Quotulatiousness

August 19, 2013

QotD: “The Genius of the Carpathians”

Filed under: Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Romanian Communism in its last years sat uneasily athwart the intersection of brutality and parody. Portraits of the Party leader and his wife were everywhere; his praise was sung in dithyrambic terms that might have embarrassed even Stalin himself (though not perhaps North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, with whom the Romanian leader was sometimes compared). A short list of the epithets officially-approved by Ceauşescu for use in accounts of his achievements would include: The Architect; The Creed-shaper; The Wise Helmsman; The Tallest Mast; The Nimbus of Victory; The Visionary; The Titan; The Son of the Sun; A Danube of Thought; and The Genius of the Carpathians.

Tony Judt, “The End of the Old Order”, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, 2005.

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