by Doru Buscu, Academia Catavencu (2)
(original article in Romanian can be read here)

19 Jan 2010

With his white hair and bow tie, and with a smile as wide as his face, Ion Ratiu presented himself to the Romanians in January 1990. He was radiating light and optimism, just like an advert for toothpaste, and his slightly accented phrases seemed to be those of a Hollywood producer. He was charismatic and flamboyant, intelligent and exotic, cheerful and sure of himself. This is the reason for him looking a hundred per cent suspect [to the Romanians]. He descended from the aeroplane’s stairs straight into the mists of a land ravaged by history, inhabited by grey and hungry people, who were eyeing him with the suspicious gaze the cannibals in the islands must have reserved for Captain Cook.

But Ion Ratiu kept harping on. People did not know what hit them: “If you want a better life, communism must die”.

He did not lose time with nuances: “If you want communism, vote for Iliescu. If you want democracy, then you vote for me!”. He did not shy away from being the sole importer of Winston Churchill in Romania, and from proposing an overdose of democracy: “I am right and you are not. But I am ready to die for your right to disagree with me”.

So it came to pass that, several days after Ion Ratiu’s return to Romania, the Securitate, then on the brink of unemployment, could breathe a sigh of relief. The copywriters with military rank re-entered the production line and the slogans of the Bolshevik revolution were installed on the lips of the proletariat.

In those times, the working class had taken some time off from the factories in order to participate in the current events. Freedom had started to show its accompanying benefits in the shape of olives and parizer (3), while the soya-based salami (4) of the past was being groomed to become an ideological hero. Having no chance in the face of collective hate, Ion Ratiu confronted his detractors with his unwavering smile. He was demonised by Ion Iliescu, threatened by the propaganda machine, chased by miners, and processed in the files kept by the officers of the power vacuum. All in vain. His almost pathological serenity did not even blink. He invested his energy and a part of his wealth in the service of democracy. He got involved in the restoration of the National Peasant Party (PNT), financed his political campaign, and printed the ‘Cotidianul’ and ‘Romanul liber’ newspapers. He transformed his bow tie into the jolly brand of normality, and the nightmare of the old structures. He became the representative in the Romanian parliament for the cities of Cluj and Arad [in Transylvania].

Ten years ago, on 17 January 2000, he died. Ion Ratiu lived for fifty years in England. In the 1960s, together with Mihai Carciog’s uncle, he built up a serious fortune from maritime operations. He had become a millionaire in pound sterling in a country where paying taxes is more regulated than breathing and business competition is tougher than a rugby match. From 1946 onwards, Ion Ratiu supported the anticommunist resistance in Romania, becoming himself a notorious enemy of the regime. He rained on Ceausescu’s parade on the dictator’s visits to Washington and London, and Pacepa and the chief of the External Liquidations department owe many sleepless nights to him. Towards the end of the Ceausescu delirium, the Securitate had concocted a concrete plan to annihilate him. In the end, the secret police fortunately decided to shoot its own boss [i.e. Ceausescu].

In 1991, Academia Catavencu was seeing again the light of day in the new printing house that Ion Ratiu had opened on Plevnei Street in Bucharest. Inaugurating this new working formula, the owner of the place insisted to come in person with glasses and a bottle of champagne. We raised our glasses together with Ion Ratiu – the man was as cheerful as always. He was the same Ion Ratiu on whom the ironies of the magazine had been heaped mercilessly. “My dears”, he said to us, “It makes me so happy you exist that I forget completely I suffer because of you”.

NOTES:
(1) – The title makes a pun on a story well-known to generations of Romanian school-children, “Old Ion Roata and the Union””, by Ion Creanga.
(2) – Academia Catavencu is the main (maybe the only) political-satirical magazine in Romania. Its natural family is formed by the likes of the Private Eye in the UK, and Le Canard Enchainé in France.
(3) – Parizer: a Romanian type of boiled salami, somewhat similar to the Italian mortadella.
(4) – Soya-based salami: due to the shortages of meat in the 1980s, the pork salami, which has the status of staple food in urban Romania, had been replaced with salami made out of soya-based protein. “He ain’t eaten soya-based salami” became an expression denoting a foreigner, or a Romanian who “had it good” in the West, and was back to Romania to “teach us lessons”.