From a Pawn to an Executed King
Ceausescu and Chess
By Prof.Olimpiu Urcan
Published in "Correspondence Chess News"


While I was traveling by train once, I asked some foreign traveler what he knows about Romania. Besides Dracula, he also mentioned the name of the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. That moment I started to get recollections of the past...I was 12 years old during the times of Romanian Revolution from 1989. Watching the snowy landscape through the window of the train, my thoughts went back to the cold winter of the year 1989. The world's first live broadcasted revolution, people on streets confronted police forces, white snow mixed with the blood of the young students, candles in the night and tears in mothers' eyes, chaos everywhere, tanks and victorious flags, gun shots all night and myself hiding in the hall way because some bullets hit the floor next to us where a known secret police servant used to stay...But what I remembered most vividly of all was that in the eve of Christmas, when the revolt against Communist regime had already emerged triumphant, I was out on my balcony and witnessed a spectacular thing. At first I thought there were about a thousand white pigeons but soon enough I realized that from my tenth-floor block, all the Communist propaganda books, brochures, magazines, and journals were being thrown up in the sky and the image of the Ceausescu, the Communist leader just deposed, was being trashed, ripped off when they hit the streets where people celebrated their victory against the imprisonment of the freedom by the former regime. The first live broadcasted revolution - a unique show you could watch no matter you were in Cuba, Manila or elsewhere.

The Westerners still remember very well the trial of the Communist couple, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, and their cold blood execution on 25 December 1989. A Christmas with candles and flowers for the dead, a Christmas with execution squad...Later, as I became a student of history, I was able to get more intimate with these events and all theories about the Romanian Revolution. I don't intend to bore the chess reader with such historical interpretations, still not very clear even today. Rather I will invite him to take a look at Ceausescu's interest in chess. While he was still alive, of course.

Many historians noted that Nicolae Ceausescu was a both an evil and yet a laughable figure. Some placed him in Idi Amin's league while others associated him with Hitler and Stalin. Bernard Levin also noticed that in comparison with the latter two names (who could at least claim some modest successes in their own sphere), Ceausescu's corruptibility made any comparison with them disadvantageous to the cause of Romanian Communism. He was the head of state from 1965 to 1989. He is notorious today for being the sole communist leader in the midst of the 1989 revolutions to refuse concessions to the reformers. Instead he tried to supress them in brutal manner of the Stalin era and it is understandable enough he played the role of the villain in the eyes of the media. Some made notes that in the land of Dracula, the undead had return.

The young Ceausescu apparently started out as a revolutionary cobbler before being imprisoned under the old Romanian Axis government. Riding into favour along with the rest of Romania's Stalinist Communist Party in the wake of Red Army in 1944-45, the former jailbird rose through the ranks before being chosen (ironically, as a compromise) as the candidate for the leadership, a mistake his peers were to bitterly regret. After this will follow a tragic descent into megalomania, deceit and ruin, not only for the dictator but for the country as well.

In the book of Peter Campeanu, Ceausescu, The Years Of The Reversed Counting ( Iasi, Ed.Polirom, 2002, 311p.), a book where historical investigation is conducted in a memorialistic style, we can find some very good pages about the interest in chess of young Ceausescu. The author reveals to us a scene where a chess game is taking place between Ceausescu and him during their imprisonment in Jilava in 1941.They shared the same cell. The author underlined that through his chess moves you could have guessed the personal features of the future Romanian dictator. Campeanu is describing him as a demonic figure, stressing his free-floating anger and contempt for other people. He could not even bear to lose a simple chess game. If he lost, he refused to speak to the winner. An interesting fact is that these pages where chess games are main subject are very appreciated by serious Romanian historians from today. In one review of the mentioned book, for instance, Florin Constantiniu, one of the most popular historian in today's Romania, noted: "There are some anthological pages in this book without a doubt. I have in mind those pages dedicated to the chess game between the author and Ceausescu in Jilava cell...".

In 1965, at the age of 47, Ceausescu succeeded Stalinist hard-liner Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej as head of Communist Party and head of Romanian state. He started to institutionalize his hatreds pursuing a self-orientated policy supported by Securitate, the Secret Service. An entire program was designed for his image as the historical most appraised ruler of Romania picturing himself as the ultimate brave man after the medieval fighting princes. A monumental palace had been built and he created his own nomenclature. Special hunting parties, special chess games with his ministers, traveling world wide, constructing buildings inside Romania in grandiose style, all these were included as special passions. From the archive pictures, we can see Ceausescu playing chess with some of his ministers and some of them after 1989 confessed that if they needed some favour or positive answer from the leader, the best moment to deliver it into conversation was in the middle of a chess game.

The chess games from presidential houses soon lost their importance in the front of the up-coming big dollars for the system's men during the 1970's. In Eastern Europe 1939-1989. The Fifty Years of War (Bloomsberry, 1990), embarrassingly for many Westerners, Patrick Brogan showed how many Western leaders coddled up to the iron-fisted Romanian dictator Ceausescu in a belief that they would gain some sort of diplomatic advantage within the Warsaw Pact: " Ceausescu, that megalomaniac Stalinist, was received with all honours in Washington by a series of American presidents, by the Queen of England and by an array of Western presidents. It was all very gratifying...He had all the tacky trappings of an instant billionaire.." In 1978, during Ceausescu's visit to Britain, Margaret Thatcher was quoted to say that she was "impressed by the personality of President Ceausescu" and "left with particular impressions about him as the leader of Romania, a country willing to develop her cooperation with other nations". In a similar vain former American President, Nixon, said "By his profound understanding of the world's major problems. President Ceausescu can contribute and does contribute to the settlement of mankind's most urgent global problems" (E Behr, Kiss The Hand You Cannot Bite, Penguin 1991). Neither Thatcher nor Nixon could have been further from the truth. Some high-ranked Securitate (Secret Police) officers gave their memories to Romanian post-1989 press, e.g. Ex-Secret Police General Nicoale Plesita and many others, and they didn't forgot to mention that during that period chess games were being eclipsed now by the big dollars schemes from Las Vegas Casinos.

The importance of sport management within an authoritarian system is very well known today and many historical studies have been conducted in the area of state control and the intrusion of politics inside sport and especially chess. Regarding the Communist rule in this area we can notice the impulse of subordination of any magazine, book, newspaper or any other word-spreading tool, to the central forum's high directives. The censorship was implemented and as a special feature in Ceasescu's case, the later plastered a portrait of himself as a young man on every public building and almost ever cover of any printing (I can still remember my shock when I saw him on TV in the days of Revolution...He appeared to me so old. Anyway, he seemed much older than his ideological portraits, which always stressed his youthfulness. Inside publications, you could not miss the directives of the Party and some acknowledgements to the leader of the nation, no matter if it was a history book, sport magazine or a cooking manual.

Revista Romana de Sah , the Romanian National Chess Magazine, had always been sensitive under Ceausescu's rule to the sport management of the Party. The cover and the first pages were always dedicated to the ruler and here are some words from 1965, the year when Ceasusescu regime came in power:

" The young sport practitioners and the activists of the sportive movement are solemnly promising in the front of the Congress of the Party to contribute with all their heart and forces for the fight of the whole people in order to achieve the great program designed by the Party, producing an essential contribution to the harmonious development and physical strength of our country's citizens..." ( Revista Romana de Sah, anul XVI, nr.7/1965, p2)

Today, one would find it amusing to see that on the very first pages of a chess magazine, you could read about the country's need to produce more in the agriculture sector and even being given professional statistics about the increase of productivity in that field.... With the reader's permission we will take another example from 11 years later:

" In the complex economical and social development plan of our country, an essential place is given to sport movement and sport education, raised by the Party at the rank of national activities. The material and organizational measurements, the scientifically character implemented to sport movement produced an increase of mass sport and of the performing level. At the same time, prestigious results have been obtained in the international area, like the results from the Summer Olympic Games, where it is sufficient to mention our exceptional evolution of the Gymnastic team, headed by the Olympic absolute champion Nadia Comaneci.... (...) the presidential high distinctions for such merits are meant to be a strong impulse for the perpetual development of sport movement, for the increased contribution of sport to the elevation of the NEW MAN of our socialist society..." ( Revista Romana de Sah, anul 51, nr.8 / 1976, cover )

Indeed, the 1970s was spectacular for the Romanian sport. Nadia Comaneci and the Romanian Gymnastic Team, the notorious tennis players, Ion Tiriac and Ilie Nastase, as well as GM Victor Ciocaltea and GM Florin Gheorghiu in chess, produced the best sport results of the period. Nevertheless, the system viewed this rather as a collective effort of Romanian socialist people headed by the Party than an individual superb event. The concept of the period was the new man of the socialist era and all individual resources and capabilities were subordinated to such an ideological framework. The latter was very well summarized by Michael Shaffir ( Romania.Politics, Economics and Society, London, 1985 ) who noted that the Ceausescu regime performed a double simulation: a simulated permanence in the Soviet sphere of power ( a policy that permitted Ceausescu to keep contact with Western world ) but also a simulated change inside the country where people was starving and rationalization was implemented. And all this time, Ceausescu suffered from a imperialistic syndrome. Some noted that Hungarians and Bulgarians did not have any foreign policy, but they had what it takes to eat...

The New Man of the socialist era had to be delivered by any means, nevertheless. Even if it meant just for the sake of putting it down on paper. All publications had to absorb this concept and contribute towards it:

" ...having in mind the values of chess, its potential to participate at the development of some intellectual and moral capabilities necessary for the new man which our socialist society is raising.(...) We need to focus more actively the spread of chess in schools and universities, in fabrics and villages, so that our sport movement to be transformed into a powerful mass movement that should comprise all young nation..." (Revista Romana de Sah, Anul 51, nr.9/1976, cover)

Isn't this very similar with Krylenko's strategy to popularize chess earlier in times within the Soviet Union by taking it to the workers and organizing chess brigades? Every small unit should count in the process of giving birth to the new man. New man built on old lies...Reading the lines I just quoted, I start to wonder how is to have a chess nation, where non-chess people is being deprived of rights, imprisoned and executed?

Ceausescu kept his interest in chess as his mind functioned on the premise that he is the reincarnation of all brave medieval men from a golden age of medieval times. His picture was always placed next to those historical antecessors and he felt himself as the leader of the army even on the chessboard. The Western as well as the Russian visitors knew of his chessic passion since Ceausescu's fortune possessed some very precious chess sets, one of them received as a gift from Karpov.

ProductStarting Price in Romanian Lei
Wood chess (2 pieces missing) 7.500.000
Chess and backgammon made of mahogany 12.000.000
Chess table with pieces 9.500.000
Chess mahogany table with bone pieces 15.000.000
Chess table with bone pieces 20.000.000
Chess table with glass pieces and 2 armchairs 21.000.000
Chess box with glass pieces 6.000.000
Chess nut-tree table with pieces and 2 chairs 3.000.000
Chess furniture set - Ludwig XVth style 30.000.000
Total Price in US $ 3595

The subordination of the national chess magazine comes naturally in such a context and in December 1989, the Romanian Chess Magazine was about to release a printing version with the image of the nation's leader on the cover wishing 'Happy New Year' but the Revolution broke up and here are some words of the new chess magazine reprinted in December 1989 after the Dictator's regime was overthrown:

" The magazine is still fresh and enthusiastic... Like our entire sport press, but maybe even more, our magazine had a lot to suffer during this years of lies and oppression. We could not write about the bad conditions in which Romanian chess players had to perform. Without help, chased away from the essential stages of the Capital, without proper training conditions so necessary for world competitiveness, our players had to face an unfair handicap...The magazine kept silent, or it made just shy allusions at this, but we kept hope that one day all these will be take out to light and lie and lack of competence will be out at index...(...) Our tipographs, who were always near us, had a great inspiration we must praise. They stopped the printing of this number still having the image of the hideous dictator and the praising words we were obliged to print. Those printings were trashed. and now you can read this new ones..." (Revista Romana de Sah, Anul 64, 11-12 / 1989, inside cover)

For me this sounds like a prayer when the Romanian Chess Magazine finally 'exited the biblical desert Moses had to travel through'. Almost 40 years of subordination to an absurd system and inside of a reservation represents long time for a magazine born in 1925, in the middle of chess history at its highest level...This might be akin to a prayer for forgiveness or a prayer for better future. One fact is certain. On the cover of the new issue of December 1989 there was a chess clock with its left face showing year 1989 and the right one showing year 1990, a year which the old dictator never saw...

In some army base near Bucharest, the former president of Communist Romania was tried and executed along with his wife on 25 December 1989. A tragic destiny, nevertheless. To believe you are the King in this game for almost a half of century and then to be executed by your own pawns...In 1991, John Sweeny wrote a great book called The Life and Evil of Nicolae Ceausescu ( Hutchinson, 1991). He takes his chaper titles from chess, and thus he starts with "Pawn" (the early years) go through "Castle" and "King" before we reach "King Goes Mad" (the Seventies) and finally "Endgame", "Check" and "Checkmate", after the trial and the old couple shot dead and buried in graves under pseudonyms. In those times it was possible to adapt the French historical phrase to this form: "The President is Dead, Live the President! "

While I am about to finish these lines I am looking through the window of my house. Cold December again. But, unlike like 13 years ago where all I could see in the dark were the military flashlights and the lights produced by guns and tanks, now I can see wonderful lights of McDonald's fast food at season time, lovely Christmas trees with bright lights, little kids singing traditional songs and so on. Smiling inside me, I turned on my computer to check TCCMB again and maybe to try my hand at some email chess. An act considered national treason during Ceausescu's regime and not even his ruthless passion for chess would have saved me from life imprisonment.

© 2003 Olimpiu Urcan