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

Robert is joined again by Jeff May to continue to discuss Nicolae Ceaușescu.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Ah, what's mummified my persons? This is Robert Evans, host
of Behind the Bastards, here with some exciting news from
the world of museums. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute have adopted the
term mummified remains and mummified persons to refer to mummies.

(00:24):
So we're good, everybody. Finally, the long problem of people
not respecting mummies is over. Uh. We we did it, everybody.
I just I know there's a lot of activists out
there in the streets who have been fighting for mummy
rights for a long time, and I just wanted to
let you all know it was all worth it. Jeff May,

(00:44):
how do you feel about mummified persons? I'm calling them
mummies and I don't care. Let the woke mob come
from me. All right, they are mummies, They've always been mummies.
I'm not Are they going to go back and change
the classic horror film to the mummified person? Absolutely not, nonsense.
Is it the m word now? Yeah? Horrible. If anyone
ever calls it a mummified person to me, I am

(01:07):
I am going to read from the Book of the dead,
and I know from the movie The Mummy how badly
that can go. I would give somebody a d d T.
If somebody was just like, um, do you mean mummified persons?
I would immediately just jake the snake Roberts d d
T them into the ground. Now, I know you're talking
about a martial arts term, but I assumed you were

(01:27):
talking about the pesticide that was made famous in the
book Silent Spring. And now I assume that you always
carry a full canister of DDT on you it all. Yes,
I gotta take I gotta fight malaria. Now it's I
would say martial arts term is that's loose? Is that
I would say a professional wrestling term. That's where you
put somebody in sort of like a like a headlock
is kind of a thing here, and then you just

(01:49):
kind of catapult the top of their head into the ground. Well,
that wrestling is the only martial art I respect um.
So there, it's the only one you can do while
you dressed like a like a garbage manner. Yeah, Jeff,
this is Behind the Bastards. It's a podcast about you know,
people who aren't great um in in history. Speaking of which,

(02:13):
today are subject in part two is still Nikolai Cechesco.
How are you feeling about Nikki as we as we
go into to part two? We love a bastard nick
on this show with with you and I together here. Um,
you know, he's he's he's something, he's something, He's something,
all right, he's he's he earned the name. I know

(02:34):
we were building up to it last episode. It's fun
to see that it's going to build up to the
crescendo that we're going to see here. There was a
lot of a lot of background last episode. Gotta you
gotta cover the background. Um, the you know, it's kind
of like how if you really want to understand the
humanity of a mummified person, you have to understand I'm sorry,

(02:55):
what did you say? You son of a bit? Also
a side note here that the Chicago Studies what was
the name of the place, the Chicago, Plicago Institute of
Oriental Study something like that, is that it's it's referring
to the region. I know, I get it seems like

(03:17):
it's a way to work. Okay, you know what you
do kind of you do kind of want to know
when they started calling at that and like, yeah, I wonder,
I wonder Chicago anyway, whatever, I'm sure it's fine. I'm
sure it's fine. You know who's not fine, Marshall Antonescu.
So this guy winds up and again Marshall Antonescu. He's

(03:38):
this interesting character because he's ideologically he is not a
guy who is particularly interested in fascism. Um, but he
winds up in bed with these fascists and becomes like
one of the worst of them in terms of like
his actual death toll for a stump of fascism. Yeah,
it's weird. He's he's he's he's a fascinating, geting figure

(04:01):
because yeah, he's the forest gump of of of the
Axis powers. So under Antonescuu Romania again when kind of
you know, there's this whole World War thing that starts
up again. And the last time Romania had gone with uh,
you know, Britain, France, Russia, uh and and and sided

(04:22):
with them, and it had gone terribly for Romania. Right,
the war kind of ends and they get some land,
but they don't do well. All of their oil fields
are lit on fire, all of their young men get killed. Um.
And under Antonescu they're going to back the opposite side
and the next World War. And you know what, Jeff,
it doesn't go well for them either. World Wars not
a good call for Romania. Yeah, they're not. They're not

(04:43):
the champions of World Wars. No, it only really goes
well for us in Switzerland. But um, you know that's
a story for another day. So Romania, and again, the
kind of the reason Antonescu sides with the Nazis, there's
there's a lot of stuff going on, but one of
the big ones is that he wants to get back
best Arabia, which based on the treaty that the Nazis

(05:05):
its side with the Soviets. The Soviets got to take
from Romania just a little bit earlier. So the Romanians
side with the Nazis, who would agreed to give up
this territory that now the Nazis are saying, hey, if
you side with us, you can get this territory back,
which may seem like a shitty deal to you, Um,
maybe not trustworthy of the Nazis. I know, this is
going to like blow a lot of people's mind historically speaking,

(05:27):
this is really going to cause some people's tops to
pop here. Yeah, wild stuff. So Romanian troops fight alongside
the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa, which works really well for
a little while, right for there's a couple of months
there where it seems like, hey, maybe a good call
back in the Nazis. We're taking a lot of territory.
Romania is suddenly much bigger. What a cool time. Um.

(05:49):
So it goes really well for a little while. But
then the bulk of Antonescue's military, the pride of Romania's army,
a huge chunk of their young male population, winds up
in a in an interesting position. They are put watching
the flanks of the German I believe it's the sixth
Army as it encircles Stalingrad. Now, jeff right, you think

(06:16):
that's gonna play out? I don't know if anybody's ever
heard of Stalingrad, but it's pretty well known as far
as battles go. It's in like I would say, as
far as battles go, that's a top three historically probably, yeah,
probably a top three, very fair. Yeah. And if you're
going to pick a position to be in in World
War Two, there's a lot of bad ones, but one

(06:38):
of the worst is watching the flanks of the German
Army is the circle Stalin hard to get much worse
than that, trying to get famed sniper ed Harrison to
take out Jude Law. Yeah, Jude Law is fucking running
rough shot over these Romanians. Um, it doesn't go well
for them. Romanian military gets its ass handed to them

(06:59):
shortly before the German military gets its ass handed to them,
and things only get worse after that point. It doesn't
go well after Stalingrad. Yeah yeah, I mean, you know,
land war in Asia and all that beyond them too,
Like the Russians. This is like the guy at the
bar that tries to pick a fight with the bouncer. Yeah,

(07:21):
and the friends like, I don't think that's a good idea. Man,
This guy, you know, he got the job for a reason.
And it's like I've taken a couple of mm A classes.
I think I's like three times your size. Man. There
is a scar on his face bigger than your fists,
not a real tooth in his mouth at that point
in time. Yeah. Um so yeah, thanks go downhill from there. Um.

(07:43):
And despite being again on paper, Antonescu, he is not
a guy that has a long history of like anti
Semitic agitation. He's not a guy who I think under
his own devices, would have cared much in either way
about kind of Nazi policies in that regard more of
a hobbyist. But his policies against Romania's Jewish population lead

(08:06):
to an unprecedented level of mass death in Romania. Um
and this is not the subject for this episode today.
We will talk about this at some point. Antonescue probably
deserves his own episode. But more Jews are murdered by
the Romanian government, but then by the government of any
other acts as state besides Germany itself. Um, it is
it is a japan didn't have a lot of options there,

(08:30):
although there are a couple of interesting cases. I mean
there's there's there's a couple of interesting cases of Japanese
officials who saved Jews, um and parts of the world
from the Nazis, and at least one interesting case of
a Nazi who saves Chinese citizens from rampaging Japanese troops.
That's why World War Two lots of lots of neat
interesting history moments there. Yeah, it's like each country of

(08:53):
doing horrendous things is like these other guys need to
call down. Kind of seems like there's some got bad
guys on the Axis side, they're massacring the wrong people. So, um, yeah,
it's Antonescu, nightmare monster. UM kills about three hundred thousand
Romanian Jews. I think something like that UM. Now. Supporters

(09:15):
of Antonescu, because he's kind of been rehabilitated by some
corners of Romanian culture recently, will note that he also
saved three hundred thousand Jewish lives by refusing to deport
those people to people to Poland when the Nazis asked
what he could kill them himself. I'm not sure that
you get credit for saving three hundred thousand Jewish lives
when you've just killed three hundred and eighty thousand or

(09:38):
so Jewish people. I don't know that. Yeah, I'm not
going to really give you credit. In Vegas terms, they
call that a push. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that's UM.
I feel I feel weird being like, look at all
these lives he's saved. Does he's massacring um like a
city's worth of human beings. We're not gonna we're not

(09:58):
gonna be doing that here on this show. That said,
we're also not going to be getting that into the
Holocaust in Romania. Not that obviously it's a worthwhile topic,
but I don't want to just like, you know, we
should just I'm just trying to acknowledge the extent of
how bad it was. We'll talk about it more detail
at some other point. So they don't know what you're
talking about. Um, Jeff, we may need to sit down

(10:20):
and talk about that after class. Don't you have a
history degree? I'm like, I don't know how I got. Yeah,
but it's from Florida, so they're not allowed to have
books Diaria and Frank hasn't gotten approved by De Santis yet. Yeah. Um. So,
as the war unraveled, resistance to Antonescue coalesced behind the scenes,

(10:41):
and there's this alliance of like liberals and royalists led
by the new King Michael and a guy named Giulio
Manu who's the head of the National Peasants Party we
talked about in the last episode, and they decide we're
going to do a coup and get Antonescu out of here.
But it's kind of useless for them to do a
coup if the Allies aren't going to lie stop doing
a war on Romania, right, Like, there was no real

(11:03):
point in getting this guy out if they're just gonna
have to fight the war more. Um, I mean, to
be fair, historically speaking, we've seen it happen where people
do a coup and then they pull out of the
war and they're like, yeah, but it's also they're trying
to like make it less messy than it's other one,
because like this, the Russians do that, right, and in
World War One, you get your revolution and then the

(11:26):
revolutionary government kind of awkwardly winds up still at war
with Germany for a while and it's it's it doesn't
doesn't go great. Um. So they have this back channel
to the Allies and the Brits, who is the people
they're talking with directly, are like, look, we'd love it
if you get Antonescu out, be real great for us.
But Stalin's really the guy you got to talk to
because your romania. Um so we are not going to

(11:49):
be your main point of contact. They're like, hey, you
know who you need to talk is too, is our
very stable friend, are sane and totally reason bold buddy
Jason to send guy now ja Stall To be fair,
it's not an unreasonable thing. He says, Hey, look, you know,
if you want to work something out with us and

(12:09):
coup this guy, that's great, it will save me some trouble.
But you gotta bring the Romanian Communist Party into the
coup government, right, They've got to be part of it,
which is again not an inherently unreasonable thing, except for
the fact that again there's like seven hundred Romanian communists, right,
so it's not a major party that will take an
afternoon to get me. Yeah, exactly, so, man, you the

(12:32):
National Peasants Party guy is like, of course, look, man,
we're this is a bad situation. I'm not gonna fight
you over this matter. Um. But he is like, there's
not really a whole lot of communists in Romania, Joseph Stalin,
who do you recommend? We put In? And Stalin and
the Soviets recommend a law professor named Lucres Patronascano, patresh Canoe.
Sorry Lucres, you, I'm sorry. I did look these names up.

(12:55):
It's hard to keep them all straight. Lucreshu, petrash Canoe, Um,
and he and Menu. They plan to basically take Antonescue
down by inviting him over for dinner and having the
king be like, hey, Antonescue, you're under arrest now. Funk
off um, which is kind of a funny way to
do it. Yea exactly on party. Come over, No, no,

(13:20):
it's fine. We just want to all hang out together
in a room. It's gonna be totally cool. How do
you don't agree on a lot of stuff? Come on
over to my house, Come on in a room. Leave
your guards, leave your guards, um. And it's very funny.
The coup actually works great. And there's this moment where
like they're like, hey, Antonescue, do you have a gun?
And he's like, I don't need a gun. You know,
my authority doesn't derive from a gun. Um. And then

(13:42):
they're like, okay, cool, well you're under arrest and then
we're gonna have you executed and they do. It works
out great, This part works out really good for them. Yeah,
brought that gun and and the National Peasants Party guy
Manu is kind of an old man at this point.
He's like, look, man running a coup government, that's young
man's work. So this communist petresh Canoe winds up being

(14:05):
kind of the first person to take a public role
in the new government. And he's actually a pretty reasonable
dude all things considered, Like I think he handles this
about as well as it could have been handled. Um. So.
One of the things that happens, though, is because this
guy is kind of your public facing dude, and the
National Peasants Party, all of the Liberals who are much

(14:26):
more numerous, and the royal like folks who are much
more numerous and actually in like the you would suspect
be the people who would wind up in charge are
all kind of scared, right because they're they've just cooed
the other leader. There's still a bunch of German soldiers
in the country, so they don't want to make too
much of a public stink. Meanwhile, the Communists, even though

(14:47):
there's not many of them, these guys have been beaten
and in prisoned and starved. They're all like hard sons
of bitches. So the Communists are like, why don't we
just immediately take power? Um, which they do, and it
works pretty well for them. They they get in and
they basically like put themselves in a lot of positions
that are going to to to kind of give them
the ability to control the direction of Romania at least

(15:09):
help with that. Obviously, the fact that the Soviets are
so nearby helps too, and the Romanian or the Red
Army enters Romania soon after that. So the Communists kind
of despite the fact that up until this point there
had been very few of them and they'd had no power,
when World War two wins, they're kind of the preeminent
power in Romania. Um and Stalin. Yeah they stepped up. Yeah,

(15:31):
they stepped up. And they have an election and show
Cescu gets to practice his faking at election skills, um
and and goes about making sure that the Communists win
that election, even though again there've been about seven hundred
of them in the company prior in the country prior
to to World War Two. To be fair, if the
people that actually stepped up to rule are running for something,

(15:53):
it wouldn't be the worst to be like, oh, yeah,
I guess I'll vote for the guys that actually said
they yeah no again. And it's it's not an unreasonable
thing that as as Romanians in World War Two, you
would see the Communists taking over, given everything that happened
with the Nazis, and be like, maybe this will work
out better. Hey, not like anything else had been working

(16:13):
very well. It's the opposite of a Nazi economist. Nothing
could go wrong. Let's let's try it. Um So Georgiu
Day that that um, that peasant who had been like
the uh the leader of that railroad union, um that
had done all those strikes that chess Cou had helped support.
He becomes one of the leaders of the country. Um.

(16:35):
Now there's a bunch of this is it's more complicated
than that Anna Poker. That other lady is also kind
of one of the people who's running Romania initially after
the communist kind of take over. But you know, you
know how it goes. You get your show trials, you
get your people start getting put in jail and locked
up on bullshit charges, and over the course of time,

(16:57):
George you Day kind of consolidates his power. One of
the things that this means is that he executes this
guy pro trash Canu who got the king out, who
helped overthrow or who not the gout the king out,
who got um antonescu at who like overthrew the dictator.
They they come after this guy on bullshit charges and
they kill his ass um It's so crazy when it's

(17:18):
just such a throwaway thing and like and then they
executed that guy. Let's move on. That cool dude you
know that cool dude who was the communist that Stalin
picked to take over and they fucking killed his ass. Yeah,
And and Parker, they get rid of Poker. Um, it's
it's it's it's as ugly as it usually is when

(17:38):
a guy consolidates power. Um, it's it's a real end
of the Godfather energy when that ship happens. And it's
a gradual process. Um. And Nikolai Chachescu is a quiet
figure for most of this. He does not stick his
neck out, He does not try to take any big
fancy jobs for himself. He sticks close today and he

(18:00):
he kind of like just sort of keeps him as
happy as possible. And I'm gonna I'm gonna read a
quote from journalist cattle and Gruya here under the protective
wing of day, whose favorite he had become. While in prison,
Chauchescu struggled, flattered, adapted, worked and raised himself up step
by step, tenaciously, stubbornly and with a real instinct for power.
At seven, he was the leader of the Communist Youth

(18:22):
Organization and later of the Central Committee of the Romanian
Workers Party. At twenty eight, party instructor in Constanta and
Olinia at twenty nine deputy in the Grand National Assembly,
after he had mobilized motorized troops in the electoral precinct
to convince electors to place ballots in the urns which
had already been filled by the communists ahead of time.
His meteoric rise continued, culminating with his election at age

(18:44):
thirty seven to the Politbureau as Minister of the Interior. Now,
this gave him a lot of control over what's called
the Securitat, which is Romania's answer to the k g B,
which means he is in a position to put people
into the Securitat, the organization that is surveilling everybody in
the country, um sweeping out corruption. Good position to be

(19:06):
in if you're a guy like this and everyone's kind
of like, well, yeah, we want like, you want someone
dumb and pliable in that job if you're not going
to be running that if you're someone with power in
the Romanian communist infrastructure and you can't be doing that job,
you want a dumb person in that job, right, You
want somebody who, like you feel like it's controllable, and
everyone kind of feels like Chowchesku is just sort of

(19:27):
this like not a very serious person, right, So they're like, yeah,
give him the job. You know, what's the worst that
could happen. He's not that, he's not that dangerous. Um. Uh,
the worst that could happen is pretty rough. Yeah, the
worst that could happen is about to occur. Um. But
for a while, everyone's like, yeah, you know, at least,
you know, if someone's going to have that job and

(19:48):
it's not gonna be me, we might as well have
it be this lick spell who kisses everybody's ass and
who wasn't very threatening. He's not, you know, really worth fearing,
and he's not worth fearing as long as George you
day is is healthy and and doing good. Um. And
given that he is an old time communist street fighter
who smokes like a chimney, surely he's going to live forever. Yep.

(20:11):
That's classic. Yeah yeah. Um. So, as Nikolai climbed the
ranks of the Romanian Communist Party, there's this combination of
as kissing and convincing everyone else that he's too dumb
to be a threat. His wife Elena experienced numerous career
benefits as well. All of the different wonderful things that
nepotism can provide to you. He's a plus wife guy.

(20:33):
By the way, Oh my god, you have never wifed
a guy as hard as this guy. Wife's that shout
out to this guy for just being just like a
He's like the Rob Zombie of wife guys of Romania,
just being like, I don't care what you can or
can't you. I'm still giving you opportunities. I wish, I
wish I could. Given that this is Romania, I should
have been able to make a Dragula joke, but um,

(20:55):
I'm really not sure how to work it out. I
threw your curveball with that. It's not it's not coming
to me, Jeff. It's not coming to me, And I
feel ashamed for that. Um, But you at home make
your own, make your own joke about Rob Zombies, hit song,
Dracula and the Romanian historical figure Dracula. Well, Jeff, and

(21:16):
I listen to some ads, Jeff, that that all got
me pumped up. I'm gonna be honest, man, I'm going
to consume all of the things that were just advertised,
gonna slam them in the back of my Dracula was
that his car was that Rob Zombies car. Well, it's

(21:37):
the monster's car, isn't it. Are you serious? Is that
song about the monsters? Yeah? I think Dracula is the
name of their car. That's cool. It's cool because he
wrote a cool, heavy song about Are you serious? Yeah,
I mean there's a reason, oh my god. And it

(21:57):
is based on the drag racer Dracula for the Munsters. Yeah,
you don't know how I know that really well, aside
from the fact that I'm I I study this ship,
the pinball machine, the munsters pinball machine has a dragula thing. Wow. Wow,
uh that's right. That's kind of a baffling piece of
pop culture. Why did that song go so hard if

(22:19):
it's about the Munsters? Because Rob Zombie did it. I
guess that makes sense. It does make sense that Rob
Zombie would do a song about the munsters and he
would go hard. Yeah, and he would, he would he
would go baffling lee hard with it. Speaking of baffling
Lee hard, Nikolai is baffling Lee hard for his wife Elena,
who sucks. Ass um. That actually worked out pretty well,

(22:42):
so nailed it. There we go. As Nikolai climbs the
ranks of the party, He's he starts putting his wife
in jobs. Now, at first, she's just kind of like
raising their kids and stuff while he's in you know,
moving on his way up to the polit bureau. But
she's got this ambition to be a chemist from the
time when she worked in a legal pill mill um.
She thinks it would be really cool to be to

(23:04):
be in chemistry, So she takes starts taking college classes
in chemistry, hoping that she can achieve her lifelong dream
of being a serious scientist. Now, in most cases, that's
a perfectly respectable thing to do. In fact, I have
a lot of any any woman who could raise three kids,
support her powerful husband in his career, and get a
complex degree in science, that's incredibly impressive. Yeah. Absolutely. Unfortunately,

(23:28):
Elena was nearly illiterate, and she had no interest in
actually being taught anything by the tutors that Nikolai got
for her, who become increasingly desperate with the fact that like,
oh my god, we have to we have to teach
her how to be a chemist, and she does not
want to read anything or like chemist. Yeah, she wants
to put on a white coat and poor things and beakers. Really,

(23:51):
isn't it like that? I think it's a Romanian textbook.
There's like a Roman or there's a textbook I forget
what country it's in that has Jesse Pinkman on the
cover of their chemistry thing of him. Uh, I'm looking
that up right now. Um. Yeah, Jesse Pinkman textbook cover
should give you exactly worth if it's from Romania. That's

(24:13):
the symmetry for that is unbelievable. Yeah, because it is
just satisfying to see because you know, it's just a
cursory Google image search for chemist and that one clearly
has the best look because it was, you know, directed
by this I think that language is Romanian. Um, it's
definitely not Romane. Oh Sri Lanka Okay, Okay, that's just shame.

(24:37):
Um that that would have been beautiful Jesse Pinkman. Jesse
Pinkman actually is objectively a better chemist than Elena czechesscu Um,
which is unfortunate because of the job she's about to have.
So these tutors who are just struggling to teach her
something get a brief reprieve because she's caught cheating on
her exams and expelled from university in the mid nineteen fifties.

(24:58):
But By nineteen six, Nikki is in the polit bureau.
So you can't keep her out of university just because
she's cheating in a danger to herself and everyone else
around her. So he forces the Scientific Establishment of Romania
to give his wife a job. She's made a junior
technician at the Central Institute for Chemical Research, and then
she gets promoted to run the institute five years later.

(25:20):
Now again, her credentials are was kicked out of college
for cheating on her exams at this point, so five
years it's time to learn r Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can.
You learn that. You learn most of that ship on
the jet, like Jesse Pinkman. Actually, you're gonna learn most
of that ship on the job anyway, right. He didn't
do good in school either, he flunked out. And look
at how Jesse did. Yeah, exactly. So she was as

(25:41):
bad at this as you would expect. When her scientists
would request supplies of ethyl alcohol, which is needed for
a lot of experiments, she would turn them down with
a note that said she knew they just wanted the
alcohol to get drunk with. Now I'm gonna say this
for al I'm gonna I'm sure she wasn't wrong a
hundred percent of the time. This is this, this is
the easter in block right, Like I'm sure of the

(26:03):
time she wasn't wrong. Um. But what's really funny is
the researchers realized that, like, Okay, if we request ethyl alcohol,
she's gonna like really drill us and turn us down,
turn it down because she thinks we're gonna drink. So
they put in the exact same request, but they used
the chemical name for ethyl alcohol, and Elena would grant
it every time because she doesn't know anything about chemistry

(26:25):
because she's a dumb guy. Yeah yeah, yeah. And now
over time she she is aware that she doesn't know
anything about chemistry, and she has impostor syndrome because she's
an impostor, because she's actually a look, impostor syndrome is
not always wrong. Some people who have impostor syndrome are impostors.
And Elena starts avoiding actual chemists, you know, the people

(26:48):
she's managing, because conversations with them would inevitably reveal she
had no idea what she was doing. My favorite example
of this was how she pronounced c O two, calling
it coutu or doi in in Romanian, right, so she
she wouldn't call it kutu, but like she called it kudi,
which is the equivalent of calling c O to couto, right,

(27:08):
because she's just kind of sounding it out because she
doesn't know how you're supposed to read um chemical names. Now,
Cody in Romanian is a slang term, or it's at
least close to a slang term for someone who has
a huge ass, right, Like it's it's like a dump
truck ass like cody. That's kind of what that means.
So since Elena herself has kind of a big butt,

(27:29):
again this is what historians will say, her scientists started
calling her kudi behind her back, like big ass. Basically, um,
she got that, Yeah, she's she is caked up uranium baby. Yeah, well,
please don't let her around the urane. That would have
gone very badly for everybody. Yeah, we could have had

(27:51):
a Chernobyl incident. Yeah. So, like most incompetent people who
wind up at the heads of large complex organizations, Elena
decided to focus her efforts on the one thing she
knew how to do, which was deny people resources in
order to save money. Right with bile as Yeah, yeah,
you swagger in with that big butt and start cutting money. Um.

(28:14):
It is kind of the thing that if you don't
know anything about an organization and you're promoted to lead it,
just start trimming the budget, you know. Um, you can
always make it look like you know what you're doing then,
and you can funk with the people who are actually
good at their jobs. This is not a thing that
you or I or any of the people we've ever
worked with have had experience with ever in our careers.

(28:34):
Not It only happens in communist states. So that's good.
It's good that we are immune from that here. Now,
this basically drives all Romanian efforts in the chemical sciences
into the ground, and it's stymies basically all of their
progress on chemistry and ship. But her institute did spend
less money over time, so that's good. Um, probably probably

(28:55):
worthwhile now that the chemistry labs that look making it
at a low budget. You say that, but I'm waiting
for the James Cameron uh to to appear in this story.
There's that we We still don't have that here, probably
because Elina would have had him purged. Yeah, maybe maybe

(29:16):
that would have been for the best. Would a would
a would have saved us that whole period of time
and which everyone thought three D tv s were going
to be a thing. Sorry, but I will not sacrifice
true lies. No, yeah, that is that is true lies. Uh.
Strange Days films. Oh, he was involved in those. Huh
that's interesting. Um, I wonder if people know that James Cameron. Right. Yeah,

(29:39):
I was just yeah, I'm really confused, and I'm like,
did I say a wrong name? No, David Fincher, And
I'm like, you know he did Terminator too. I do
kind of want to see David Fincher's Terminator too, would
be something, right. Yeah. So, in person, Elena was extremely
anti social and quick to anger. She was jealous of
any of the other polit bureau wives she thought were

(30:00):
more attractive than her, and she preferred to spend her
time avoiding social engagements. Altogether, she was disgusted with the
other wives because they were traditional homemakers, whereas she had
a career of her own. Now, the fact that her
career was an absolute sham does not seem to have
upset Alda. It is also worth noting that she was
a pretty piss poor mother. Um. Look some people with

(30:25):
with well, with a large ass um that's that everything
like that's all up to up to personal up to
personal judgment. Um. So, Nikko cho Chesku, her son born
in ninety one, was the baby of the family and
from the jump seemed to realize that his parents position
made him untouchable. He was disruptive in school, He threatened

(30:46):
teachers and classmates. No one could discipline him. He would
just start punching teachers and students whenever he got angry.
Because you know, his dad is helping to run the country,
nobody can actually punish him. It's a good situation. We
call this like the U We call this the day
and Kusa route. Right, that's kind of where if you
believe now, I'll say this. A lot of our sources

(31:08):
on Niku chow Chesku come from a guy who defects
from the country after running the secret police. So there's
some debate over how accurate all this is because maybe
he has a vested interest in making the family sound
worse than they were at that. That said, the idea
that Nikko chow Chesko would be a violent asshole um
not a not a big stretch either. So I don't know,

(31:30):
you know, grain assault m According to this guy who
later defects who we will talk about later. At age fourteen,
Nikko rapes one of his classmates. Um. At age fifteen,
he gets his first boat and he drunk drives it
before he gets his first car at sixteen, at which
point he becomes one of the leading causes of car
accidents in the capital of Bucharest. Um, because he is

(31:52):
just a you know, he's he's he's a dictator's son, right,
This is all pretty standard dictator's good stuff. Go than
golden weapons and and you know side palace isn't ship. Yeah,
he doesn't have the panash of Uday and kusay, So
he's not I don't know, firing a golden machine gun
and do a crowd at a party. Um. But he

(32:13):
is crashing his car constantly, so he's got that. He's
got that good Assad energy, the Assad kid who fucking
killed himself in his car drunk driving. Um, he's he's
that kind of dictator's son as opposed to more of
the more of the days dash day esque variety. So
for the first decade or so that Communist Romania is

(32:34):
doing its thing, the Soviet Union keeps a bunch of
soldiers in country, right, because you know, they want to
make sure things keep going, keep going in a direction
they're comfortable with. Now, this means that for a while
Romania's Communist Party is a subservient branch of the party
in Moscow. George U. Day, who's running the country, and
his polit bureau are not happy about this, especially once

(32:56):
Stalin dies and Khrushchev takes power, because Cruise have kind
of repudiates some of the stuff that Stalin had done. Right,
he gives the speech where he's like, hey, you know
what everything Stalin did wasn't perfect. Um, you know what
it was George you Day? Where I oh, oh, George
U Day. Yeah, George you Day, Georgie. That's that is

(33:18):
my personal headcanon, like fantasy fiction mash up between George
Bush and Uday Husain Um mainly or actually, no, you
know that's that. Yeah, that's the that's that's what I'm
shipping them together, right, that's what you'd call it. We
shipped them. Yeah, we should, Yeah, ship George Bush and
Uday Hussein somebody somebody gets some fan art going, use
that chat GPT, make it real horny and make sure

(33:40):
they're both caked up in honor of Elena. Just just
huge asses on both Day and George Bush and just
sweaty against each other. Get him in there. Yeah, and
then you would have George H. W. Bush and Saddam
Hussein looking down on them both from heaven, smiling, smiling,
proud George as George Bush paints Day done up like

(34:04):
the chick from Titanic, but instead of the heart of
the ocean, it's a golden ak forty seven. Somebody do this.
You know you've got, You've got. It's perfect, perfect opportunity
for giving you God. Yeah, and do it. Do it? Aii.
So everyone has really fucked up, unsettling hands. George Bush
has like three long fingers painting it'll be great. Oh

(34:27):
so I'll be able to call you a loser on
the internet for doing that. Let's let's get a T
shirt out. I mean that's up to Sophie. Sophie make
the merch. Yeah, I think I think this will She's
still there. I'm here only if the people demand it.
I think the people are going to demand it, not
want you demand Yeah. So um yes. As a Stalinist,

(34:53):
Day is not thrilled by the fact that Kruschev has
repudiated uh some of the stuff that Stalin did Um.
So they're all kind of figuring, how can we get
a little bit more autonomy from the U. S. S R.
How can we get these soldiers out of our country,
How can we kind of like take actual control for ourselves.
In nineteen fifty six, protests and Hungary boil up into

(35:14):
an uprising, which is again right next to Romania. Now
that includes the destruction. Like in these protests and Hungary,
they destroy a bunch of statues of Stalin and Budapest.
Unrest spreads widely from there and it reaches Romania by
October of that year. You know the way protests do.
You get protests in one capital, they move over to
the other soon. And I'm gonna quote in a right

(35:34):
from a rite up by the Wilson Center here. On
the twenty ninth of October, railwaymen in Bucharest held a
protest meeting calling for improved conditions of work, and in
the asse there were street demonstrations in supportive better's food
supplies and exceptionally poor harvest had drastically cut food production
and cues, and Bucharest and the other main towns were commonplace.
Georgia Day and a Romanian delegation cut short of visit

(35:56):
to Yugoslavia in the October to address the crisis. Thousands
of arrests were made in the centers of protest, especially
among students who participated in meetings in the Transylvanian capital
of Clues and tim Assura. One of the largest meetings
took place in Bucharest on the thirty of of October.
The Timnasaura, Radia and the Assy regions were placed under
military rule as Soviet troops were brought in across the

(36:17):
Romanian border in the east and concentrated on the frontier
with Hungary in the west. Important question did that postpone
trick or treating? I don't think there's a lot of
trick or treating going on in Georgia Day's Romania, So
that's the time for draculas. It would have been perfect.
It would have been perfect, um. But I think it's

(36:38):
interesting here. One of the things you're seeing Georgiu Day
is a railway man like running like was the guy
organizing in a legal railway union and spent a shipload
of his life in prison for doing so, And now
that he's in charge, he's cracking down on protests by
railwaymen and throwing a bunch of them in prison. Always fun.
How that keeps happening? It's the circle of life. Yeah,

(36:59):
it's beautiful. It's beautiful in its own way. Um we
are yeah yeah, or it's the flat circle thing. So
the Hungarian crisis concludes when Soviet sent tanks into Budapest
to crush the crush the uprising. And this actually, the
Romanian Communist Party is going to benefit from this hugely
because Soviet troops helped them stop protests in their own

(37:22):
capital from turning into an uprising. And the fact that
the Romanian regime is so supportive of crushing these protests
means the USSR is like, well, we can't trust Hungary
because we just had to send in tanks here, but
we can trust Romania. And so now the Romanian Communist
Party and Georgiu Day are like, hey, you know, we
don't need all these troops in our country. Khrushchev, you
know you guys, you guys need those dudes in Hungary.

(37:44):
Why don't you send all those troops to Hungary and
and we'll take care of Romania. You know, we can.
We can keep a lock on things ourselves. Um So
in this works, the Soviets withdraw troops from Romania, and
as a result, Romania is going to have a lot
more autonomy than other country. These who are kind of
in the Warsaw Pact in the region are going to
have in this period of time. So in nineteen sixty five,

(38:07):
Georgio Day gets sick with lung cancer, which is a
huge surprise for a for a communist dictator in the
nineteen sixties to have lung cancer just absolutely shocking stuff
because because that was back when cigarettes were really good
for you. Yeah, this is back when doctors recommended them.
You know, he's he's smoking the good ones, he's smoking
the lucky strikes, which which I'm sure every yeah, every

(38:31):
dum listening. The air quality was general, like the air
quality was roughly the same as like a cigar lounge. Yeah. Yeah.
The way they would do it is they would just
light giant piles of lead on fire every time you
bought gasoline and celebration. Uh, that's what we were all doing.
It's why everyone liked brain. Like, we found these rocks

(38:52):
that radiate heat, so we've been just hovering around them
like that one episode of Star Trek. Yeah. Um, so
org you day gets his ask some lung cancer, um and,
and it's he's the whoever it becomes clear that like
whoever is going to inherit power from him, is going
to inherit a really centralized, strong state in Romania that's

(39:16):
more independent than basically any of the other countries in
the Soviet Block other than Yugoslavia. I mean, whether or
not you want anyway whatever, it's it's it's a lot
of power. Who that who coming into whoever takes over
for this guy? Um And because he had been such
a private man, effectively, right, he was number one in

(39:36):
total power. But he was also because he was in
power able to hide the fact that he was sick
until the signs of the fact that he had terminal
cancer got too obvious to ignore. Like you read that
like a baseball stat you like, you know, he was
actually number one in total power. Yeah, he was Mark McGuire,
he was the Mark McGuire of of of the Warsaw Pact.

(39:56):
A lot of people right down to the well, I mean,
cigarette were steroids for for for dictators. But yeah, if
you're a member of a of a of a communist dictatorship,
you're yeah, you're really the performance enhancing cigarettes really get
through you. I guess we'd probably say that Tito was
the Nolan Ryan, just because I think he probably could

(40:16):
have cold cocked anybody else in the Warsaw Pact if
he had to. Yeah. Yeah, and longevity, Yeah, and longevity.
He really did stay in there a while. And Ryan
throwing a hundred three four years old, that's something that
is Tito energy. Yeah. So chow Chessco, you know the
fact that so first off, like all of these other guys,

(40:37):
because everyone in the polit bureau right either has someone
else that they want to take over for Georgie you
day or once that job themselves. Um, but they don't
realize he's sick until he's very close to death. Now,
chow Chesscu again, he's the ass kisser. So he's in
there daily. He's seeing Georgiu day all the time. He's
talking to him all the time. How you doing. Yeah,

(40:58):
you're looking like you're losing white man and hair and
some skin. Yeah, you seem to be wasting away more.
You want to sign this piece of paper real quick,
don't ask about it. Yeah, you're good. So, um, all
of these other guys kind of suddenly find themselves scrambling
to figure out how to set themselves up for the
post George you Day world, whereas Chachesko knows exactly what's

(41:20):
going on. And I'm gonna quote from Paul Kinyon again here.
The list of possible successors was short. The nine member
polit bureau was hardly overburdened with talent. Five of them
had barely completed elementary school, and three were former rail
workers from George you Day's union days who had been
elevated for loyalty, not literacy. Not only had George you
Day purged the upper echelance of the party, he had

(41:42):
impoverished the entire country with his anti intellectual policies. Children
of political detainees were denied a university education, their extended
families were considered stigmatized. Schools were barred from teaching critical thought.
Academics were regularly arrested and detained. All this was designed
to eradicate opposition, but had inadvertent starved the Romanian Communist
Party of even moderately capable minds. You know, so maybe

(42:07):
don't purge people who know how to do things um
from your although it does make it easier to stay
in power. So it really, it's a it's a it's
a tough situation that they were in. Um yeah, yeah
that that kind of happens when somebody withers away and
dies it is surrounded by morons. Yeah, this is this

(42:28):
is actually a version. I mean it's interesting because Georgie
Day is a stolidist. This is basically the same kind
of thing that happens. It's a little less severe, right,
the pollit Bureau that kind of stalin uh leaves behind
are more capable than the guys that Georgie Day had
around him. Um, but yeah, it is. It's interesting kind
of some of the similarities here. But you know who

(42:49):
else has carried out a series of anti intellectual purges
in order to ensure that no one capable can force
them from their position of power. Pot pol Pot who
is the primary sponsor of this podcast? Oh wow yeah yeah, no, no,

(43:09):
we got the big pol pot coickwork company, pol pots Pots. Yeah.
He's selling cast iron skillets and you do not want
to see what happens if you wash one of them
with soap. It's either that or it's like some clever
weed brand. M yeah. Um, it'll make you so stupid,

(43:30):
you'll be anti intellectual. Just go ahead, and if you've
got some of this weed, just throw your glasses away.
You don't need them. Um, it'll I don't know, I
don't know how to keep making pull. Welcome to the
smoking fields. Everybody that's a boy, yeah, will be stoned
out of your skull. Let's let's get let's break two ads. Now. Ah,

(43:59):
we're back, and we're we're talking poll pot um. Well,
no we're not. We're talking the end of George you
Day's time in charge of the Romanian Communist Party, So
joking about pol pot we're talking about just like this
episode isn't horrible enough plot? Yeah yeah, yeah, bring a
little bit of pol pot in there. So let's have

(44:20):
a holiday in Romania. Yeah yeah. Now, there are only
three veteran members of the Pollit Bureau who had any
degree of competence um, but all of them had with
the party considered to be unhealthy origins. One of them
is German, another's Ukrainian, and the third is Bulgarian. And
as Catalan Gruia notes, the three prerequisites for the future

(44:41):
leader were one to be Romanian, two to be an activist,
and three to be part of the working class. So
no one in power likes Nikolai or considers him a
good choice to replace Georgie. But Nikki had maneuvered himself
into an incredible position um and it was one that
surprised his colleagues. His job in the Pollit Bureau at
this point was secretary for organization in Cadras, and this

(45:03):
is kind of a boring job. It's pretty low prestige
within the pullet bureau jobs, but it provides them with
this opportunity to make a lot of little decisions about
who's in position where, who's booking the boss's schedule every day, right,
who gets to like set George you day schedule, all
these different people, who's working in his house. He's kind
of picking all of these low level functionaries. And it

(45:23):
turns out when that's your job, when your job is
to hook a bunch of people up with these little
jobs that determine everything about the boss's life, you kind
of control the boss's life, especially when he's dying of
cancer and doesn't have as much wherewithal as he used
to have. Um So, because Nikki is in charge of
the people making the boss's schedule, Nikki effectively has control

(45:45):
over who gets to visit George you Day every day,
and once the man gets sick, Nikki is able to
exercise near total control over who sees the boss and win.
The last weeks of George you Day's life where a
constant series of pullar bureau members trying to get him
to confirm his successor, and Shochesco being like, now he's
sick today, he doesn't want to talk politics. Don't come

(46:06):
around another day. You know, you just gotta let him,
let him chill out um. And Ko is doing this
because he knows he's in the best position. He's a Romanian,
you know, he's got peasant credentials. He's the best positioned
to take over for for for George you Day. And
so if you can just kind of keep the others
away from him and stop them from getting him to

(46:26):
agree to make someone else's successor, he's got a pretty
good shot of getting the job. Now, George you Day,
despite his illness, realizes what Nikki is doing and he
sees it as a major threat to the country. And
this is kind of a thing that happens with Lenin
and Stalin. Right when Lennon's on his last legs, He's like,
I don't really think this Stalin guy is a good
job to follow me up. I think this could go badly.

(46:48):
He's like, excellent point, I'm going to Mexico. Yeah, yeah,
that's how that went. So in snatched conversations with old comrades,
he warns of Nicolai's feverish maneuver rings, but the boss
has already been out maneuvered himself. While half the Pullet
Bureau was angling to try and get Georgie to make
it a selection, Nikolai is getting the other half to

(47:09):
line up behind him, and he promises them, Hey, guys,
you know me, I'm a blank slate, right, you could
just make me do whatever. I'll do anything you want.
You know, It's fine. Yeah, I'll be your guy. I'm
a I'm a fun time guy. I just want the title.
You know, you guys will be the power behind the throne.
I just want the title. Um, just a fun time
and guy, ain't nothing wrong with me again. Georgiu Day

(47:32):
has pretty systematically purged anyone most of the people who
are good at things, so all of the other Pollet
Bureau guys are like, well, this seems reasonable. Why would
he lie about this? Why would somebody in a position
of power. Lie, It's like, dude, what what war do
you think you just lived through by wild wires? Uh?

(47:55):
So this works incredibly well for chat CHESSCO. The Boss
dies on Mark nineteenth, nineteen sixty five, and CCO is
shortly thereafter confirmed as Prime Secretary of the Romanian Socialist Republic,
which is a new term. They've been using other terms
for their leaders before that. He decides, I'm going to
pick a new title, you know, new guy at forties seven,

(48:17):
I think he's the youngest leader in Europe at the
time when he when he gets power out there is it? Yeah, yeah,
he's doing good. These guys. Everyone else kind of running
communist countries in Europe at this point time is a
lot older. He's he's young, he's considered handsome, he's a
he's the JFK of communism, right. That is actually kind

(48:38):
of how he's viewed when he takes power. Um yeah yeah,
And and to be fair, he does pretty well at first.
You actually wouldn't be there were not initially warning signs
that like this was gonna be worse than kind of
anything going on around him. Right, It's like, hey, this guy,
he's not going to do like like a genocide or anything, right,
like yeah, not per pussfully. So despite being essentially he

(49:03):
is an old fashioned stalidist, and he's pretty consistent about
being a stalinist, particularly like economically most of his career. Um,
but he supports a lot more liberalization than Georgia Day
had allowed. He opens up some space for private enterprise.
Mostly what he does is he kind of opens up
space for foreign trade, which means Western music is getting

(49:24):
in right. People are getting to listen to like rock
and roll in that kind of stuff, which is cool.
Some movies and some TV is getting in um and
that makes people really happy. He also provides a little
bit more space for public speech. He allows newspapers you
can't criticize the system, but you can kind of poke
around edges of like certain programs that might not work. Well.

(49:45):
It's a lot more than they've had right under George
you Day, because it's a pretty pretty strict system under him.
So he he liberalizes quite a lot. And people are
really optimistic. This is actually considered a lot of Romanians.
It was like it was not a bad time, you know, Um,
there's there's plenty of food. Uh. People are like the
state was actually doing a decent job of taking care

(50:06):
of people. It's it, It seems it seems good everything.
That's it. That's just the pretty cool breeze of a dude.
None of these guys ever stopped there, um, And part
of why things are good is that he kind of
wants he's part of part of One of the things
Chichisco is doing is like, like anyone who takes power

(50:27):
in a system like this, you gotta consolidate it, Nicks, right,
you gotta push out your rivals, you gotta jail some people.
You've got to force them out of their jobs so
you can take total power. And you don't want to
be cracking down on the people well that's going on, right.
You want to keep them happy while you're taking power.
And so that's kind of part of what he's doing
in this period of time, and in fairly short order,

(50:48):
he forces out all of these guys who'd agreed to
vote for him to take power. He pushes them out
of their jobs, right, Um, some of us he does.
He opens an investigation into the purchase that had been
carried out by George you Day, that dude Petronascu who
had forced the who had taken out Antonescu. He he
doesn't investigation into that guy's execution, and obviously Chowchescu had

(51:10):
helped with that, right, he had been a part of
killing that guy and purging all of these people. But
now he's being like, yeah, we're gonna look into this.
That was really bad. We gotta get these bad actors
out of here. You know. It's like when the police
are like, we're going to have an internal on this
massacre that we did. Well, it turns out we found
out we did nothing wrong. So yeah, it was just
those five guys who happened to be rivals to my power.

(51:34):
Dollars more please, Yeah, yeah, this is it's it's very
much that sort of thing. Um. And while he does this,
he also supports a drive towards Romanian nationalism, and he's
he's gonna back anything that he thinks will make people
feel an identity separate from the Soviet Union and one
of them. Because again, while he's he is a strong

(51:55):
communist by this point, and and so is obviously the
Romanian Communist Party is a communist party. That doesn't mean
that there like I want to be part of Russia, right,
This is actually a big thing for a lot of
countries in the Warsaw Act, and Romania has this, as
we've talked about, this kind of long history of being
oppressed and attacked by their neighbors. So they don't he

(52:16):
doesn't want and obviously it's bad for his own personal
power to if everyone in Romania feels like we're just
a satellite of Russia. So he starts backing. He starts
like really supporting a series of like books and uh uh,
kind of questionable historical tracts about guys like vlad Dracula
and the Emperor traction, who he kind of turns into
a Romanian um. And what's really funny is like, while

(52:38):
they while he's kind of backing guys like Dracula and
Emperor Trajan, they have to be framed as proto socialist right.
They're not communists obviously because communism didn't exist back when
Draculas walking around. But you have to say that like
Dracula actually, when you think about it, was like a
pre socialist leader. You know, he had a lot of
these tendencies that we that we've now figured out as commune.

(53:00):
This So like the Emperor Trasian, classic proto socialist right
really was big about redistribution of wealth. What a weird
what a weird person to try to reframe the the
emperor Trasian socialist here the people's hero. Yeah, it's like,
you know who actually was a good person, Elizabeth Battery.
Let's talk about how great she was. She loved unions,

(53:23):
couldn't get enough of unions. She was just the union darling.
Really yeah. Um, so obviously all of this was was
very questionable from historic standpoint, But again, why is anyone
going to complain for one thing? At least you're getting
to read more books now, you know more the papers
are out there, You're getting some music. Um, life is

(53:44):
pretty good. What do you think the most popular song
was when they're hitting what? Um? I know, I don't
think I know if it's in sixty five quite yet,
but the fucking Stones were pretty popular in Romania. Yeah,
I mean obviously, um, the Romanian stonesiction it's just like

(54:07):
the beach Boys. Because it is the sixties. I'm sure
the beach boys are fucking blowing up out there. U
s in big popular. Yes, Romania's famous surf culture. Yeah,
they really get heavily until like that you Yeah, Um,

(54:29):
so Romania had been one of the major bread baskets
of the region. Um. It was actually the Soviet Union
back when they were still kind of occupying the country.
Their pitch to the Romanian Communist Party was like, Hey,
we'll do all this industrializing you guys basically grow all
of the food for the Warsaw Pact, right, that'll why
don't we just do it that way? And the Georgia

(54:52):
Day had kind of been like, well, no, i'm a
I'm a I'm a railway union man. I want to
industrialize too. I don't want us to just be your
garden base. Sickly, So he had industrialized the company the
country pretty rapidly. And one of the reasons why a
lot of Romanians suspected that he had been because because
there's this this conspiracy theory develops that he had gotten
cancer because the Russians had poisoned him because he was

(55:14):
so independent. I don't know how likely this is. There's
a lot of reasons why George you Day might have
gotten cancer. Um, but anyway, there's a myriad that hard
to get cancer being that guy. Um, though I would
I will add that Romania. I looked up some of
their number one songs and they it looks like they
only charted like the international stuff around that I saw quickly.

(55:38):
Yeah that makes sense. You are not alone by Michael Jackson.
Oh that's nice. It's like mostly American stuff. It's it's
surprisingly it's surprisingly close to what you would think of
because like it was like the top charts in the
United States. I know that Chowchesku's favorite TV show is
Kojack um, because yeah, Kojack can just shoot anybody who

(56:03):
wants and ask you identifies with that. There's um. Telly
Savalis wrote a book I Think about Getting Asked, which
I think is just really hilarious, like it's just a
way to get ass wait when I'm I'm super into that.
The idea that Ko Jack was writing a how to
pick up women? Um, yeah, it's interesting. It's always interesting,

(56:25):
like when you look at kind of these countries while
they are under communism. What American TV shows are really popular?
I think it was Hungry where um what's its name?
The Peter Folks show, Um, Colombo Colombo. Colombo was like huge,
I believe in Hungary where it was like people were

(56:45):
absolutely out of their fucking minds for Colombo, which makes
sense against Colombo isn't that weirdly enough? I think that's
one of the main points of WandaVision. Oh is it
so like if you saw wand Division on Disney Plus,
the whole point of it was that she, you know,
where she grew up was clearly the Eastern Bloc, and

(57:05):
they just like they had these old DVDs of old sitcoms.
I've talked to a couple of people, like there were um,
like folks who grew up in countries where like The
Simpsons was illegal, who would get like smuggled Simpsons DVDs
where like one person you would just have some like
random lady who would read in the local language like

(57:26):
over who would basically do these like underground dubs of
shows like The Simpsons. And how it's like, even now
that they have access to the show as it actually is,
the voices sound wrong because it's like, well, no, I
grew up with like like Vlad from the village over
was the guy who did the voice. It was like this,
there's a documentary about the world. It's fascinating stuff. It's

(57:49):
all It's I love this kind of like weird culture
bits like that. It's always really interesting. It's kind of
like how you had. I mean, one of my favorite
stories from Castro's Q but is that during the aid's outbreak, Um,
there was like there were basically punks who you know,
a lot of there was heavy restrictions and what music

(58:10):
you could listen to and what music you could play,
and so you had these punks who realize that like, well,
if we get AIDS, the government will put us in
these like basically medical facilities where because we're all dying,
there's not the same kind of restrictions. So if we
just infect each other with HIV, we can play and
listen to whatever music we want. Um, it's a it's

(58:31):
a fucking There was an NPR documentary about it. That
is not the most far sighted way. I think that's
about the most punk rock anything could be. I'm not
saying I wouldn't say punk rock is something that is
not shortsighted. Well, yeah, that's probably fair given the lifespans
of a lot of those guys. Yeah, like the crust

(58:51):
punk lifestyle is not designed to make it to to
you know, you're not gonna die of old age if
if you're like really, but you know who I love
g Allen. Important to note Chow Chessco through none of
this period is not listening to to punk music. He is, however,
watching Kojack. It is interesting that, like the dictator of

(59:12):
Romania's favorite TV show is a fucking cop show. Um yeah,
Greek car Perhaps not surprising, um so yeah. Chow Chesscu
has this plan to continue Georgiu Day's policy of industrializing Romania.
He wants to build it into this consumer goods mecca.
His plan is to turn Romania. Instead of it being

(59:34):
a breadbasket, and Romania is very well suited to produce
a shipload of high quality food, he wants it producing
consumer goods, appliances, refrigerators, and televisions, all sorts of electronics
that can then be sold all throughout Europe, including Western Europe. Now,
doing this, Romania not a huge country. He's gonna need
a bigger population. If you want to be an industrial nation,

(59:56):
you need a lot of workers. So in order to
p vide this needed base of industrial workers, Nikolai and
Elena calculate that the country should shoot for a population
of twenty million people. Now, what's the best way to
incentivize basically doubling the population of your country. Well, first
you've got to make sure people don't have condoms, and
then you have to ban abortion, and you know what,

(01:00:19):
you might as well just make it illegal to provide
much of anything in the way of sex set or contraceptives.
But just just get rid of all that and people
will naturally make more of themselves. Now, there's some consequences
to this, UM. For example, the fact that over time
a huge number of Romanian women seek abortions anyway, but
they don't have access to decent medical care or information

(01:00:43):
about their bodies that would allow them to do that
in anything that even approaches a safe way. And so
during the time that Nikolae and Elena are in power,
between ten and twenty thousand Romanian women die due to
botched abortions. UM. So that's pretty bad. You're not going
to help the population well overall, I mean, they do
reach their population goal. We will talk more in another

(01:01:05):
episode about the other things that happened as they that.
His goal was just like, you know, why don't we
become like Japan? Yeah, and it's like just I don't.
I think they got a lot of assistance from America
in that regard that you're not getting in Romania. Yeah,
you're not going to get that in Romania, you know,
you don't have there's a lot of things that like,

(01:01:28):
maybe you shouldn't immediately assume that you can go from
zero to like producing everybody's televisions when there's a lot
of competition for that role. And yeah, getting a Magna
box or a Sorny you know, Um, it's not going
to work out well, a lot of none of this
is going to work out well. But you know, in
the early kind or in the mid to late sixties,

(01:01:50):
while you still have this, I mean this, this abortion
policies pretty nightmarish and that's going to cause a lot
of suffering. You could be forgiving. Yeah, yeah, if you're
living in Romania, you could be forgiven for thinking, well, ship,
this is actually kind of working out, okay, right, um,
And that's that's the point at which we're going to
end right now. On an up note, aside from the

(01:02:12):
ten to twenty people who die in a nightmarish totalitarian
anti abortion policy, that's called dipping your toes into the pool, baby, Yeah,
dipping your toes into the pool. And we will come
back and we will talk about what happens when Chowchesco
dips a little bit more of himself into the pool.
But first, Jeff, you you who do you? Who are you? Jeff?

(01:02:35):
Where do you come from? Where did you come from?
The cotton? Jeff? Well, you know, I'm I'm a comedian podcaster.
The one thing I will say is that if you
are in the New England area and you want to
see me performing live, I'm going to be doing one
show uh Wednesday, February twenty second at Redemption Rock Brewery
in Western Massachusetts. It's my one show that I do

(01:02:58):
out there. Limited tickets, but it's a great stand up
show and I love doing stand up and I get
I don't get to do it enough, so I'm very
happy to do that. You can also see me live
the second Friday of every month at Blast from the
Past on Magnolia and Beautiful Burbank, California for my show
Mint on card Love Burbank. Podcast wise God, you can

(01:03:18):
hear I got a lot of good ones I got
Jeff has cool friends, which you can hear for free anywhere.
But you can get early access to uncensored episodes with
bonus content at Patreon dot com slash Jeff May one Word.
You also have access to shows like Nerd with Drey Alvarez,
which is a nerdy deep dive podcast. You can do
shows like ug Find Me with Kim Crawl that's monthly.
You can go to Game Fully Unemployed, and you can

(01:03:39):
hear Tom and Jeff watch Batman with Tom Riman, who's
been a guest of the show a million times. Um,
you can check that out. You can also check out
you Don't Even Like Sports, a sports podcast for people
that hate sports, and Unpopular Opinion, both on the un
Pops Network with Adam Todd Brown. Um. Other than that,
I'm around. You can find me on social media. Yeah,

(01:04:01):
you can find Jeff. That was very thorough. That is
what happens when you do these plugs seven times a week.
And you can find me next to Jeff waiting for
him to get sick and die so that I can
take over for him. Been much. I'm gonna be the

(01:04:21):
chow chesscoo of Jeff may Um. Yeah, it's gonna be good.
And then I'm going to turn Jeff's apartment into a
manufacturing hub for southern California. We're getting up all my toys.
We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna melt him down and
turn him into those big old style TVs made like
seven pounds in the back. Oh yeah, oh yeah, the

(01:04:46):
ones that are like of a nuclear bomb, like you
basically have a dirty bomb if the TV goes out.
That's the kind of TV that has that fizzy static
on it when it's been off for the whole time. Yeah,
the one that glows at night and you just wonder,
is it is there something always going on in there?
I miss old TV. There's something in this TV humming

(01:05:08):
all the time, unplugged, still humming. Yeah, the one that
could kill a family of four if it fell over
while you were eating your fucking uh TV Swanson dinners.
Um God, things were so much better in the nineties. Well,
we'll be back on Thursday. Everybody Behind the Bastards is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool

(01:05:29):
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.