Factoids

Here is a link to a program from the University of Northern Iowa's production of Mad Forest in 2011. It contains some interesting facts about life in Romania and also Romanian-Hungarian relations under Ceausescu.

http://www.uni.edu/theatre/swt/sites/default/files/mad_program.pdf

Documentaries on Nicolae Ceausescu

Ceausescu Behind the Myth
Biography of Nicolae Ceausescu

Defender of Communist Romania, leader of the fight against the Iron Guard, shot to death by a firing squad

Basic Info on Iron Guard

Iron Guard/ Legion of the Archangel Michael

• ultra-right political party, facist, promoted by Orthodox Christian faith
• anti-semetic: religious anti-semitism, economic and racial anti-semitism
• used lots of religious symbols and imagery in nationalist speeched, poetry, songs
• youth movement had stronghold on Faculty of Theology at U of Bucharest
• Legion founded on July 24, 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu until 1938 when he was assassinated
• more terms “legionnaires”, “Legion”, “Legionary Movement”
• Iron Guard formed in 1930, paramilitary political branch of Legion
• June 1935 “Totul pentru Tară” or “Everything for the Country”/ “Everything for the Fatherland”/ “Everything for the Motherland”
• similar to an oligarchy?
• Iron Guard Anthem - Hymn of Legionari Youth, speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWQkAfSLSLA
• Corneliu = Sun of Romania
• Creepy death team song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYaX2hS3iUk
• Legionaires were asked to give and embrace death (lots of songs and tributes to death, as it was noble to die for God)
• Romanian Orthodox Church prohibits death, but they got around it by saying “giving death”
• GLORY, moving “through” death
• Nest Leader’s Manual: http://ia700305.us.archive.org/9/items/TheNestLeadersManual_148/NestLeadersManual.pdf
• Romania switched from Facism to Communism during WWII when Russia invaded Romania in an attempt to recapture it from German forces and liberate Czechoslovakia  http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/ceausescu.html
• “no one shall escape judgement”, everyone is responsible to the nation, no matter who you know or who you are (unless you’re the all powerful leader)
• Although religious, Legionnaires enjoyed the idea of the dead and living making up the nation; invoking the dead for justice
• Jilava Massacre:
• Nov 26, 1940, Jilava penitentiary
• 64 political detainees killed during the night
• Iron Guard came to power in 1940, PM and conducator Ion Antonescu sought justice through legal means, but IG wanted bloodshed and vengeance
• post-Codreanu (after his assassination)
• short bio on Antonescu: http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/antonescu.html







Short blog entry on religion and Iron Guard
Religion and Romania
excerpt from 


From Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, From the Great War to the War on Terror, by Michael Burleigh (HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 270-271

Here's an article on the Iron Guard as a political religion:
Fascism as Political Religion: The Case of the Romanian Iron Guard

Abortion

Here are some links to articles and a documentary on abortion. Be careful while reading - some are opinion pieces, but they do contain a lot of useful information. Here is the gist of it, highlighting Ceaucescu's Decree 770, but please take a peek at all the articles (they're short and concise):

"The highest abortion rates recorded have been in Romania in 1965, where, among women in the reproductive age from fifteen to forty-four, one in four had an abortion each year (Henshaw and Morrow 1990). The abortion rate in Romania plummeted in 1966 when Romanian dictator Nicolau Ceaucescu banned abortion in an attempt to increase population growth rates. Police surveillance of women included mandatory pelvic examinations and pregnancy tests. This action resulted in higher birth rates, but it was also accompanied by skyrocketing maternal mortality rates including a dramatic increase in deaths from abortion, which caused approximately 85 percent of all maternal deaths. The Romanian maternal mortality rate went from 86 per 100,000 live births in 1966 to 170 per 100,000 live births in the late 1980s—the highest in Europe.

Approximately 10,000 excess maternal deaths due to abortion occurred during the period from 1966–1989 (Serbanescu et al. 2001). Romanian abortion rates again became the highest in the world after Ceaucescu was overthrown in 1989, and abortion mortality rates dropped ( Joffe 1999; Henshaw 1999). Within one year after the fall of the Ceaucescu regime, the maternal mortality rate dropped by 50 per cent. By 1997, there were 21 abortion-related deaths per 100,000 live births (Serbanescu et al. 2001)."
<a href="http://family.jrank.org/pages/5/Abortion-Incidence-Abortion.html">Abortion - Incidence Of Abortion</a>

THE OTHER ARTICLES:

http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn318cohort_of67ed

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/do-republicans-want-america-to-be-like-romania-in-the-1960s-1980s/question-1550853/

***Here is a link to a DOCUMENTARY that you can view in full (in 7 parts) on YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9F9AF9998020C1DE