The Corrupt Communist Regime and the News Media

In his cold war classic, Red Horizons, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest defector from a communist regime, wrote that “the Romanian revolution of 1989 was the first one in history to have been started by the news media and won by the television cameras.” The misery and starvation subsistence that Romanians had to endure for decades, while the media, political apparatchiks and the Ceausescus rolled in the lap of luxury, finally exploded into revolt.

For decades after World War II, the communist propaganda machine of the most oppressive regime in Eastern Europe was kept alive and enhanced through forced communist education, parades, posters, publications, poetry, art

The people did not have arms; they had been confiscated decades earlier. But the revolt leaders, as Pacepa described it, “were able to mobilize virtually the entire citizenry by seizing the television station, making it their headquarters, and then broadcasting their fight against the hated dictator live, day and night.” But even so, the revolution never would have succeeded had it not been for the military forces who had joined the people’s revolt. The proletariat had had enough suffering and misery during the quarter of a century of Ceausescu’s oppressive communist regime. Despite his “large, vicious, well trained, and heavily armed security force,” and despite his underground bunkers and tunnels, he lost his total control of the nation in a few days. The self-described “mother and father of the nation” were whimpering during their arrest while attempting to escape by helicopter. The shoemaker and his uneducated wife, who awarded herself degrees she never earned from schools she never attended, were finally deposed, summarily tried by a military tribunal, and sentenced to death by firing squad. The media was no longer there to lionize their diabolical tyranny. For decades after World War II, the communist propaganda machine of the most oppressive regime in Eastern Europe was kept alive and enhanced through forced communist education, parades, posters, publications, poetry, art, the dear leader’s cult of personality marches, a well-oiled propaganda machine, books, pamphlets, and the powerful official Romanian media that churned out tons of lies, disinformation, and manufactured history.

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Ceausescu ran a police state that Soviets would have envied

After the much-hated dictator Ceausescu and his wife were hurriedly executed on Christmas 1989, the very next day a suspiciously “independent” newspaper Adevarul (The Truth) published, for the first time for the repressed population, the painful reality of the vicious and corrupt regime they had just survived. People stood in lines for hours to buy the paper. After all, they were used to standing in huge lines every day to buy food that would help their families survive another day. When Gen. Pacepa defected to the U.S., rumor had it that Ceausescu had a nervous breakdown and wanted him killed immediately. He did not want the rest of the world to find out the depth of his crimes against humanity. Ceausescu ran a police state that Soviets would have envied. All telephones were fitted with a “high-tech microphone,” and people had to submit samples of handwriting in case they decided to publish unauthorized hand-written pamphlets that would embarrass the regime and reveal the truth. All typewriters had to be registered with the police. Letters and packages were opened and read. Package contents were checked; many were confiscated as contraband and used by the loyal apparatchiks as spoils of war. Nobody bothered to reseal correspondence or deliver mailed packages that were emptied of western goods and stolen. Informers had to work hard to follow their marks’ every move. And yet, this type of spying seems juvenile and pales in comparison to today’s technology that spies on us and causes the erasure of any modicum of privacy we think we have. While people starved and stood in lines for hours on end each day to buy food, Ceausescu’s son, Nicu, a pathetic and worthless drunk, broke unopened Johnny Walker Black Label bottles against the wall in his parents’ fancy home when he got bored, laughing when broken bottles splashed liquid on the walls, the expensive carpets, and furniture. The house maids had to clean any evidence of his outrageous behavior.

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People were temporarily lulled into a false sense of freedom, security, and peace

Sadly, Pacepa remarked that, even though the evil dictator and his wife were gone, the system that brought him to power and enabled him to stay in power was very much alive, ready to produce another Ceausescu when necessary. And the media was there to help. Unfortunately, people were temporarily lulled into a false sense of freedom, security, and peace. Giving them better living conditions and the food they wanted for almost three decades, went a long way to quell any dissent to the new “free” regime. Pacepa wrote then, “In the absence of any organized opposition and democratic framework, Romania’s communist structure of government remains essentially in place…” That is how, overnight, the former communist handlers, in the confusion and vacuum of uncertainty that ensued after the dictator’s execution, became rich beyond their dreams, and made fortunes stealing money and state property and selling it to the highest bidders before anyone woke up to take account of the theft. It was eventually stopped but not before the massive plunder underway became permanent.