Romanian tourism minister announced on August 17 2011 that a new tourist attraction will soon be available to tourists visiting the country - the Ceausescu Trail. In an interview with B1TV channel, the minister declared:
"We are working on a 'red circuit' that would follow the traces of communism and the dictatorship," according to a report by APF.
Following the Ceasescu Trail
The trail will include all aspects of the former Romanian leader's life, including his native village of Scornicesti and Doftana prison, where he served two years in the 1930s. More recent locations in the Ceausescu story, including the balcony of Communist Party Headquarters where he gave his final speech, and the military barracks at Targoviste will also be on the tourist route.
"Western tourists are very interested in Ceausescu's history, provided we can sell it properly," Udrea said, announcing also that the Ceausescu official residence would also be opened to the public.
Merging tourism with the Communist legacy has produced some interesting results in recent times. While Western interest in life under Communist rule has led to a fascination with the dictators and their lifestyles, not all countries were initially keen to cash in on the potential, having suffered under the various regimes.
The Rebirth of Stalin
The fall of the Soviet Union, as elsewhere in the Communist world, brought about the mass felling of the statues of Lenin, Stalin and other leaders which adorned most town squares. Indeed such was Stalin's fall from grace that every statue was torn to the ground apart from one in Gori, the town of his birthplace and home to a museum of the former leader, where one can play his piano and sit on the toilet of his personal train.
Modern tourism needs reversed the trend, however, and several Stalin statues began to reappear in an effort to boost tourism, as well as another Stalin museum in Volgograd.
Statues in a Budapest Park
An enterprising idea in Hungary turned the hated symbols of Communist oppression into one Budapest's prime tourist attractions today, the popular Memento Park just outside the capital. The park houses many of statues of the Communist era, and owes its existence to an idea floated by literary historian, László Szörény, at a time when the popular mood was in favour of destroying the reminders of oppression.
Sinking the Presidential Plane in Bulgaria
Bulgarian tourism took a novel approach to benefiting from the Communist era early this year, with the decision to submerge the government plane of former Communist leader Todor Zhivkov in the Black Sea off the coast of Varna, thereby creating "the largest artificial reef along the Bulgarian Black Sea coastline," according to State television. The Tu-154 was sunk on May 25 2011 and is now 23m underwater.
The most well-known Communist tourist attraction, however, is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin himself, whose embalmed body has drawn millions of tourists to his mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.
Paul Bradbury - Author of Hvar: An Insider's Guide to Croatia's Premier Island, and Lebanese Nuns Don't Ski
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