Romania, Europe's North Korea?

*sense of de javu*

Uh. Wasn't there a thread on the exact same topic. And it seems to be going nearly the same way... but my memory's lousy.


Albania sided with Mao because China was the only country left which followed Stalinism. Albania was crazy enough to split when Mao began reforming Chinese Communist Party line.
 
Are you by any chance referring to Molvania? :)

No no, I had not heard of that

This was back in the early 1990s, a dentist who....and I am very vague on this...was recruited to be Hozha's double, had his bits altered to be exact and ... er... something like that

I don't know what happened to that book...

I bought it from a shop near Centre Point that specialised in Eastern Europe

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
but what do you mean by the Yugoslav path of development?

I mean in terms of it's diplomatic/doctrinal outlook - detached from Moscow, and slightly more flexible in it's economic/political model. This is basically what Ceacescu was flirting (albeit not with any wholeheartedness on his part) with in the late sixties/early seventies.

I don't think that would be particularly likely, but it's far more likely than a North Korea-style scenario.
 

Hendryk

Banned
I second those who say that while Albania was OTL's closest European analog to North Korea, it would be more interesting to see how we could get there with Romania, which is a bigger country and more difficult to ignore if it remains totalitarian and starts developing a comparatively strong military.

Also, a POD shouldn't be too hard to find. Until December 1989, Romania as North Korea redux would have been FH rather than AH.
 
Except in Romania the party's second echelon of apparatchiks along with 'elements' from the DSS were already straining at the leash since the mid '80s. There was a large undercurrent of discontent among the "technicians" of the Communist governance.
 

Thande

Donor
I second those who say that while Albania was OTL's closest European analog to North Korea, it would be more interesting to see how we could get there with Romania, which is a bigger country and more difficult to ignore if it remains totalitarian and starts developing a comparatively strong military.

Also, a POD shouldn't be too hard to find. Until December 1989, Romania as North Korea redux would have been FH rather than AH.

That's basically where I was going with this.

To take one example, while North Korea has failed to put any satellites in orbit, modern democratic Romania is well on the way to a launcher even though it's being built by one underfunded NGO. A continuing totalitarian Romania would have both the resources and technological expertise to be a considerable local threat. I'd be interested to see what Russia's policy would be, probably analogous to that of China w.r.t. to NK at the moment: a cautious balance between not wanting to become too aligned with a volatile dictatorship, but also being willing to back it to some extent to intimidate neighbouring countries out of participating in NATO/EU eastward expansion.
 
Ceauşescu tried to get in with the West at times- he even got a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth- which got revoked not long before he died.
 
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