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

Robert is joined by Jeff May for part three of our series on Nicolae Ceaușescu.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You can do your your your job now, Robert h Well,
I did my job, Sophie. I introduced the podcast. How
are we feeling? Everybody good? We all have we all
have newly hot bev's. We're doing great. Yeah, we got
a hot bev uh and we've got a hot bud

(00:23):
Jeff May. Jeff, I got a bone to pick with you. Yeah,
what what is that bone? Well, Jeff, at the end
of last episode, I said, as I was asking you
to introduce your plug doubles, where did you come from?
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.

(00:46):
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

(01:09):
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,

(01:30):
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

(01:51):
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,

(02:13):
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

(02:33):
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

(02:53):
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,

(03:17):
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

(03:39):
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

(04:02):
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

(04:23):
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

(04:43):
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

(05:04):
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

(05:25):
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

(05:46):
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.

(06:07):
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

(06:28):
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.

(06:49):
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,

(07:12):
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

(07:34):
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

(07:55):
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,

(08:17):
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

(08:40):
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.

(09:04):
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,

(09:25):
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

(09:47):
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

(10:09):
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,

(10:33):
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

(10:53):
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.

(11:14):
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,

(11:36):
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

(11:57):
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

(12:18):
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

(12:40):
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,

(13:02):
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,

(13:22):
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

(13:43):
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

(14:04):
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,

(14:27):
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

(14:49):
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,

(15:11):
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

(15:32):
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.

(15:54):
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

(16:14):
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.

(16:37):
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

(16:59):
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

(17:21):
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.

(17:43):
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

(18:07):
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

(18:29):
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.

(18:50):
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

(19:13):
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,

(19:33):
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

(19:56):
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

(20:20):
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,

(20:40):
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

(21:03):
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,

(21:23):
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

(21:43):
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

(22:05):
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,

(22:28):
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

(22:50):
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

(23:11):
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

(23:33):
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,

(23:54):
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

(24:15):
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

(24:35):
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

(24:58):
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

(25:18):
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

(25:41):
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

(26:03):
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,

(26:25):
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

(26:46):
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

(27:08):
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,

(27:29):
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

(27:51):
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

(28:13):
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,

(28:41):
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

(29:03):
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

(29:26):
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

(29:47):
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

(30:07):
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

(30:29):
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

(30:51):
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

(31:14):
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

(31:36):
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

(31:57):
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

(32:18):
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

(32:39):
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

(33:00):
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

(33:23):
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

(33:44):
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

(34:05):
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

(34:26):
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

(34:47):
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

(35:09):
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

(35:30):
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.

(35:53):
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

(36:16):
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

(36:42):
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

(37:03):
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,

(37:23):
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

(37:45):
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

(38:08):
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

(38:28):
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

(38:50):
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,

(39:13):
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

(39:34):
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

(39:55):
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

(40:15):
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

(40:38):
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

(40:58):
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

(41:18):
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

(41:38):
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

(42:00):
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

(42:21):
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

(42:42):
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

(43:03):
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,

(43:24):
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

(43:46):
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

(44:09):
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

(44:30):
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

(44:52):
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

(45:13):
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,

(45:44):
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

(46:05):
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.

(46:29):
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,

(46:50):
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

(47:13):
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

(47:35):
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

(47:55):
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,

(48:16):
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

(48:38):
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

(48:59):
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

(49:21):
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

(49:44):
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.

(50:05):
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

(50:28):
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.

(50:52):
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

(51:16):
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.

(51:36):
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

(51:59):
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

(52:22):
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

(52:46):
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

(53:08):
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

(53:28):
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.

(53:51):
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,

(54:12):
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

(54:32):
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

(54:55):
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

(55:16):
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

(55:41):
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

(56:03):
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

(56:27):
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

(56:49):
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,

(57:10):
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,

(57:31):
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,

(57:54):
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

(58:15):
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

(58:36):
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

(58:57):
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

(59:17):
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,

(59:41):
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.

(01:00:04):
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.

(01:00:27):
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

(01:00:49):
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

(01:01:10):
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

(01:01:31):
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

(01:01:53):
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.

(01:02:18):
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

(01:02:38):
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

(01:03:00):
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,

(01:03:25):
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,

(01:03:45):
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
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