Democracy and Communism

Eugene Ionesco, a French playwright from Romania, is the world-famous writer of absurdist play. His masterpiece <La cantatrice Chauve> is the essence of the world absurdist plays along with Samuel Beckett’s work, <En attendant Godot>.

Eugene Ionesco mentioned that „Communism is the most tragic and the biggest mistake in the modern history.”

About 20 years have passed after the tide of democratization at the end of 1980s and meanwhile, there have been tremendous changes.

Generally, if we say ‘The change of social structure’, it seems that it would be difficult to solve and it would take long time to do so. And if we think of restructuring, this reminds us of voluntary retirement or unemployment. In this way, the expression including the word ‘structure’ has a sense of graveness. East European countries in the 1990s have undergone ‘an overall structural change’ at the whole national level, not a change of social structure merely in a certain area. That is, system transformation from communism to capitalism and from socialism to democracy.

Contrary to socialism with one-party system, the most requirement of democracy is ‘a multiparty system’. And compared to communism, the requirement of capitalism is ‘privatization’. East European countries in the 1990s, through an overall change in law including constitution, tried to reform regime of the nation entirely and tried to privatize national property. In this transitional period, there was a great confusion and difficulties, followed by severe adversity to the public.

I have no intension of discussing ‘Democracy and Communism’, a grave subject. I’m going to talk about one historical event from Europe which is in relation to those two ideologies.

During the Second World War, the Allied Forces tried to conduct landing operations in the Balkans at first, but they changed their plan to conduct invasion of Normandy. This is the similar case in the Korean War, landing operation changed from Busan to Incheon.

Originally, it was the plan of the United Kingdom to advance to central Europe and Romania via Yugoslavia by conducting landing operation in the Balkans. However the United States retracted this plan in January, 1943. The United States insisted that the Allied Forces had to focus on the invasion of Normandy because they leave the battle in the Balkans to Soviet forces. Consequently, the United Kingdom agreed on the US proposal and the Soviet Union governed Romania, adjoining to Balkans afterwards. From then on, in Romanian history, ‘The Communism’, the tragedy and the biggest mistake in modern history, has begun in the near future.

To be more specific, the United States and the United Kingdom proposed setting ‘a temporary military zone’ to the Soviet Union in order to focus on the invasion of Normandy. It meaned that Romania is under protection of the Soviet Union(influence : the Soviet Union-90%, the United Kingdom-10%) and Greece is under protection of the United Kingdom(influence : the Soviet Union-10%, the United Kingdom-90%). Accordingly, Romania and Greece move toward communism and democracy respectively after the Second World War.

From Romanian point of view, by a narrow margin in history, a change of invasion from the Balkans to Normandy, the biggest mistake in modern history has begun.

After the Second World War, Romania got far ahead of Greece at economic level. During the First World War, actually, the share of overseas sales of Romania in world trade placed within the top 10 over the world. However Romania entered the communism of the Soviet Union and Greece entered the democracy of the United Kingdom.

From the introduction of communism to Romania in 1948, after 40 years, the civil revolution took place in 1989 in Romania. The dictator Ceausescu was executed on December 25, on Christmas day and democracy in Romania has begun afterwards.

How was the economic level in Romania and Greece right after the collapse of communism in Romania in 1989? The economic condition in Greece is poor nowadays but in the Early 1990s, there was a huge gap at economic level between Greece and Romania which were advanced country and underdeveloped country respectively.

Before the introduction of communism from the Soviet Union, Romania was wealthier than Greece. During the last 40 years of communism, however, Romania has degenerated into a poorer nation than Greece.

Jeong O PARK PH.D

Head of Romanian Department, HUFS, KOREA

Honarary Professor at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University

2010-2012 Visiting Scholar at UC. Berkeley, U.S.A.