The Curious Story of How Bootlegged Hollywood Movies Helped Defeat Communism in Romania

Chuck Nor­ris helped defeat Com­mu­nism in Roma­nia… or at least the black mar­ket VHS tapes of his movies did. That’s what Roman­ian film­mak­er Ilin­ca Calu­gare­anu argues in her New York Times Op Ed piece and in a relat­ed doc­u­men­tary short, which you can see above.

Nico­lae Ceaus­es­cu’s regime was noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal and oppres­sive, even by War­saw Pact stan­dards. In his mad efforts to erad­i­cate all for­eign debt, he impov­er­ished his peo­ple while build­ing a mas­sive, opu­lent palace for him­self in the heart of Bucharest. He shut down all radio sta­tions out­side of the cap­i­tal and restrict­ed all tele­vi­sion broad­casts to a mere two hours a day. And what was pro­grammed was, by all accounts, pret­ty dull unless you’re a fan of Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da.

So it isn’t a suprise that when an enter­pris­ing entre­pre­neur began to flood the black mar­ket with boot­leg VHS tapes of Hol­ly­wood block­busters in the mid-80s, they were met with great illic­it excite­ment. “It was amaz­ing to do some­thing ille­gal dur­ing Com­mu­nism, some­thing not Com­mu­nist. Watch­ing impe­ri­al­ist movies,” says one inter­vie­wee.

Movies like Flash­dance, Taxi Dri­ver, and Miss­ing in Action became hits. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Sylvester Stal­lone and, yes, Chuck Nor­ris all became under­ground stars. Yet while Roman­ian audi­ences were wowed by the spec­ta­cle of car chas­es, machine gun fights and explod­ing heli­copters, they were equal­ly trans­fixed by things that West­ern audi­ences might over­look — the rel­a­tive lux­u­ry of a typ­i­cal Amer­i­can abode, for instance.  It was a pow­er­ful reminder that things were far bet­ter in the West than at home. “You could see what those peo­ple had, what they ate, what free­doms they had, how they spoke to one anoth­er,” says anoth­er inter­vie­wee. “It was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. And some­how, under­neath it all, you felt … what free­dom was.”

Yet the pecu­liar thing about all these VHS bootlegs is that they were all dubbed by the same per­son, a young trans­la­tor named Iri­na Mar­gare­ta Nis­tor. “As Hol­ly­wood movies became ubiq­ui­tous through the black mar­ket, this voice became one of the most rec­og­niz­able in Roma­nia,” writes Calu­gare­anu. “Yet no one knew who she was.”

Nis­tor under­stand­ably worked in secret, con­scious that a bru­tal crack­down could hap­pen at any moment. But one nev­er came. Ceausescu’s regime met a swift and bloody end on Christ­mas Day, 1989. As she looks back on her time as a trans­la­tor and an unwit­ting under­ground celebri­ty, Nis­tor beams with a qui­et pride, explain­ing that her actions were “a way to trick the Com­mu­nists. That was my biggest sat­is­fac­tion.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

A Short His­to­ry of Roman­ian Com­put­ing: From 1961 to 1989

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.