The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil

by Michael Malice

Already a group called the National Salvation Front was trying to establish itself as government of Romania. General Victor Stanculescu arrived in Tirgoviste to bring the case of the Ceausescus to a close. It was decided to put the couple on trial, then and there. When he was fifteen, young Nicolae told his brother-in-law that he was going to be “Romania’s Stalin.”[dxcvii] Now he and Elena were going to be the defendants in a trial so absurd that even Stalin would have blushed. A classroom in a nearby school was hastily set up to serve as the court. The defense attorney was given ten minutes to confer with his clients. The best he could come up with was to plead insanity, which Elena especially found to be unconscionable. “I do not recognize this court,” Ceausescu insisted, not unreasonably. “I refuse to answer those who have fomented this coup d’etat. I am not the accused. I am the president of the republic, I am your commander in chief. We have been working for the people since the age of fourteen.”[dxcviii] The prosecutors charged the couple with genocide, organizing armed action against the people and the state, the destruction of public assets and buildings, sabotage of the national economy, and attempting to flee the country with funds of more than US$1billion deposited in foreign banks.[dxcix] At one point the prosecutor even stopped to ask Elena if she was “mentally defective.”[dc] “Let’s get this over with,” barked Ceausescu.