Part Three: Nicolae Ceaușescu: The Dracula of Being A Dick

Where did you go? Where did you come from? And then I had to say Cotton eight, Jeff, which made me sad because if your name had just been Joe. You see what I'm saying here, Jeff, that worriginal enough to do that, But they just missed Joseph. It's like the one white guy name that nobody in my family has let them know. They fucked up my joke. Mm hmm, I'm sorry, honestly, like that's on my dad. Yeah. Well,

I'm I'm living now, Jeff. What I'm not living at is you for being here to continue talking about Nikolai Cechesco with me. How are you? There's no place I'd rather be than right here talking about tyrannical despots. Wow, that's a lie, but it's a nice lie. Um, a sweet lie, Jeff, Thank you for thank you for that, for that friendly lie. We used to call those white lies, but now I'm going to call them Jeff May lies.

I mean, the name Jeff May is pretty synonymous with the word white, so I feel like it does work either way. Jeff May of the West estimate, h, we gotta find more uses for you to do your your your front American Northeast accent. Jeff, that was perfect. Um, I gotta, I gotta do a Vanderbilt. But before we do a Vanderbilt, let's talk about a guy who probably had an accent like the only, the only Romanian accent that I know how to do as a Dracula accent.

And I do feel like that would be offensive. Although Jeff, No, we are about to start by talking about how Chowchescu used Dracula Um and other heroes from Romania's passed um in order to uh to to make the case as to why he and I'm gonna quote here from an article on the cult of Chaochescu by The New York Times In Tirgo Vista's History Museum, there is a new exhibition of Romanian heroes. An enormous portrait of Chowchescu gazes

down on the busts of Romanian rulers. Among the venerated is of lad Dracula, the fifteenth century prince whose cruelties gave rise to the Dracula Vampire vampire legend. Flanking the entrance way are huge bronze busts of Decibel, the Dacian king, and Trajan, the Roman Emperor, who defeated Decibel at a great cost in the second century. Could it be that Chowchescu is casting himself not only as a Romanian emperor,

but as a Roman one as well. After all, he carried a jeweled royal mace at his nineteen seventy four induction as President Roman Emperor. I had snorted, it's a little late to do jeweled mace. Do you think seventy four you think that's late for a jeweled mace? Yeah? Yeah, Like if my dad was alive for it. I feel like you shouldn't have, like shouldn't have a jeweled mace. But I do love the idea of like, I vant

to rehabilitate your legacy. Yeah, I we're talking about Sachku here as we should on the idea of having a jeweled mace at your coronation. But the British royal families over there sweating in a corner being like, don't bring us up, don't bring us up. We got a fucking room full of jeweled mace is don't let anybody tell. They're like, you don't even want to know where we got these jewels. Yeah, um, so yeah, it's it's very funny. Um. There's a line in that article where the Guide is like, no,

he doesn't think he's a Roman emperor. He thinks he's a god. Uh. And the New York Times reporters like, what do you mean? And the Guide is like, in the newspapers they've printed poems about Chesko describing him as a dimmi gut. Yeah. Um, not too far off from what Roman emperor's thoughts. So then were yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's good. So I mean you could say, yeah, he's just he's honoring his his cultural heritage, Um, all

of our cultural heritage. As an Italian, Um, I understand the need to believe that some guy who was born into a job is literally divine. It's easier than thinking yeah exactly, yeah, thank you, um the god of my people. So why is Mario Italian? What is it? What is it about? What is it? What? What? What is it about Japanese game designers that made him think? Like, well, you got a plumber? What what what's the natural natural ethnicity for a plumber who fights mushroom people? Wasn't he

the superintendent of of the Nintendo of America? Like he was like his character was created to basically he was. He was like some guy that they knew they designed him that way. Okay, well that that is less magical than I had hoped it was. Yeah, but I mean, you know, it's the Japanese and the Italian's deep rooted history all the way back to roughly trying not to go too deep into this new Chris Pratt playing Mario situation. That's my question. When I had a real voice, I

was like, get this ship out of here. If you're not being an offensive Italian stereotype, you're not my Mario. Yeah, that is what Bob, Bob Hoskins played an incredible Mario. It's like, you know, who's a great Mario, that Cockney actor. Yeah, so we're back talking about Romania um and kind of occasionally Italy. Um. But yeah, so Cesco when we kind of leave left off, he's he's he's gotten himself into power, he's establishing his cult of personality, and he's he's he's

doing some some terrible stuff like band abortion um. And he's starting to do some dumb stuff like trying to turn Romania into the television making capital of Europe. Um. But broadly speaking, things are going okay. And one of the thit reasons things are going okay is because he does not have enough money yet to realize all of his visions of turning the entire country into a giant factory. And in order to get that kind of money, Church knows he's gonna need some loans. Now, the Soviet Union

does not hit. One of the funny things about this is for all of the mismanagement the USSR was guilty of, they're totally right here where they're like, no, man, just just keep growing food. They're making TVs probably isn't gonna work out for Romania, and it doesn't. Um, So they're not going to give Romania the resources that Ski thinks they need in order to become this manufacturing capital of Europe. But you know who does have a lot of money and he's really willing to use it on stupid shit.

The United States of America. Now that's our thing. That is our thing. We will put a lot of money into some very dumb ship because we have infinity dollars. Now, the problem with this is that the United States is the heart, the beating heart of global capitalism, and Romania is, in theory, a stalinist state, right, a state that's based on at least quasi stalinist policies. So the fact that Chowchesco decides to get in bed with the US seems like a bad I like something that couldn't possibly work.

It's actually going to be one of the most successful things that he does. But the first stage of his plot to get in bed with Lady Liberty comes courtesy of Lady Liberty's pimp at the time, a fellow that you might have heard about, a friend of the pod, Richard Millhouse Nixon. Now we love him, We love old tricky Dick. Choochesco actually is going to get along very well with with with old Dick Nixon. Now nineteen sixties seven, which is when they meet, is kind of an awkward

time for for for Richard Nixon. He had finished being vice president quite a y hile ago, and he's sort of in the term that politics political writers would use at the time is that he's in like the wilderness right now, right where he's kind of he doesn't have this like he doesn't have like a super prominent role, but he's trying to get back into politics, right He's trying to, you know, he wants to become president. Um,

he's had a couple of scandals. He's in this kind of very messy place, um, and he's trying to he knows that he wants to like kind of recapture some of his glory days in order to put himself back on the political limelights that he can run and and win the Republican nod for president. Now. One of the biggest moments from his career previously to this had been this very highly publicized kitchen table debate that he'd had

with Nikita Khrushchev. So Khrushchev comes to power after Stalin, there's kind of this falling of a little bit in the Cold War. Nixon has what most people would consider to be pretty unimpeachable anti communist Cold warrior credentials. So referring to Richard Nixon is anything unimpeachable is also very it. It is very and yeah, perhaps an ironic term to use for him, um, but he he So he meets up with Kruschev and they have this like very famous debate.

That is, it's one of these things that kind of turns him, makes him look like a statesman, and so as he's kind of in this awkward position, he's like, well, what if I do that again? So he he gets in, He gets in a fucking plane charter is a flight,

and he starts traveling through the USSR. He goes to Moscow and he tries to set up another debate with Krushchev, but the Soviets are like, well that worked out for us, but now the Cold War is like getting gnarlier again, and we really it doesn't benefit us at all to help Richard Nixon become the Republican presidential candidate. So no,

we're not going to do this. Um. And he kind of dick kind of awkwardly mopes around Eastern Europe until he finds a communist leader who would be absolutely thrilled to be his buddy. And that communist leader is Nikki Chauchesco. Now, the first meeting between the two men is mainly a photo op for Nixon, but it helps to soften his image as this hardline cold warrior, and it makes him look more like a statesman, Right, that's what Dick wants

to look like a serious politician, is Yeah. And the big the big thing about that is obviously that he has built up a very good photo opportunity life like Nixon. For all of the all of the bumbling that that man has done throughout his entire career, I'm not giving up checkers and all this stuff. Like he went to China, like yeah, yeah, and this is kind of the start of that, right, because I mean you could say Kruz

Jeff was kind of the start of that. But it's interesting as much of like this anti Soviet hardliner, as he has a reputation for being, a lot of his career gets made by hanging out with communists. Um, so that's kind of cool. Um at least it's well, it's actually gonna be disastrous for a lot of people, um, but it's it's uh, we'll call it a mixed bag. Um, So it works out really well though for Nixon. It

makes him look, you know, like a statesman. And it's gonna work out really well for chaw Chessco because it's it's going to give him a connection to the man who's about to be the president of the United States. And Richard Nixon you wouldn't call him a great friend, but he does remember when people are useful to him. Right. Um, there's a I don't know, loyalty is the wrong word, but he is going to have like a soft spot for chow Chessco after this, and he's going to help

out the dictator of Romania in whatever way that he can. Um. Now, this does a couple of things for Chowchesco besides just sort of making him look like, oh maybe this is maybe this this guy is actually not as much of a hardline communist as we've been led to believe. The first thing it does outside of that is it it's it's him throwing a middle finger at Moscow, right. The

Soviets don't want him to do this. And one of the other things that's happening in this period, this is when you have that big Sino Soviet split, So there's really like soldiers killing each other Chinese and and and Soviet soldiers killing each other on like the borders of

both countries. Right, this is a really nasty time, and this conflict is escalating, and the Soviet Union basically asks chow Chesscu to stand with them against the People's Republic of China and he's like, no, I'm not going to do that. You know, I'm not going to actually take a side in this Sino Soviet split and the way

that you want me to. Um. So by doing that and by having Nixon over, he's kind of provided a bridge for the Americans where they're like, well, we actually would really like to be able to communicate and and talk and settle things directly with China, and we've had to do that kind of through the Soviet Union prior

to this. And now there's this guy at chow Chesscu who the Chinese, like Mao likes show Chesscu because chow Chesscu wouldn't throw down against him with the U. S. S r Um and he's already had Nixon over, so maybe we can work with this guy. Maybe this guy is going to be our buddy and help us like smooth out some shit. Um, so this is a you know, this is a bold move. It's it's risky, but you have to say this is actually he's going to do a lot of stupid things. Most of the things Ciochessco

does are very dumb. This is good foreign policy. He's actually playing very intelligently all these kind of powers off each other for his own benefits. That it's intrigue, yeah, surprisingly adept at intrigue. Yeah. And it's one of those things. If he had never been running the country, if he'd just been like Romania's head of foreign you know, policy or something, he might have actually been pretty good at

his job. Um. The problem is that no one actually is ever good at the job that he has, which is like guy in charge of an entire country down to the lives of individual people in it. But he's pretty good at the foreign policy ship. And he's gonna double down on this foreign policy success. In August of nineteen sixty eight, when Vincent Czechoslovakia provide him with a

golden opportunity. So the checks elect a new first Secretary, and czechos a Bakia is a communist state, they elect a new first Secretary of their party a guy named Alexander Dubcheck. And dumb Check is a communist, but he is a reformer, right, Um, he's and he's very popular in the West because while he's he's still a comy. He's this kind of communist who's got more democratic attitudes about how things ought to work, and he starts pushing a raft of reforms that are much more extensive than

the ones Cho Chessco had offered his own people. Most crucially, he's like, maybe we'll have elections again, and hey, maybe we'll even let parties run that aren't communist parties. Now, the Soviet Union, who has just sent tanks not all that long ago into Hungary over you know, um an uprising, they're not going to like this. Uh, this is not acceptable to them. And Moscow responds by invading Czechoslovakia and arresting Dubcheck. The force they sinned is made up of

the five Central Warsaw Pact nations. UM. The two countries that do not participate in this invasion are Romania and Yugoslavia because they're seen as unreliable um, and they are in fact unreliable for that. I love that where we're in like obviously Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and we're like, oh man, these things don't even exist anymore. Like it's so funny. It's like we're talking about yeah, yes, but yeah, I

mean we are. You've got Romania still, you know, you gotta Czech Republic um, but um, yeah, it is, it is.

We are talking about like these ghostly nations. It's interesting too because like if you go around, if you travel through a lot of Eastern Europe, especially if you travel through like the Balkans, it's obviously it's not uniform, but you will run into a lot of people, particularly older people who are like um, who miss when Tito was around and who missed the days of Yugoslavia, which is not hard to see why when you think about how ugly things got as soon as Yugoslavia broke apart, and

you can find people, particularly in Russia who missed the U. S. S R. You do not run into a lot of Romanians who miss ko no no no no no no no. Um. Not as common, not nearly as Not to say that, obviously I'm not trying to like whitewash either the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, but you you you you do run into people who are like, ah, you know that for a lot of reasons, there were there were things that I preferred back then. That does not tend to happen

nearly so often with Chesco in Romania. Um, but what he is pretty good at is this right here. So the Soviets invade Czechoslovakia, they arrest this guy, dub check Um, and they, you know, put an end too this whole We're gonna try opening shipped up a little bit here. And Nikolai is in a dangerous position. He does not have Soviet soldiers in his country. But obviously Romania is not gonna win a war with the Soviet Union, right If the USSR wants to come in and force him out,

they can do it. And he's just seen they're willing to do that to the checks Um. So he's not going to back down over this though. Um. He calculates kind of act curately that the uss are they've just blown a lot of political capital and taken a risk themselves in occupying Czechoslovakia. They're not gonna want to funk with Romania right now, right because they're kind of dealing with this ship storm already. So while they're occupying the country.

He delivers a speech on August twenty one to nineteen sixty eight in front of a hundred thousand people and Republic Square in Bucharest, and he's he's it's called the Balcony Speech. He's standing on this balcony of this uh UM like government building and he addresses this crowd and he tells them that the Romanian Communist Party is expressing

full solidarity with the Czech people. He calls Soviet actions a danger to the peace of Europe, and he condemns them for forcing their version of socialism on another socialist state.

One of the things he's like is that like, as socialist states, we should have the freedom to exist whatever way we want and to like experiment with policies, and the Soviet unions shouldn't be cracking down on that stuff which is objectively good, right, Like what he he's actually taking this is a prince suppold stance, and it's a

risky one for him. Now. He's not taking it because he's morally opposed to what the USSR is doing so much as he's taking it because this is going to reinforce his popularity with the Americans and the West right, and it is outrage. It is popular, you have to say,

it's very popular. In Romania. This is seen as like the high point of his regime, and it gives a lot of people reason to be like, oh, you know this guy actually, you know, maybe maybe we we lucked out in terms of you know, having this student charge of the country. He's willing to stand up to the Soviets, you know, he's taking a taking this prost stance in favor of liberty from the from the U. S. SR. Maybe maybe we're doing all right. Yeah, yeah, no notes

on the specific thing. Yeah, and with that we can put a lid on him. Yeah, that's the end of it. Rides off into the sunset um like co check. So um, he's he's done this thing and these kind of two moves. He's made this unique place for himself in the world of diplomacy. And shortly after there, right around this time, Nixon wins election. Yes sixty eight, Nixon wins election and

he takes office. Um, and so now his buddy Richard is running the United States, and he's just given himself a really good reason to be trusted by the West. So he starts saying, hey, I would like to have most Favorite Nation trading status right with the U S. Which is a big deal economically, there's a whole bunch of benefits to that, and no communist country had ever been offered that um. And the US is like, well, funk,

why shouldn't we do this? Right? This guy actually seems like he's you know, and obviously we don't care that he's he's a he's a dictator who's purged his enemies, he's made a borshit illegal, he's doing all of these things that are like fucked up in his own country. But obviously we've never given a shit about. That we care about is that he's benefiting US foreign policy right now. So we're going to stand up and start offering him

some shit um. And one of the things that means is that, like we do, Romania does eventually get most Favored Nation trading status. But the other thing it means that Tricky Dick is is going to start talking to American business leaders in American banks and being like, yeah, you can trust Chessco, you know, invest in his country, give him some loans. It's gonna trustworthy bron Yeah, as he's as he is pounding his entire body weight in vodka on a daily basis and threatening Henry Kissinger. He

is he's letting people. Yetta put her money in Romania. It's gonna work out really well long term. Good goodbye. Who amongst us would not threaten Henry Kissinger given the opportunity. Yeah, Um, I mean we probably shouldn't go much further down that road, uh, because I think he still has a secret service detail.

So um. This is also very popular among the Romanian people, and catal And Gruya, who's a Romanian journalist, describes people's feelings this way, Romanians lived better and they were out of their president, frustrated by history. They saw in Chaochesco one of their own who was on equal foot standing with the world's bigger players. When he condemned the military

intervention in Czechoslovakia, Romanian enthusiasm was spontaneous. This act of defiance against Moscow brought him the respect of the entire world, and Silvio Bruckin, another Romanian writer, adds this Chesko was a tyrant when it came to politics and economic disaster, but in his foreign policy he had a spark of genius. Although uneducated, he was smart, a wily peasant sort of smart, and uh, you know it is the kind of one

thing that's interesting is Choochesco is this little guy. He doesn't have he never has anyone backing him up earlier in his career. He's entirely on his own, and so he's really good at kind of running in between the feet of these more powerful figures in Romanian politics. Yeah, yeah,

and that's what he's doing. Like you can see why his background makes him good at this specific job, because Romania is in this really awkward position geographically, and it's in this awkward political position between China and the USSR in the US, and he is he is very good at He's as good at this as he was good at navigating a similar situation in the Constist Party. What do you do when you're a rock between three hard places? Like, like, how do you like? You're like, yeah, when you're a

tomato between three rocks. Props to him for doing I guess, as far as foreign policy is concerned, as good as you can do in this situation from a foreign policy standpoint, he's kind of your best case scenario as a leader in Romania at this point. Now from an everything else standpoint. That's what we're about to talk about. It's not the optimal case Scenaria. Unfortunately, it is not enough to be good at foreign policy. And for his first half decade and so in power, he seems to be okay at

some of the other stuff we've just talked. He does some ugly ship, but like the Communist Party under him in the first five or so used in power also does the sort of ship communists are supposed to do. Um. They put a huge amount of money into this building program to ensure every one in the country has a private hat residence, which is nice and a good policy

for keeping people happy. Right. Um. He also invests funds in education, and again it's it's promoting books that you know he supports, including these like propaganda books about Dracula and ship. But it's still like better than I guess doing nothing at all. Um. And then in nineteen seventy one show, Cesco goes on tour and as part of his plan to irritate the USSR, he visits China, North Korea,

and North Vietnam and Mongolia. Now China is going to be the big visit, right because he has just kind of backed or at least refused to like side with the USSR against China, and Mao is very grateful for this. So he gets this huge welcoming, these massive crowds and marches, you know, China's and then he played for three hours straight. Yeah. Yeah, he does all all all of the big hits he's doing. Um Um, I don't know, uh, I don't know where to take this joke, Jeff, but Mao shows him a

very good time. And obviously China massive powerful country, so coming from Romania, Mao is able to show off these huge factories, these massive crowds of soldiers and workers marching in unison, and he in Elena Cchesco and Elena look at all this and they start to get really jealous because they're like, well, ship, this is like a first class world power, and you know, we're us and I would really like it if we could be a little

bit more like Mao. Um. One of the things that he in Elena do is they go to see this play put on by Mao's fourth wife, John quing Uh, and they see for the first time what this like real cult of personality looks like. Because Um, Mao's fourth wife and Mao. Both have very effective cults of personality, massive and expanse of huge numbers of people, of all these books about them and paintings and portraits everywhere. Um we he I made the joke the three hours he

performed for three hours talking about being on tour. Yeah, I mean it's kind of it's actually kind of the opposite of that, because Choochescu is the and and Elena, like Nikolae and Elena are the audience, and Mao is putting on a show for all of them. Right, He's got these huge crowds of soldiers and of workers like marching in Unison. He's got all of these like they go see these beautiful, elaborate plays. He takes them to

see these factories. And Nikolai is just first off, he's blown away by all of this, but he's also he's kind of like jealous, right because China is on its way to becoming kind of this first class world power and Romania is a pretty small country by comparison. Um so he's he falls in love both with this idea of power that Mao is able to show, but also he becomes aware of this huge cult of personality around Mao.

And around Mao's fourth wife, where they got all of these books about them, all of these plays that are both like dedicated to them and dedicated to like kind of referencing them, and they've got you know, portraits up everywhere. And he sees number one, Wow, this is really what you can do when you get off your ass and

you put together a first class cult of personality. But the other thing he sees is that, like, well, shit, Romania could maybe be the kind of power that China is if only I exercised power the same way that Mao did. Right, Um, because Mao is a very centralized ruler. He's got total pretty total control, least he he is heard of him? Yeah, we've heard of Mao. Right Like, every time you say cult of personality, I immediately want

to break into the Living Color riff. Oh see, I was gonna in and there I was thinking of isn't that a in that a? What is it? Duran Duran song? Living Color? Wait? The TV show that's David Allen Greer. Oh. Excellent is the band fronted by Corey Glover and in Living Color was the comedy show fronted by Keenan, Ivory Wayans and uh and and uh and uh David Ellen Greer. David Allen Greer was there. Yeah, that was really a

Wayn's joint. It was and and and didn't know how Jim Carey broke out to Jim Carey did that until up until the end, really, I mean he stuck around there, you go, Jim Carey relevant because he's obviously the chairman Mao of comedy. You could say that, you know, there's a lot of similarities between the Cultural Revolution and that year that we got ace Ventura and The Mask, and there was at least one other Jim Carrey movie that he was at nine, I believe, and then The Mask

was five. I think you had dumb and Dumber around them somewhere in there too, much like Mao clearing more on the Sparrows. Well, I mean, if you think about it, there's a lot of similarities between when when um, when he was showing up, he was saying, let me show you something, and that's a very fire Marshal Bill line right there. So it all does tie together, a lot of a lot of similarities between the two men. But you know who won't make inappropriate references to tragedies from

Jim Carey's life. I'm going to guess that it's these amazing sponsors that we have coming up. It is these amazing sponsors because they are all big fans of Jim Carrey. Ah, we're back. I'm feeling good. I'm I'm feeling like maybe watching The Mask tonight, that seems like one of the Jim Carrey movies that didn't have anything problematic in it. Right, it's The Mask is pretty good. He also saved them a lot of money in c G I by being

able to do a lot of that stuff. Interestingly enough, off that is one of four movies that were produced by Dark Horse Comics. Ish, So you had a two year span where we had four movies. You had The Mask, you had Tank Girl, you had Time Cop and barbed Wire. I didn't realize that was a man. The Tank Girl movie also pretty good. It's definitely better than Yeah, I'm gonna say it, tank Girl better than The Mask and

now a better dictator than chow Chescu. But now he's jealous, right, he's jealous at seeing this Jim Carey like power jealous, Wow, um good work chef, professional comedians. So he decides that like the only thing holding Romania back from being China is that there's still all this red tape, right, it takes too long to do things, there's too many other people who aren't Nikolai chow Chesscu and power if yeah

yeah yeah, because the communism, right yeah yeah. Well, obviously there's a lot of reasons why Romania was never going to be the kind of power China is, including look at the two of them on a map. Just look at the size of both countries. Yeah, we're not saying I wouldn't show that for all of the tea in

Romania exactly. Um. The other reason is that Mao a lot of problems with Chairman Mao pretty canny fellow, and Nikolai Chowchescu has his kinds of canniness, but they are more limited than Mao, so he is not going to be good at this. But I'm going to read a quote from Nicolas Holman describing what happens next. To achieve his aims, the population would have to be subjected to his control, most easily achieved if they were contained in

large urban centers. The economic consequences of such a policy was an all out drive to create a heavy industrial base in Romania and a determination to make Romania self sufficient through the elimination of its foreign debt. A policy of systemization was also proposed, in which the rural population was to be moved to larger urban centers, but this

was later abandoned. Initially, the developments strategy was very successful, as vast pools of underutilized labor and agriculture was mobilized for industry, with the proportion of the non agricultural labor labor force increasing from thirty point three percent in nineteen fifty six to sixty three point five percent in nineteen

seventy seven. However, this growth was not sustainable, being based on structural shifts, and soon the labor force was faced with inadequate employment and income opportunities, with a reduced supply of food and other consumer goods. However, Chachesco's ideological inflexibility allowed for no changes in his policy, and the regime resorted to coercion to achieve the production targets, which enterprise

managers were then forced to fabricate. The effects of this flawed system soon became apparent as the benefits from the labor force shift were reduced. Economic growth fell from ten percent in the early nineteen seventies to three percent in nineteen eighty, with food and other consumer goods becoming very short and supply and gentlemen. Yeah. He he basically is like, everybody get out of the country. Everyone has to move to the city so that you can work in these factories.

And we're just going to start the slow process of bulldozing every single rural community in Romania. Um. Yeah, it's like he did. Did he think he could build food? Yeah? I mean he he doesn't want to make food, Like food is not sexy, right, Food is a very reasonable thing to want to have, um and actually not a bad thing to base your economy around making because people are always going to need food, but you're never going to be a world power just making a decent amount

of food. As like a country the size of Romania. Right, You've become a world power by industrializing, so you can have this massive industrial based so you can have a big military, so you can have all of these things that he sees the USSR and the Soviets and the Americans having um and so this is going to be a fucking This is kind of Romania's version of the

Great Leap Forward. And like the Great Leap forward, it does not work very well, and he might have known that if he'd actually gotten an accurate look at what was going on in China. The problem and she was she and she checked in with Mao's wife and said, everything's good, it's going great. Ye. The backyard furnaces worked wonderfully.

Um we've been leaping forward greatly. Yeah, And this is part of the problem, is that, like his attitude about what works in mouse China comes from Mao, and that you may recognize Chairman Mao not the most reliable source on Chairman Mao. Yeah. So Nikki's friendship with Nixon, who was also buddies with Mao. They all get along like legitimately, people will say Nixon and Schawchesku were friendly with each other, like they enjoyed one another's company. Um So that's sweet, Jeff.

It's always nice to hear about friends. You know. It's funny when you see that people are friends with other people that you know and you're like, oh, yeah, I know you guys were friends. Oh you like Maw, I know Maw. Oh my god, I was in glee club

with Mao. Yeah, great guy. Um So, Nikola's French up with Nixon had earned Romania or had earned Romania and invite to the World Bank and the I m F UM and then again the only communist nation at this point at least who gets invited invited to the World Bank in the I m f the US considering Nikki a good communist, and this is the term that people in Nixon's White House will say for him, and eventually I think in Reagan's White House to people are calling

him he's the good communist, right, he's the nice one. Um. They encourage banks to lend money to Romania, and so Nikki uses all of this cash he's getting from the West to start building these massive, absolutely titanic factories, much larger than they need to be and much larger than there's any kind of demand for. Right. This is the field of dreams of industrializing Soviet block. If you build it, everyone will want to Romanian television. Um. But there are

problems with this. One of them is that Romanian steel, because they're also trying to make like cars and shipped Romanian steel is of terrible quality. Right. This is I'm not a metallurgist, but certain areas make good steel. In certain areas do not make good steel. Unless you know how to like to move impurities and ship the the Iberian Peninsula and Pittsburgh. Yeah, generally speaking, those are the two the two main spots are like Saville and Pittsburgh.

And I'm not, again not a metallurgist, but perhaps Romania would have done a better job from moving impurities from their steel if they'd had chemists who weren't a Lena Ceches. It might have helped um. There's also massive corruption in corner cutting, which means none of their products are actually

very safe to use. Romanian televisions were known to be as likely to burn your house down as let you watch threes company, and so once they start producing this stuff, European countries get a look at these things that are like, well, these will kill people. You can't put these in houses like very so idea, but some houses burned down. It's fine. But you can tell you what Dracula would say. Dracula would say, sometimes you get them paled. Sometimes impaled gets you,

you know. Yeah, so you just just take it from nationally rehabilitated hero the impaler. That's a fun time and nickname to have for somebody that you're trying to rehab I mean, it's funny. He is objectively a better person than a lot of the American folk heroes I was raised to hear about, like Kit Carson, where it's like, well, at least Dracula was usually doing it in self defense. Um, I don't know, you know what, I'll say it right now, Dracula better person than Kit Carson. That's ah, that's my

path right yeah, yeah yeah, and genocide fighter. Okay, so now we're just gonna call every American we see that does a slight genocide a genocide, a light a light genocide. So if you will, yeah, yeah he was. He was a genocide uh theoretician. So matters were made worse by the fact that all of this industrial production used up more fuel than and again Romania, like the Nazis, are

very like like. Part of why they wanted Romania on their side is that, like, Romania has a shipload of oil, right, That's why the Germans wanted to conquer Romania like during World War One, is Romania has a shipload of oil. One of the things that Romania could be other than a bread basket is a massive oil producing nation, which, again, everything is set up for Romania to have been doing quite well in this period. Could be the Dubai, Yeah,

could have made made very well for himself. But because he wants to industrialize, this takes a shipload of fuel and so Romania, one of the most oil rich nations on Earth, becomes a net importer of petroleum. Like they are having to buy guys, what are you doing? They're buying oil from Iran because he's using up all of their fuel trying to make fucking televisions. Um. Yeah. It's like if the Saudi king embarked on a building program that forced them to buy oil from Texas, where it's like,

what the funk are you doing? Your word, you shouldn't need to do this. This should have been a sign that something was awry. Um. And as the building program turned ever onwards, Romania's debts stacked up. CHESKU cut rations over and over again, and caps were put on how warm buildings could be during the winter. It was like, if it was above sixteen degrees fahrenheit, I think you had to you, I think, yeah, that was the equivalent you you weren't allowed to use heating at all, which

is like that's quite cold, um, below freezing. Yeah, And it becomes increasingly common for the old and sick to freeze to death in winter. Again, in a country with some of the largest oil reserves in Europe, um, should not have been a problem they were dealing with. Now. This was of course very stressful for Nikki and he opted to blow off steam and one of the most time honored traditions of European rulers shooting hundreds and hundreds

of animals. Now, Romania is a country with a long sporting tradition UM and as a result, brown bears had been prized hunts of the Romanian nobility for I mean presumably for thousands of years UM. And as a result, the whole country of Romania had less than nine hundred

brown bears when the monarchy fell right um. By the time Chowchescu took power, socialist policies had rehabilitated the bear count, because again, there's not any nobles hunting bears at this period of time for sport communists shutting, yeah, one thing. Communists are great at making sure that doesn't happen, um for a little while. So the early years of Communism

are very good for Romania's bear population. It goes from about eight nine hundred prior to communists taking over to about hundred um by kind of the like first ten years or so of Nikki's So that's good. Be those bears are fucking nobody's killing them, So bear fucking the woods in Romania. They did for a while, and then Chowchesku found out that it's kind of fun to shoot things. Um, so one of the things he does when he gets into hunting. If you're a dictator and you take up

a hobby, you can get really into that hobby. So he takes personal possession of all of the best hunting land in Romania. And so the game wardens who were watching these areas realized that, like, if I want to keep my job, anytime the boss comes by, I need to make sure he gets to shoot something right, which you may recognize is not really hunting, but we're about to talk about that. I'm gonna quote me hunting isn't Yeah, um,

this is less hunting than most bad hunting. This is like like like the guys who pay half a million dollars to shoot an elephant in the head from a truck would look at what Chacu is about to do and be like, well, that's a little gross um, So I'm gonna quote from the Atlantic. Here, one district competed against another for his visits, offering big bears and rack heavy stags as easy targets for his expensive imported rifles. For typical hunt, Chessco would fly in by helicopter, landing

on a pad cleared within the hunting area. From there he'd be taken by rough terrain vehicle. In earlier years he favored jeeps. Later a Russian made the gas and later still a rattle trap Romanian imitation the row along forest roads to a point very near the spot where hungry bears are running red deer were expected to appear. He would walk the short distance to a strategically placed high seat, a tight little draw that served as a game corridor, for example, or along a stream where the

gurgling water would cover noises made by a hunter. Usually he was accompanied by at least one security officer who would carry his weapons and ammunition, and a forestry official from the district office. Many other forest department employees would have been involved in preparing for his visit, but they were kept at a distance during the actual hunt, and the high seat. Chaochescu had little patients for waiting and watching. His attention span, according to a witness who had worked

with him, often was five minutes. The report of his short attention span comes from Vacille Crissan, a forestry official who later published a memoir in German, the title of which translates as Chochescu hunter or butcher. The gist of the book is that Chrissan's boss was indeed a butcher and not a true hunter. For instance, Chesko would continue firing wildly at an animal until it collapsed or ran away.

If he wounded a stag, he'd command Chrissanne and the other attendants to find it and bring him the trophy. If he missed all together, they would tell him the stag was wounded and that they'd find it, and then that stagg or a similar one would be killed and delivered. Sometimes more stags were found than were shot. Chrissan wrote once after a hunt, a party secretary called him the next day and told him that all six stags were found. The hell chouches said, how can you find six stags

if I only shot four? I mean, they're like, look, man, you're just good, Yeah, I know you want from us. You're just talented you John wicked it. Yeah, you you

folded the bullet through one and into another. Um. One of the things that's funny about this, so there's a way that you can, like if you're the kind of people who measure trophies and hunting trophies and stuff, there's like different categories, right, And it was known for a while, like if you go to museums in Romania of like that like have animal stuff like that are like museums of like natural wildlife in Romania that have stuffed animals,

like most of them even to this day or from Chowchescu, and he had this he was noted during the time when he was hunting for he had like a weird number of incredibly high quality trophies um, particularly for bears, and there were a lot of questions about, like how are there so many bears of that size in Romania,

Like there shouldn't be that many trophies that big. And it came out after his fall that what what his um like, the people who were responsible for keeping him happy we're doing is they were stretching the hides in a bunch of fucked up ways in order to make it look like the bears were much bigger than they were. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they were like cheating to make him feel like he'd shot a bigger bear than he had. It's like those

dudes that that were like filling fish with uh with weights. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly like that. But he's not even competing against anybody. They're just trying to make him feel like a big man, um, and he's trying to make himself feel like aman. Yeah yeah, exactly. UM. So it was not uncommon for him to shoot more

game than just four. I will say that on one day in nineteen seventy four, he shot twenty two bears um and over the course of his reign he's known to have killed at least four hundred of the animals. He also blew off steam in the gigantic, almost impossibly large mansion he had constructed for himself using some of those same four and loan dollars that he'd used to make giant factories with. I know this is the name of the show, but this guy's kind of a dick.

He is a little bit. We are getting well into the bastardry now. So when he had taken power, Nikki had actually refused to live in the mansion occupied by his predecessor, because he was like, yeah, I want to live in a people's house. I'm wanna live in a humble house when I go out and shoot twenty two bears in a day. But then he visits MAO and he comes back and he's like, actually, I think I want a palace. So he builds one for himself using the people's money, UM that has eighty rooms, a jacuzzi,

and in movie theater where he can watch Kojack. That sounds awesome, It does sound awesome. Look, it's it's it's objectively sweet to have your own private ko Jack theater. Um. But that's not a thing that I would be like, this is a problem. I'd be like this is this guy gets it, although perhaps not very communist. Um, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, you know what is communist? I mean I'm at a loss because there's so much stuff that we've

talked about that is communist. The products and services that support this podcast all proud members of the Romanian Communist Party. Uh, we're back. We're feeling good. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling great. You're feeling great, excellent, So feel thank you Sophie, do you feel hunt bears? Yeah, Sophie, why don't you and I go out, We'll shoot need two bears will come back. We'll have us a good time. I'll pass. You don't want to shoot twenty two bears? You don't even want

to run romania? Yeah, you're never gonna wind up and shared your romania with that attitude. So two bears, it's a little bit much for my taste, you know. Okay, what about an even baker's dozen't uh half half a chow chess bears a day? Yeah, dreamer's dream, Yeah exactly. They're to dream follow your following. But if you feel like doing that, all life for you in court. Thank you, Sophie. Help me out in my poaching trial. Everybody, and hey, if you've got any bears that you need shot, I'll

helicopter in. Um. I've got about a five minute attention span like Nikki, but that ought to be enough. Allegedly, Yeah, you're fine, You're fine, it'll be good, it'll be good. I'll just keep shooting until I hit something much like chow Chessco. Now, so chow Chessco builds himself this mansion. But he realized that he decides pretty quickly. It's it's nice having a mansion, certainly, but that's also not nearly

enough for a guy with my kind of tastes. And so there's this in nineteen seventy seven, there's this devastating earthquake in the capital in Bucharest Um And most people would say devastating earthquake, that's a tragedy, but Chu says, devastating earthquake, well ship that got rid of a lot of buildings that weren't doing anything but taking up space

I could have replaced with a balace. Tragedy the opportunity that that's right, And you know you You might say he's a dreamer, Jeff, but he's certainly not the only one, because nobody is allowed to disagree with his dreams. Um, are you proud of yourself? Thank you. I'm always proud of myself as long as you're proud, because I'm not proud of him. Thank you, thank you, Jeff, not thank you, Sophie,

and thank you Chaochescu. Because the thing he's about to do next is he's about to start construction of a parliamentary palace for Romania. Now I thought you were going to say a death star for some reason. I don't know why I thought that, but it is a little bit of a death star. Undergone construction of a new death star. It is going to be a death star

for the Romanian economy because the palace they are building. Again, Romania lovely country, a lot of great resources, not a massive country, right, tend to twenty million people, you know, kind of over the course of his reign, it gets up to about twenty million people, so not like tiny, but not a massive country. And Chaochescu decides, we need one of the largest buildings ever constructed by human hands in order to act as the center for our government,

tourism dollars folks. Yeah, well that's not legal. Um, there's the biggest ball of yarn of Romania. Um, that's what he should have done. He should have made the world's biggest ball of yarn and then lived inside of it. He is not going to do that, Um, Sophie, would you google chich Escu stairs so you can pull up some of these pictures pictures for for uh, for Jeff while I tell this story. So today, the Parliamentary Palace that chaw Chesku had built is the third largest building

on the planet by volume. Um. It comes in right after the Aztec Pyramid of Teotihuacan and the Cape Canaveral rocket assembly hangar. It uses thirty It used thirty five hundred tons of crystal and one million cubic meters of marble. The carpet of the main hall weighed on its own one and a half tons. When you have a three thousand pound carpet, that's a big building. Now, the earthquake had not destroyed enough of the enough of the city to make room for this palace, So Chauchescu ordered the

rest of the city center bulldozed. He flattened a hill. Yeah, like you do. We gotta get rid of the rest of this capital city so we can build a capital for our city. UM. I prefer to that that has very, very like the forbidden city energy. Yeah. And he is. He sees what happens to the government that makes a forbidden city, and he decides, I want that for myself.

Why not me? Yeah? Why not me too? Um. He changes the course of a river using dams, and he forces he's going to evict forty thousand people from their homes in order to build this thing. Every building, and not only does he bulldoze the center of town in order to make this fucking thing? So yeah, every surrounding

building for four square miles is rebuilt. So not only does he demolish a bunch of buildings in the center of town or to make this thing, but he demolishes and rebuilds every building four miles within four miles of it, so that it will match the style of the building. It's pretty pretty impressive. Yeah, it is quite a building. You're looking at those photos now, yeah, Like, well, I'm

seeing him, you know, Sophie did bring them up. We're looking at these things and like the hell, well, the man forced a large number of other people to make an impressive looks like scientology, just a little bit scientology esk Um. Yeah, so that's pretty cool. Um. He calls it the people's Palace. Um, Like yeah, and in order to make the people's Palace, he has to demolish multiple

hospitals and as well as two dozen historic churches and synagogues. Um. They do say nothing for him, No, No, he's he'll demolish a lot more than that before I'm in Um. He also, like, while this is going on, there's this kind of like um, covert plan within citizens of Bucharest where they figure out how to lift up historic churches and put them on wheels and like drive them away from where Cheski wants to destroy them, and so they

wind up like hiding. There's all these there's these there's I think like three of them, these old Orthodox churches that are like in the middle of these gigantic warrens of massive apartment buildings because they had to hide them from him. He didn't want to see them, so they had to like stick them in courtyards and stuff where nobody could see them so that they wouldn't be destroyed by Chess. Genuinely unhinged. Pretty it's pretty cool stuff. Yeah,

that's like yakety sacks playing while they're moving. Now. I want to quote now from an article in CNN Travel that interviewed Irene, a parliamentary aid who works in the building today, or at least did when that article was written. Well passed escuse period. Quote. Construction involved seven d architects and twenty thousand building workers doing three shifts a day, plus five thousand army personnel, one and a half million factory workers, and an army of so called volunteers. You

didn't always get to volunteer. The palaces Union Hall features two large spiral staircases that descend to the main entrance to allow Chachesscu and his wife Elena to make grand synchronized entrances. He was short and touchy about his height, says Irene, so he had the staircases rebuilt twice to match his step. All right, I'm gonna say that that's

not a good investment of money. No, no, no, you gotta make you gotta you gotta make it sound right, right, Um, you gotta make it look like you're a taller man. So you have to change the staircase is repeating. Man, just spend that money on lifts if that's the case, or yeah, bigger shoes. Irene claps her hands. The sound travels crisply. Every chamber has a perfect echo because when Cesco wanted something, he clapped and he wanted everyone to know he'd clapped. Oh yeah, that was very big in

um google architecture. Actually, they used to do that a lot in palaces. They would have those reflective the refractive yeah whatever, the I forget what the building processes where you'd clap in one spot and it would travel all the way to a central location. Yeah, there's actually this, It's really actually pretty amazing what people can do with stuff. There's this, like with with the way sound travels around objects.

There's this art project by the wharf in San Francisco where it's these two big metal chair rs that are like, I don't know, thirty feet apart, and you can sit in one and like whisper and the person in the other chair will hear you clearly just because of like the way the sound waves travel. It's fucking wild. Um, some of the stuff that that you can do with that ship. Um. But yeah, as impressive as aspects of

this building are, it is not worth the money. Um, and in fact is kind of like a massive disaster from every practical standpoint. So today in Romania, the People's Palace is still empty, Right, They're still using this thing because like, well it's kind of you have to at this point. But like they've never it's never even been close. They never needed anything nearly this big, Like a building the third of the size would have been perfectly adequate

for their needs well into the future. Um, but you know, Cho wanted to look fancy. Now fancy looking he is he is. And another person who liked looking fancy was a Lena Curchesco. She had developed very expensive tastes over the period of their time and power for high faction and luxury goods. And it ain't cheap covering that ass No, no, no, you need a lot of a lot of nice fabric

um and so esco. Obviously, regular Romanians are not allowed to travel unless they're involved in the security services UM, and they're certainly not allowed to go buying capitalist goods unless they're paying bribes and ship. But Cescu's family, well, they're able to travel, They're able to go shopping, you know, wherever they want. And we're going to go to the US. We're gonna go to Paris. We're gonna buy all the

nice luxury goods we can. Now, the problem with that is that it takes cash to do that, UM, and getting cash is going to because again this is a communist state, they have to get a little creative about where they find cash for these kind of fulling shopping excursions. And Chescu decides that the best way to kind of ring water from the stone that Romanian had become on Romania had become under him was to ransom off city the country's Jewish population for cash. That's how he's going

to pay for these shopping trips. He's Romania's Jews. How that's so much somehow worse? It is pretty bad. I don't think somehow we need to say yeah, well, I mean other than like straight out extermination, like yes, well, and that's I mean strange. It does involve obviously he's not killing anybody here, but it is this is intimately tied to genocide because you know, World War two ends, and an awful lot of Jews in Romania are like

well Antonescue killed like half of us. Maybe this isn't a safe place to stay, and you know, it's it's it is perhaps time to go um. But obviously the people who are in charge, the new leadership of Romania UM are not going to do that, right. They don't want anyone leaving. They certainly don't want a fairly well educated and economically productive chunk of the population to suddenly leave.

And so at first under George you Day, when Jewish people in Romania would try to leave, generally for Israel, they would ransom their Jewish population off to Israel and exchange for money and trade goods, a lot of it. They would like trade pigs for people. Um, because they were trying to start all of these factories. Um. Many Romanian Jews were ransomed off in exchange for bull seamen, which was later used as part of a breeding program. Um. Yeah,

it's a it's a whole thing. And when comes to power and he realizes what Georgiu Day had been doing, he was initially like livid, like, oh my god, that's actually kind of fucked up, like what the hell? Um, But then he starts to he gets over it when he understands how much money is at stake. And I'm gonna quote from the book Children of the Night by Paul Kenyon here. Under Cichesco's stewardship in the nineteen seventies, the trade and Jews became even more elaborate and far

more lucrative. Financing animal farm was no longer adequate. Churchesco was prepared to throw caution to the wind in a man direct cash payments in exchange for Jewish exit visas. The ransom money was to be calculated according to a sliding scale at the lower end, where unemployed Jews and children who were considered Category D and required a ransom

fee of around two thousand dollars. More well educated Jews were deemed Category A and could only be released from the country for a fee of six thousand dollars in exceptional cases that rose to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The secret trade and Jews provided an important source of income for Chesco. He never drew an official salary and in fact never actually earned a penny in his life, having worked in exchange for food and lodging when he

was an apprentice shoemaker. The ransom money constituted an emergency slush fund. He kept it in secret bank accounts alongside the proceeds from other covert operations carried out by his

foreign intelligence services. According to the former chief of his foreign intelligence services, Yon Pasipa, these accounts contained around four hundred million dollars by the mid nineteen seventies that were used to buy a Western mortar call cars for Churchesco's chidred and custom built armored Mercedes limousines for the leader and his wife, along with the new acquisitions for A

Lena's expanding collection of diamonds. The first Lady was notorious for purchasing jewels while on trips abroad, but on most occasions, her aids persuaded the foreign hosts to present her with expensive gifts. This is for a rainy day. Chowchesko would whisper to Pecipa as they discussed the slush fund while walking along the moonlit pathways around his villa. So that's cool, he's a Jew salesman. Yes, he's selling them to Israel. That's such an uncomfortable thing. Yeah, it is pretty gross.

Pretty gross. Now within the broad context of his at least these people are getting out of chow Chess goose Romania. Um, but yeah, we probably don't need to do that. So I don't know, Jeff, you don't make your money by ransoming Holocaust survivors off to another country. How do you make your money? Uh? That is fair, that's a great question. Occasionally I I win small fortunes on Netflix game shows. Um, but when I'm not doing that, I have I do stand up and I am a podcaster. Um, I am

also a podcaster. I don't do stand up. Um, but you know what I do like is hearing you and Tom watch Batman. That's right, Tom and Jeff watch Batman. Is a is a podcast I do with Tom Ryman on game Fully Unemployed where we watch we go through the all of the annals of Batman history and we talk about it and we are doing Vent three super Friends and that is insane. So you can check that

out at game Fully Unemployed. You can also hear you Don't even like sports and in Popular Opinion both on the Unpopped Network with Adam Todd Brown and I do my own show called Jeff Has Cool Friends, which is a sort of long form interview podcast with people I know that have cool jobs and we we talk about it and that's really fun and that you can get for free if you just look up Jeff Has Cool Friends wherever, or you can go to patreon dot com

slash Jeff May. You get early access to uncensored episodes with bonus content, as well as access to shows like ug Fine with Kim Crawl, which is a monthly show, the monthly show Nerd with Drey Alvarez, which is a deep dive into nerdy histories between me, who is more of like an artsy nerd and Drey Alvarez is a stats nerd. So it's an interesting clash of two worlds in that regard. If you want to see me live, I run a stand up show in a toy store

and Burbank called Mint on Card. It is the second Friday of every month that blasts from the Past on Magnolia in Burbank, California. So our next show will be coming up pro quick February ten. And if you live in New England, I'm doing a very rare one night only show at Redemption Rock Brewery in Worcester, Massachusetts, and that is Wednesday, February twenty second. Um. I'm very excited to be able to get home. I perform back home once a year. Uh, and it seems like this is

going to be it. I do a lot of local talent. I managed to make sure that the people that I work with are not scum, which is very hard in comedy. How you know what, It's almost as hard as finding a good dictator. Yeah, it's very hard. It's I I get to I get to I get to take the moral high point of saying, if I find out a comedian is a rapist, I don't work with them anymore. And the club's very hard to get the clubs to buy into that. Um. But I love stand up. I

love doing it. I love my hometown, I love performing. I keep the tickets cheap. So if you want to check that out Redemption Rock Brewery, and you can go to my social media at hey there Jeff ro for more information about that. Hell yeah, we'll check all of that out. Um and uh, I don't know, go uh go go to hell. But you know we should do huh we should do this again in a couple of days. We should do this and again in a couple of days and talk more about chow Chessco, particularly the end

of chow Chessco. Actually, there's a lot of other funked up ship including, um, the inevitable consequence of banning all contraception in your country. Um. And uh yeah, we'll get we'll talk cult personality, we'll talk getting shot with your wife, all the good chow Chessco. Shit. If you're going to get shot up, someone might as well do with your wife, right, yeah, man, not if it's a Lana. Actually no, that sounds a yeah, that sounds actually well maybe worse. I don't know, that's

actually way worse. Yeah, who knows. We all as everybody gets to choose who you want to get shot with. Um, that's not true anyway. Episodes over perfect, finished, excellent, dismount. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.