Speaker 1: You can do your your your job now, Robert h Well,
Speaker 1: I did my job, Sophie. I introduced the podcast. How
Speaker 1: are we feeling? Everybody good? We all have we all
Speaker 1: have newly hot bev's. We're doing great. Yeah, we got
Speaker 1: a hot bev uh and we've got a hot bud
Speaker 1: Jeff May. Jeff, I got a bone to pick with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what is that bone? Well, Jeff, at the end
Speaker 1: of last episode, I said, as I was asking you
Speaker 1: to introduce your plug doubles, where did you come from?
Speaker 1: Where did you go? Where did you come from? And
Speaker 1: then I had to say Cotton eight, Jeff, which made
Speaker 1: me sad because if your name had just been Joe.
Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying here, Jeff, that worriginal enough
Speaker 1: to do that, But they just missed Joseph. It's like
Speaker 1: the one white guy name that nobody in my family
Speaker 1: has let them know. They fucked up my joke. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, honestly, like that's on my dad. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm living now, Jeff. What I'm not living at
Speaker 1: is you for being here to continue talking about Nikolai
Speaker 1: Cechesco with me. How are you? There's no place I'd
Speaker 1: rather be than right here talking about tyrannical despots. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a lie, but it's a nice lie. Um, a
Speaker 1: sweet lie, Jeff, Thank you for thank you for that,
Speaker 1: for that friendly lie. We used to call those white lies,
Speaker 1: but now I'm going to call them Jeff May lies.
Speaker 1: I mean, the name Jeff May is pretty synonymous with
Speaker 1: the word white, so I feel like it does work
Speaker 1: either way. Jeff May of the West estimate, h, we
Speaker 1: gotta find more uses for you to do your your
Speaker 1: your front American Northeast accent. Jeff, that was perfect. Um,
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta do a Vanderbilt. But before we
Speaker 1: do a Vanderbilt, let's talk about a guy who probably
Speaker 1: had an accent like the only, the only Romanian accent
Speaker 1: that I know how to do as a Dracula accent.
Speaker 1: And I do feel like that would be offensive. Although Jeff, No,
Speaker 1: we are about to start by talking about how Chowchescu
Speaker 1: used Dracula Um and other heroes from Romania's passed um
Speaker 1: in order to uh to to make the case as
Speaker 1: to why he and I'm gonna quote here from an
Speaker 1: article on the cult of Chaochescu by The New York
Speaker 1: Times In Tirgo Vista's History Museum, there is a new
Speaker 1: exhibition of Romanian heroes. An enormous portrait of Chowchescu gazes
Speaker 1: down on the busts of Romanian rulers. Among the venerated
Speaker 1: is of lad Dracula, the fifteenth century prince whose cruelties
Speaker 1: gave rise to the Dracula Vampire vampire legend. Flanking the
Speaker 1: entrance way are huge bronze busts of Decibel, the Dacian king,
Speaker 1: and Trajan, the Roman Emperor, who defeated Decibel at a
Speaker 1: great cost in the second century. Could it be that
Speaker 1: Chowchescu is casting himself not only as a Romanian emperor,
Speaker 1: but as a Roman one as well. After all, he
Speaker 1: carried a jeweled royal mace at his nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: induction as President Roman Emperor. I had snorted, it's a
Speaker 1: little late to do jeweled mace. Do you think seventy
Speaker 1: four you think that's late for a jeweled mace? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if my dad was alive for it. I feel
Speaker 1: like you shouldn't have, like shouldn't have a jeweled mace.
Speaker 1: But I do love the idea of like, I vant
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate your legacy. Yeah, I we're talking about Sachku
Speaker 1: here as we should on the idea of having a
Speaker 1: jeweled mace at your coronation. But the British royal families
Speaker 1: over there sweating in a corner being like, don't bring
Speaker 1: us up, don't bring us up. We got a fucking
Speaker 1: room full of jeweled mace is don't let anybody tell.
Speaker 1: They're like, you don't even want to know where we
Speaker 1: got these jewels. Yeah, um, so yeah, it's it's very funny. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a line in that article where the Guide is like, no,
Speaker 1: he doesn't think he's a Roman emperor. He thinks he's
Speaker 1: a god. Uh. And the New York Times reporters like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? And the Guide is like, in
Speaker 1: the newspapers they've printed poems about Chesko describing him as
Speaker 1: a dimmi gut. Yeah. Um, not too far off from
Speaker 1: what Roman emperor's thoughts. So then were yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's good. So I mean you could say, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just he's honoring his his cultural heritage, Um, all
Speaker 1: of our cultural heritage. As an Italian, Um, I understand
Speaker 1: the need to believe that some guy who was born
Speaker 1: into a job is literally divine. It's easier than thinking
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, yeah, thank you, um the god of my people.
Speaker 1: So why is Mario Italian? What is it? What is
Speaker 1: it about? What is it? What? What? What is it
Speaker 1: about Japanese game designers that made him think? Like, well,
Speaker 1: you got a plumber? What what what's the natural natural
Speaker 1: ethnicity for a plumber who fights mushroom people? Wasn't he
Speaker 1: the superintendent of of the Nintendo of America? Like he
Speaker 1: was like his character was created to basically he was.
Speaker 1: He was like some guy that they knew they designed
Speaker 1: him that way. Okay, well that that is less magical
Speaker 1: than I had hoped it was. Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the Japanese and the Italian's deep rooted
Speaker 1: history all the way back to roughly trying not to
Speaker 1: go too deep into this new Chris Pratt playing Mario situation.
Speaker 1: That's my question. When I had a real voice, I
Speaker 1: was like, get this ship out of here. If you're
Speaker 1: not being an offensive Italian stereotype, you're not my Mario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is what Bob, Bob Hoskins played an incredible Mario.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, who's a great Mario, that Cockney actor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're back talking about Romania um and kind of
Speaker 1: occasionally Italy. Um. But yeah, so Cesco when we kind
Speaker 1: of leave left off, he's he's he's gotten himself into power,
Speaker 1: he's establishing his cult of personality, and he's he's he's
Speaker 1: doing some some terrible stuff like band abortion um. And
Speaker 1: he's starting to do some dumb stuff like trying to
Speaker 1: turn Romania into the television making capital of Europe. Um.
Speaker 1: But broadly speaking, things are going okay. And one of
Speaker 1: the thit reasons things are going okay is because he
Speaker 1: does not have enough money yet to realize all of
Speaker 1: his visions of turning the entire country into a giant factory.
Speaker 1: And in order to get that kind of money, Church
Speaker 1: knows he's gonna need some loans. Now, the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: does not hit. One of the funny things about this
Speaker 1: is for all of the mismanagement the USSR was guilty of,
Speaker 1: they're totally right here where they're like, no, man, just
Speaker 1: just keep growing food. They're making TVs probably isn't gonna
Speaker 1: work out for Romania, and it doesn't. Um, So they're
Speaker 1: not going to give Romania the resources that Ski thinks
Speaker 1: they need in order to become this manufacturing capital of Europe.
Speaker 1: But you know who does have a lot of money
Speaker 1: and he's really willing to use it on stupid shit.
Speaker 1: The United States of America. Now that's our thing. That
Speaker 1: is our thing. We will put a lot of money
Speaker 1: into some very dumb ship because we have infinity dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem with this is that the United States is
Speaker 1: the heart, the beating heart of global capitalism, and Romania is,
Speaker 1: in theory, a stalinist state, right, a state that's based
Speaker 1: on at least quasi stalinist policies. So the fact that
Speaker 1: Chowchesco decides to get in bed with the US seems
Speaker 1: like a bad I like something that couldn't possibly work.
Speaker 1: It's actually going to be one of the most successful
Speaker 1: things that he does. But the first stage of his
Speaker 1: plot to get in bed with Lady Liberty comes courtesy
Speaker 1: of Lady Liberty's pimp at the time, a fellow that
Speaker 1: you might have heard about, a friend of the pod,
Speaker 1: Richard Millhouse Nixon. Now we love him, We love old
Speaker 1: tricky Dick. Choochesco actually is going to get along very
Speaker 1: well with with with old Dick Nixon. Now nineteen sixties seven,
Speaker 1: which is when they meet, is kind of an awkward
Speaker 1: time for for for Richard Nixon. He had finished being
Speaker 1: vice president quite a y hile ago, and he's sort
Speaker 1: of in the term that politics political writers would use
Speaker 1: at the time is that he's in like the wilderness
Speaker 1: right now, right where he's kind of he doesn't have
Speaker 1: this like he doesn't have like a super prominent role,
Speaker 1: but he's trying to get back into politics, right He's
Speaker 1: trying to, you know, he wants to become president. Um,
Speaker 1: he's had a couple of scandals. He's in this kind
Speaker 1: of very messy place, um, and he's trying to he
Speaker 1: knows that he wants to like kind of recapture some
Speaker 1: of his glory days in order to put himself back
Speaker 1: on the political limelights that he can run and and
Speaker 1: win the Republican nod for president. Now. One of the
Speaker 1: biggest moments from his career previously to this had been
Speaker 1: this very highly publicized kitchen table debate that he'd had
Speaker 1: with Nikita Khrushchev. So Khrushchev comes to power after Stalin,
Speaker 1: there's kind of this falling of a little bit in
Speaker 1: the Cold War. Nixon has what most people would consider
Speaker 1: to be pretty unimpeachable anti communist Cold warrior credentials. So
Speaker 1: referring to Richard Nixon is anything unimpeachable is also very it.
Speaker 1: It is very and yeah, perhaps an ironic term to
Speaker 1: use for him, um, but he he So he meets
Speaker 1: up with Kruschev and they have this like very famous debate.
Speaker 1: That is, it's one of these things that kind of
Speaker 1: turns him, makes him look like a statesman, and so
Speaker 1: as he's kind of in this awkward position, he's like, well,
Speaker 1: what if I do that again? So he he gets in,
Speaker 1: He gets in a fucking plane charter is a flight,
Speaker 1: and he starts traveling through the USSR. He goes to
Speaker 1: Moscow and he tries to set up another debate with Krushchev,
Speaker 1: but the Soviets are like, well that worked out for us,
Speaker 1: but now the Cold War is like getting gnarlier again,
Speaker 1: and we really it doesn't benefit us at all to
Speaker 1: help Richard Nixon become the Republican presidential candidate. So no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do this. Um. And he kind
Speaker 1: of dick kind of awkwardly mopes around Eastern Europe until
Speaker 1: he finds a communist leader who would be absolutely thrilled
Speaker 1: to be his buddy. And that communist leader is Nikki Chauchesco. Now,
Speaker 1: the first meeting between the two men is mainly a
Speaker 1: photo op for Nixon, but it helps to soften his
Speaker 1: image as this hardline cold warrior, and it makes him
Speaker 1: look more like a statesman, Right, that's what Dick wants
Speaker 1: to look like a serious politician, is Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: big the big thing about that is obviously that he
Speaker 1: has built up a very good photo opportunity life like Nixon.
Speaker 1: For all of the all of the bumbling that that
Speaker 1: man has done throughout his entire career, I'm not giving
Speaker 1: up checkers and all this stuff. Like he went to China,
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, and this is kind of the start
Speaker 1: of that, right, because I mean you could say Kruz
Speaker 1: Jeff was kind of the start of that. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting as much of like this anti Soviet hardliner, as
Speaker 1: he has a reputation for being, a lot of his
Speaker 1: career gets made by hanging out with communists. Um, so
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool. Um at least it's well, it's
Speaker 1: actually gonna be disastrous for a lot of people, um,
Speaker 1: but it's it's uh, we'll call it a mixed bag. Um,
Speaker 1: So it works out really well though for Nixon. It
Speaker 1: makes him look, you know, like a statesman. And it's
Speaker 1: gonna work out really well for chaw Chessco because it's
Speaker 1: it's going to give him a connection to the man
Speaker 1: who's about to be the president of the United States.
Speaker 1: And Richard Nixon you wouldn't call him a great friend,
Speaker 1: but he does remember when people are useful to him. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a I don't know, loyalty is the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but he is going to have like a soft spot
Speaker 1: for chow Chessco after this, and he's going to help
Speaker 1: out the dictator of Romania in whatever way that he can. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: this does a couple of things for Chowchesco besides just
Speaker 1: sort of making him look like, oh maybe this is
Speaker 1: maybe this this guy is actually not as much of
Speaker 1: a hardline communist as we've been led to believe. The
Speaker 1: first thing it does outside of that is it it's
Speaker 1: it's him throwing a middle finger at Moscow, right. The
Speaker 1: Soviets don't want him to do this. And one of
Speaker 1: the other things that's happening in this period, this is
Speaker 1: when you have that big Sino Soviet split, So there's
Speaker 1: really like soldiers killing each other Chinese and and and
Speaker 1: Soviet soldiers killing each other on like the borders of
Speaker 1: both countries. Right, this is a really nasty time, and
Speaker 1: this conflict is escalating, and the Soviet Union basically asks
Speaker 1: chow Chesscu to stand with them against the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China and he's like, no, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do that. You know, I'm not going to actually take
Speaker 1: a side in this Sino Soviet split and the way
Speaker 1: that you want me to. Um. So by doing that
Speaker 1: and by having Nixon over, he's kind of provided a
Speaker 1: bridge for the Americans where they're like, well, we actually
Speaker 1: would really like to be able to communicate and and
Speaker 1: talk and settle things directly with China, and we've had
Speaker 1: to do that kind of through the Soviet Union prior
Speaker 1: to this. And now there's this guy at chow Chesscu
Speaker 1: who the Chinese, like Mao likes show Chesscu because chow
Speaker 1: Chesscu wouldn't throw down against him with the U. S.
Speaker 1: S r Um and he's already had Nixon over, so
Speaker 1: maybe we can work with this guy. Maybe this guy
Speaker 1: is going to be our buddy and help us like
Speaker 1: smooth out some shit. Um, so this is a you know,
Speaker 1: this is a bold move. It's it's risky, but you
Speaker 1: have to say this is actually he's going to do
Speaker 1: a lot of stupid things. Most of the things Ciochessco
Speaker 1: does are very dumb. This is good foreign policy. He's
Speaker 1: actually playing very intelligently all these kind of powers off
Speaker 1: each other for his own benefits. That it's intrigue, yeah,
Speaker 1: surprisingly adept at intrigue. Yeah. And it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: If he had never been running the country, if he'd
Speaker 1: just been like Romania's head of foreign you know, policy
Speaker 1: or something, he might have actually been pretty good at
Speaker 1: his job. Um. The problem is that no one actually
Speaker 1: is ever good at the job that he has, which
Speaker 1: is like guy in charge of an entire country down
Speaker 1: to the lives of individual people in it. But he's
Speaker 1: pretty good at the foreign policy ship. And he's gonna
Speaker 1: double down on this foreign policy success. In August of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, when Vincent Czechoslovakia provide him with a
Speaker 1: golden opportunity. So the checks elect a new first Secretary,
Speaker 1: and czechos a Bakia is a communist state, they elect
Speaker 1: a new first Secretary of their party a guy named
Speaker 1: Alexander Dubcheck. And dumb Check is a communist, but he
Speaker 1: is a reformer, right, Um, he's and he's very popular
Speaker 1: in the West because while he's he's still a comy.
Speaker 1: He's this kind of communist who's got more democratic attitudes
Speaker 1: about how things ought to work, and he starts pushing
Speaker 1: a raft of reforms that are much more extensive than
Speaker 1: the ones Cho Chessco had offered his own people. Most crucially,
Speaker 1: he's like, maybe we'll have elections again, and hey, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll even let parties run that aren't communist parties. Now,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, who has just sent tanks not all
Speaker 1: that long ago into Hungary over you know, um an uprising,
Speaker 1: they're not going to like this. Uh, this is not
Speaker 1: acceptable to them. And Moscow responds by invading Czechoslovakia and
Speaker 1: arresting Dubcheck. The force they sinned is made up of
Speaker 1: the five Central Warsaw Pact nations. UM. The two countries
Speaker 1: that do not participate in this invasion are Romania and
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia because they're seen as unreliable um, and they are
Speaker 1: in fact unreliable for that. I love that where we're
Speaker 1: in like obviously Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and we're like, oh man,
Speaker 1: these things don't even exist anymore. Like it's so funny.
Speaker 1: It's like we're talking about yeah, yes, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we are. You've got Romania still, you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta Czech Republic um, but um, yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 1: We are talking about like these ghostly nations. It's interesting
Speaker 1: too because like if you go around, if you travel
Speaker 1: through a lot of Eastern Europe, especially if you travel
Speaker 1: through like the Balkans, it's obviously it's not uniform, but
Speaker 1: you will run into a lot of people, particularly older
Speaker 1: people who are like um, who miss when Tito was
Speaker 1: around and who missed the days of Yugoslavia, which is
Speaker 1: not hard to see why when you think about how
Speaker 1: ugly things got as soon as Yugoslavia broke apart, and
Speaker 1: you can find people, particularly in Russia who missed the U. S.
Speaker 1: S R. You do not run into a lot of
Speaker 1: Romanians who miss ko no no no no no no no. Um.
Speaker 1: Not as common, not nearly as Not to say that,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not trying to like whitewash either the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union or Yugoslavia, but you you you you do run
Speaker 1: into people who are like, ah, you know that for
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons, there were there were things that
Speaker 1: I preferred back then. That does not tend to happen
Speaker 1: nearly so often with Chesco in Romania. Um, but what
Speaker 1: he is pretty good at is this right here. So
Speaker 1: the Soviets invade Czechoslovakia, they arrest this guy, dub check Um,
Speaker 1: and they, you know, put an end too this whole
Speaker 1: We're gonna try opening shipped up a little bit here.
Speaker 1: And Nikolai is in a dangerous position. He does not
Speaker 1: have Soviet soldiers in his country. But obviously Romania is
Speaker 1: not gonna win a war with the Soviet Union, right
Speaker 1: If the USSR wants to come in and force him out,
Speaker 1: they can do it. And he's just seen they're willing
Speaker 1: to do that to the checks Um. So he's not
Speaker 1: going to back down over this though. Um. He calculates
Speaker 1: kind of act curately that the uss are they've just
Speaker 1: blown a lot of political capital and taken a risk
Speaker 1: themselves in occupying Czechoslovakia. They're not gonna want to funk
Speaker 1: with Romania right now, right because they're kind of dealing
Speaker 1: with this ship storm already. So while they're occupying the country.
Speaker 1: He delivers a speech on August twenty one to nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight in front of a hundred thousand people and
Speaker 1: Republic Square in Bucharest, and he's he's it's called the
Speaker 1: Balcony Speech. He's standing on this balcony of this uh
Speaker 1: UM like government building and he addresses this crowd and
Speaker 1: he tells them that the Romanian Communist Party is expressing
Speaker 1: full solidarity with the Czech people. He calls Soviet actions
Speaker 1: a danger to the peace of Europe, and he condemns
Speaker 1: them for forcing their version of socialism on another socialist state.
Speaker 1: One of the things he's like is that like, as
Speaker 1: socialist states, we should have the freedom to exist whatever
Speaker 1: way we want and to like experiment with policies, and
Speaker 1: the Soviet unions shouldn't be cracking down on that stuff
Speaker 1: which is objectively good, right, Like what he he's actually
Speaker 1: taking this is a prince suppold stance, and it's a
Speaker 1: risky one for him. Now. He's not taking it because
Speaker 1: he's morally opposed to what the USSR is doing so
Speaker 1: much as he's taking it because this is going to
Speaker 1: reinforce his popularity with the Americans and the West right,
Speaker 1: and it is outrage. It is popular, you have to say,
Speaker 1: it's very popular. In Romania. This is seen as like
Speaker 1: the high point of his regime, and it gives a
Speaker 1: lot of people reason to be like, oh, you know
Speaker 1: this guy actually, you know, maybe maybe we we lucked
Speaker 1: out in terms of you know, having this student charge
Speaker 1: of the country. He's willing to stand up to the Soviets,
Speaker 1: you know, he's taking a taking this prost stance in
Speaker 1: favor of liberty from the from the U. S. SR.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe we're doing all right. Yeah, yeah, no notes
Speaker 1: on the specific thing. Yeah, and with that we can
Speaker 1: put a lid on him. Yeah, that's the end of it.
Speaker 1: Rides off into the sunset um like co check. So um,
Speaker 1: he's he's done this thing and these kind of two moves.
Speaker 1: He's made this unique place for himself in the world
Speaker 1: of diplomacy. And shortly after there, right around this time,
Speaker 1: Nixon wins election. Yes sixty eight, Nixon wins election and
Speaker 1: he takes office. Um, and so now his buddy Richard
Speaker 1: is running the United States, and he's just given himself
Speaker 1: a really good reason to be trusted by the West.
Speaker 1: So he starts saying, hey, I would like to have
Speaker 1: most Favorite Nation trading status right with the U S.
Speaker 1: Which is a big deal economically, there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of benefits to that, and no communist country had ever
Speaker 1: been offered that um. And the US is like, well, funk,
Speaker 1: why shouldn't we do this? Right? This guy actually seems
Speaker 1: like he's you know, and obviously we don't care that
Speaker 1: he's he's a he's a dictator who's purged his enemies,
Speaker 1: he's made a borshit illegal, he's doing all of these
Speaker 1: things that are like fucked up in his own country.
Speaker 1: But obviously we've never given a shit about. That we
Speaker 1: care about is that he's benefiting US foreign policy right now.
Speaker 1: So we're going to stand up and start offering him
Speaker 1: some shit um. And one of the things that means
Speaker 1: is that, like we do, Romania does eventually get most
Speaker 1: Favored Nation trading status. But the other thing it means
Speaker 1: that Tricky Dick is is going to start talking to
Speaker 1: American business leaders in American banks and being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can trust Chessco, you know, invest in his country,
Speaker 1: give him some loans. It's gonna trustworthy bron Yeah, as
Speaker 1: he's as he is pounding his entire body weight in
Speaker 1: vodka on a daily basis and threatening Henry Kissinger. He
Speaker 1: is he's letting people. Yetta put her money in Romania.
Speaker 1: It's gonna work out really well long term. Good goodbye.
Speaker 1: Who amongst us would not threaten Henry Kissinger given the opportunity. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean we probably shouldn't go much further down that road, uh,
Speaker 1: because I think he still has a secret service detail.
Speaker 1: So um. This is also very popular among the Romanian people,
Speaker 1: and catal And Gruya, who's a Romanian journalist, describes people's
Speaker 1: feelings this way, Romanians lived better and they were out
Speaker 1: of their president, frustrated by history. They saw in Chaochesco
Speaker 1: one of their own who was on equal foot standing
Speaker 1: with the world's bigger players. When he condemned the military
Speaker 1: intervention in Czechoslovakia, Romanian enthusiasm was spontaneous. This act of
Speaker 1: defiance against Moscow brought him the respect of the entire world,
Speaker 1: and Silvio Bruckin, another Romanian writer, adds this Chesko was
Speaker 1: a tyrant when it came to politics and economic disaster,
Speaker 1: but in his foreign policy he had a spark of genius.
Speaker 1: Although uneducated, he was smart, a wily peasant sort of smart,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know it is the kind of one
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting is Choochesco is this little guy. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have he never has anyone backing him up earlier
Speaker 1: in his career. He's entirely on his own, and so
Speaker 1: he's really good at kind of running in between the
Speaker 1: feet of these more powerful figures in Romanian politics. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what he's doing. Like you can see why
Speaker 1: his background makes him good at this specific job, because
Speaker 1: Romania is in this really awkward position geographically, and it's
Speaker 1: in this awkward political position between China and the USSR
Speaker 1: in the US, and he is he is very good
Speaker 1: at He's as good at this as he was good
Speaker 1: at navigating a similar situation in the Constist Party. What
Speaker 1: do you do when you're a rock between three hard places? Like, like,
Speaker 1: how do you like? You're like, yeah, when you're a
Speaker 1: tomato between three rocks. Props to him for doing I guess,
Speaker 1: as far as foreign policy is concerned, as good as
Speaker 1: you can do in this situation from a foreign policy standpoint,
Speaker 1: he's kind of your best case scenario as a leader
Speaker 1: in Romania at this point. Now from an everything else standpoint.
Speaker 1: That's what we're about to talk about. It's not the
Speaker 1: optimal case Scenaria. Unfortunately, it is not enough to be
Speaker 1: good at foreign policy. And for his first half decade
Speaker 1: and so in power, he seems to be okay at
Speaker 1: some of the other stuff we've just talked. He does
Speaker 1: some ugly ship, but like the Communist Party under him
Speaker 1: in the first five or so used in power also
Speaker 1: does the sort of ship communists are supposed to do. Um.
Speaker 1: They put a huge amount of money into this building
Speaker 1: program to ensure every one in the country has a
Speaker 1: private hat residence, which is nice and a good policy
Speaker 1: for keeping people happy. Right. Um. He also invests funds
Speaker 1: in education, and again it's it's promoting books that you
Speaker 1: know he supports, including these like propaganda books about Dracula
Speaker 1: and ship. But it's still like better than I guess
Speaker 1: doing nothing at all. Um. And then in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one show, Cesco goes on tour and as part of
Speaker 1: his plan to irritate the USSR, he visits China, North Korea,
Speaker 1: and North Vietnam and Mongolia. Now China is going to
Speaker 1: be the big visit, right because he has just kind
Speaker 1: of backed or at least refused to like side with
Speaker 1: the USSR against China, and Mao is very grateful for this.
Speaker 1: So he gets this huge welcoming, these massive crowds and marches,
Speaker 1: you know, China's and then he played for three hours straight. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does all all all of the big hits he's doing.
Speaker 1: Um Um, I don't know, uh, I don't know where
Speaker 1: to take this joke, Jeff, but Mao shows him a
Speaker 1: very good time. And obviously China massive powerful country, so
Speaker 1: coming from Romania, Mao is able to show off these
Speaker 1: huge factories, these massive crowds of soldiers and workers marching
Speaker 1: in unison, and he in Elena Cchesco and Elena look
Speaker 1: at all this and they start to get really jealous
Speaker 1: because they're like, well, ship, this is like a first
Speaker 1: class world power, and you know, we're us and I
Speaker 1: would really like it if we could be a little
Speaker 1: bit more like Mao. Um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: he in Elena do is they go to see this
Speaker 1: play put on by Mao's fourth wife, John quing Uh,
Speaker 1: and they see for the first time what this like
Speaker 1: real cult of personality looks like. Because Um, Mao's fourth
Speaker 1: wife and Mao. Both have very effective cults of personality,
Speaker 1: massive and expanse of huge numbers of people, of all
Speaker 1: these books about them and paintings and portraits everywhere. Um
Speaker 1: we he I made the joke the three hours he
Speaker 1: performed for three hours talking about being on tour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of it's actually kind of the
Speaker 1: opposite of that, because Choochescu is the and and Elena,
Speaker 1: like Nikolae and Elena are the audience, and Mao is
Speaker 1: putting on a show for all of them. Right, He's
Speaker 1: got these huge crowds of soldiers and of workers like
Speaker 1: marching in Unison. He's got all of these like they
Speaker 1: go see these beautiful, elaborate plays. He takes them to
Speaker 1: see these factories. And Nikolai is just first off, he's
Speaker 1: blown away by all of this, but he's also he's
Speaker 1: kind of like jealous, right because China is on its
Speaker 1: way to becoming kind of this first class world power
Speaker 1: and Romania is a pretty small country by comparison. Um
Speaker 1: so he's he falls in love both with this idea
Speaker 1: of power that Mao is able to show, but also
Speaker 1: he becomes aware of this huge cult of personality around Mao.
Speaker 1: And around Mao's fourth wife, where they got all of
Speaker 1: these books about them, all of these plays that are
Speaker 1: both like dedicated to them and dedicated to like kind
Speaker 1: of referencing them, and they've got you know, portraits up everywhere.
Speaker 1: And he sees number one, Wow, this is really what
Speaker 1: you can do when you get off your ass and
Speaker 1: you put together a first class cult of personality. But
Speaker 1: the other thing he sees is that, like, well, shit,
Speaker 1: Romania could maybe be the kind of power that China
Speaker 1: is if only I exercised power the same way that
Speaker 1: Mao did. Right, Um, because Mao is a very centralized ruler.
Speaker 1: He's got total pretty total control, least he he is
Speaker 1: heard of him? Yeah, we've heard of Mao. Right Like,
Speaker 1: every time you say cult of personality, I immediately want
Speaker 1: to break into the Living Color riff. Oh see, I
Speaker 1: was gonna in and there I was thinking of isn't
Speaker 1: that a in that a? What is it? Duran Duran song?
Speaker 1: Living Color? Wait? The TV show that's David Allen Greer. Oh.
Speaker 1: Excellent is the band fronted by Corey Glover and in
Speaker 1: Living Color was the comedy show fronted by Keenan, Ivory
Speaker 1: Wayans and uh and and uh and uh David Ellen Greer.
Speaker 1: David Allen Greer was there. Yeah, that was really a
Speaker 1: Wayn's joint. It was and and and didn't know how
Speaker 1: Jim Carey broke out to Jim Carey did that until
Speaker 1: up until the end, really, I mean he stuck around there,
Speaker 1: you go, Jim Carey relevant because he's obviously the chairman
Speaker 1: Mao of comedy. You could say that, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of similarities between the Cultural Revolution and that
Speaker 1: year that we got ace Ventura and The Mask, and
Speaker 1: there was at least one other Jim Carrey movie that
Speaker 1: he was at nine, I believe, and then The Mask
Speaker 1: was five. I think you had dumb and Dumber around
Speaker 1: them somewhere in there too, much like Mao clearing more
Speaker 1: on the Sparrows. Well, I mean, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of similarities between when when um, when
Speaker 1: he was showing up, he was saying, let me show
Speaker 1: you something, and that's a very fire Marshal Bill line
Speaker 1: right there. So it all does tie together, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of similarities between the two men. But
Speaker 1: you know who won't make inappropriate references to tragedies from
Speaker 1: Jim Carey's life. I'm going to guess that it's these
Speaker 1: amazing sponsors that we have coming up. It is these
Speaker 1: amazing sponsors because they are all big fans of Jim Carrey. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back. I'm feeling good. I'm I'm feeling like maybe
Speaker 1: watching The Mask tonight, that seems like one of the
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey movies that didn't have anything problematic in it. Right,
Speaker 1: it's The Mask is pretty good. He also saved them
Speaker 1: a lot of money in c G I by being
Speaker 1: able to do a lot of that stuff. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: off that is one of four movies that were produced
Speaker 1: by Dark Horse Comics. Ish, So you had a two
Speaker 1: year span where we had four movies. You had The Mask,
Speaker 1: you had Tank Girl, you had Time Cop and barbed Wire.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that was a man. The Tank Girl
Speaker 1: movie also pretty good. It's definitely better than Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say it, tank Girl better than The Mask and
Speaker 1: now a better dictator than chow Chescu. But now he's jealous, right,
Speaker 1: he's jealous at seeing this Jim Carey like power jealous, Wow,
Speaker 1: um good work chef, professional comedians. So he decides that
Speaker 1: like the only thing holding Romania back from being China
Speaker 1: is that there's still all this red tape, right, it
Speaker 1: takes too long to do things, there's too many other
Speaker 1: people who aren't Nikolai chow Chesscu and power if yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, because the communism, right yeah yeah. Well, obviously
Speaker 1: there's a lot of reasons why Romania was never going
Speaker 1: to be the kind of power China is, including look
Speaker 1: at the two of them on a map. Just look
Speaker 1: at the size of both countries. Yeah, we're not saying
Speaker 1: I wouldn't show that for all of the tea in
Speaker 1: Romania exactly. Um. The other reason is that Mao a
Speaker 1: lot of problems with Chairman Mao pretty canny fellow, and
Speaker 1: Nikolai Chowchescu has his kinds of canniness, but they are
Speaker 1: more limited than Mao, so he is not going to
Speaker 1: be good at this. But I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: quote from Nicolas Holman describing what happens next. To achieve
Speaker 1: his aims, the population would have to be subjected to
Speaker 1: his control, most easily achieved if they were contained in
Speaker 1: large urban centers. The economic consequences of such a policy
Speaker 1: was an all out drive to create a heavy industrial
Speaker 1: base in Romania and a determination to make Romania self
Speaker 1: sufficient through the elimination of its foreign debt. A policy
Speaker 1: of systemization was also proposed, in which the rural population
Speaker 1: was to be moved to larger urban centers, but this
Speaker 1: was later abandoned. Initially, the developments strategy was very successful,
Speaker 1: as vast pools of underutilized labor and agriculture was mobilized
Speaker 1: for industry, with the proportion of the non agricultural labor
Speaker 1: labor force increasing from thirty point three percent in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six to sixty three point five percent in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven. However, this growth was not sustainable, being based
Speaker 1: on structural shifts, and soon the labor force was faced
Speaker 1: with inadequate employment and income opportunities, with a reduced supply
Speaker 1: of food and other consumer goods. However, Chachesco's ideological inflexibility
Speaker 1: allowed for no changes in his policy, and the regime
Speaker 1: resorted to coercion to achieve the production targets, which enterprise
Speaker 1: managers were then forced to fabricate. The effects of this
Speaker 1: flawed system soon became apparent as the benefits from the
Speaker 1: labor force shift were reduced. Economic growth fell from ten
Speaker 1: percent in the early nineteen seventies to three percent in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, with food and other consumer goods becoming very
Speaker 1: short and supply and gentlemen. Yeah. He he basically is like,
Speaker 1: everybody get out of the country. Everyone has to move
Speaker 1: to the city so that you can work in these factories.
Speaker 1: And we're just going to start the slow process of
Speaker 1: bulldozing every single rural community in Romania. Um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like he did. Did he think he could build food? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean he he doesn't want to make food, Like
Speaker 1: food is not sexy, right, Food is a very reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to want to have, um and actually not a
Speaker 1: bad thing to base your economy around making because people
Speaker 1: are always going to need food, but you're never going
Speaker 1: to be a world power just making a decent amount
Speaker 1: of food. As like a country the size of Romania. Right,
Speaker 1: You've become a world power by industrializing, so you can
Speaker 1: have this massive industrial based so you can have a
Speaker 1: big military, so you can have all of these things
Speaker 1: that he sees the USSR and the Soviets and the
Speaker 1: Americans having um and so this is going to be
Speaker 1: a fucking This is kind of Romania's version of the
Speaker 1: Great Leap Forward. And like the Great Leap forward, it
Speaker 1: does not work very well, and he might have known
Speaker 1: that if he'd actually gotten an accurate look at what
Speaker 1: was going on in China. The problem and she was
Speaker 1: she and she checked in with Mao's wife and said,
Speaker 1: everything's good, it's going great. Ye. The backyard furnaces worked wonderfully.
Speaker 1: Um we've been leaping forward greatly. Yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: part of the problem, is that, like his attitude about
Speaker 1: what works in mouse China comes from Mao, and that
Speaker 1: you may recognize Chairman Mao not the most reliable source
Speaker 1: on Chairman Mao. Yeah. So Nikki's friendship with Nixon, who
Speaker 1: was also buddies with Mao. They all get along like legitimately,
Speaker 1: people will say Nixon and Schawchesku were friendly with each other,
Speaker 1: like they enjoyed one another's company. Um So that's sweet, Jeff.
Speaker 1: It's always nice to hear about friends. You know. It's
Speaker 1: funny when you see that people are friends with other
Speaker 1: people that you know and you're like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know you guys were friends. Oh you like Maw, I
Speaker 1: know Maw. Oh my god, I was in glee club
Speaker 1: with Mao. Yeah, great guy. Um So, Nikola's French up
Speaker 1: with Nixon had earned Romania or had earned Romania and
Speaker 1: invite to the World Bank and the I m F
Speaker 1: UM and then again the only communist nation at this
Speaker 1: point at least who gets invited invited to the World
Speaker 1: Bank in the I m f the US considering Nikki
Speaker 1: a good communist, and this is the term that people
Speaker 1: in Nixon's White House will say for him, and eventually
Speaker 1: I think in Reagan's White House to people are calling
Speaker 1: him he's the good communist, right, he's the nice one. Um.
Speaker 1: They encourage banks to lend money to Romania, and so
Speaker 1: Nikki uses all of this cash he's getting from the
Speaker 1: West to start building these massive, absolutely titanic factories, much
Speaker 1: larger than they need to be and much larger than
Speaker 1: there's any kind of demand for. Right. This is the
Speaker 1: field of dreams of industrializing Soviet block. If you build it,
Speaker 1: everyone will want to Romanian television. Um. But there are
Speaker 1: problems with this. One of them is that Romanian steel,
Speaker 1: because they're also trying to make like cars and shipped
Speaker 1: Romanian steel is of terrible quality. Right. This is I'm
Speaker 1: not a metallurgist, but certain areas make good steel. In
Speaker 1: certain areas do not make good steel. Unless you know
Speaker 1: how to like to move impurities and ship the the
Speaker 1: Iberian Peninsula and Pittsburgh. Yeah, generally speaking, those are the
Speaker 1: two the two main spots are like Saville and Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: And I'm not, again not a metallurgist, but perhaps Romania
Speaker 1: would have done a better job from moving impurities from
Speaker 1: their steel if they'd had chemists who weren't a Lena Ceches.
Speaker 1: It might have helped um. There's also massive corruption in
Speaker 1: corner cutting, which means none of their products are actually
Speaker 1: very safe to use. Romanian televisions were known to be
Speaker 1: as likely to burn your house down as let you
Speaker 1: watch threes company, and so once they start producing this stuff,
Speaker 1: European countries get a look at these things that are like, well,
Speaker 1: these will kill people. You can't put these in houses
Speaker 1: like very so idea, but some houses burned down. It's fine.
Speaker 1: But you can tell you what Dracula would say. Dracula
Speaker 1: would say, sometimes you get them paled. Sometimes impaled gets you,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so you just just take it from
Speaker 1: nationally rehabilitated hero the impaler. That's a fun time and
Speaker 1: nickname to have for somebody that you're trying to rehab
Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny. He is objectively a better person
Speaker 1: than a lot of the American folk heroes I was
Speaker 1: raised to hear about, like Kit Carson, where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: at least Dracula was usually doing it in self defense. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know what, I'll say it right now,
Speaker 1: Dracula better person than Kit Carson. That's ah, that's my
Speaker 1: path right yeah, yeah yeah, and genocide fighter. Okay, so
Speaker 1: now we're just gonna call every American we see that
Speaker 1: does a slight genocide a genocide, a light a light genocide.
Speaker 1: So if you will, yeah, yeah he was. He was
Speaker 1: a genocide uh theoretician. So matters were made worse by
Speaker 1: the fact that all of this industrial production used up
Speaker 1: more fuel than and again Romania, like the Nazis, are
Speaker 1: very like like. Part of why they wanted Romania on
Speaker 1: their side is that, like, Romania has a shipload of oil, right,
Speaker 1: That's why the Germans wanted to conquer Romania like during
Speaker 1: World War One, is Romania has a shipload of oil.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Romania could be other than
Speaker 1: a bread basket is a massive oil producing nation, which, again,
Speaker 1: everything is set up for Romania to have been doing
Speaker 1: quite well in this period. Could be the Dubai, Yeah,
Speaker 1: could have made made very well for himself. But because
Speaker 1: he wants to industrialize, this takes a shipload of fuel
Speaker 1: and so Romania, one of the most oil rich nations
Speaker 1: on Earth, becomes a net importer of petroleum. Like they
Speaker 1: are having to buy guys, what are you doing? They're
Speaker 1: buying oil from Iran because he's using up all of
Speaker 1: their fuel trying to make fucking televisions. Um. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: like if the Saudi king embarked on a building program
Speaker 1: that forced them to buy oil from Texas, where it's like,
Speaker 1: what the funk are you doing? Your word, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: need to do this. This should have been a sign
Speaker 1: that something was awry. Um. And as the building program
Speaker 1: turned ever onwards, Romania's debts stacked up. CHESKU cut rations
Speaker 1: over and over again, and caps were put on how
Speaker 1: warm buildings could be during the winter. It was like,
Speaker 1: if it was above sixteen degrees fahrenheit, I think you
Speaker 1: had to you, I think, yeah, that was the equivalent
Speaker 1: you you weren't allowed to use heating at all, which
Speaker 1: is like that's quite cold, um, below freezing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it becomes increasingly common for the old and sick to
Speaker 1: freeze to death in winter. Again, in a country with
Speaker 1: some of the largest oil reserves in Europe, um, should
Speaker 1: not have been a problem they were dealing with. Now.
Speaker 1: This was of course very stressful for Nikki and he
Speaker 1: opted to blow off steam and one of the most
Speaker 1: time honored traditions of European rulers shooting hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of animals. Now, Romania is a country with a long
Speaker 1: sporting tradition UM and as a result, brown bears had
Speaker 1: been prized hunts of the Romanian nobility for I mean
Speaker 1: presumably for thousands of years UM. And as a result,
Speaker 1: the whole country of Romania had less than nine hundred
Speaker 1: brown bears when the monarchy fell right um. By the
Speaker 1: time Chowchescu took power, socialist policies had rehabilitated the bear count,
Speaker 1: because again, there's not any nobles hunting bears at this
Speaker 1: period of time for sport communists shutting, yeah, one thing.
Speaker 1: Communists are great at making sure that doesn't happen, um
Speaker 1: for a little while. So the early years of Communism
Speaker 1: are very good for Romania's bear population. It goes from
Speaker 1: about eight nine hundred prior to communists taking over to
Speaker 1: about hundred um by kind of the like first ten
Speaker 1: years or so of Nikki's So that's good. Be those
Speaker 1: bears are fucking nobody's killing them, So bear fucking the
Speaker 1: woods in Romania. They did for a while, and then
Speaker 1: Chowchesku found out that it's kind of fun to shoot things. Um,
Speaker 1: so one of the things he does when he gets
Speaker 1: into hunting. If you're a dictator and you take up
Speaker 1: a hobby, you can get really into that hobby. So
Speaker 1: he takes personal possession of all of the best hunting
Speaker 1: land in Romania. And so the game wardens who were
Speaker 1: watching these areas realized that, like, if I want to
Speaker 1: keep my job, anytime the boss comes by, I need
Speaker 1: to make sure he gets to shoot something right, which
Speaker 1: you may recognize is not really hunting, but we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about that. I'm gonna quote me hunting isn't Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: this is less hunting than most bad hunting. This is
Speaker 1: like like like the guys who pay half a million
Speaker 1: dollars to shoot an elephant in the head from a
Speaker 1: truck would look at what Chacu is about to do
Speaker 1: and be like, well, that's a little gross um, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from the Atlantic. Here, one district competed
Speaker 1: against another for his visits, offering big bears and rack
Speaker 1: heavy stags as easy targets for his expensive imported rifles.
Speaker 1: For typical hunt, Chessco would fly in by helicopter, landing
Speaker 1: on a pad cleared within the hunting area. From there
Speaker 1: he'd be taken by rough terrain vehicle. In earlier years
Speaker 1: he favored jeeps. Later a Russian made the gas and
Speaker 1: later still a rattle trap Romanian imitation the row along
Speaker 1: forest roads to a point very near the spot where
Speaker 1: hungry bears are running red deer were expected to appear.
Speaker 1: He would walk the short distance to a strategically placed
Speaker 1: high seat, a tight little draw that served as a
Speaker 1: game corridor, for example, or along a stream where the
Speaker 1: gurgling water would cover noises made by a hunter. Usually
Speaker 1: he was accompanied by at least one security officer who
Speaker 1: would carry his weapons and ammunition, and a forestry official
Speaker 1: from the district office. Many other forest department employees would
Speaker 1: have been involved in preparing for his visit, but they
Speaker 1: were kept at a distance during the actual hunt, and
Speaker 1: the high seat. Chaochescu had little patients for waiting and watching.
Speaker 1: His attention span, according to a witness who had worked
Speaker 1: with him, often was five minutes. The report of his
Speaker 1: short attention span comes from Vacille Crissan, a forestry official
Speaker 1: who later published a memoir in German, the title of
Speaker 1: which translates as Chochescu hunter or butcher. The gist of
Speaker 1: the book is that Chrissan's boss was indeed a butcher
Speaker 1: and not a true hunter. For instance, Chesko would continue
Speaker 1: firing wildly at an animal until it collapsed or ran away.
Speaker 1: If he wounded a stag, he'd command Chrissanne and the
Speaker 1: other attendants to find it and bring him the trophy.
Speaker 1: If he missed all together, they would tell him the
Speaker 1: stag was wounded and that they'd find it, and then
Speaker 1: that stagg or a similar one would be killed and delivered.
Speaker 1: Sometimes more stags were found than were shot. Chrissan wrote
Speaker 1: once after a hunt, a party secretary called him the
Speaker 1: next day and told him that all six stags were found.
Speaker 1: The hell chouches said, how can you find six stags
Speaker 1: if I only shot four? I mean, they're like, look, man,
Speaker 1: you're just good, Yeah, I know you want from us.
Speaker 1: You're just talented you John wicked it. Yeah, you you
Speaker 1: folded the bullet through one and into another. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's funny about this, so there's a
Speaker 1: way that you can, like if you're the kind of
Speaker 1: people who measure trophies and hunting trophies and stuff, there's
Speaker 1: like different categories, right, And it was known for a while,
Speaker 1: like if you go to museums in Romania of like
Speaker 1: that like have animal stuff like that are like museums
Speaker 1: of like natural wildlife in Romania that have stuffed animals,
Speaker 1: like most of them even to this day or from Chowchescu,
Speaker 1: and he had this he was noted during the time
Speaker 1: when he was hunting for he had like a weird
Speaker 1: number of incredibly high quality trophies um, particularly for bears,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of questions about, like how
Speaker 1: are there so many bears of that size in Romania,
Speaker 1: Like there shouldn't be that many trophies that big. And
Speaker 1: it came out after his fall that what what his
Speaker 1: um like, the people who were responsible for keeping him
Speaker 1: happy we're doing is they were stretching the hides in
Speaker 1: a bunch of fucked up ways in order to make
Speaker 1: it look like the bears were much bigger than they were. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were like cheating to make him feel like he'd
Speaker 1: shot a bigger bear than he had. It's like those
Speaker 1: dudes that that were like filling fish with uh with weights. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's exactly like that. But he's not even competing against anybody.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to make him feel like a big man, um,
Speaker 1: and he's trying to make himself feel like aman. Yeah yeah, exactly. UM.
Speaker 1: So it was not uncommon for him to shoot more
Speaker 1: game than just four. I will say that on one
Speaker 1: day in nineteen seventy four, he shot twenty two bears
Speaker 1: um and over the course of his reign he's known
Speaker 1: to have killed at least four hundred of the animals.
Speaker 1: He also blew off steam in the gigantic, almost impossibly
Speaker 1: large mansion he had constructed for himself using some of
Speaker 1: those same four and loan dollars that he'd used to
Speaker 1: make giant factories with. I know this is the name
Speaker 1: of the show, but this guy's kind of a dick.
Speaker 1: He is a little bit. We are getting well into
Speaker 1: the bastardry now. So when he had taken power, Nikki
Speaker 1: had actually refused to live in the mansion occupied by
Speaker 1: his predecessor, because he was like, yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: live in a people's house. I'm wanna live in a
Speaker 1: humble house when I go out and shoot twenty two
Speaker 1: bears in a day. But then he visits MAO and
Speaker 1: he comes back and he's like, actually, I think I
Speaker 1: want a palace. So he builds one for himself using
Speaker 1: the people's money, UM that has eighty rooms, a jacuzzi,
Speaker 1: and in movie theater where he can watch Kojack. That
Speaker 1: sounds awesome, It does sound awesome. Look, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: objectively sweet to have your own private ko Jack theater. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's not a thing that I would be like,
Speaker 1: this is a problem. I'd be like this is this
Speaker 1: guy gets it, although perhaps not very communist. Um, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you know what is communist? I mean I'm
Speaker 1: at a loss because there's so much stuff that we've
Speaker 1: talked about that is communist. The products and services that
Speaker 1: support this podcast all proud members of the Romanian Communist Party. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're back. We're feeling good. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling great.
Speaker 1: You're feeling great, excellent, So feel thank you Sophie, do
Speaker 1: you feel hunt bears? Yeah, Sophie, why don't you and
Speaker 1: I go out, We'll shoot need two bears will come back.
Speaker 1: We'll have us a good time. I'll pass. You don't
Speaker 1: want to shoot twenty two bears? You don't even want
Speaker 1: to run romania? Yeah, you're never gonna wind up and
Speaker 1: shared your romania with that attitude. So two bears, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit much for my taste, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: what about an even baker's dozen't uh half half a
Speaker 1: chow chess bears a day? Yeah, dreamer's dream, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: They're to dream follow your following. But if you feel
Speaker 1: like doing that, all life for you in court. Thank you, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Help me out in my poaching trial. Everybody, and hey,
Speaker 1: if you've got any bears that you need shot, I'll
Speaker 1: helicopter in. Um. I've got about a five minute attention
Speaker 1: span like Nikki, but that ought to be enough. Allegedly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're fine, You're fine, it'll be good, it'll be good.
Speaker 1: I'll just keep shooting until I hit something much like
Speaker 1: chow Chessco. Now, so chow Chessco builds himself this mansion.
Speaker 1: But he realized that he decides pretty quickly. It's it's
Speaker 1: nice having a mansion, certainly, but that's also not nearly
Speaker 1: enough for a guy with my kind of tastes. And
Speaker 1: so there's this in nineteen seventy seven, there's this devastating
Speaker 1: earthquake in the capital in Bucharest Um And most people
Speaker 1: would say devastating earthquake, that's a tragedy, but Chu says,
Speaker 1: devastating earthquake, well ship that got rid of a lot
Speaker 1: of buildings that weren't doing anything but taking up space
Speaker 1: I could have replaced with a balace. Tragedy the opportunity
Speaker 1: that that's right, And you know you You might say
Speaker 1: he's a dreamer, Jeff, but he's certainly not the only one,
Speaker 1: because nobody is allowed to disagree with his dreams. Um,
Speaker 1: are you proud of yourself? Thank you. I'm always proud
Speaker 1: of myself as long as you're proud, because I'm not
Speaker 1: proud of him. Thank you, thank you, Jeff, not thank you, Sophie,
Speaker 1: and thank you Chaochescu. Because the thing he's about to
Speaker 1: do next is he's about to start construction of a
Speaker 1: parliamentary palace for Romania. Now I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to say a death star for some reason. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I thought that, but it is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a death star. Undergone construction of a new
Speaker 1: death star. It is going to be a death star
Speaker 1: for the Romanian economy because the palace they are building. Again,
Speaker 1: Romania lovely country, a lot of great resources, not a
Speaker 1: massive country, right, tend to twenty million people, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of over the course of his reign, it gets
Speaker 1: up to about twenty million people, so not like tiny,
Speaker 1: but not a massive country. And Chaochescu decides, we need
Speaker 1: one of the largest buildings ever constructed by human hands
Speaker 1: in order to act as the center for our government,
Speaker 1: tourism dollars folks. Yeah, well that's not legal. Um, there's
Speaker 1: the biggest ball of yarn of Romania. Um, that's what
Speaker 1: he should have done. He should have made the world's
Speaker 1: biggest ball of yarn and then lived inside of it.
Speaker 1: He is not going to do that, Um, Sophie, would
Speaker 1: you google chich Escu stairs so you can pull up
Speaker 1: some of these pictures pictures for for uh, for Jeff
Speaker 1: while I tell this story. So today, the Parliamentary Palace
Speaker 1: that chaw Chesku had built is the third largest building
Speaker 1: on the planet by volume. Um. It comes in right
Speaker 1: after the Aztec Pyramid of Teotihuacan and the Cape Canaveral
Speaker 1: rocket assembly hangar. It uses thirty It used thirty five
Speaker 1: hundred tons of crystal and one million cubic meters of marble.
Speaker 1: The carpet of the main hall weighed on its own
Speaker 1: one and a half tons. When you have a three
Speaker 1: thousand pound carpet, that's a big building. Now, the earthquake
Speaker 1: had not destroyed enough of the enough of the city
Speaker 1: to make room for this palace, So Chauchescu ordered the
Speaker 1: rest of the city center bulldozed. He flattened a hill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you do. We gotta get rid of the rest
Speaker 1: of this capital city so we can build a capital
Speaker 1: for our city. UM. I prefer to that that has very,
Speaker 1: very like the forbidden city energy. Yeah. And he is.
Speaker 1: He sees what happens to the government that makes a
Speaker 1: forbidden city, and he decides, I want that for myself.
Speaker 1: Why not me? Yeah? Why not me too? Um. He
Speaker 1: changes the course of a river using dams, and he
Speaker 1: forces he's going to evict forty thousand people from their
Speaker 1: homes in order to build this thing. Every building, and
Speaker 1: not only does he bulldoze the center of town in
Speaker 1: order to make this fucking thing? So yeah, every surrounding
Speaker 1: building for four square miles is rebuilt. So not only
Speaker 1: does he demolish a bunch of buildings in the center
Speaker 1: of town or to make this thing, but he demolishes
Speaker 1: and rebuilds every building four miles within four miles of it,
Speaker 1: so that it will match the style of the building.
Speaker 1: It's pretty pretty impressive. Yeah, it is quite a building.
Speaker 1: You're looking at those photos now, yeah, Like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing him, you know, Sophie did bring them up. We're
Speaker 1: looking at these things and like the hell, well, the
Speaker 1: man forced a large number of other people to make
Speaker 1: an impressive looks like scientology, just a little bit scientology
Speaker 1: esk Um. Yeah, so that's pretty cool. Um. He calls
Speaker 1: it the people's Palace. Um, Like yeah, and in order
Speaker 1: to make the people's Palace, he has to demolish multiple
Speaker 1: hospitals and as well as two dozen historic churches and synagogues. Um.
Speaker 1: They do say nothing for him, No, No, he's he'll
Speaker 1: demolish a lot more than that before I'm in Um.
Speaker 1: He also, like, while this is going on, there's this
Speaker 1: kind of like um, covert plan within citizens of Bucharest
Speaker 1: where they figure out how to lift up historic churches
Speaker 1: and put them on wheels and like drive them away
Speaker 1: from where Cheski wants to destroy them, and so they
Speaker 1: wind up like hiding. There's all these there's these there's
Speaker 1: I think like three of them, these old Orthodox churches
Speaker 1: that are like in the middle of these gigantic warrens
Speaker 1: of massive apartment buildings because they had to hide them
Speaker 1: from him. He didn't want to see them, so they
Speaker 1: had to like stick them in courtyards and stuff where
Speaker 1: nobody could see them so that they wouldn't be destroyed
Speaker 1: by Chess. Genuinely unhinged. Pretty it's pretty cool stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like yakety sacks playing while they're moving. Now. I
Speaker 1: want to quote now from an article in CNN Travel
Speaker 1: that interviewed Irene, a parliamentary aid who works in the
Speaker 1: building today, or at least did when that article was written.
Speaker 1: Well passed escuse period. Quote. Construction involved seven d architects
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand building workers doing three shifts a day,
Speaker 1: plus five thousand army personnel, one and a half million
Speaker 1: factory workers, and an army of so called volunteers. You
Speaker 1: didn't always get to volunteer. The palaces Union Hall features
Speaker 1: two large spiral staircases that descend to the main entrance
Speaker 1: to allow Chachesscu and his wife Elena to make grand
Speaker 1: synchronized entrances. He was short and touchy about his height,
Speaker 1: says Irene, so he had the staircases rebuilt twice to
Speaker 1: match his step. All right, I'm gonna say that that's
Speaker 1: not a good investment of money. No, no, no, you
Speaker 1: gotta make you gotta you gotta make it sound right, right, Um,
Speaker 1: you gotta make it look like you're a taller man.
Speaker 1: So you have to change the staircase is repeating. Man,
Speaker 1: just spend that money on lifts if that's the case,
Speaker 1: or yeah, bigger shoes. Irene claps her hands. The sound
Speaker 1: travels crisply. Every chamber has a perfect echo because when
Speaker 1: Cesco wanted something, he clapped and he wanted everyone to
Speaker 1: know he'd clapped. Oh yeah, that was very big in
Speaker 1: um google architecture. Actually, they used to do that a
Speaker 1: lot in palaces. They would have those reflective the refractive
Speaker 1: yeah whatever, the I forget what the building processes where
Speaker 1: you'd clap in one spot and it would travel all
Speaker 1: the way to a central location. Yeah, there's actually this,
Speaker 1: It's really actually pretty amazing what people can do with stuff.
Speaker 1: There's this, like with with the way sound travels around objects.
Speaker 1: There's this art project by the wharf in San Francisco
Speaker 1: where it's these two big metal chair rs that are like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, thirty feet apart, and you can sit
Speaker 1: in one and like whisper and the person in the
Speaker 1: other chair will hear you clearly just because of like
Speaker 1: the way the sound waves travel. It's fucking wild. Um,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that that you can do with
Speaker 1: that ship. Um. But yeah, as impressive as aspects of
Speaker 1: this building are, it is not worth the money. Um,
Speaker 1: and in fact is kind of like a massive disaster
Speaker 1: from every practical standpoint. So today in Romania, the People's
Speaker 1: Palace is still empty, Right, They're still using this thing
Speaker 1: because like, well it's kind of you have to at
Speaker 1: this point. But like they've never it's never even been close.
Speaker 1: They never needed anything nearly this big, Like a building
Speaker 1: the third of the size would have been perfectly adequate
Speaker 1: for their needs well into the future. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: Cho wanted to look fancy. Now fancy looking he is
Speaker 1: he is. And another person who liked looking fancy was
Speaker 1: a Lena Curchesco. She had developed very expensive tastes over
Speaker 1: the period of their time and power for high faction
Speaker 1: and luxury goods. And it ain't cheap covering that ass No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you need a lot of a lot of nice fabric
Speaker 1: um and so esco. Obviously, regular Romanians are not allowed
Speaker 1: to travel unless they're involved in the security services UM,
Speaker 1: and they're certainly not allowed to go buying capitalist goods
Speaker 1: unless they're paying bribes and ship. But Cescu's family, well,
Speaker 1: they're able to travel, They're able to go shopping, you know,
Speaker 1: wherever they want. And we're going to go to the US.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go to Paris. We're gonna buy all the
Speaker 1: nice luxury goods we can. Now, the problem with that
Speaker 1: is that it takes cash to do that, UM, and
Speaker 1: getting cash is going to because again this is a
Speaker 1: communist state, they have to get a little creative about
Speaker 1: where they find cash for these kind of fulling shopping excursions.
Speaker 1: And Chescu decides that the best way to kind of
Speaker 1: ring water from the stone that Romanian had become on
Speaker 1: Romania had become under him was to ransom off city
Speaker 1: the country's Jewish population for cash. That's how he's going
Speaker 1: to pay for these shopping trips. He's Romania's Jews. How
Speaker 1: that's so much somehow worse? It is pretty bad. I
Speaker 1: don't think somehow we need to say yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean other than like straight out extermination, like yes, well,
Speaker 1: and that's I mean strange. It does involve obviously he's
Speaker 1: not killing anybody here, but it is this is intimately
Speaker 1: tied to genocide because you know, World War two ends,
Speaker 1: and an awful lot of Jews in Romania are like
Speaker 1: well Antonescue killed like half of us. Maybe this isn't
Speaker 1: a safe place to stay, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it is perhaps time to go um. But obviously the
Speaker 1: people who are in charge, the new leadership of Romania
Speaker 1: UM are not going to do that, right. They don't
Speaker 1: want anyone leaving. They certainly don't want a fairly well
Speaker 1: educated and economically productive chunk of the population to suddenly leave.
Speaker 1: And so at first under George you Day, when Jewish
Speaker 1: people in Romania would try to leave, generally for Israel,
Speaker 1: they would ransom their Jewish population off to Israel and
Speaker 1: exchange for money and trade goods, a lot of it.
Speaker 1: They would like trade pigs for people. Um, because they
Speaker 1: were trying to start all of these factories. Um. Many
Speaker 1: Romanian Jews were ransomed off in exchange for bull seamen,
Speaker 1: which was later used as part of a breeding program. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a whole thing. And when comes to
Speaker 1: power and he realizes what Georgiu Day had been doing,
Speaker 1: he was initially like livid, like, oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: actually kind of fucked up, like what the hell? Um,
Speaker 1: But then he starts to he gets over it when
Speaker 1: he understands how much money is at stake. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from the book Children of the Night by
Speaker 1: Paul Kenyon here. Under Cichesco's stewardship in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the trade and Jews became even more elaborate and far
Speaker 1: more lucrative. Financing animal farm was no longer adequate. Churchesco
Speaker 1: was prepared to throw caution to the wind in a
Speaker 1: man direct cash payments in exchange for Jewish exit visas.
Speaker 1: The ransom money was to be calculated according to a
Speaker 1: sliding scale at the lower end, where unemployed Jews and
Speaker 1: children who were considered Category D and required a ransom
Speaker 1: fee of around two thousand dollars. More well educated Jews
Speaker 1: were deemed Category A and could only be released from
Speaker 1: the country for a fee of six thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: exceptional cases that rose to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: The secret trade and Jews provided an important source of
Speaker 1: income for Chesco. He never drew an official salary and
Speaker 1: in fact never actually earned a penny in his life,
Speaker 1: having worked in exchange for food and lodging when he
Speaker 1: was an apprentice shoemaker. The ransom money constituted an emergency
Speaker 1: slush fund. He kept it in secret bank accounts alongside
Speaker 1: the proceeds from other covert operations carried out by his
Speaker 1: foreign intelligence services. According to the former chief of his
Speaker 1: foreign intelligence services, Yon Pasipa, these accounts contained around four
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars by the mid nineteen seventies that were
Speaker 1: used to buy a Western mortar call cars for Churchesco's
Speaker 1: chidred and custom built armored Mercedes limousines for the leader
Speaker 1: and his wife, along with the new acquisitions for A
Speaker 1: Lena's expanding collection of diamonds. The first Lady was notorious
Speaker 1: for purchasing jewels while on trips abroad, but on most occasions,
Speaker 1: her aids persuaded the foreign hosts to present her with
Speaker 1: expensive gifts. This is for a rainy day. Chowchesko would
Speaker 1: whisper to Pecipa as they discussed the slush fund while
Speaker 1: walking along the moonlit pathways around his villa. So that's cool,
Speaker 1: he's a Jew salesman. Yes, he's selling them to Israel.
Speaker 1: That's such an uncomfortable thing. Yeah, it is pretty gross.
Speaker 1: Pretty gross. Now within the broad context of his at
Speaker 1: least these people are getting out of chow Chess goose Romania. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we probably don't need to do that. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, Jeff, you don't make your money by
Speaker 1: ransoming Holocaust survivors off to another country. How do you
Speaker 1: make your money? Uh? That is fair, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I I win small fortunes on Netflix game shows. Um,
Speaker 1: but when I'm not doing that, I have I do
Speaker 1: stand up and I am a podcaster. Um, I am
Speaker 1: also a podcaster. I don't do stand up. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know what I do like is hearing you and
Speaker 1: Tom watch Batman. That's right, Tom and Jeff watch Batman.
Speaker 1: Is a is a podcast I do with Tom Ryman
Speaker 1: on game Fully Unemployed where we watch we go through
Speaker 1: the all of the annals of Batman history and we
Speaker 1: talk about it and we are doing Vent three super
Speaker 1: Friends and that is insane. So you can check that
Speaker 1: out at game Fully Unemployed. You can also hear you
Speaker 1: Don't even like sports and in Popular Opinion both on
Speaker 1: the Unpopped Network with Adam Todd Brown and I do
Speaker 1: my own show called Jeff Has Cool Friends, which is
Speaker 1: a sort of long form interview podcast with people I
Speaker 1: know that have cool jobs and we we talk about
Speaker 1: it and that's really fun and that you can get
Speaker 1: for free if you just look up Jeff Has Cool
Speaker 1: Friends wherever, or you can go to patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Jeff May. You get early access to uncensored episodes
Speaker 1: with bonus content, as well as access to shows like
Speaker 1: ug Fine with Kim Crawl, which is a monthly show,
Speaker 1: the monthly show Nerd with Drey Alvarez, which is a
Speaker 1: deep dive into nerdy histories between me, who is more
Speaker 1: of like an artsy nerd and Drey Alvarez is a
Speaker 1: stats nerd. So it's an interesting clash of two worlds
Speaker 1: in that regard. If you want to see me live,
Speaker 1: I run a stand up show in a toy store
Speaker 1: and Burbank called Mint on Card. It is the second
Speaker 1: Friday of every month that blasts from the Past on
Speaker 1: Magnolia in Burbank, California. So our next show will be
Speaker 1: coming up pro quick February ten. And if you live
Speaker 1: in New England, I'm doing a very rare one night
Speaker 1: only show at Redemption Rock Brewery in Worcester, Massachusetts, and
Speaker 1: that is Wednesday, February twenty second. Um. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: to be able to get home. I perform back home
Speaker 1: once a year. Uh, and it seems like this is
Speaker 1: going to be it. I do a lot of local talent.
Speaker 1: I managed to make sure that the people that I
Speaker 1: work with are not scum, which is very hard in comedy.
Speaker 1: How you know what, It's almost as hard as finding
Speaker 1: a good dictator. Yeah, it's very hard. It's I I
Speaker 1: get to I get to I get to take the
Speaker 1: moral high point of saying, if I find out a
Speaker 1: comedian is a rapist, I don't work with them anymore.
Speaker 1: And the club's very hard to get the clubs to
Speaker 1: buy into that. Um. But I love stand up. I
Speaker 1: love doing it. I love my hometown, I love performing.
Speaker 1: I keep the tickets cheap. So if you want to
Speaker 1: check that out Redemption Rock Brewery, and you can go
Speaker 1: to my social media at hey there Jeff ro for
Speaker 1: more information about that. Hell yeah, we'll check all of
Speaker 1: that out. Um and uh, I don't know, go uh
Speaker 1: go go to hell. But you know we should do
Speaker 1: huh we should do this again in a couple of days.
Speaker 1: We should do this and again in a couple of
Speaker 1: days and talk more about chow Chessco, particularly the end
Speaker 1: of chow Chessco. Actually, there's a lot of other funked
Speaker 1: up ship including, um, the inevitable consequence of banning all
Speaker 1: contraception in your country. Um. And uh yeah, we'll get
Speaker 1: we'll talk cult personality, we'll talk getting shot with your wife,
Speaker 1: all the good chow Chessco. Shit. If you're going to
Speaker 1: get shot up, someone might as well do with your wife, right, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: not if it's a Lana. Actually no, that sounds a yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds actually well maybe worse. I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: actually way worse. Yeah, who knows. We all as everybody
Speaker 1: gets to choose who you want to get shot with. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not true anyway. Episodes over perfect, finished, excellent, dismount.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.