Romania Fears Putin, But Putin Should Fear Romania, Too
Romanians and Moldovans share a long border with Ukraine, and question the West’s commitment should Russian troops head their way.
The Ceausescus were high flyers, on the Concorde.
Source: Steve Burton/Hulton Archive
In 1984, during the darkest period of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s Stalinist rule, I visited Targoviste, over an hour northwest of the capital, Bucharest, on the Wallachian plain. It was a hellish town of mud-strewn streets, a few battered cars, without any decent place to eat and garbage everywhere. People looked and smelled bad.
Two weeks ago, I revisited Targoviste for the first time in almost four decades. It is now a gleaming, vibrant town of new roads with speed bumps, clipped flowers and hedgerows, new supermarkets and restaurants, and late-model cars everywhere. People looked and dressed like anywhere in the West.