INTELLECTUALS ' NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
71S
sake of power, the National Salvation Front leadership is ready to do
anything. It proved it in January, in February, in March, and in June of
1990, and it proved it as well in September 1991, and it will do so in the
future whenever necessary. The star of lliescu rises, shining with a glow of
unanimity, as the most precious stone of a regime for which any minority
- national, intellectual, professional - is considered,
ex officio,
criminal.
Taking advantage of the troubled international political context, Iliescu
is, in fact, only a step away from assuming dictatorial powers. In a
Europe divided by irreconcilable conflicts and torn apart by fratricidal
wars, a little despot from an isolated country between the Carpathians
and the Danube bothers no one. As long as he maintains peace, his
support is assured. Playing from the very beginning into the hands of
party activists and the former repressive apparatus, lliescu was sure to put
up the high card. In Romania, where the shamelessness of politicians has
reached the heights, no one is bothered that the heads of parliament are
two old wrecks of Communism. No one minds that what sets the
majority of the parliamentarians into motion is fidelity to the ancient
Communist party apparatus, not an attachment to the values of
democracy. The graceful speeches of men like Vasile Vacaru, Marian
Enache , Dan Martian, Gheorghe Dumitrascu, Alexandru Birladeanu,
Romulus Vulpescu will lead us, in an atmosphere of merry National Sal–
vation Front democracy, to where Ceausescu wanted to lead us in a
paranoic
allegro:
to the Asiatic border of Europe, into the land of en–
lightened dictators.
The most frightening thing in this situation is that the man of good
will seems to have signed a treaty with the red beast. Deprofessionalized,
underqualified, driven to despair by poverty and misery, living as if he
were kept in a kind of reservation, always waiting to be told what to
do, what to think, what to say, and what to eat, he is part of a perfectly
maneuverable mass in a country of absolute cynicism. A television com–
pany in which disinformation has reached the acme of shamelessness is
contributing fully to the moral ill-treatment of the mass of Romanian
people. Meek and frightened, it will lose even the nothing it possesses
and keep on voting for standing still in the communitarian utopia.
It is no less true, though, that the opposition did its best to amplifY
the fears of a population infantilized by a Communist regime, which in
Romania rules with dehumanizing force. In a way, the opposition has
been the didactic material for the clever activist propaganda disguised as
the herald of democracy. "You see ," the propagandists used to say, "you
see where these enemies of the people want to lead you? They will
throw you out of your jobs, and they will abandon you to the foreign–
ers who come here to get rich!" Under these circumstances, dialogue
becomes impossible . In all the other ex-Communist countries, Bolshevik
