In Europe

honorary doctorates and other commendations from institutions including the New York Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Chemistry in London.
    The son of a farmer, Ceauşsescu was one of Europe's most popular leaders in the late 1970s. Like Gomulka in Poland he was seen as a left-wing nationalist, and always maintained a certain distance from the Soviet Union. Within the Warsaw Pact he regularly caused commotion by doing things like recognising the state of Israel and condemning the intervention in Czechoslovakia. But unlike Dubžcek in Czechoslovakia, he never really challenged the system. This allowed him to maintain a skilful balance between Moscow, Peking and the West.
    Within Rumania itself he ruled like a European Mao Tse-tung. In the 1970s, the economy began encountering the same problems faced by other communist states. The nation's industry was pronouncedly obsolete, the enormous oil refineries worked at only ten per cent of their capacity, and as a result of its collectivisation the agricultural production of Rumania – once a breadbasket of Central Europe – was waning fast. In 1981 the country even began to ration bread.
    Ceauşsescu dealt with these problems in his own peculiar way. The only problem, he claimed, was that Rumanians ate too much, and so in 1985 he introduced a ‘scientific diet’ for the whole country. Energy consumption was subjected to rigorous restrictions: while chandeliers with more than 7,000 bulbs were being hung in the Palace of the People, the only thing the shops sold were 40-watt bulbs. Two thirds of the lamp posts in Bucharest were disconnected.
    The country's female population was sorely tried. Ceauşsescu was worried about the sharp decrease in the birth rate: abortion and contraception were banned. Working women had to report to a gynaecologist every month. From 1983, all women were expected to bear at least five children; childless and sterile women were punished with higher taxes. These population policies had dramatic results: crowded orphanages fullof abandoned children, countless women who died or were maimed at the hands of illegal abortionists.
    Rumania was the most extreme example of Stalinism-without-Stalin and of the leader-worship and megalomania such a system brings with it, and in the regime's final years the situation only became worse. Work was resumed on the notorious Danube-Caspian Sea canal; in the 1950s, rumour had it, the regime had already worked to death some 60,000 of its opponents on that project. The old plans to ‘systematise’ the rural areas and incorporate the farmers into ‘agro-industrial communities’ were revived. In the end, though, only two villages – both of them close to Bucharest – were actually wiped off the map. But traditional houses were razed to the ground everywhere: their inhabitants were given twenty-four hours to pack their belongings and move out.
    Meanwhile, the Ceauşsescus lived in a wholly different world. Today one can rent their villa in Bucharest for $650 a night, and my interpreter had arranged for a guided tour. I go in and I find myself in the house of a cowherd who has just won the lottery. The mind boggles: the gold toilet-roll holder belonging to son Nicu, the hot pink bathroom belonging to daughter Zoë (the drainpipe under the washbasin is gilded too), the dining room of carved oak, the sentimental paintings of a Gypsy girl and a pine forest, the bedroom wallpaper with 2,000 hand-painted roses, Ceauşsescu's personal bath with 12 taps and 10 pressure gauges, the home cinema with a system of bell signals for the projectionist: Wait a minute! More volume! Stop! Lights! Change the film!
    The cellars are still full of the remains of their blithe existence, with hundreds of the duo's coats, suits, dresses and shoes, now on sale for anyone who wants them. ‘I don't understand,’ my guide says, picking up one of Elena's light-blue mules. ‘Lovely, expensive, excellent quality. But we can't get rid of them. The young people don't want this model any more. And look here, aren't these fantastic pyjamas?’
    He tells me that, in the course of their hurried departure on 22 December, 1989, the couple left this house carrying only two blue bags filled with blankets and large loaves of bread. In their final hours, Nicolae and Elena had again become what they truly were, deep down: two farmers’ children on the run.
    My interpreter takes me on a tour of the city's ring road. We zigzag carefully around