When The Queen met Ceaușescu

Witness History

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Nicolae Ceaușescu was the first communist leader to be given a full state visit to the UK, but it was controversial from the outset. The Romanian president was a known dictator who ran a brutal regime, but Britain was still cash-strapped after World War Two and was desperate to build new trading partners. Dorian Galbinski was one of the main translators for the visit and he explains to Rebecca Kesby some of the background to the event.

(Photo: June 1978: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu rides in the state carriage with Queen Elizabeth II on his official visit to Britain. Credit: Central Press/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca
0:45.1	Kespi. Today, when the Queen met Chausescu, the Romanian President was the first communist
0:52.0	leader to receive a state visit to the UK in
0:54.8	June 1978 but it was controversial from the outset. I've been speaking to one of the
1:00.9	official translators of that visit.
1:03.4	The first state visit to Britain by the leader of a communist country.
1:07.3	Here the president, a short compact figure, was welcome to Britain by Her Majesty the Queen.
1:12.2	Nikolai Chauchescu wasn't the first communist leader to meet Queen Elizabeth the second,
1:17.4	who incidentally came to the throne when Stalin was still in power in the USSR,
1:22.2	but he was the first to be welcomed with the full
1:24.8	pomp and pageantry available to one of the oldest surviving monarchies in the
1:29.0	world.
1:30.0	Important visit this by President Charchesccu a powerful ruler in his own state and
1:34.5	at a moment now the carriages will come forward to begin the procession
1:38.9	towards Buckingham Palace. One of the two main interpreters for the three-day state visit was Dorian Galbinski.
1:46.0	He'd left Romania as a young man in the mid-1960s and was now a journalist in the Romanian section of the BBC World Service. It was there he got the call
	...

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