Books about them to explain their past. Those books be due to other books. Often very obscure ones. We travel to learn and we can only learn by reading. The relationship between travel and good books is inextricable brian . Why a book about romania . Robert i have had a third of a century long obsession with romania because it is where essentially i started my professional life. Where i realized i was finally doing what i wanted. Brian 1973 . Robert my first visit was in 1973 as a backpack after college. I stayed in Youth Hostels from east germany down to bulgaria. Weaverey taught me reading that all these countries were the same. What i found in 1973 was at they were all extremely different from each other because even communism could not erase their ethnic histories, geographies, cultures. Really start not my session with romania. That happened later. It happened in 1981. In the fall. I was getting out of the Israeli Defense forces. I was in jerusalem. , a seeminglyk obscure book by a canadian author and expert on central and Eastern Europe. He talked about all of the countries of the region the way i had experienced it. Mind that i into my would travel through central and Eastern Europe but israel only had direct flights to bucharest, the capital of romania. That was the only country it had diplomatic relations with. I bought a oneway ticket. I had little money. I had a few phone numbers. Left for the blackandwhite engraving of november. I did it because in the middle east, there were hundreds upon hundreds of journalists all covering the same story, which was the subsidiary of the cold war. When i got to the when i got to romania, there were no journalists covering the main story of the second half of the 20th century, which was the cold war itself. I have to ask you about being a member of the Israeli Defense force. You were not born in israel. How long were you in . Robert i travel through the middle east in the 1970s. I arrived in israel with little money. I liked the country immensely. I stayed. I was drafted into the military time, i did not my liking for israel did not dissipate but i did not want to spend my life there. I had wanderlust. I wanted to see other things. Brian what did you do . Robert nothing particularly interesting. For one year. Brian the fact that you are jewish means you can serve automatically . Robert yes. I left in 1981. Later, i renounced my citizenship in order to serve in government. Brian in the United States. Where were you born . Robert new york city, 1952. Brian you were here for book in 1996. I want to run a clip from that and see what you think about your prediction back then. For most of the people in the world, things have gradually been getting better. One of the messages of this book is that a Critical Mass of third world inhabitants, things are gary things are going to get tumultuous environment over the next 2030 years. A longrange future may be dry but the next 2030 years and a significant part of the globe may be very bloody. It is not because of poverty so much. People do not go to war because they are poor. These places are rapidly changing and developing and developing is always violent and uneven and painful and cruel. Brian how did you do . Robert i think i did fairly well. I like the way is better than the amount. Then than now. A journalists cannot predict the nearterm future. Silly decisions are made and it is figuring world wind of human passion and individual action. Journalists cannot predict the longrange future because who knows what the world will be and 5070 five years . The best in journalist can do is to make us a bit less surprised and shocked by what is going to happen in the near term. In the middle term future i should say. Five years. If a news story or a book makes you a bit less surprised about development in a given country 510 years out that is the best a journalist can do. Brian you told us to had been to 75 countries. How many more since then . Counting,have stopped i have stopped counting but i never really covered latin america much. Never really covered many of the much. C islands there are places i have never been. I have never been to st. Petersburg. There are other places. Here are holes what you travel alone . Brian robert you want to be facetoface with the landscape you do not want your ideas and reactions condition by somebody with you. Because once somebody is with you you will enter into a relationship with them and that will act as a block to the landscape your do you do not want to have your ideas and opinions conditioned by others however, you cannot completely travel alone. ,ften you need a translator someone to make arrangements for you especially as i get older. Be the idea, the goal is to as abundant as you possibly can. Romania. 73 you are in how monday tuesday . Robert i stayed 10 days and those with a 10 days that changed me. Made me think differently about a lot of things. From there i went to bulgaria, which was then part of yugoslavia. Serbian, the kosovo, and croatian parts of yugoslavia, into hungry, into czechoslovakia and east germany. Brian how many times have you been there since . Robert i went back to romania , 1984. , 1983 after 1984i published an essay in the new republic called romanian gymnastics, why it is like stalins russia. I was no longer even a visa after that. 1990,id not go back until four months after the 1989 revolution. I spent two months in the country in 1990. Then i was back for another 1998 for another book. Then i went back for an extended visit in 2013. Four extended visits in 2013 and 2014. Brian i want to run some video from 1989. We will have you explain what this is. [indiscernable chanting] [speaking foreign language] who was he . Robert nikolai touch asking who had been in power since 1965. He replaced the previous dictator. Dictator brought stalinism to romania. He was a brutal tyrant. What nicolae ceau . Escu did was to add the north korean element to romanian stalinism in terms of the pageantry, the personality called. Nicolae ceau . Escu who went to north korea and most people were shocked but they were impressed. They said, we can do this in romania. That was the moment when the crowd turned against the dictator and the facade of dictatorship collapsed and from then on, a helicopter took him from the top of that building to an area north of bucharest. It was there a few days later where he was executed. Brian and his wife . Was executed. Fe the decision was made by several reform communists who were fallen into disfavor. Among them was a man who had worked for a stalinist in his youth, who worked for nicolae until 1987. Talked to him about the decision to have him executed. , we decided that they both had to be executed or else they could have gathered the security and intelligence around them and we might have had bloodshed going on for months. We had to stop the chaos. Question,ed a naive did you have to execute her . And he looked at me like i was a fool and he said he was almost more important to execute her then to a secured him. Brian what impact did that assassination have on romania . Obert it called things down people knew that they had turned a corner. The violence stopped. Order was restored under officially a democracy but in fact it was reform communist who took power. Ruled in what you would call officially a democracy that really a gorbachevstyle reformed communism until the mid1990s when full democracy finally came to romania. Of yourn the middle writing this book, there had been major corruption trials. Some people say it was the most corruption in the world. Explain that. Robert it is a good thing that it is being exposed. Romania was and and the clean extremely corrupt and then emically end corrupt. This is nothing new. The romanian population has grown up and become more sophisticated and is demanding clean government. It is its number one demand. Klausu on us johannes he was elected on that i will move closer to the west and i would develop clean institutions as humanly possible. Brian who had they been trying and convicting . What kind of people . People in business. I am not sure about the exact , what was basically going on is a lesson is the old way of doing things will no longer work because we are going after you. Brian when did you finish this book . Robert i finished at the end of 2014 which was about 15 months ago. Brian what you want somebody wandering in a bookstore seeing your book to know about this book . Why you would read it if you dont know anything about romania . Robert it is a deep vertical dive. So many of my forward so many of my former books were a result of studies. Were horizontal studies. Here, i look at one country in death and i use it to explore scenes es great the holocaust, the cold war, the challenge of vladimir putin. Romanian speaking moldova have a longer border with ukraine and poland. The challenge and also about empire, the cause is where the austrohungarian the Habsburg Empire overlapped with sars to russian empires, the soviet empire, the turkish empire, the byzantine empire. To study romania is to study the legacy of empires. Brian what is the relationship now and also back in 1989 with this country . Robert in 1989, romania was a pariah state. When i published that article they 1984, romanian gymnastics, what i was reacting to was the miniaturethere was a news cycle in 1984, the los angeles olympics, when nicolae ceau . Escu sent a team to compete while the rest of the soviet bloc boycotted the olympics so toolae ceau . Escu was a hero i informed americans. The purpose of the article was that he actually ran the most oppressive state in the soviet bloc. After the revolution, especially into the 1990s, romania felt very insecure like other countries and it wasnt it trusted the United States more than nato in brussels. It had to prove that it was a loyal ally to the United States so romania sent troops not only to afghanistan but also to iraq and it sent troops to several u. S. Military exercises in u. S. A wherever the wanted allies, the romanians came along, as did the polls because they wanted to say, we are there for you in a matter what please be there for us. Brian what was our relationship with nicolae ceau . Escu . Robert we tried to use him because this is very subtle. Romania was always different than its neighbors. Didnt speak a slavik language, it spoke to a latin language. Always had much worse relations with russia, historically speaking, then the other countries of the warsaw pact, save for poland perhaps. In a vagueu . Escu was way following romanian tradition of separating himself from the soviet union by having what was called a maverick foreign policy. Sent he says where he at his to the epics, he had diplomatic relations with israel. It was very superficial. He was no threat to the soviet union because he ran the most lockdown stalinist state in the block. The soviets were annoyed with gorbachevau . Escu and was especially annoyed because gorbachev was all about liberal openminded communism and so gorbachev the romanian revolution that killed nicolae 1989, thatn december may have been the only one of the revelations that gorbachev actually liked. Brian how did they kill them . Robert firing squad. Brian you met with his son . Robert i never actually did i refer to him in the book but i never met him. Brian what happened to him . His son went into exile and died a few years later of cirrhosis, some disease related to drinking. Brian how big is romania . Robert 23 million people. 30s40s. N high oregonbout the size of or something. What is important about your question is romania is the demographic and geographical organizing principle of southEastern Europe to the same extent that poland is to northEastern Europe. It is sort of the poland of the balkans in terms of his geopolitical importance. Brian how to change between 19812013 . Robert in 1981, the colors were black and white. 2000 13, it is multicolored. In 1981, it made a profound impression on me because of the literallynes bread lines, people waiting in line for stale bread. And it was the only communist regime in Eastern Europe that start its own people. 2000 and 13, bucharest is glittering, it is a mishmash, and as a lot of bad new architecture some good new newitecture, beautiful plexiglas vancouverlike buildings right next to vacant lots because this is part of the corruption. The property regime who owns what after communism has still not been resolved in many places, so you have vacant lots because nobody can legally determine who the owner is what hasnt been built upon. As a mishmash. But that is very humanizing in a way because it doesnt have some archetypal millenarian utopian belief. Brian in world war ii, what country was at allied with . Robert nazi germany. Loyal. Had a the fields near bucharest. Hitler needed the oil. Romania had a dictator a very interesting man. He was in the terrorist, a nationalist, a realist, and authoritarian. He was not strictly a fascist because he purged the fascists from his regime early on. Showed was that even realism, militaries and, authoritarianism taken a bit too far can be to hundreds of thousands of murders. Brian we have some video of his death. How did he die . Who killed him . That is in. Robert he was executed you will see that. In a minute. Go ahead. Squad executed by firing after being convicted of war crimes. Fairly close to bucharest. He was convicted by a prosoviet regime that was installed in the wake of stops victory in Eastern Europe. Brian we are watching that not only did they shoot him, they came up with a pistol and shot him again and again. Was that a video available what year did he die . Robert 1946. Antonescu met with hitler 10 austria,used russia, other places are from the very beginning of his dictatorship to the very end, his last meeting with hitler was in 1944. Fromescu came back that meeting very depressed. He started being depressed after stalingrad when he realized for the first time that the nazis may not win the war game where does that leave me . Because up until that time he had been murdering hundreds of thousands of jews outside romania in what is today moldova is translate syria which east of romania in what used to be the soviet union. Even as but after 1943, he changed. He kept hundreds of thousands of jews from inside romania proper from going to the gas chambers in germanoccupied poland. It was what scholars have called opportunistic mercy. He saw that hitler may not win the war and he started to change his behavior. Himself. To survive when he came back from the last meeting with hitler, he knew that his days were numbered and he was overthrown in a palace in august, 1944. Then romania switched sides. Romania is interesting. It was the only country even more so than italy that actually switched sides in the midst of world war ii. Hundreds of thousands of romanian troops fought for hitler at stalingrad and by the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of romanian troops were fighting ferociously against hitler in order to regain transylvania from hungary. Brian what is transylvania . Robert transylvania means be on the forest. It is the region to the northwest of the carpathian mountains. It was part of the austrohungarian empire. Before that, the Habsburg Empire. Central europe. Architecture,e with its cafe culture, the culture of the desert, civilization, cosmopolitanism. Good things. Many it is also a place with a large minority of Ethnic Hungarians because the region had been part of greater hungary until romanians got it back at the end of world war ii but actually i am telescoping history because the region changed hands many times. Brian how many jews were murdered in the holocaust from romania . Hear is thecally, record. Over 300,000 jews were murdered withtonescus troops antonescus bureaucratic fingerprints all over it. Outside romania but occupied by the Romanian Army in the midst of hitlers operation barbarossa to capture. He soviet Union Romanian troops got as far as port in the middle of the black sea. I believe the number was 375,000 but it is in the book specifically. All of this is the work of some real trailblazing scholars who solidified the record following the release of the soviet archives, the romanian archives after 1989 in in in the 1990s. Inside romania proper, there are about 300,000 jews who are being kept from the gas chamber but nevertheless they were, there were 15,000 jews killed by antonescus troops inside romania the most famous event in 1941. Brian this is your 16th book. When did you decide you want to do this book . Robert i had been thinking about doing a book on romania for years and years but i wasnt sure. First i thought, i will do a project. , will start in the black sea romania, and i will travel up to estonia and you a travel book of what used to be called by a , that before between the seas. In romania. I want to romania in 2013. But i got so swept up in it. I said, wait imminent, and maybe i shouldnt do another book about six countries, there is so much here, what am i write about what i really know about and are accessed with deeply interest keep it to that even if it is less marketable so to speak . Brian 16 books, which was at the best sellers . Coasts, oftic course. So far about close to 400,000 copies worldwide in many languages. Earth to a the lesser extent. The comingitics, anarchy, the revenge of geography. Brian your relationship with the publisher, is at the same one . Robert i am fortunate that random house has published my last 12. Brian how does that work. In your idea . Robert i used to in the very ideas withalk over editors. As i got older i kept more and more to myself. It is scary self generated, very personal. A book is something that you should have to write your digital be something im going to write a book if i can get a lot of speaking fees awry can make a lot of money on this what is a good topic you know, that gel in the marketplace, books are hard to write. You dont know how they will be received. Cycle not know what news will be when the book is published. I had a book published in the president ial election in 2000. Happened then. The florida recount. So all of my interviews were publicity interviews and they were canceled. The book did well but it and not have that initial burst so because of all of these on globals, you are better off just writing that something you are possessed with, you have to do, that way you will have no regrets. Brian which bookend the most impact on politics . Robert probably balkan ghosts. Brian what happened . Robert what happened was that i started covering the balkans and it is in this book, the early part of this bill, i talk about balkan ghosts. I started covering the balkans in 19 every 1981 as a set, it would back to romania