The Listening Tube Welcomes Tudor Alexander

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey, the listening to Welcome to Guest. My guest today is a man who was born and raised in Romania. He's been living in the United States for a long time now, but he writes about his life experiences under the communist rule of Soviet-era policies, and how living conditions and everyday decisions are different from what we know in the West. Tudor Alexander, engineer and novelist, spent some time with me in the listening tube, where we talked about the real life experiences that led to his work as a writer of historical fiction. An interview from the listening tube. And why did you want to live in the United States?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I when I arrived in the United States, I was 27 years old. When I left Romania, I left Romania about a year earlier, and then it took a while to find my way to the United States, because at that time there was a program that was called, I think, the third country program. So anybody from Eastern European countries and Russia, and to a certain degree from Vietnam, who could make it to a European capital would then qualify as political refugees to the United States. Because we could certainly not come directly from Romania to the United States. So me and my wife ended up in Athens, in Greece. And we spent uh almost half a year, a little under half a year in Greece. And we asked for political asylum in Greece, surrendered our national passports, interviewed at the American embassy. We spoke English at that time, so that was not too big of a challenge, and uh eventually got permission to come. And we came to the United States as political refugees with uh temporary green card status. And by temporary, that meant that if we did not do anything unlawful for two years, we would then get permanent green card status and could apply for citizenship uh in after five years. Why did I want to come to the United States? Because I wanted to live in the West, I wanted to have access to the freedoms that people in this country enjoy. And for that matter, maybe in other countries in Western Europe. But the United States was a country of immigration at that time. As a matter of fact, when we applied uh in Greece for political asylum, we were told that we have four choices. That in the world there are four immigration countries: United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And we chose United States.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Were you considered by Romania to be a defector?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

I would think so. I would think so. But I know that there are certain agreements that perhaps are not known, and to I cannot be 100% sure of what I'm saying right now, but I know that the American authorities requested uh did a clearance. They checked my clearance and they they were in touch with the Romanian authorities, and that means with the uh Romanian security police. So the Romanians knew exactly that I was that I surrendered my passport and I was waiting to come to the United States. At the same time, I had family in Romania and nothing happened to them. So you might expect that there would be some measures taken about my father or my mom, but no, maybe because they were already approaching retirement age.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Well, that's good to hear. What was Romania like at that time?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Well, uh, could you be a little more specific in your question? Because there is so much I could say. Are you referring politically?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Well, perhaps politically, but well, what you know, was everyday life um enjoyable? Was it a struggle? You know, what what was education like? Uh and and certainly uh the political climate.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Sure. I would say that it was both a struggle and enjoyable. I was a single child. Both my parents were doctors. My father was uh a doctor with of some renown, he was a surgeon. Uh, we had a very comfortable middle class life. Uh we had a car, which my dad allowed me to drive from time to time, which put me in a position of advantage relative to some other uh young people my age. One struggle that we had was that uh we were not allowed to have long hair, because if the police saw you in the streets with long hair, they would send you to the barber. I managed to grow a beard, for instance, and that is because dad, who had plenty of connections, uh, went with me to the police and changed. In Romania at that time, people had to have their ID on them all the time. And the ID was not a passport, it was like internal ID. And I had and I had a picture in the ID, and in the picture I had no beard. So they took a picture of me with the beard, and then the police could not harass me anymore. So those types of details. Was I happy? I was, but I was also unhappy every time I saw uh a foreigner my age come, let's say, from Italy or Germany, drive their own car, look like the hippies you would see in uh in um certain colorful magazines that somehow made it from the West. We cannot, we uh I wanted to read other books than the ones that were available in the bookstores or go and see certain movies that were not shown to the general public. And in general, at least in my circles, and I grew up in Bucharest, the the desire to leave Romania and uh settle somewhere in a western country was very predominant. It was very strong. Uh, education-wise, college was free. I um went to school, 12 12 classes, so high school was nine through 12, and then I went to a uh to the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, which was an engineering degree, a five-year engineering degree. That was free of charge.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

And did you then pursue an engineering career or did you did you have a choice?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

In Romania or in Romania? In Romania the moment I graduated, the Romanian authorities told me, based on your grades and our needs, you need to go to such and such a place. There was a small town in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and work in a in a petrochemical plant over there. I worked there for about 10 months, and after that I left the country.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

So you were assigned a job then upon graduation? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Everybody gets assigned a job. Now, of course, connections and contacts help. Or if you are brilliant in school and you have very good uh bra, if you have very good results, then you you have better choices. I was, I would say, mediocre. I did not like engineering as a profession that much. But it was pressure from my family that I that caused me to pursue that that uh avenue.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

How did your family and friends take your decision to leave your homeland and not just that, but going to the United States? Were were you ostracized for that in any way?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Not by my family or friends. I was considered the official uh position was that people who left Romania were traitors, of course. But in practicality, none of that uh my my friends understood me perfectly. There was only one example uh that um I could that comes to mind. We had a good I had a good friend, uh uh a girl, uh in in in high school, and she chose a different career. She went and studied economics and then she studied law, and she started working for the commerce department, dealing internationally, and that would not be possible without some ties to the uh to governmental controls and security police, and so uh she told me that it's best if we seize any connections, but most of my friends know. And this young lady who is my age and no longer a young lady, is a good friend of ours right now. But for a while she could not communicate with us because it would have been detrimental to her career. My parents, they certainly understood. They certainly understood.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Do you ever go back to visit?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Yes. Um I've been back many times. I don't know, maybe uh to begin with, in 1989, uh the the political system in Romania changed. Um when when the Berlin Wall fell, uh the the tyrant in Romania, Ciaocescu, was shot. And Romania switched from communism to some sort of democracy that progressed over the years. If I go to Romania today, it's uh it's like almost like a Western country. I can stay in a Westerstein hotel, go to nice restaurants, there is no problem uh whatsoever.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

What kind of surprises did you find upon moving to the United States?

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Well, I would not have a straight answer because the surprises um were on different levels. In the beginning, in the very, very beginning, at the time we came to I came to the United States, I was married, and we ended up in New York, New York City. And we were supposed to be sponsored by a certain group, and our sponsor was not a very reliable sponsor, and they did not help us very much. And so I eventually ended up staying for about a month with a friend of ours who had a very nice studio uh on East 36th Street in Manhattan. And it was a studio, so the three of us shared the studio. And then because we spoke English and because I had an engineering degree, I found a job within a month after arriving to the United States. And my wife, who also spoke English and was also educated, she found a job as a receptionist at the publishing house. And so we both started working about in about five weeks. Once you work and you derive a salary, the rest falls into place. I mean, materially speaking, we were very satisfied. But New York, especially in the beginning, scared us. It wasn't a very accommodating place. I say that, but nowadays I love to go to New York because now I understand what's going on, I like the energy, I like the culture, I like the the sites, and I have money. At that time it was a little bit different. I needed to rent a place, and the rents were expensive. So we moved into a pretty nice area called the Riverdale in the Bronx, and that's where we found our first apartment. So my answer would be that the first impression of America was underwhelming rather than overwhelming. I expected America to be more solid, cleaner than it was, more attuned towards cultural events. And instead of that, I found poverty in the streets, dirt, depressed areas in New York. My wife, it turned out, was pregnant when we arrived. And the first reality of living in the United States was that she did not have medical insurance because pregnancy was a pre-existing condition. Even though I worked and I had insurance through work, and she was insured for everything else, not for pregnancy. Now, as soon as my daughter, our first child was a girl, as soon as my daughter was born, my daughter was insured and my wife was insured. But the prenatal care was not covered. So we have to we had to pay for it ourselves, which to me was even though I knew that medical insurance in the United States could be a problem. I came from a family of doctors. In Romania, medical care was free for everybody under communism. So that was kind of a shock. The worst part was the longing for my home, for my language, for my friends, for my family. Forgetting them took a long time. I would say a decade, maybe longer. And um, yeah. So it was a mixture.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

You've written a number of novels based on real life experiences of not only yourself but others around you. What can a reader of your novels learn about the different types of governments and lifestyles and what it's like to live under those conditions?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

I think that my last two books, uh, The Last Patient and In Darkness and Light, are very relevant today because on one hand they describe how it is to live in an oppressive communist regime. Uh and uh in spite of the theoretical beauty of the communist doctrine, you know, if you read the the the premise of communism, it's it it sounds wonderful, but people are people and it cannot be implemented. It is it's it's been proven. So um uh I think that uh my especially in darkness and light, which is my most recent novel that came out in June of this year, uh describes the progression of a young woman who is a communist in her youth, and how she slowly her belief in communism deteriorates and she becomes disillusioned and disappointed, and eventually the book ends when she leaves Romania, in her case for Israel. I think that uh I find relevance in in a lot of things. Um for example, books that were forbidden in Romania. And it it makes my blood boil when I hear that such things take place in the United States as well, that uh certain schools would uh throw out of the school libraries certain books like I don't know, uh Harry Potter or uh Huckleberry Fed. There is um there is a lot in my books about the fact that people acted differently at home than in society. Uh I was perfectly I was uh protected at home by my parents. And when I was with my parents and my parents' friends and my own friends, we could discuss freely almost everything. At the same time, as soon as we were in a larger group, we were we we we learned, we knew how to self-censor ourselves, how to not say certain things, how to not react to certain uh events or or um whatever was happening around us.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Other people's comments, uh other people's comments.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Very often uh we we we uh I think me and my friends, we developed a almost a code. If we felt that somebody might be an informant, we would kind of silently signal to each other and we would walk away. Things like that. Um is uh in in your questions, you you brought this up, and uh you were talking about socialism and communism, uh, given that a certain wing of the Democratic Party might look at that as a potential solution. I don't think that that is a solution. I think that uh uh communism to begin with means that all means of production are owned by the state. And I think that this is a formula for disaster. And I think that uh my books do not necessarily reflect that, but it is implied. Socialism, democratic socialism, like in certain North European countries, might be something that I would think might benefit this country. For instance, our experience with medical insurance wouldn't have happened if we had immigrated to Germany or to France. So uh it goes both ways, I would say. On the other hand, a lot of Americans ask me how come the Romanians did not rebel, how come they did not start the revolution before they did it? And they did it when the Soviets allowed it to happen. But before that they couldn't do it, right? And now you see how certain law firms and universities and some private, large private corporations bent to the will of one man without revolting, without standing, without daring to stand against those uh uh tendencies. So it is it goes both ways. And I think that the book is relevant because it shows what can happen in a dictatorship.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

And now many people assume that under an authoritarian government, the individual has few opportunities to make personal decisions. What kind of decisions are you able to make for yourself? Do you get to choose where you live or what kind of car you drive? How far is that thumb holding people down and uh how can they get out from under it in certain situations?

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Well, I can only speak from my own experience. And to start, I would say that uh the situation in Romania evolved over the years. Uh, it was much harder to. In the late 40s and early 50s, when the communist regime, with the backup of the Soviets, was trying to establish itself. And it relaxed to a fairly large degree in the late 60s and early 70s. And by mid-70s, I left. But I know from others that in the 80s things got tougher again. When you say, can they buy any car they want? Yes. If you have the money, and you have to have the money, if you have the money, you can buy any car that you can buy that is available that was available in Romania at that time. The choice was very limited. Some people who had connections or traveled to the West would sometimes bring used cars from mostly Germany, West Germany at the time. But most people in Romania would buy Romanian-made cars, which were modeled after the French Renault. It was called Dacia. And my father, who was a doctor, he had this type of a car. So he bought cars that were available for purchase in Romania. House, for a long time having uh real estate property was not widespread. Some people somehow maintain their properties from before the war. My parents rented up until mid-1960s. And then they bought the apartment that we lived in. So by mid-60s, it was already possible to buy the apartment. Now, again, dad was a surgeon, mom was a doctor as well. And even so, we had an apartment that was maybe 1200 square feet, and we lived three generations there. Grandparents, my parents, and myself. I had my room, but that was compared to American standards, especially in the suburbia where I live now, that's not very big. But if you go to Manhattan, uh 1200 square foot apartment is uh it's a pretty nice size.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Yeah, so it depends a little bit on what, but yes, you could buy um uh uh apartments. If you had money, the limiting factor was what was available in the stores.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

And that that's that brings me to another question. Now I know when I lived in West Berlin in the mid-80s, if you were if you were in East Berlin and wanted to buy a car, you had to get on a waiting list and pay for the car in advance.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

And then whatever one came off the assembly line when your name came up, that's the one you got.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

That that is true. There was there was a procedure like that, and usually the the waiting was six months.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

But uh, like in my in the case of my dad, he had a car, so he would buy the new car, drive the old car until the new car became available. So it was kind of seamless. And there were always ways of beating the system. There was there was an underground economy, there were connections. Dad, being a surgeon in a in a premier hospital in Bucharest had connections. He was a party member. Uh, he had to be a party member. So uh there were things that uh people did. A lot of people managed to circumvent the system in that fashion. But yes, it was exactly as you described it.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Now, there's a trend among many young people in the United States today, influenced by politicians and others, that socialism is an attractive and promising form of government. And you already touched on this a little bit, but I want to ask what can you tell us about socialism that young people who grew up under Western capitalism and never even heard of the Soviet Union may not realize about it?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Well, uh, I think that socialism might mean different things to different people. And uh I don't know if when you say socialism you mean what what is the relationship to private property and means of production? Is everything does everything belong to the government or primarily belongs to the government or not? Uh I would say that uh there are certain certain um that a safety net, a social safety net that is a little more developed than we have in the United States, uh seems doable and attractive to me. Uh of course there are it's a question of money, it's a question of whether the state can can afford it. I would think that what the young people should do is try to read about life experiences in the Soviet Union and in Eastern European countries and in China and perhaps in Cuba, and uh they will see that uh all social all all countries where socialism or communism was promoted as the ideology turn out to be dictatorships. Um now uh socialist democracy, I think it's called, what's going on in Germany or it what's going on in Scandinavia? They have a much stronger uh social network helping people. Of course, many of those countries are much smaller, countries more heterogeneous, and therefore it is easier to implement such a policy than it would be in the United States. What should the young people do? I don't know. I think that they should travel a little bit and they should read historical novels.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Well, now, speaking of which, historical novels, the writing of historical novels takes a lot of research, even if you lived through the events yourself. Was there anything in your research that you wish you hadn't learned or were unsure about sharing as a part of what you wrote?

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Not really. I uh did some research, but the research was limited because both both my my two most recent books are both family lore, and they are both based on history that I witnessed or I heard from my parents. There or there was research that I did when I described a particular city that was not Bucharest, my hometown. Uh, if I wanted to, I don't know, describe a street or uh figure out the distance or things like that. But beyond that, I did not need to do a lot of research. Although In Darkness and Light has is based on the life of my mother-in-law, and my mother-in-law was Jewish, and during the war, the Romanians and the Nazis were allied, uh, and they went into the Soviet Union together, and my mother-in-law was deported from where she lived to an area in the Ukraine called Transnistria, and of course, I did not know anything about that, and the way I learned about it is by interviewing my mother-in-law. I spent hours upon hours, I think I have uh about 15 hours of recording of her telling me of her experience of about her life in Transnistria. Um, and that is reflected in the book. So, to the degree that this was research, that's what I did. But again, it was more like an interview with the person who survived or went through that experience than anything else.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

How close to nonfiction are your novels?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Well, I would say they're fiction. They are fiction almost a hundred percent. Of course, the uh a lot of the stories are based on on true events, but very many uh true events are reinterpreted and presented in a fictionalized way. Not only did I change names of the characters, but I uh I preserved the location and the major events. For instance, the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968, and I have something happening in my novel in that year, and I mentioned that it that the Russians occupy Czechoslovakia. But most of the rest is fictionalized. Many real characters, I I would take two characters and put them into one. The way I wrote this is I started based on my memories, and I when I finished the first draft and I sent it to my editor, she said, Well, this is very nice, Alex, but uh it reads like a series of vignettes. It's not a novel. You have to give it an arc. And so I went back and I started modifying things and I started creating, inventing scenes in order to have a gradual uh increase in in the tension in order to reach the climax and then uh the ending. For example, in The Last Patient, I have uh one scene in which the main character who is modeled after my father uh happened to be in Frankfurt, West Germany, and somebody offers him a position at the hospital. So now he is facing the possibility to defect while leaving his family back in Romania. And so that entire uh scene is a figment of my imagination, is not a real thing. Also, my father, because he's the main character in my book, has an extramarital affair. I am not sure that he did or did not, and he never talked to me about it, but I imagined the whole thing. So there are things like that. On the other hand, I describe a trip that uh mom, dad, and me took to Odessa, which is a city in Crimea. Oh, well, uh in Ukraine, and we took that, we we drove through the Soviet Union, which was quite rare at that time. That entire scene is actually, I lived it through, so it's very close to reality. So, but but I would say that most, at least 80%, is fictionalized.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Uh, where can people go to find more information about you and your novels?

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Well, of course, my novels are available at some of the local uh bookstores and the local library. Uh, you can buy it on Amazon and you can uh read much more about me on my website. So, my website would be Tudor AlexanderinOneword.com.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Well, Mr. Alexander, thank you very much for spending some time with me in the listening tube today. I really do appreciate it. I found the conversation to be fascinating. I I hope you've enjoyed it as well.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

I enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Tudor Alexander's website again is www.tudoralexander.com. That's T-U-D-O-Ralexander.com. Thank you again to Tudor Alexander for spending some time with you and me in the listening tube. Follow the listening tube at thelisteningtube.com, where you'll also find NotThe Headlines and This Week in History. Click the green follow button or support the show by clicking on the Buy Me a Coffee link on the homepage. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou at Infinitum.