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Yak and Leopard Skin, Ceausescu’s Presents Go on Auction
January 24, 2012

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Bucharest, Romania. A bronze yak offered by China’s Mao Zedong and an African leopardskin are among official presents given to the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu that will be auctioned off in Bucharest on Thursday.

The sale in the Romanian capital falls on Ceaucescu’s birthday (January 26, 1918).

Enamelled and silver doves given by the former Shah of Iran as well as a pen presented by Japan to Romania’s former strongman will also be offered to collectors along with many other objects from Communist times (1947—1989).

Among the latter are posters promoting healthy food like fruit or holidays on the Black Sea as well as other “proletarian” artefacts.

The auction is called “Golden Age” in reference to the final years of Ceausescu’s rule, when propaganda pictured a thriving Romania whereas in reality people were suffering food shortages.

Ceausescu and his wife Elena fled Bucharest after mass street protests at the end of 1989, when the iron curtain fell across eastern Europe. They were executed on Christmas Day the same year.

“Whether we like it or not, the communist regime is a page of our history. This time we are proposing to think about it in a different way from history books and sociological analysis,” Alin Ciupala, an art expert for the Bucharest-based auction house ArtMark told AFP.

Some of the objects were auctioned in 1999 by the state body charged with dealing with the dictator’s goods and came back on the market through private owners.

Several works from the Romanian-born Victor Brauner, a Paris-based Surrealist painter will also go under the hammer in Bucharest the same day.

Agence France-Presse