldovans would support unification with Romania if a referendum were held now. Political elites, meanwhile, have lost interest for pragmatic reasons.

“Not everyone wants to be second in Bucharest if they can be first in Chisinau,” said Konstantin F. Zatulin, director of the Moscow-based Institute of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

But the question has never been entirely set aside, either. As recently as 2006, President Traian Basescu of Romania said, “The Romanian-Moldavian unification will take place within the European Union and in no other way.” The issue was churned up again by last week’s protests, when Romanian flags were raised at two government buildings. Mr. Voronin has said he can prove that Romanian agents planned and organized the protests.

“I would not call it nationalism, because nationalism is when people fight in the interest of their own nation,” Mark E. Tkachuk, one of Mr. Voronin’s key aides, said in an interview. “This I would call ‘unionism,’ when people are fighting for the liquidation of their own nation, and absorption by another country.”

Opposition leaders reject that explanation. Iulian Fruntasu, a deputy chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party, said the accusation of Romanian influence diverted attention from growing complaints about the ruling Communists. Deep down, he said, Russia knows it is losing its hold on young Moldovans. Faced with this crisis, he said, Moscow-backed leaders “would claim we want to join with the moon.”

“What they were able to do in Soviet times—it’s not possible any more,” Mr. Fruntasu said. “They have the Russian-language media, but this is another generation that has access to the Internet and books. No one now believes that there is a Moldovan language and a Romanian language. People travel a lot. I don’t think Russia in the long term has any chance to keep Moldova in its orbit.”

In the meantime, Moldovans will part ways every Sunday morning, with some headed to a Romanian Orthodox Church and some to the Russian Orthodox Church. At newsstands, Russian newspapers refer to last week’s events as a “putsch,” and Romanian newspapers cast them as a revolution. Mr. Botnaru says he has friends on both sides of the divide, and they keep asking him to choose.

“It’s like stupid parents who get divorced and say to their children, ‘Who do you love more, Papa or Mama?’ ” Mr. Botnaru said. “There are children who cannot love either Papa or Mama. And there are a lot of people in that situation.”

Opposition to Boycott Recount

MOSCOW — Moldova’s main opposition leaders announced Tuesday that they would not participate in a vote recount in disputed parliamentary elections, and the president of Romania angrily rejected accusations that Romanian agents were behind huge anti-Communist rallies last week.

“We will not allow Romanians to be blamed simply because they are Romanians,” President Traian Basescu of Romania said in an address to Parliament in Bucharest that was posted on his Web site. “We will not allow Romania to be accused of attempting to destabilize the Republic of Moldova. We will not allow Romanians who live across the Prut to be humiliated simply because they believe in an open society.”

Communists made a better-than-expected showing in parliamentary elections held April 5, leading to youth demonstrations that turned violent. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova immediately cut diplomatic ties with Romania, saying its secret services had staged the events in an attempt to topple his government.

Mr. Voronin ordered a recount of votes last Friday. But Vlad Filat of the Liberal Democratic Party said at a news conference that he would insist that the elections be invalidated and held again, Interfax reported. Mr. Filat said voter lists had included the names of long-dead people, minors and longtime expatriates.

13 April 2009
by Vladimir Tismaneanu
Radio Free Europe

A student shows an anticommunist sign during protests in Chisinau

What we are currently witnessing in Chisinau is the beginning of a revolutionary movement.

I wish to emphasize this, because revolutions are the only means of action against political systems that are defunct, but refuse to admit it. The political regime in the Republic of Moldova is indeed such a case. The country has been governed for many years by the Communist Party of Moldova (CPM), an unreformed, unrepentant party of the Leninist mold.

I disagree with those analysts who consider this party communist only in name, on the grounds that it allegedly reconstructed itself as a political formation foreign to traditional communist principles. True, it would be absurd to assert that the CPM is communist in a classical sense, because things have changed radically in the past 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. But if one takes into account the CPM's motivation, its nostalgia for the Leninist past, and the way it rules the country, the CPM led by Vladimir Voronin is the clear successor to the Soviet-era Communist Party of Moldavia.

Voronin himself has said so many times. He and his comrades have viciously and unswervingly opposed even the most anodyne decommunization initiatives. Moreover, on December 18, 2006, when Romanian President Traian Basescu condemned the communist regime in Romania as "illegitimate and criminal," Voronin's party issued an official denunciation of the “Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania” (which I chaired), the document on which Basescu's statement was based.

I wish to stress a few things about the movement that is taking shape in Chisinau. First and foremost, I consider it to lie within the continuum created by the revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. Two decades after those historic events, we are seeing, in a former Soviet republic, a movement which I believe is fundamentally spontaneous and characterized by a liberal anticommunism centered on honoring and actualizing individual human rights. The primary and essential principle of modern liberalism is the recognition of the inalienable rights of any human being.

The protests in Moldova show us beyond any doubt that anticommunism is not an illusion. The essence of the demonstrators' message, both to their country and to Europe, is anticommunism: the simultaneous rejection of the police state that Comrade Voronin so deftly built while in power, and of the endemic corruption generated in this country by state-sponsored Mafioso networks.

Last but not least, Voronin's overreaction to the post-election protests—repression by the secret police, mass arrests, sealing the country's borders, censoring information and the media—clearly shows his Stalinist mentality. The governing principle of his politics is Lenin's old dictum: kto kogo—who will prevail over whom? The pillars of the CPM regime are hostility to the rule of law, undermining pluralism, and total disregard for civic dignity.

A Movement Emerges

I would also like to stress that this is a revolution of an anti-ideological type, as clearly stated by the Anticommunist Forum in Moldova, an organization that emerged spontaneously over the past few days. We are dealing with a movement that has not yet assumed a clear political coloring. In their own words: it is transparent and pure.

This indeed is a beautiful definition, a truly poetic self-description. You may ask: What does poetry have to do with revolution? Revolutions are poetic moments. The epic lies within the minutiae of mundane politics. Poetry alone can do justice to the empowering and liberating revolutionary act.

Undoubtedly one must always be careful when dealing with metaphors. One must resist the temptation, so typical of utopian radicalisms, to develop them too far. But in Moldova now there is no utopian ideal in operation. The younger generation has risen against the neo-Leninist CPM. And the prefix "neo" is the key to the story here, because it shows that the CPM regime is a form of authoritarianism with a very distinct ideological flavor, and of a characteristic cynical and sycophantic nature.

It is regrettable, as Romanian historian Armand Gosu has remarked, that in the ongoing geopolitical games on the eastern flank of the European Union, EU representatives' shared fixation with Russia's strategic position seemingly deters them from taking a categorical stand in defense of the "young generation of Moldovan citizens who wish to built their destiny in freedom." As in 1989, Europe was caught unawares by a rejection of the status quo from below. The established power game in the region takes priority over the civic rebellion from within.

Where is the pro-democracy movement in Moldova heading? That will depend largely on how it chooses to organize itself. The Moldovan case falls into the category of "new social movements," such as Vaclav Havel’s Civic Forum in former Czechoslovakia in 1989-1990.

The revolutionary movement in Moldova will almost certainly give birth to several new political parties. I can easily believe that the anticommunist forum in Moldova will produce a democratic, liberal youth party. Hungary's FIDESZ (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, Alliance of Young Democrats), the original statutes of which even included an upper age limit of 35 for membership, could serve as an excellent example.

I believe that those who took to the streets in Chisinau and occupied the official buildings on National Assembly Square are the opposite of homo sovieticus (Soviet man), and the antithesis of homo prevaricatus (mendacious man, a term coined by Russian sociologist Yury Levada). They are people who demand simply to live in truth, to reject hypocrisy and duplicity—people who refuse to relinquish their human dignity in the face of abuse of power.

This protest will not end soon. The approaching commemoration on August 23 of the 70th anniversary of the shameful and criminal Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact may well serve as the catalyst for a renewed opposition onslaught against the neo-authoritarian and neo-Leninist regime of Comrade Voronin and his clique. The memory of the victims of 20th century totalitarianism will surely strengthen the political will of those who are now fighting for democracy and freedom in Moldova.

Vladimir Tismaneanu is a professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, director of the university’s Center for Study of Postcommunist Societies, and the author of numerous books, including "Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism" (University of California Press, 2003). In 2006 he served as chair of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. The views expressed in this commentary are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.

9 April 2009
by Robert Coalson
Radio Free Europe

Protesters wave the Moldovan flag near the government building in Chisinau on April 8

On April 6 and 7, a crowd of thousands of mostly young Moldovans erupted into violence to protest the preliminary results of the country's April 5 parliamentary elections. The storming of the parliament and presidential residence were the first violent political actions in the country's post-Soviet history and came as a surprise to virtually all observers.

As the smoke clears, the country is coming to grips with the question of how events took such a turn.

There is no shortage of explanations for what happened in Moldova this week. Everyone, it seems, can point the finger at someone.

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin has said repeatedly he believes the protests were sparked by Romania.

"The neighboring state, Romania, has been involved in all these events. We have proof of that,” Voronin said. “Romania's ambassador will be declared persona non grata today. This is a political step meant to make the Romanians understand that we have our own independent state, Moldova. They shouldn't stick their noses in our boiling pot, as we Moldovans say."

Speaking on Russian state television, State Duma Deputy Aleksandr Babakov, of the A Just Russia party, repeated Voronin's charges against Romania. Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said many foreign countries, "including the United States," have the expertise to carry out uprisings such as what transpired in Moldova and argued that "the same tactics" were used against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, as well as in Ukraine and Georgia.

Some in the opposition, however, think Voronin instigated the unrest to justify a crackdown and secure his hold on power. At a meeting between Voronin and opposition leaders on April 7, Our Moldova party leader Serafim Urechean raised his concerns with Voronin.

“I am very concerned that all these actions were organized today [April 7] by the special services, because you can see a logic behind them, a reason,” Urechean said.

“Are you saying this seriously?” Voronin asked.

“Yes, this is very serious,” Urechean said. “I am strongly convinced that this was organized by the special services. Which one? I don't know. You are in charge of the country and you have to answer this."

Volatile Youth

Others see the violence as the actions of spontaneous, leaderless youths who are frustrated with the waning of Moldovan democracy. Former Moldovan President Petru Lucinski told RFE/RL's Moldova Service that there is no need to look further to explain the unrest.

"I see it as an unorganized youth movement,” Lucinski said. “On the 6th, it was OK, but on the 7th there were more people coming and they could not be controlled. They didn't have any leaders. One part went in one direction, a peaceful one. And another part took a violent turn."

What is clear is that Moldova is a deeply divided country facing dire economic straits. The protesters were primarily Western-oriented, urban youths who are frustrated by the country's Communist rulers. The Communists, however, are supported by an aging, largely rural electorate that is more comfortable looking to Russia for support.

Remittances from Moldovans working abroad -- many in the European Union, many in Russia -- once made up one-third of GDP, but that source of revenue is drying up as the global economic crisis deepens.

On top of this, Voronin's second and final term as president is drawing to a close and the new parliament will choose his successor. Analysts believe Voronin intends to maintain his hold on power, perhaps by becoming parliament speaker.

In addition, there is evidence that the country's Communist Party itself is divided between the conservative, Russia-oriented followers of Voronin and a younger generation that favors greater Moldovan integration into European structures. That faction is headed by parliament speaker Marian Lupu and Foreign Minister Andrei Stratan. In the present crisis, however, the party has been united.

Russian Influence

All these divisions leave Moldova, a country with weak and underdeveloped political institutions, vulnerable to domestic and foreign manipulation.

Although Voronin has generally tried to follow a path toward integration with the EU, he has tried to do so without antagonizing Moscow. However, with his grip on power in transition, some analysts think he may be inclined to strengthen relations with the Kremlin.

Moldova is among the six Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) member countries that will be formally included in the EU's Eastern Partnership at a summit in Prague on May 7. Russia has harshly criticized the EU initiative as an attempt to set up a sphere of influence among the traditionally Russia-friendly countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Russian Duma Deputy Babakov told Russian state television that the violence in Chisinau could have been avoided if Moldova had been "better integrated" into the CIS and other Russia-dominated regional structures.

Nicu Popescu, a researcher at the European Council for Foreign Affairs in London, told RFE/RL's Moldova Service that Russia will likely benefit most from this week's events in Moldova, at least in the short term.

"Under these conditions, the only beneficiary of this could be the Russian Federation,” Popescu said. “We can draw some parallels between the current events and the protests in Ukraine in 2002. That action, called Ukraine Without Kuchma, was brutally suppressed. And those events in Ukraine in 2002 pushed President [Leonid] Kuchma to become more authoritarian, closer to the Russian Federation and to make more concessions. But it also radicalized the opposition."

Popescu added that in response to the unrest, Voronin will likewise become more authoritarian, meaning that Moldova will be increasingly isolated from the West and, therefore, dependent on Russia.

However, he added, this is not inevitable. "What Moldova needs today is a negotiated solution -- a solution in which the Communist Party, the opposition parties, and civil society come together to the negotiating table under the mediation of the European Union to defuse the crisis and find a peaceful solution to strengthen Moldovan democracy and prevent the country from becoming isolated from regional processes," Popescu said.

At present, though, that seems unlikely. The European Union has been largely silent on the Moldovan crisis, issuing on April 8 a tepid statement urging "proper respect for freedom of the media and freedom of expression."

Analyst Andrew Wilson, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Reuters the same day that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana should mediate in Moldova. "The EU should go and it should go now," Wilson was quoted as saying. "But, yes, that would annoy the hell out of Russia."

RFE/RL's Moldova Service contributed to this report.

8 April 2009
by Ellen Barry
New York Times

Protesters during a demonstration in Chisinau, Moldova on Wednesday—Tomas van Houtryve for The New York Times

CHISINAU, Moldova — On Wednesday, Moldova’s Parliament building was seared black from fire, and its ceremonial entryway was spray-painted with crossed-out hammers and sickles. Filing cabinets lay where they crashed to the ground the night before, while office papers were tangled in the boughs of pine trees.

Ruslan Grosu, 21, stood outside, trying to make sense of it.

“A little revolution happened here,” he said. “There is this power in our youth, and they should respect our wishes.” But from inside the building came the bleak sound of workers knocking out broken windows, and Mr. Grosu felt compelled to add this: “Almost all of us think it is bad and evil, what happened here.”

“We are not thieves,” he said.

A day after a huge anti-Communist rally turned violent in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, everyone was speculating about who was behind it.

President Vladimir Voronin said the event had been planned by Romanians, and called for the Romanian ambassador to leave within 24 hours. Youth activists charged that opposition parties had hijacked an otherwise peaceful crowd for their own purposes. And the opposition leader Vlad Filat said authorities had allowed the protests to get out of hand in order to portray the president’s challengers as extremists.

But Dumitru Minzarari, a political analyst, thought the best answer was the simplest one.

“It was a spontaneous event,” said Mr. Minzarari, who works at the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives, a policy research organization here. “The real reason behind this was that young people just revolted. These are not Soviet-educated people who are submissive and afraid to get into the streets.”

Nobody was killed in Tuesday’s violence, but 118 police officers needed medical assistance and 43 of them were hospitalized, said Alla Meleka, a spokeswoman for the Moldovan Interior Ministry. The city ambulance service reported that 79 civilians received medical care and that 14 of them were hospitalized.

Crowds gathered again on Wednesday in the city’s main square, but it was a chastened group of around 1,000, a fraction of the 10,000 to 15,000 estimated on Tuesday. During Tuesday’s protests, 193 people were arrested, Ms. Meleka said. Moldova’s Prosecutor General’s Office announced that it would investigate each case and pursue criminal charges against organizers.

The half dozen young activists who enlisted Twitter, Facebook and text messages to organize a “flash mob” on Monday have withdrawn from the protests entirely. In an interview, one activist, Natalia Morar, 25, said that she expected to face charges, and that she and other organizers had received phone calls that were “not so much threats as warnings that we will be in very big danger during the next few days.”

What bothers her the most, she said, is the suggestion that she and her friends somehow contributed to the violence, which she watched on television. “Believe me, there is nothing at all enjoyable about it,” she said.

The protests have exposed a split in Moldova, the first post-Soviet state to vote Communists back into power. Mr. Voronin was elected president in 2001 on a wave of deep disappointment that the Soviet collapse had brought Moldova little but poverty, corruption and civil war.

Mr. Voronin, who once led the Moldovan K.G.B., won re-election in 2005 pledging to renew relations with Europe and strengthen democratic institutions. But many of his opponents saw his commitments as hollow.

Many of the young see Romania, a European Union member just southwest of Moldova, as a symbol of promise. There have been short-lived movements to unite the countries, which were one from 1918 to 1940. Attempts in 2002 by the new Communist government to impose a Moldova-centric school history curriculum that played down Romanian influence prompted protests in the capital. A main complaint among youths in the recent protests was about the government’s restrictions on passage into Romania.

As protesters flooded the Parliament building on Tuesday, one raised a Romanian flag on the roof, something that Mr. Voronin pointed out Wednesday. “We know that certain forces from Romania masterminded these riots,” he said, according to the Interfax news agency. “Romanian flags which were planted on state buildings in Chisinau prove this.”

The protests were first called on Monday, after preliminary parliamentary election results showed that the Communist Party had won about half the vote, giving its deputies enough leverage to appoint the next president.

Helen Pascari, who gathered in the square with friends, said none of her peers had expected Communists to hold onto power for another four-year presidential term. “We want some changes in our country,” she said. “Any kind of changes.”

Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from Moscow.

8 April 2009
BBC News

Moldova's president has accused neighbouring Romania of stoking the protests that erupted into violence in the capital Chisinau on Tuesday.

Some of those protesting on Tuesday
bore the Romanian flag

Vladimir Voronin said the Romanian ambassador would no longer be welcome.

Thousands of young protesters thronged Chisinau, fighting police and ransacking parliament, in protest at the results of Sunday's election.

Official results gave the ruling Communists about 50% of the vote in the Romanian-speaking ex-Soviet republic.

International observers said the vote appeared to have been fair, though one told the BBC she had her doubts.

President Voronin, a Communist, was quoted by Russian agency Interfax saying: "We know that certain political forces in Romania are behind this unrest. The Romanian flags fixed on the government buildings in Chisinau attest to this."

Earlier he described the violence as "a coup d'etat".

Some of the protesters on Tuesday had called for the unification of Moldova with Romania, its bigger neighbour.

Russia's foreign ministry said there was a plot aimed at undermining "the sovereignty of Moldova".

Summoned on Twitter

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for calm and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said violence against government buildings was "unacceptable".

In pictures: Moldova Protests

The streets of Chisinau were quiet on Wednesday morning. Protesters had left the scene of the rioting on Tuesday night, and police retook control of parliament.

But opposition leaders said protests would continue.

Vlad Filat, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, called the demonstrations "a spontaneous action by protesting young people".

He said the opposition had tried to prevent excesses, like the attacks on parliament, but said: "We are not scared of arrests or intimidation. The people do not want to live like this and want to live free and without fear."

Word of the demonstrations was spread by text message, via the internet, and on social networking tools.

"We sent messages on Twitter but didn't expect 15,000 people to join in. At the most we expected 1,000," Oleg Brega, of the activist group Hyde Park told the Associated Press news agency.

'Manipulation' suspected

Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca, a member of the Liberal Party, said: "The elections were fraudulent, there was multiple voting."

The opposition have called for ballots to be recounted or the vote to be reheld—a request rejected so far by the government.

A report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe on Sunday's vote gave a mostly positive assessment of the poll.

But a British member of the OSCE's observation team questioned that conclusion.

Baroness Emma Nicholson said she found it "difficult to endorse the very warm press statement" from the head of the OSCE.

"The problem was that it was an OSCE report, and in the OSCE are, of course, the Russians, and their view was quite different, quite substantially different, for example from my own," she told BBC News.

She said she and other observers had a "very, very strong feeling" that there had been some manipulation, "but we couldn't find any proof".

Moldova, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, is the poorest country in Europe, where the average wage is just under $250 (£168) a month.

The people speak Romanian and the country shares many cultural links with Romania. However it was annexed by the Soviet Union in World War II and gained independence in 1991.

There remains an unresolved conflict with the breakaway region of Trans-Dniester, which has run its own affairs, with Moscow's support, since the end of hostilities in a brief war in 1992.

8 March 2009
by Dan Bilefsky
New York Times

Christian Movila for The New York Times

Ionut and Alina Lungu despair that paying bribes was not enough to prevent the negligence that contributed to their son being born severely brain damaged.

BUCHAREST, Romania — Alina Lungu, 30, said she did everything necessary to ensure a healthy pregnancy in Romania: she ate organic food, swam daily and bribed her gynecologist with an extra $255 in cash, paid in monthly installments handed over discreetly in white envelopes.

She paid a nurse about $32 extra to guarantee an epidural and even gave about $13 to the orderly to make sure he did not drop the stretcher.

But on the day of her delivery, she said, her gynecologist never arrived. Twelve hours into labor, she was left alone in her room for an hour. A doctor finally appeared and found that the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her baby’s neck and had nearly suffocated him. He was born blind and deaf and is severely brain damaged.

Now, Alina and her husband, Ionut, despair that the bribes they paid were not enough to prevent the negligence that they say harmed their son, Sebastian. “Doctors are so used to getting bribes in Romania that you now have to pay more in order to even get their attention,” she said.

Romania, a poor Balkan country of 22 million that joined the European Union two years ago, is struggling to shed a culture of corruption that was honed during decades of Communism, when Romanians endured long lines just to get basics like eggs and milk and used bribes to acquire scarce products and services.

Alarm is growing in Brussels that Romania and other recent entrants to the European Union are undermining the bloc’s rule of law. The European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, published a damning report last month criticizing Romania for backtracking on judicial changes necessary to fight corruption. And Transparency International, the Berlin-based anticorruption watchdog, ranked Romania as the second most corrupt country in the 27-member European Union last year, behind neighboring Bulgaria.

Those who have faced corruption allegations in recent years have included a former prime minister, more than 1,100 doctors and teachers, 170 police officers and 3 generals, according to Romanian anticorruption investigators.

Romanians say it is the everyday graft and bribery that blights their lives, and nowhere are the abuses more glaring than in the socialized health care system.

Interviews with doctors, patients and ethicists suggest that the culture of bribery has infected every level of the system, sometimes leaving patients desperate.

One doctor said a patient recently offered him a free shopping trip to Dubai, an offer he declined.

The issue of health care corruption gained national attention in January when a 63-year-old man, Mihai Constantinescu, died of a heart attack in the waiting room of a hospital in Slatina, in southern Romania. Mihaela Ionita, the nurse who wheeled him from room to room trying to get a doctor to treat him, said in an interview that she believed he had been refused care “because he appeared poor and could not afford a bribe.” The hospital said Mr. Constantinescu had not seemed an emergency case.

Dr. Vasile Astarastoae, a biomedical ethicist who is president of the Romanian College of Physicians, which represents 47,000 doctors, blamed a pitifully low average monthly wage of about $510 for doctors for the bribe-taking.

“Patients don’t want to go to a doctor who is distracted thinking, ‘How will I feed my kids or pay the rent?’ ” Dr. Astarastoae said. “So there is a conspiracy between the doctor and the patient to pay a bribe.”

He said that unlike in many Western countries, where doctors are respected and handsomely rewarded for years of hard study, the medical profession here had been denigrated under Communist leaders who made workers in factories the country’s heroes.

A 2005 study conducted by the World Bank for the Romanian Ministry of Health concluded that so-called informal payments amounted to $360 million annually. When an illness requires hospitalization, patients typically pay bribes equivalent to three-quarters of a family’s monthly income, the study showed.

Some doctors say that the bribery culture is so endemic that when they refuse bribes, some patients become distraught and mistakenly conclude it is a sign that their illnesses are incurable.

Doctors and patients say the bribery follows a set of unwritten rules. The cost of bribes depends on the treatment, ranging from $127 for a straightforward appendix-removal operation to up to more than $6,370 for brain surgery. The suggested bribery prices are passed on by word of mouth, and are publicized on blogs and Web sites.

Victor Alistar, director of Transparency International’s Romanian branch, said public hospitals routinely exchanged “supplementary payment” lists to ensure that they had the same rates.

Dr. Adela Salceanu, a psychiatrist and antibribery advocate, recalled that one friend, a 42-year-old lawyer, recently broke two legs in a basketball game and was taken to a hospital for surgery. When he did not offer money to the orthopedic surgeon on duty, his procedure was postponed for a week; he finally received treatment, but only after paying the doctor an extra $510.

Mugur Ciumageanu, a psychiatrist who has practiced in public hospitals in Bucharest, said that when he was a young doctor, a senior physician forbade him to talk with patients for three months. She explained that by spending more time with patients than she was, and appearing more caring, he was putting a dent in her bribery earnings.

Marilena Tiron, 26, a recent graduate of a medical school in Bucharest, said the issue of bribery did not come up in her optional medical ethics class at the University of Bucharest’s Medical School “since the teachers were taking bribes themselves.”

Dr. Astarastoae, of the Romanian College of Physicians, acknowledged that bribery needed to be rooted out. He said that the college had the power to revoke the licenses of doctors implicated in a bribe but added that few patients were willing to identify their doctors for fear they could be shunned by other doctors.

The Ministry of Health has taken some steps to try to change the culture of bribery. It recently set up a free phone line for patients to report abuses. Within an hour, it was jammed with calls. Hospitals here are plastered with antibribery posters.

But Liviu Manaila, Romania’s secretary of state for health, said in an interview that the culture would not change fundamentally until doctors’ pay increased. While he said the government’s budget was too strained to raise wages, he proposed revamping Romania’s socialized medical system so that patients took on a greater burden of the costs. He said their payments could be used to pay doctors higher fees.

Ms. Lungu, Sebastian’s mother, said that whatever changes were made, they should start now, before other children suffer like her son, who will probably spend his life in a vegetative state.

“The problem is that all this black money absolves doctors of their moral responsibility toward their patients,” she said. “It has got to be stopped.”

1 March 2009
by George Grigoriu
Nine O'Clock

“Martisor”, flowers, gifts – all were given yesterday to ladies and young women throughout the country. Celebrated by all Romanians and taken over, from them, by all neighbouring peoples, a different symbolic significance was attached in time to Martisor.

Displayed for sale some time ahead of March 1, “Martisorul”, under different forms – flowers, gifts or plain necklaces made of white and red threads – were given yesterday to ladies and young women. Romanians had a large choice available, for “martisoare”, as prices were for all and they were made for every taste, according to Antena 3.

The tradition of “martisor” is specific to the Carpathian area and to the neighbouring regions and it goes back to pre-Christian time, when it marked the beginning of the new agricultural year. According to Agerpres, Martisor has gained, in time, a different significance, and it currently means any object given which has white and red knitted thread. In the past, the thread had at the end a coin, which was used as a talisman against bad thoughts or as magic for happiness. Currently, martisor has the shape that the one who gives intend it, it can be a jewel, a decoration object, pendants of wood or silver with zodiacs, a ticket to a cultural event or anything that has a white – red shred.

Along with Martisor there are Babele (Old Women Days), a tradition that lasts, depending on the region, 12, 9, 6 or 3 days. These are the days when Baba Dochia removes her winter clothes. The name comes from the Christian martyr Evdochia but it includes reminiscences of a much older domestic pastoral goddess by which the people explain the unstable nature of the weather in early March. The first three “babe” represent spring, winter and autumn – sewing, summer work and harvesting. The weather phenomena of these three days are usually telling something about the time period they represent. People must choose a day, out of the 12, and the way that day is represents how their whole year ahead shall be.

Martisor fairs in Bucharest museums

In Bucharest, the most important museums opened their gates for the thousands of visitors willing to offer to the loved ones, “martisoare”, displaying a large choice of martisoare, which are nicely coloured, brighter and unique, in their way.

Necklaces, earrings, pendants, brooches of natural crystals and polished or stone birds are only a few objects that could have been purchased by Bucharest inhabitants from Martisor Fair, organized by National Museum of Geology in Bucharest.

Those who entered the Museum of the Romanian Peasant found both classic “martisoare”, made of painted wood, glass or immortal natural flowers, and modern “martisoare”, made of special materials. This year, the museums at Bucharest became appealing for the Capital inhabitants also through cook “martisoare”: kurtos kalacs, ginger bread, home made cookies or honey. At “Dimitrie Gusti” Village Museum (Muzeul Satului), one could find unique martisoare, funny and coloured martisoare, made by the students from National Fine Arts University, along with traditional “martisoare”, made by craftsmen from various regions of the country.

Yesterday, flowers and “martisoare” instead of fines and penalizing points

Yesterday, Road Police organized, throughout the country, actions aimed at observing the compliance with the legal norms related to driving on public roads. According to the Info-traffic Department within Romanian Police General Inspectorate (IGPR), the women drivers received, yesterday, flowers and “martisoare” instead of fines and penalizing points.

Flowers for women journalists offered by president Basescu on martisor day

President Traian Basescu offered flowers yesterday to the women journalists accredited to accompany the official delegation that represents Romania in the informal reunion of the EU heads of state and governments in Brussels.

The Martisor offered by the President was a violet freesia to which a white – red thread was attached.

26 February 2009
by Michael Kimmelmen
New York Times

Cristian Movila for The New York Times

Portraits of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu painted during his dictatorship, at Bucharest’s National Museum of Contemporary Art.

BUCHAREST, Romania—What are the arts worth?

In straitened times it’s easy to mistake cost for value. You might also say it’s the difference between cash and culture, the price of something and what’s ultimately priceless.

Romanians, it seems, have been prone to confuse the two since even before the revolution that overthrew the country’s Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and executed him and his wife, Elena, nearly 20 years ago.

That’s one explanation, at least, for why, when the courts here recently ruled that some art formerly in the possession of the Ceausescu family should be returned to Nicolae’s only surviving child, Valentin, Romanians hardly blinked.

The art is mostly Romanian paintings, but also some Goya prints. That ruling was not quite an equivalent to German courts handing art formerly at Berchtesgaden over to Hitler’s relatives. But it was close.

Bogdan Maran/Mediafax Foto, 2005

Valentin Ceausescu sought the return of some seized art.

A soft-spoken 60-year-old physicist who never helped run his father’s regime, Valentin Ceausescu has said the works he wanted to get back belonged to his own former wife, Iordana, an art historian and the daughter of a onetime Communist leader. Valentin’s father, who didn’t approve of the marriage, expelled her years ago to Canada.

Other works being returned, however, belonged to Valentin’s brother, Nicu, a much-loathed figure when he was the dictator’s heir apparent. He died of cirrhosis in 1996, at 45. (Ceausescu’s third child, a daughter, Zoe, who also had some works of art, died from lung cancer in 2006, at 57.)

Ultimately, of course, everything that belonged to the family of Ceausescu, a onetime apprentice shoemaker from a peasant village, derived from the privileges of power.

The case went through many convolutions over seven years. Valentin argued in court that what had been confiscated from him after his father was overthrown was not state property—never mind if, as the state argued, none of the Ceausescus ever bothered to document properly what was in their possession, as the Ceausescu regime required every Romanian to do.

An eyebrow or two might have been raised when the court then agreed with Valentin, at least among Romanians who could recall how the dictator enriched his homes, his family members and others close to him by seizing art and property from innumerable countrymen.

But the ho-hum response here speaks volumes about this struggling country’s cash-versus-culture climate. With most barely scraping by, Romanians admire private enterprise more than they value some vague notion of shared artistic heritage.

“Since the revolution the country is only about private enterprise,” said Cristian Stanescu, a journalist who covered the trial for the local newspaper, The Guardian. He echoed what others here say: “Romanians sympathize with Valentin because he worked the system to his advantage. Our idea of culture now is making money. We still have too many basic needs to worry about elevated ones like art and the state.”

Alin Ciupala, a thoughtful young historian of Romanian history at Bucharest University, put his countrymen’s indifference to their artistic heritage another way: “In Romania under Ceausescu there didn’t exist, as there did in the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia, any underground cultural movement. There was no samizdat culture. And so there never was a tradition here of cultural liberalism, of cultural resistance. Intellectuals were opportunistic. The instinct to survive has always been highly developed in this country.

“If Valentin had obtained from the courts big castles, or land, it might have provoked a reaction and reduced public sympathy for him. But paintings and prints, works of art? They don’t mean that much for most Romanians.”

The art the court agreed should be handed over to Mr. Ceausescu is still in storage in the National Art Museum, where it has been since being seized years ago. One estimate put the price tag for the lot of pictures, some 40, at somewhat less than $1 million, but that was only a wild guess.

Goya aside, the best-known artists among the work being returned, Victor Brauner and Theodor Pallady, aren’t exactly big names outside the country. Like Valentin Ceausescu and his wife, but for very different reasons, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu also amassed works by Romanian artists, in their case pre-modern and Socialist Realist, although for a while, while the Communist leader was courting Richard M. Nixon and Charles de Gaulle during the 1960s, the state officially tolerated modern art for the sake of Western consumption. Briefly Romanian artists had a window onto what was happening in America and Western Europe.

But then, culture having only been a political tool, the window eventually shut. After Ceausescu visited Pyongyang in North Korea, he decided to rebuild his own capital city. The result was to wipe out much of historic Bucharest to make way for grotesque and gigantic building projects that still spoil the city center, and sycophants kept a virtual army of state-approved artists busy painting portraits of Ceausescu and his wife, thousands of them. These ended up in public buildings and in the various homes of the dictator, who loved to receive as birthday gifts pictures of himself showing how much the Romanian people loved him. Ceausescu constructed a whole building to store these portraits.

As it happened, the National Museum of Contemporary Art here had some of them on view the other day. Mihai Oroveanu, the museum’s director, hung them in one gallery—diagonally, to make clear that the show was not actually a tribute.

Big, brightly colored scenes of Communist kitsch, they showed the dictator and his wife smiling before reverent mobs of workers, receiving flowers from ruddy-cheeked female soldiers, and wearing white 1970s leisure suits that, like the peaked winter hat Ceausescu made de rigeur for all loyal apparatchiks, became the height of Romanian fashion once upon a time.

Radu Filipescu, a former dissident imprisoned and beaten under Ceausescu for distributing antigovernment leaflets, recalled Romanian life back then. “The most interesting books I read were in prison,” he said one recent evening, with a laugh. “There was not a lot else to do.” But he was also half-serious.

“Today Romanians are totally consumed by competition and money,” he explained. “It’s easier for them to keep warm memories of the past, when life certainly was not better, but in some ways it was not as difficult. They don’t want to concern themselves with Ceausescu at the moment.”

All of Europe wrestles with the last century, at different speeds. A generation of Spaniards is just getting around to unearthing the graves of Republicans killed under the rule of Francisco Franco, more than three decades after his death; France and Poland still haven’t quite confronted their conflicted roles during World War II. Germany struggles with addressing the legacy of its division, 20 years after the Wall fall.

Here, Ceausescu and his wife aside, few Romanians were prosecuted for what happened during the Ceausescu era. Nobody served more than a few years in jail.

“It is incredible to give back paintings to the son of a dictator,” said Stejarel Olaru. He oversees the government-sponsored Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania. “But people don’t care.”

And so it’s left to Valentin Ceausescu, of all people, to deal with the past. He agreed to meet one afternoon in a nearly empty restaurant outside Bucharest. Nervous and defensive, he stressed that the art his parents had in their homes was borrowed from state-owned museums. The works he fought to recover, the only ones he really cares about, he said, were collected by him and his former wife, a private affair.

“I was defending my name,” he said. “These works were part of my past, my life. Some were gifts from a painter who was a friend.”

If the museum abides by the court order and turns the pictures over, which he said he still doubts, Mr. Ceausescu plans to give most of the works to Iordana, keep two or three for himself, but sell none.

The issue was never profit, said the son of the dead dictator. It was justice.

“I’m not pressed for money,” he wanted to make clear. “The whole point was that there should be a fair trial.”

Overcoming Dictatorship

By Dan Bilefsky
14 February 2009
New York Times

Gheorghe Ciurea, 16, at the tree where his half brother Stefan hanged himself. Stefan did not want their mother to leave Romania.

VALEA DANULUI, Romania — For millions of Romanians, migration has been an economic lifeline. But for 12-year-old Stefan Ciurea, the thought of his mother leaving to work as a maid in Italy was worse than death: he hanged himself with a leather horsewhip from the branch of a cherry tree.

After taking one last photograph of himself with his cellphone, Stefan, a quiet, diminutive boy who collected foreign coins and made toy swords out of scrap metal, posted a note to his chest.

Gheorghe showing a Mother’s Day card with a photo of Stefan. Their mother eventually migrated to Rome to work as a maid.

“I’m sorry we are parting upset,” the note said, referring to his pained efforts to stop his mother, Alexandrina, from migrating to Rome, part of an exodus of one-third of Romania’s active work force. “You don’t have to worry about my funeral because a man owes us money for timber. My sister, you should study hard. Mom, you should take care of yourself because the world is harsh. Please take care of my puppy.”

Two years later, Ms. Ciurea, a 38-year-old single mother, is a cleaner in Rome, one of an estimated three million Romanians who have migrated westward over the past five years. She said Stefan’s suicide had given her a stomach ulcer. After his death, she waited a year before deciding to leave her two other children, who were teenagers, behind.

But in the end, economics prevailed: she could earn about $770 a month cleaning houses in Italy, more than three times her wage as a seamstress in Romania.

“Stefan’s death is the tragedy of my life,” she said in a telephone interview from Rome. “But I left because I was poor and couldn’t feed my children. If I could, I would come back to Romania tomorrow.”

Many in this poor Balkan country of 22 million dreamed of escaping during decades of dictatorship. The exodus of poor, rural Romanians began after the fall of Communism in 1989 and intensified two years ago when Romania joined the European Union. Spain, Italy and a handful of other countries softened immigration rules to attract less expensive workers from the East.

Diligent Romanians became the strawberry pickers, construction workers and housecleaners of choice, doing jobs that workers in richer neighboring countries no longer wanted.

But while migration has brought economic gains—migrants sent home nearly $10.3 billion in remittances last year—it has also exacted a heavy toll on the country left behind.

The migration ripped apart the social fabric, creating a generation of what some sociologists call the “strawberry orphans.” An estimated 170,000 children have one or both parents working abroad, according to a recent study by the Soros Foundation.

The same study found that children with parents abroad were more likely to abuse alcohol and cigarettes, have problems with the police and underperform in school. Conversely, some children who blame themselves for their parents’ departure become straight-A students in the hope of luring them back.

Denisa Ionescu, a psychologist who works with the children of migrants, said they were at higher risk for depression, especially if it was the mother who left, while some of the children suffer from feelings of abandonment.

“In Romania, it is the mother who cares for the children,” Ms. Ionescu said. “So when the mother leaves, the child’s world falls apart.”

Of the children left behind, 14 have committed suicide over the past three years, according to researchers with the Soros Foundation. It is unclear what role their parents’ leaving played in the children’s decisions to take their lives, except in the case of Stefan.

But psychologists say the effects of migration have been especially acute because Romania is a largely rural country where close family ties underpin all aspects of life. In some cases, migration causes already dysfunctional families to implode.

Gheorghe Ciurea, Stefan’s 16- year-old half brother, said Stefan was a quiet, affable boy. But when he learned that his mother was leaving and he would be in the care of Stefan’s hard-drinking father, who never married Stefan’s mother, he locked himself in his room and refused to come out for days.

After the suicide, Stefan’s father moved out. Now Gheorghe, whose own father is dead, lives alone in their cramped, messy house in this village about 105 miles northwest of Bucharest.

He said he dropped out of high school because he could not afford the tuition. He does odd construction jobs to scrape by. The house is freezing, and he wears a wool coat inside. To pass the time, he plays backgammon. His sister, Alina, 17, lives with her boyfriend. Being alone has forced him to learn to cook. He calls his mother every day.

The village of Valea Danului benefits from remittances.

“I miss my mother,” he said from Stefan’s room. “At some point, she says, she will bring me to Italy so I can work in construction, but I am still waiting. I am still waiting.”

Outside, down a dirt road, dozens of new homes have sprouted, the product of toil abroad. Vasile Dina, the vice mayor of Valea Danului, said he could barely meet the demand for new housing permits. But the wealth came at a price.

“We have more tax revenues, nice cars on the road, people send their children to university in Bucharest,” Mr. Dina said. “But the sad truth is that if we were still living under Communism, Gheorghe would be going to school—not sitting at home by himself.”

Mihaela Stefanescu, who coordinated the study for the Soros Foundation, said the billions in remittances had helped eradicate extreme poverty and had empowered working mothers like Alexandrina Ciurea.

But she said the migration was also redefining the notion of the traditional Romanian family.

Many children of migrants live with grandparents, some of whom are not able to deal with the demands of rearing young children.

Divorce among migrants is rising, with sets of parents sometimes migrating to different countries. In extreme cases, children are abandoned or sent to orphanages, child advocates say. Some work as prostitutes or get involved with criminals.

An Emmy Award-winning documentary series, “Any Idea What Your Kid Is Doing Right Now?” shown on national television here, featured a family of six children left with their blind father after the mother went to work as a maid in Germany. She met another man and never returned. Soon, some of the children were forced to stop going to school and find work to survive.

Ms. Stefanescu said migrating parents were spoiling their children to allay guilt.

“People are going on spending sprees in order to overcompensate for their humiliation and guilt at having had to leave the country to support the family,” she said. “Migrant kids have new bikes and the latest mobile phones.”

Economists warn that the benefits of working abroad may prove short-lived, especially if the global economic downturn forces workers to return home to an economy that can no longer absorb them. Some companies dealt with worker shortages caused by the migration by importing workers from Turkey, China and India to fill jobs in construction, agriculture and textiles.

Tens of thousands of Romanians are already out of jobs in Spain and Italy, and alarm is growing that a mass return could overstretch an already teetering Romanian economy.

“The short-term economic gains of migration will not justify the long-term costs,” said Radu Soviani, a leading economist. “It is a national tragedy.”

3 February 2009
Radio Free Europe

The disputed Serpents Island

The International Court of Justice in The Hague has delivered its ruling on the long-running dispute between Romania and Ukraine over an islet in the Black Sea -- called Serpents Island—with access to potentially large reserves of oil and gas.

The court delivered a compromise decision that awarded part of the disputed sea floor to each country, but the biggest share went to Romania.

Romanian leaders hailed the decision. Speaking in Gyula, Hungary, Romanian President Traian Basescu said the verdict was "a major success for [Romania's] Foreign Ministry."

In Bucharest, former Romanian Prime MInister and opposition leader Calin Popescu Tariceanu said the court's decision will allow Romania to drill for oil and gas under the Black Sea. And a Romanian member of the European Parliament, Adrian Severin, said: "From now, Romania is able to exploit its full territory, including the continental shelf, and also has a better perspective for better relations and economic cooperation with Ukraine."

Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Kupchyshyn said the decision is "a wise compromise, and both parties are bound by this decision.... From now on there are no contradicting points between Ukraine and Romania."

The ruling means that the maritime border between Romania and Ukraine must be drawn up without consideration of Serpents Island.

At stake are oil exploration and drilling rights in a 12,000 square kilometer area of the Black Sea.

Romania has previously estimated that the disputed continental shelf there may contain reserves of 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas and more than 10 million tons of oil. Foreign oil majors have expressed interest in more fully exploring the area, and potentially investing in extraction.

Romania brought the case to the world court in 2004, after both Kyiv and Bucharest agreed to submit to the court's arbitration after years of fruitless bilateral negotiations.

Romania's case was that Serpents Island should be defined only as a rocky outcropping, and therefore need not be considered important enough to be a factor in drawing the Romanian-Ukrainian maritime border.

Ukraine's case was that Serpents Island should be defined as an island, as its name suggests, which would mean that the continental shelf around it would fall to Ukraine's possession.

The court's decision ignores the island as a factor in establishing the common boundary, and draws an equidistant line from the Ukrainian and Romanian shorelines. That awards the majority of the disputed territory to Romania.

Bogdan Aurescu, the head of the Romanian legal team, welcomed the result. "The boundary clearly separates the territories that can be used by Romania and Ukraine," Aurescu said. "It is a better line [for Romania] than any solution that could have been obtained through negotiations, better than anything Ukraine has offered."

Serpents Island was owned by Romania until 1948, when the Soviet leadership ordered it transferred to Ukrainian control. Romania has not contested Ukraine's ownership, but it has complained that Kyiv has been developing the island in order to bolster its undersea claim at the world court.

European parliamentarian Severin said the settlement imposed by the court has benefits for the whole region. "There are two major benefits," he said. "Number one is that a dispute between two neighboring countries is over, and this dispute was a burden on their bilateral relations; the second benefit is that Romania has a clear definition of its rights."

Presently the island has a population of about 100 people, mostly border guards, but also scientists and shopkeepers. It has a lighthouse, and a harbor is under construction.

Ukraine's representative to the court, Volodymyr Vasylenko, said before today's ruling that his side expected a compromise decision that would give something to both appellants.

RFE/RL's Moldovan Service contributed to this report.

BBC News

Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January is an occasion for Jews and Roma (Gypsies) to remind the world how their families were terrorised and butchered by the Nazis in World War II.

Roma in Vlasca, a village in southeastern Romania, told the BBC's Delia Radu about their wartime ordeal.

The wartime suffering of many Roma villagers is not well documented

The Roma people of Vlasca—traditional metal workers called Kalderash—are closed and inward-looking. They are reluctant to talk to anyone from outside the community.

It took weeks of negotiation to hear the accounts of Holocaust survivors in the village.

Historians often call it "the forgotten Holocaust". Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have died in mass shootings and Nazi gas chambers.

Recent studies have brought more of their suffering to public attention, but to this day little is known about the Roma targeted for persecution and extermination by the allies of the Third Reich on the eastern front.

The men are the first to speak—and later, when it is the women's turn, they leave the room.

Antonescu (left) was an ally of Hitler on the Russian front

Dumping ground

Sandu Stanescu remembers how, in the early summer of 1942, some policemen installed a table by the road, covered it with papers and made lists: Roma families, extended families, communities—shatras.

The Nazi-backed ruler of Romania—military dictator Ion Antonescu—had just received his reward for attacking the Soviet Union: Trans-Dniester, "the land beyond the Dniester". It was a chunk of land in the east, between the rivers Dniester and Bug.

The territory, most of it part of today's Ukraine, became Nazi Romania's ethnic "dustbin" for Jews and Roma.

Conveniently the nomadic Roma had carts and horses and the police only had to escort them across the border.

But as soon as the convoys reached Trans-Dniester, the Romanian authorities confiscated everything.

"We lost our carts, horses, all our baggage and all the gold our fathers had hidden in the carts' shafts," Mr Stanescu says.

In freezing cold, with no food, thousands of Roma were marched towards the river Bug. The survivors were forced to live in camps of flimsy hovels on the outskirts of war-torn villages, or in stables on deserted collective farms, to provide forced labour.

"My father, Mihai Gheorghe, died there, my mother Maria died there, both my brothers died there," says Mihai Gogu.

"They died because of the bitter cold, because there was nothing to eat and you couldn't wash. I think filth was the main killer: lice were crawling everywhere, like teeming ants in an anthill. That was our ordeal."

"My mother... managed to find another way to sneak back into the village—we waited and waited, fearing she might never come back" Mihai Iorga

Scavenging for food

One man speaks of "beatings, disease and bitterness in the fields".

Mihai Iorga recalls how his mother had "brought with her some embroidered pieces of cloth, like those ones people arrange on walls under the icons".

His sharp grey eyes are moist and he stands in the middle of the gathering to tell the story better.

"She tried to sell those in the neighbouring village, for food. But a Romanian policeman and a Ukrainian guard saw her, beat her badly and threatened to shoot her. She rushed back home crying.

"Me and my brothers begged her not to go again. But the following day off she went. She did what she did and managed to find another way to sneak back into the village.

"We waited and waited, fearing she might never come back... But lo and behold, there she was, carrying two buckets of potatoes and sweet cornflour! Oh, how we hugged her, how we kissed her! She then baked those potatoes straight on the flame because we were left with nothing, not even a pan or dish for cooking.

"Afterwards she managed to find a small tin. She melted some snow in it, there was no other source of water, and made a nice tiny polenta. It was so good! We felt so good!"

In 1944, when the war front moved west and the Romanian administration withdrew from Trans-Dniester, the Roma had to walk back hundreds of miles, "covered in mud, covered in bitterness".

A teenager at the time, Mihai Gogu was the only survivor in his family and saw many children dying on the road.

"We walked back, barefoot. Parents carried children on their shoulders. But time and again, one of these little ones would slip and fall off the grown-up's back. They died of hunger."

Mihai Iorga's father was taken ill and died during the return journey. It was his mother who managed to see her children safely to Romania.

Vlasca's Roma are close-knit and maintain a traditional lifestyle

Girls targeted

The men leave, the women enter in their flowery scarves.

During the deportation pregnant Roma women were killed because they were unable to walk fast enough.

"A heavily pregnant woman was shot before my eyes," Maria Mihai recalls. "She fell on the ground. And the baby started struggling inside her."

The women remember how their mothers had to find water and food miles away from the camps, there were long queues at the wells, sometimes the water sources had dried up. They remember their mothers making clothes out of thick brown paper potato sacks.

But most stories revolve around the constant fear of being raped by the armed guards.

"Both my parents died. I was only a girl, in the flower of my youth. That was very dangerous. They tried to take us young girls by force," says Natalia Mihai.

There were horsemen hunting women and little girls hiding under their mothers' long-layered Gypsy skirts.

"Once they put a gun at a girl's neck and raped her, something like a whole committee raped her and they were shouting and chanting," says Floarea Stanescu. But Natalia Mihai asks her to stop: "Don't remind me of all that, I feel like dying".

Maria Mihai says she and fellow Roma were reduced to eating dog meat

A report by the International Commission for the Study of the Romanian Holocaust says the number of Roma victims in Trans-Dniester is difficult to establish, mainly because the lists of deportees were negligently put together.

Some 25,000 Roma deportees are accounted for and the number of dead is thought to be 11,000. According to the report, half of the deported Roma were children and the women were frequently subjected to brutal sexual attacks.

Now that the Roma women in Vlasca have finished their stories, the men are back.

Both groups make a few final comments about the food in Trans-Dniester. "The Ukrainians used to catch those underground creatures, moles, you know", says Maria Mihai. "They skinned these animals and either ate them or sold them to us."

"Yes," says Mihai Iorga, "I ate moles too, on the banks of the Bug".

"And when we saw those moles, we wept with revulsion," continues Maria Mihai. "And we ate dogs, too… Yes, dead dogs, sweet Jesus, we were given dog meat, too."

"But in the summer, the mussels in the Bug were a luxury," says Mihai Iorga. "She knew how to cook those, my poor mum."

Most of the Holocaust survivors in Vlasca have received compensation via the International Organization for Migration, in Geneva. The IOM says survivors and their close relatives receive up to 7,000 euros (£6,590; $9,070) each.

The compensation is paid under an IOM partnership with Germany.

Movie Review California Dreamin' (2007)

By A. O. SCOTT
23 January 2009
New York Times

A scene from "California Dreamin'," directed by Cristian Nemescu.
Marion Hanciarek/Mediapro Pictures

Poor Captain Jones. An American military intelligence officer in command of a company of marines, he finds himself, in the autumn of 1999, stuck in a Romanian backwater called Capalnita. Charged with the apparently simple task of delivering some non-lethal equipment, by train, to NATO forces dealing with the situation in Kosovo, Jones stumbles into a Balkan world of bureaucratic intransigence, corruption and local feuding. A square-jawed by-the-book kind of warrior who keeps whatever sense of humor he might have on lockdown, he struggles to understand why he must spend five days languishing in a place he describes as lost “in the fold of some map.”

It may be just as surprising to find Armand Assante, who plays Jones, giving the performance of his career in a modest Romanian movie: “California Dreamin’,” the first and only feature directed by Cristian Nemescu, a phenomenally talented young filmmaker who died in a car accident shortly after completing it.

Mr. Assante, a solid, hard-working actor with scores of roles on his résumé, inflects Jones’s crisp, authoritative martial gestures with hints of inner complication. Trying to assess the delicacies of the situation on the ground in Capalnita — even as he tries to force or coax his way out — he walks a fine line between hero and clown. He may be the new sheriff in town, or else just another player in the circus passing through.

The stranding of Jones and his men could be the biggest thing ever to happen in Capalnita, and the cause of it is Doiaru (Razvan Vasilescu), the village’s bitter, semicriminal stationmaster, who lives above the depot with his daughter, Monica (Maria Dinulescu). Like most of the women in town, Monica regards the arrival of the Americans as an occasion for sexual adventure and possible escape.

At a party thrown together by the unctuous, opportunistic mayor (Ion Sapdaru), the local young men stand around looking glum while their girlfriends flirt and dance with the foreigners. Monica is drawn to Sergeant McLaren (Jamie Elman), Jones’s second in command, and though they have no language in common their first touch produces a literal electric shock. The eventual consummation of their attraction causes a blackout and several explosions.

“California Dreamin’ ” is a rambunctious, closely observed comedy of cultural collision, its satirical gaze aimed at Romania’s foibles and also at the sometimes lethal absurdities of geopolitics. A crucial decade younger than the other filmmakers associated with Romanian cinema’s recent renaissance, Mr. Nemescu, 26 at the time of his death, did not share their penchant for long takes and stripped-down realism. Compared with Cristi Puiu’s “Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (to limit the field to Cannes prize-winners by directors with nearly identical first names), “California Dreamin’ ” filters its local concerns through a restless pop sensibility.

Its themes are serious, but they are addressed with a playful exuberance that suggests a young man’s unbridled delight in every aspect of filmmaking, a spirit that also infuses Mr. Nemescu’s wonderful short films “C Block Story” and “Marilena From P7.” His nascent style was eclectic and sometimes chaotic, but “California Dreamin’ ” shows his ability to direct actors in two languages, and to execute set pieces — from McClaren and Monica’s intimate moments to the farce of the mayor’s big shindig — with precision and panache.

“California Dreamin’ ” is being released as it was shown in Cannes in 2007, which is to say in an unfinished (or, as the title parenthetically suggests, “endless”) state. Had he lived, Mr. Nemescu would probably have trimmed and tightened the movie, which at more than two and a half hours runs a bit long for the scope of its story. But loose-jointed though it is, it is never boring. It rambles a bit, but it always has something interesting to say.

In particular, I think, to American audiences. Given everything that has happened since, the Kosovo intervention of 1999 may not seem like a terribly relevant or significant moment in history. But viewed through the lens of the Iraq war — which was surely on Mr. Nemescu’s mind in 2006 — this odd little Clinton-era anecdote takes on some unsettling resonances.

Jones arrives, as Americans so often do, with high ideals and good intentions, greeting the people of Capalnita with a sincere respect that contains more than a hint of condescension. The villagers are mired in their own problems — a power struggle between Doiaru and the mayor and a simmering confrontation between the stationmaster and workers in a factory he wants to buy, to say nothing of the romantic agonies of the town’s young people — which the Americans can neither ignore nor solve.

The Americans, so powerful and confident, so attractive and so clueless, are regarded with ambivalence by the Romanians (including the director), whose self-image combines a sense of grievance with a certain stiff-necked pride. They live in a small country that has often found itself in the path of imperial powers, a condition they address with guile, stubbornness and a measure of grace. And lately with some pretty great movies.

California Dreamin’

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Cristian Nemescu; written by Tudor Voican and Mr. Nemescu; director of photography, Liviu Marghidan; edited by Catalin Cristutiu; production designer, Ioana Corciova; produced by Andrei Boncea; released by IFC Films. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In Romanian, English, Spanish and Italian, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes. This film is not rated. WITH: Armand Assante (Capt. Doug Jones), Jamie Elman (Sgt. David McLaren), Razvan Vasilescu (Doiaru), Maria Dinulescu (Monica), Alex Margineanu (Andrei) and Ion Sapdaru (the mayor).

17 January 2009
by Nick Thorpe
BBC News

Scrap metal was once a lucrative trade for Eastern European gypsies but as Nick Thorpe reports, this has been devastated by the global economic crisis.

The global financial collapse has hit the scrap metal trade

Melting snow has turned the unpaved roads of Zizin into streams of mud, ankle deep.

Wading through it, in search of drier ground, your ears grow accustomed quickly to the gentle murmur of the wintry village, dogs barking, cocks crowing, neighbours calling out to each other through hazel fences.

There are sharper sounds too, like the fireworks set off by children in far-off cities.

But there is no money for such frivolities in this predominantly gypsy village.

The sounds are made by bull-whips, lengths of rope with horse-hair tied in knots at the end.

Scrap scarcity

Cracked incessantly by the kids at the end of streets, in the yards of houses, but above all on a small hill which overlooks the village.

Splitting the sky apart for a split-second, as though in the space created, poverty might be transformed into wealth, tin into gold.

Zizin - the name itself sounds like sheets of tin falling on tin. And that is how many of the gypsies here made a living, until the global financial crisis struck.

Like millions of scrap-metal hunters and gatherers around the world, the gypsies of eastern Europe did well from the tinkers' trade in recent years, as the price of metals soared.

A huge hunger for metal in the construction industries of India, and China in particular, fuelled the price rises. But that has all changed now.

Bridge stolen

Gypsies and non-gypsies alike snapped up every scrap as it fell by the wayside, and today, it seems, there is little left for anyone to gather up.

As scrap became scarcer in recent years, the theft of metal became more common in eastern Europe and beyond.

One of the first Soviet locomotives in Ukraine, all 14 tonnes of it, and a metal bridge which connected a village in the west of the country to the outside world, were the most brazen thefts.

In Hungary, the re-opening of the Freedom Bridge over the Danube in Budapest, closed for many months for repairs, was postponed after thieves in eastern Hungary went off with hundreds of steel girders prepared for it.

The guttering and even the roofs of churches, and bronze plaques to Holocaust victims have all disappeared overnight.

And copper wire, used in railway signalling, was especially prized. Sixty three trains were disrupted in one day alone near Prague, when a length went missing between two main city stations.

Prices plummet

Both the Czech Republic and Hungary have now passed laws imposing strict controls on the operation of scrap metal yards. Hungary alone has 20,000.

Now everyone selling is obliged to record their identities, and full details of their loads.

But the new legislation may prove redundant. The economic downturn means people are not spending on scrap metal. Prices paid for it have fallen in some places by 90%.

From Zizin, Ion Ocelas, a father of five children with a sixth on the way, used to make the trip to the scrapyard in the nearest city, Brasov, almost daily.

Now he says it is hardly worth it. He used to get 33 euro cents (£0.29) for each kilogramme he brought in, now he is getting three cents.

Even if his horse-drawn wagon was piled high, he would only come back with a handful of small coins, less than a beggar might make for a day's pleading on the pavement outside the famous Black Church in Brasov.

As scrap becomes scarcer metal thefts have increased in Eastern Europe

"I'd like to work as a welder," he says, as he restacks the last of his metal collection - the twisted blue bonnet of a car, pots and pans, and something white and spiked, like the head of a metallic thistle - "but there's no work for welders round here, still less for gypsy welders."

"People here have no time to think about the future," says Father Raia, an Orthodox priest of gypsy origin, when I ask him what hope he sees. "They have to eat today."

At the main scrapyard in Brasov, buried deep in waste land beneath the girders of a new road, the manager refuses to talk.

But on the western outskirts of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, the owner of another yard, Ciprian Porumb, is happy to unburden his concerns.

Future fears

"I used to get the $450 (£300) a tonne for this," he waves his hand at a mountain of scrap, still being unloaded from lorries.

"That fell to about $150 (£100), but I dare to hope it will improve again soon."

As he speaks, a four-piece gypsy street band, blasting on trombones and drums, marches boisterously by, serenading the ladies at the upstairs windows of the drab flats which overlook the scrapyard.

Back in Zizin, Ion's seven-year-old daughter, Rebecca, is feverish. The doctor has been called.

We leave the village as darkness falls, and an ambulance siren mixes with another orchestra of children crying, horses braying, dogs barking and always the whips, cracking in the frost.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday 17 January, 2009 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.