Million from the dustbin of history

Ten years ago, on Christmas Day 1989, in the barracks of the Romanian town of Targovishte, after a five-minute trial, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena, who ruled Romania for almost a quarter of a century, were shot. The Ceausescu died, but their work lives on - and brings quite decent money to the country.

Pentagon on the Champs Elysees
One of the last earthly affairs of Nicolae Ceausescu was the transformation of Bucharest into an exemplary socialist city. To do this, in the center of the Romanian capital everything was destroyed to the ground, and then something in the spirit of Kalininsky Prospekt in Moscow was built.
Residents of Bucharest nicknamed the new city center “caushima” (something like our “khrushchubs”, but a little higher class). Its main street, the Boulevard of Victory of Socialism (now, of course, renamed) was supposed to eclipse the bourgeois Champs-Elysees. Responsible comrades were sent to Paris with a special task - to measure the width of the Champs Elysees in order to build a socialist boulevard two meters wider.
The three-kilometer boulevard ended in a huge square capable of accommodating 300 thousand demonstrators with flags and banners. On the other side of the square stood the Palace of the People (now the Palace of Parliament) - a building that Bucharest residents call “pimple”, “it”, and sometimes in completely obscene words, was planned as the largest administrative building on Earth. But, apparently, the comrades sent to the USA made a mistake in the measurements, and the palace was inferior in size to the Pentagon and became the largest only in Europe.
Under Ceausescu, the palace consumed six times more electricity per day than the rest of Bucharest. The total cost of the building was, according to various estimates, from $760 million to $3.3 billion.
For the sake of a 12-story monster in the style of traditional Stalin-Brezhnev architecture, 12 churches, three monasteries, two synagogues and 7,000 residential buildings were demolished. The building has more than 1000 rooms. Marble stairs, red carpets, huge crystal chandeliers, huge tables for meetings of the Central Committee and ministerial boards. Now it houses the Constitutional Court of Romania and the lower house of parliament. The top one is getting ready to move in. Tourists are taken through some of the halls.
Particularly important guests of the country are allowed to stay in the palace. The famous gymnast Nadia Comaneci had a wedding there. And Michael Jackson managed to fulfill Ceausescu’s dream - to gather a crowd of 300 thousand in front of the palace. Coming out onto the balcony, the pop singer greeted the crowd with the words “Hello, Budapest!”

Good genius, drunkard and prince
Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu had three children.
The eldest (adopted) son Valentin was an apolitical person. He received a higher education in England and worked as a nuclear physicist at a regular research institute. He was a kind genius of the Steaua (Bucharest) football team. For victories in European cups, Valentin gave the players of his favorite club from $200 to an ARO car (Romanian Niva) - depending on the importance of the match. During the days of the revolution, he was arrested and spent eight months in prison on suspicion of “undermining the national economy.”
Valentin is now 51 years old. He is engaged in export-import operations; he has no desire to remember the past or communicate with journalists. “Especially with Russian journalists,” his lawyer clarified in a telephone conversation with me. Businessman Valentin Ceausescu rarely visits his native Romania. When he appears at the football stadium during Steaua matches, the crowd applauds.
His sister Zoya Elena is 48. Under her father, she studied mathematics, now she studies business. She prefers to live outside her homeland with her husband, a programmer. Like her brother, Zoe spent eight months in prison on charges of embezzling $8 million (between them). Perhaps the amount was slightly overestimated. In any case, during a search in December 1981, only $97 thousand in cash was found on her.
In the first post-revolutionary years, the life of Zoe Ceausescu was one of the most beloved topics in Romanian newspapers. She was accused of nymphomania, drunken sprees and suspicious transactions with jewelry. Either the daughters of communist leaders are similar to each other, or journalists in different countries expose in the same way, but this story is painfully reminiscent of something Soviet.
But the most colorful was the third child - the youngest son Niku. Firstly, he took after his father and rose to the post of member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania and head of the local party committee in the city of Sibiu. In his free time from party work, Niku liked to go to Las Vegas and play in the casino. Usually he lost, and a lot. The father, seeing how the game had a bad effect on his son, even banned bridge in Romania, but he could not tell Las Vegas.
In addition to cards, Nicu, who was known behind his back as the Prince, devoted a lot of time to women - from factory workers in Sibiu to Nadia Comaneci, whom he raped immediately after the 14-year-old gymnast’s triumphant return to Romania with five Olympic medals from Montreal.
The third passion of Ceausescu's youngest son was alcohol. When he was tried, Nicu justified himself by saying that he did not remember whether he gave the order to shoot at the demonstration in Sibiu, since he was on a multi-day drinking binge and only sobered up in a prison cell. For genocide and illegal possession of weapons, he received 20 years in prison. Three years later he was released due to health reasons. Already free, he was hospitalized with a diagnosis of liver cirrhosis, varicose veins of the esophagus. The liver transplant operation was not performed in the best clinic in Vienna, although friends paid $40 thousand in advance. Niku died in a hospital bed. He is buried next to his parents in the Genci cemetery in Bucharest. On the grave of the main playboy of socialist Romania there is a foppish tombstone, paid for by friends in the Communist Party and the Romanian Komsomol, who have now become the business elite.

Wool socks $16 each
From December 8 to 10, in a conference hall in the center of Bucharest, where shortly before his death Nicolae Ceausescu gave a report at a party conference, an auction of things that once belonged to him and his wife was held.
The hall was attended by lovers of historical curiosities (mainly from the USA and Japan), as well as numerous journalists.
Judging by the items put up for auction, the most extravagant of the communist rulers of Europe was most often given handmade chess, hunting and fishing equipment, carpets, crystal vases, and tablecloths. Brezhnev presented his Romanian colleague with a “Flight” watch, a nesting doll and two Olympic bears.
The trades were brisk. Four dozen autumn-winter hats from the dictator’s wardrobe were sold out instantly. Buyers paid from $15 (for a simple beret) to $250 (for a real Tsek astrakhan “pie”).
Woolen socks, which Ceausescu never even wore, were sold for $16 apiece. But for some reason, handkerchiefs that were never used for their intended purpose (five pieces for $3) did not find a buyer.
No one was flattered by the most expensive lots - two motor boats produced a quarter of a century ago ($4-5 thousand apiece), and two yachts (for $40 thousand and $80 thousand). And a MANN bus was purchased by a local resident at the starting price — $38 thousand
The real battle arose over a completely Woland-like silver cane with a knob, decorated with the inscription in Romanian: “To Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu, our Supreme Commander, as a sign of immeasurable love from lovers of mountain hunting.” The cane was sold for the same amount as Woland - $666.
Prices, however, were not quoted in dollars, but in Romanian lei. And buyers had to struggle with calculators. For $1 they give about 18 thousand lei. It is impossible to give an exact figure: the exchange rate of the national currency is falling daily.
Personally, I liked lot #1002 - “Pyongyang porcelain coffee service with images of birds and a floral landscape on a white background: 3 cups, 3 saucers, 1 coffee pot, 1 sugar bowl, 1 milk jug.” Presented to the “great leader Comrade Ceausescu” by the no less great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung. The starting price was 500 thousand lei ($29). I got the lot for 1 million ($58). However, when I wanted to pick up my purchase, I heard that I had to pay 250 thousand lei more. I expressed my dissatisfaction and was removed from the hall for refusing to pay the specified amount. The classic episode from “The Twelve Chairs” came to mind already on the street.
The auction, which ended so sadly for me, was already the fourth this year. In total, the dead Ceausescu earned more than $1 million for Romania in 1999 (in a country where the average salary does not exceed $100). Maybe that's why 22% of Romanians, according to polls, consider the late dictator the greatest Romanian of the 20th century?

ALEXEY ALEXEEV

Magazine "Kommersant Power" No. 50 dated December 21, 1999, p. 30