WEBVTT - Part Four: Nicolae Ceaușescu: The Dracula of Being A Dick 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:06.360 Welcome back to Behind the Bastard Heart, four of our 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:12.120 epic series on Nikolai cha Chessco with the inimitable Jeff May. Jeff, 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.040 you know you you have an interesting background. You were 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.960 a teacher, um, and you decided, you know, you had 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:21.400 to make the very difficult choice to leave that career 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:24.480 behind to focus upon another career as a live performer. 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:28.840 I mean that's teaching. It's very live performer esque, just 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:31.960 with health insurance. And I will not not anymore with zoom. 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.680 But um, but yeah, you know I empathize with that. 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:37.839 I also had years ago. I had to make a 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.720 really tough choice, which was to proceed with my career 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.640 as a as a writer and a journalist, um, but 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:48.640 to give up my ambitions of being a musician and 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.519 and and really participating, which has been with one of 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:53.800 the maybe the hardest choice I've ever had to make. Well, 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:56.280 one thing, people don't know you were on the cusp. Yeah, 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.640 I was, darling. I was about to break through. Um. 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.280 But you know, I made peace with the choice that 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:05.920 I made. But but every now and then I feel 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:09.120 the urge to get back into it. So recently I 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:11.039 reached out to some old friends of mine from back 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:12.520 in the day when I was when I was doing 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:14.319 a lot of stage shows. You might have heard of 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:18.319 a little band called Destiny's Child and we we put 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:20.960 together a little bit of collab based on my my 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:23.800 incredible Boston accent. So I want to just play that 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:39.399 for everyone right now. Is a little treats them from 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:43.720 Okay that ought to do there? That was? That was beautiful. 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:48.040 Wow wow. Honestly, like I'm kind of like, I mean, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.160 I'm glad we have this show, and I'm glad we 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:52.640 have all the great work you're doing, but I do 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:55.560 feel like this is sort of like a reminder of 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.600 sort of like the other day the music died. Yeah exact, 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.160 you decided to give up your career, and I'm glad 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:03.760 that you guys are you and Destiny's Child, that you're 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.600 still you Still it's all amicable, I know you kind 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:09.520 of they felt like you left him in the lark 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:12.560 for a while. They had to lift up a lot 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.799 of the stuff that you left behind. But she's done, okay, right, 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.120 she's done. Okay for she did okay, Um, you know, 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:21.720 we're very proud of her. I just I really wish 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:23.720 I could have seen, you know, that's a glimpse into 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:26.400 the alternate reality that we could have had if you 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.400 get stuck with it. You know, it's just one of 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.000 those one of the tiny tragedies that is that is 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:33.800 everyday life. But you know the upside of it is 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.600 that now that we have released this in twenty five years, 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:39.440 I do qualify for admission to the Rock and Roll 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:41.640 Hall of Fame. So I'm sure we're all looking forward 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:45.799 to that. I mean, you have my vote. You're you 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.480 and Billy Joel um both both back in me on 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:53.080 this one. Um, he's actually back acting you. That was 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:55.799 That was a solid Billy Joel joke. Jeff, I hope 0:02:55.800 --> 0:03:00.400 you're proud of yourself. It's a Billy joke. Wow, Well 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:02.800 we're doing good. So you want to talk about a 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:04.919 piece of sh it a little bit more. I thought 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:13.120 we just were. Wow. No, Billy, come on, he does Okay, Yeah, 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.760 he's he's he's he's a good guy. William William Joel 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.280 Oh God, why is my phone ringing? Stop us? Because 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:22.920 you're popular. Oh it's another spam call. It's one of 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.920 the five spam calls I get every single day because 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:31.480 the FCC under uh fucking Donald Trump, decided that phones 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.320 should no longer be things that people can use, isn't 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:37.520 isn't that nice? Isn't that a nice change that was 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:42.720 made classic. Yeah, it's like it's like when commercials were 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.120 allowed to be cartoons again. Yeah's just one of these 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:51.120 decisions that his low key destroyed civilization and shaped my 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:54.880 entire personality. Yeah. Absolutely, I've seen all the he Man 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.400 and g I Joe and stuff that I have behind 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.840 me here. But yeah, you and Michael Bay completely changed 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.560 as a result of that move. Um, just like I 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.360 was completely changed by the fight Beyonce and I had. 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.440 But you know, that's that's that's that's that's water under 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:13.880 the bridge now? Is it in an elevator? Yeah, that 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.040 would probably be the most cinematic place for us to 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.200 have had a fight. Right, but on a security camera? 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:21.279 Did you get did you get the joke or is 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:24.840 that over your head? No, Sophie, if you make a 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.240 joke about Beyonce, you can assume I'm not going to 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.080 get it. But I thought you were so close. I 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.880 know out exactly exactly when you're too close to somebody. 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.000 It's like, how I'm too good at basketball to to 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.719 compete on camera against Lebron James. Can you just do 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.760 that episode? M Yeah, of course Sophie happened up on 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:50.160 an episode on Lebron James. He's like a good dude. Yeah, 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.039 I mean, he's okay again, he's done all right for himself. 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:58.680 So we're talking about Nikolai chaku Um. Now when we 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:01.279 when we had left off, we were talking about the 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.440 gigantic series of palaces. He built the third largest building 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.919 by volume in the world. UM. And as Czech excuse 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:11.240 ambitions for control over the country that he was gradually 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:14.080 grinding into the dust grew, he decided he found the 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:17.719 need to establish and expand a state security force UM 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:22.680 that could surveil his populace to an unprecedented extent. In Romania, 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.360 the state's security force, the secret police, whatever you wanna 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:27.880 call them, they were called the Securitat UH and they 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:29.560 were run by which is actually I think the name 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:33.040 of like a local rent a cop company that you 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.320 can have like do armored car ship. Here, you got 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:42.000 some some Portland's Pinkerton's or whatever. Yeah, I mean, uh, 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:43.839 maybe I'm getting that wrong. I should have checked on this, 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.280 but anyway, the Securitat, the Romanian one was run by 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.359 Jan Pasipa, who we talked about a little bit last episode. 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:52.560 And you know, folks talk about the KGB, they talked 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:54.800 about the East German Stazi, you know when they talk 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:59.840 about communist secret police forces. Yeah, none of these mother 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.560 suckers had ship on the Security TOT in terms of 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.359 its actual like the extent of the repression that it 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:09.160 was capable of carrying out. Oh oh yeah, No, these 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:11.880 are this is a good state security force, not like 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:14.960 an immoral sense, but in a in an efficiency sense, 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.400 in an efficiency sense. Yeah, and in being perfect villains 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:20.880 in a James Bond movie. Since and I'm gonna quote 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:24.280 from Cattle and Gruya here, that's that Romanian journalist. In 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:26.960 nineteen sixty five there was a central phone tapping center 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.440 and eleven regional ones. That's when Chichesco takes power. Thirteen 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:33.680 years later there were two hundred and forty eight centers 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.880 and a thousand portable stations. By the nineteen eighties, the 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:38.880 Security TOT had become one of the most feared secret 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.440 police organizations in the world. In nine it had fourteen thousand, 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.080 two hundred fifty nine employees, of which eight thousand, one 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.240 hundred and fifty nine were officers. According to PACIFA, each 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:51.599 officer had to have fifty collaborators members of the Romanian 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.679 Communist Party and fifty informants outside of the Romanian Communist Party. 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:59.200 The result was the constant surveillance of the population, so 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:04.440 damn near everybody was either in the employee of the 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:09.120 securitat or directly under surveillance of the security talk like both, yeah, 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.520 or both in many cases both the other part. Yeah, 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:15.040 that's I mean, it's they always used to make the 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.720 you know, the KGB jokes. We've all seen that where 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:23.440 yeah yeah and stuff like that, but this seems less funny, Yeah, 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:26.720 somehow less funny than the KGB. Who were who are 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.520 a bunch of lab hucksters? Chuckle chuckle buddies. I did 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.840 a research paper on the KGB and the title of 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:38.160 it was Cops and Robbers. That's not a bad title, fair, 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.120 And the professor was like, this is supposed to be 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.320 like a serious class. Yeah, a lot of people died 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:45.560 and were tortured, but you know that's the case with 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:48.360 secret police all the time. Um, it's a shame that 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:53.000 secret police are absolutely necessary to have in every single country. Um. Yeah, 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:56.720 I'm just gonna on a limb here. A cab includes 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:03.640 secret police establishing WHOA I'm sorry. I know every time 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:08.040 I come on, I cause chaos, um, and this is it. 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.400 I'm sorry. But yeah, wow, that's gonna be that's gonna 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:15.800 be really, really controversial among our listeners, fully half of 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:20.720 whom work in secret police forces. But you know, everybody 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.200 needs to hear stuff that's difficult to listen to sometimes. 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:29.240 So yeah, except that people disagree with you secret police officers, 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.520 that's not what secret police officers do. Um. What they 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:35.440 did in Romania, in addition to domestic repression, was carry 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.280 out a steady stream of assassinations of foreign dissidents, including 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:43.160 Romanian citizens writing for Voice of America, a US funded 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.640 Cold War era news and propaganda agency. At the most 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.520 basic level, this could mean hiring gunmen or assassins with 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.400 knives in other countries. There's one particular guy that they 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.040 tried to kill like three different times, and they shot 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.719 him and they stabbed him, and he kept like not 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.400 quite dying. I've gotta respute and everybody yeah yeah, and 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.920 then it was like a year after getting stabbed, he 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.480 dies of this like mysteriously virulent cancer and it's kind 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.000 of come out since then that it's almost certain they 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.640 slipped him radioactive poison. Um, that's the thing they did 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.920 a couple of times, I think. Uh. And it's honestly, 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.880 that's kind of a cool way to kill someone. Yeah. No, no, 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.520 if you're if you're if you're a journalist writing against 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:25.880 the state and they have to use the radioactive poison 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.800 against you, you know, you've that's like, that's like the 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:34.160 Pulitzer getting getting radiation, getting like radioactive poison, Uh, slipped 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:38.640 in your Yeah, of Jeff dying as a journalist for shure, 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:43.360 you know, yeah, we should all be so lucky. But 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.439 of course, Jeff, I don't know if you've ever priced 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.840 radioactive poison. It is not cheap. And having someone assassinated 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.960 across international lines also very expensive unless they live in 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:57.360 like Toronto. Um. So this this is something that the 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.320 Romanians we're gonna have to spend a lot of money on. Um. 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.680 And when titened Belts put the security tot in a 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.680 budget crunch, they were able to rake in extra cash 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.760 millions of dollars over time, hundreds of thousands of dollars 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:12.240 a year from a foreign benefactor. Now, Jeff I'm gonna 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.160 you want to guess what foreign company secretly funded the 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.280 Secura tot during the most repressive years of Czech excuse regime. 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:21.400 You know what, I have a lot of guesses, Okay, 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:23.640 but I feel like I'm not going to nail it 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:28.280 down because my first answer was McDonald's. No, not McDonald's. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.120 You might call them the McDonald's of furniture, because it 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:38.520 was I kea, I'm sorry, it was like Kia, I 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.480 still like them. Yeah, I'm gonna go and say I'm 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.640 still going to go there. Wow, wow, bold, brave. Well, 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:46.720 I mean, we don't know. I'm sure they're supporting a 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.920 completely different series of secret police agencies now and and 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:52.280 the good ones, you know, the secret police agencies you 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.680 want to trust? Am I supposed to not eat potential 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.800 horse meat balls? Because I'm gonna eat potential horse meat balls? Yeah? 0:10:57.840 --> 0:10:59.520 Where are you gonna get horse meat? If you're not 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.520 getting it somewhere sketchy, right, That's that's how I feel 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:04.520 about And when that came out and everyone was mad 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:07.000 about the about the meatballs maybe having horse, I was like, 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:10.439 it's about time I get to eat horse. Yeah, exactly, exactly, 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.559 And that's exactly what the securitat said. So during the 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:16.000 nineteen eighties this was actually a thing across a lot 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.760 of Eastern Europe. A number of communist states are having 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.800 these like economic crunches, and so they start opening themselves 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.040 up to more capitalist businesses and being like maybe you 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:27.320 come in a little bit in the help of sweet things, 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.600 and is like, oh, yeah, you would like to be 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:33.440 coming in. I don't know how to that's they're not 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.400 from Boston. They're not from Boston. Yes, sorry, I can't 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:40.680 do a good Swedish What was that? It was not 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.000 your best? Yeah, I am a speed in modern and 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:51.439 I went offensive. I went Muppet pretty pretty deep in there. 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:53.240 But it's okay to make fun of the way Swedish 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:56.199 people talk here because they're funding a secret police force. 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.960 So one of the things that KIA did was they 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.280 they realized that it was really cheap to have East 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.719 German political prisoners build their billy bookshelves and other you know, 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:09.000 announceable bedframes. So that was one of the things i 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.160 KA got up to in this period. But they were 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.560 really interested in Romania because Romania has these huge again 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:18.880 is forcing people to leave rural areas and move to 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:22.280 the cities. So there's lots of free timber in Romania 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:26.679 that nobody's living around massively forested. Yes, there's a lot 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.960 of wood anyway. It's sort of like like Siberia when 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:31.880 you see what's and most of people are like tundra 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:33.360 and then you look at it you're like, no, it's 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:35.920 just like the biggest forest on the planet. Yeah, it's 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.520 just like trees all all up in everybody's business. And 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:42.680 that's so you know that i KEA is like, well, 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:45.280 we need trees. We have a lot of low quality, 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:49.840 easily breakable furniture to produce. We'll take all the trees 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:53.840 that you can give us um and Romania is like, well, 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.920 how about you know, you pay our state run timber company, 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.079 you know, ten million pounds ish a year for it, 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.640 and we will skim a significant chunk of that off 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:05.760 the top and send it to our secret police force 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:09.920 so they can buy radioactive poison. Now, IKEA denies that 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:12.800 they knowingly funded a secret police agency through this deal. 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.400 There is a lot of debate between journalists and scholars today. 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:18.040 There is some evidence that I think the fair thing 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:21.760 to say is that while nobody ever wrote this out directly, 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:24.680 based on their dealings in other countries and their understanding 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:28.040 of the situation in Romania. They absolutely knew the Secret 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:30.000 cops were taking a cut off the top of the 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:32.959 money that they were paying. Where do you think your 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:37.880 money is going after you send it to a dictatorship? Yeah, 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.440 some of it's gonna pay for the secret police. Everybody 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:43.120 knows this. Everybody. It's cheap labor. It's sort of like 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.760 how people still have Amazon accounts even though they know 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:49.240 the human toll that it takes on people. And I 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:53.160 sure do like immediate shipping because I'm impatient and I 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.560 like things being slightly cheaper, so I like the media shipping. 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:00.360 I'm okay that Jeff Bezos is buying radioactive reason to 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:04.240 use on his enemies. Um, it's it's such a easy 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:06.520 way to be like, well, they didn't tell us they 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.360 were doing that. Yeah, you guys knew. Um there's some 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:12.520 other evidence to believe that they actually had a decent 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.080 amount of knowledge about how this was working. Um, but yeah, 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.600 if you if you bought any products in the Billy 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:22.360 range or any Albert chairs or any Abbo table tables 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:25.720 or Jonas desks from Ikea in the nineteen eighties. There's 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.520 a very good chance that your purchased directly helped fund 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.560 to the securit tot. So that's neat. Those are specific 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.760 product lines that they really Oh. I had two and 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:38.880 both of them broke within a year. I love Ikea. 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:44.160 This thing right here from Ikea is great. That's good. Well, listeners, 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.080 if your Ikea send us money and I will edit 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:49.360 out that part where I talked about how billy bookshelves 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:53.640 are not made particularly well, Now that's how you do it. Extortion, 0:14:53.880 --> 0:15:00.000 that's how you get money, just like the securitat. Yeah. So, uh, 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:02.760 that's good. That's that's cool stuff. And obviously, while all 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.840 this is happening, this is pretty fucked up, especially the 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:10.800 assassinations they carry out in foreign countries and like NATO countries. Um. 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:12.960 But the West put up with it for quite a 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:16.000 while because as horrific as Cheski was to his own people, 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.240 he never failed to back up u S interests at 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:21.800 critical junctures. And I'm gonna quote from a ride up 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.600 by the Wilson Center here in nineteen seventy nine, Shaochesku 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:28.800 attacked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In nineteen eighty one, 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.360 he counseled caution in the Warsaw Pacts response to the 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.240 crisis in Poland. In the following year, he opposed packed 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.680 plans to increase defense spending and in fact reduced Romania's 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.640 defense budget. In nineteen eighty three, he repeated his call 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:43.680 for a halt to the arms race and advocated multilateral 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:46.720 nuclear disarmament in Europe, and the following year he proposed 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.480 a moratorium on the deployment of new nuclear weapons in Europe. 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.200 At the same time, refused to join the Soviet led 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.640 boycott of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And I'm 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:58.000 noting this because he's he's doing this to stay in 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:00.440 the West good graces. That's not like necessary the bad 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.640 stuff to do obviously, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:07.840 was bad. It's good to disarm and advocate for nuclear disarmament. 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.560 His foreign policy moves are continue to be more right 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.120 than wrong kind of in this period. This is just 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:17.360 all paired with the unspeakable levels of domestic repression that 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:19.840 he's carrying out at home. He seems like a sleeper 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:22.560 agent we forgot about and then things got way out 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.400 of control. Yeah, yeah, he did. He just kept right, 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:29.040 letting it ride. Brasco energy coming out of him here 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:31.600 on this one. For the record, the Soviets were right 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:34.800 to boycott the Olympic Games, not necessarily because of whyever 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.040 they did it. I actually have no idea why they 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.480 did it, but because fun the Olympics. Anyone who boycotts 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:41.800 the Olympics is in the right. I'll stand with whoever 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.320 against the Olympics. If you hate the Olympics, you're my homie. 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:51.760 Get them. Yeah, so chow Chessco. You're uncanceled, buddy. Um, 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:54.160 that's probably not a thing I should Oh wait now 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:57.680 he refused to join it. You're still canceled, motherfucker. Um. So. 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:00.480 Nixon had been the first U S President to visit Romania, 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.680 and a follow up to his nineteen sixty seven visit, 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:07.000 but Nikolairam maintained excellent relations with every US president during 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.680 his time in office. His success in this was close 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:12.280 to perfect until in nineteen seventy eight he sent Yon 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:16.480 Paspa to Germany with apparently a plan to assassinate a journalist. 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.280 I say apparently because Paspa defected to the United States 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.840 and offered up a comprehensive list of Romania's overseas narratives 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.560 in exchange for one presumes a pile of cash in 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:29.639 a lifetime of protection. His intel on the securitat was 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.760 obviously good because he'd been running it. But you also 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.560 have to remember there's like a book that exists that 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.240 stories about the Chowchcuse, but it's based on the stuff 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:43.360 Paspa claimed almost exclusively. And again, this guy is not 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.320 necessarily a credible source on his old boss because he's 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:52.399 defected and had invested interest in ignoring a lot of 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:54.159 the fund up things he'd done as head of the 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.879 secret police and making his boss seem more directly responsible 0:17:57.920 --> 0:17:59.960 for it um, which is not to say that Czech 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.080 Ascue wasn't but just like you shouldn't take anything Paspa 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:07.879 says at face value, right, Yeah exactly, exactly, yeah exactly 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:10.000 that Like that's literally what he's doing. Like he's not 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:11.960 a hero because he came out with the story of 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:15.600 how BADU is he was his secret police head. He's 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:21.239 a snitch, yeah exactly, And snitches get stitches even when 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:25.000 they're snitching on Actually, in this case, snitches get a 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.000 house paid for by the US government for the rest 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.520 of their lives. Um. I mean, I'll snitch on whoever. 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:33.480 If that means I could own a house, I think 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:37.439 a lot of people would. So Paspa was the first 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.800 public figure in the West because obviously it's big news 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:44.199 when he defects to portray Romania and kind of like 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:47.840 a mass sense as a totalitarian hellscape significantly worse than 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.800 anywhere else in communist Europe. Kind Of before this point, 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:53.080 there's been a lot of you know, Romania had had 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.080 a lot of good press in like the US media 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:57.679 and stuff, and that starts to turn around after this. 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.760 And then in nineteen seventy nine, the irane and revolution, 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:03.080 you know, becomes a thing, and that brings an end 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:05.760 to the cheapest oil Romania had been able to buy 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:09.040 because Chesco had a pretty good relationship with the Shaw. 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.000 Then you would get the Iran Iraq War, which ratchets 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:13.879 up the price of oil more and that makes stuff 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:16.960 more difficult for Chochesco and for everybody. Inflation is increasing 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:20.440 across the world at this point, but it's particularly devastating 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:23.280 to Romania because they've been taking on all of this 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.320 debt in order to build these ridiculous things that Chochesko 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:28.959 wants to create. And as you get this kind of 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.400 we all heard the term stagflation, you know, right as 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.320 that starts to really hit, Romania's creditors start calling in 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:37.040 their debts. And I'm going to quote from a book 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.560 by the Charles River editors here. As Western banks increased 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.120 their own interest rates, in turn, the debt repayments became 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.640 ever harder to service for many governments. At the start 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.160 of the nineteen eighties, many developing countries struggled to pay 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.400 the interest on their debt, leading to an era often 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.240 referred to as the debt crisis. For its part, Romania 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:55.320 had half a billion dollars worth of debt in nineteen 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.200 seventy eight, and that had risen to ten point four 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.199 billion by nineteen eight two, equivalent to twenty eight scent 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.080 of its GDP. In nineteen eighty one, just the interest 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:06.159 payments alone accounted for three billion dollars. As a result, 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.199 Romania applied for an I m F loan of some 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:10.359 one point three billion, only for the I m F 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:13.360 Board to reneg on it. As Misha Glennie has pointed out, 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.040 clearly the Western economic institutions had little faith in the 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.719 reliability of Choko's regime to honor its commitments. As a result, 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.800 the Romanian economy suddenly found itself in deep trouble. By 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.000 nineteen eighty two, was forced to cut spending and redirect 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:30.080 foreign currency towards interest repayments. After nineteen eighty two through 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.480 most of the Romanian budget into paying down the debt. 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:36.600 So you've got two things going on here. One is 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:39.720 that Romania has this crippling debt to pay off, and 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:42.159 the other is that Chochesco gets angry at the I 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:44.520 m F over the fact that they're not willing to 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:46.840 give him the kind of deal he wants, and despite 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.040 his creditors, he decides to make Romania totally independent from 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:53.560 the global economy. And obviously, you know it's gonna go 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.000 great for everybody. You know, the I m F is 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.000 also a bad guy in this, because it was very 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.639 obvious to anyone paying attention that Romania was not going 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:03.200 to be able to handle the kind of debt that 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:07.160 they were taking on. Um, that these were really bad investments. 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:10.200 But um, yeah, so there's a lot that's sucked up here. 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.520 But well, well we will we will in this case 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.120 put most of the blame on Chesscu. Um, I mean 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:18.600 just the blame kind of goes everywhere in that case, 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:21.640 all right, Like it's yeah, it's like, yeah, it's I mean, 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:25.119 debt happens we live. When I heard the number, I 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.359 was like, oh that is cute. Yeah, yeah, yeah it is. 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:31.560 I mean it's a lot more money for them. Um. 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:34.720 But yeah, that is like a rounding error. Now it 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.399 is funny that like Elon Musk could have paid off 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:41.200 us debt with pocket change still has a quarter of Twitter. 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:48.280