Rating: 
Summary: How come someone say it's not true?
Review: ... I lived this nightmare for 31 years! That was the reason for my defection to the US.And now to the book... I read it twice, devouring it page by page until the wee hours of the mornings. It transported me back to the times when terror and oppression ruled this beautiful country of Romania. I encountered the steel arm of the Securitate a few times as well. The book is not a fiction but rather a document left for our future generations to ponder upon. Wonderful yet scary, funny and serious, a complete description of Romania's corrupt system. Not to be missed!
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Summary: THE book to read about the Ceausescus' regime in Romania
Review: After performing scenes from Churchill's play "Mad Forest," I wanted to learn more about Ceausescu and Romania and found "Red Horizons" was one of the few books in the market on the subject. After reading this book I better understood "Mad Forest" and am shocked that Ceausescu will probably never appear in a History textbook or mentioned after '89. Even if you don't like Historical nonfiction, you will love this book and it will truly hold your attention. It is not just a book of facts but written by the man who led Ceausescu's Intelligence agency during his regime. One must wonder how he could go along with Ceausescu's regime and still live with it today but nonetheless it is worth reading. The feeling you get from "Red Horizons," when reading it is not so much an account of dates and facts but a feel of the day to do atrocities and the Ceausescus cowardice and filthy nature. It is almost like reading Macbeth and you shutter to think this actually happened. This book should be read by anyone who has a yearning to learn about one of the worst regimes to exist after WW2.
Rating:
Summary: THE book to read about the Ceausescus' regime in Romania
Review: After performing scenes from Churchill's play "Mad Forest," I wanted to learn more about Ceausescu and Romania and found "Red Horizons" was one of the few books in the market on the subject. After reading this book I better understood "Mad Forest" and am shocked that Ceausescu will probably never appear in a History textbook or mentioned after '89. Even if you don't like Historical nonfiction, you will love this book and it will truly hold your attention. It is not just a book of facts but written by the man who led Ceausescu's Intelligence agency during his regime. One must wonder how he could go along with Ceausescu's regime and still live with it today but nonetheless it is worth reading. The feeling you get from "Red Horizons," when reading it is not so much an account of dates and facts but a feel of the day to do atrocities and the Ceausescus cowardice and filthy nature. It is almost like reading Macbeth and you shutter to think this actually happened. This book should be read by anyone who has a yearning to learn about one of the worst regimes to exist after WW2.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting look at Romania's Ceausescu regime
Review: Anyone who spent even a few months in Romania when Ceausescu ran it knows that it was very poorly governed. Some symptoms of this were the long lines, the empty shelves in the food stores, the lack of so many consumer goods, the dollar shops, the Securitate, the eagerness of so many citizens to emigrate (and the difficulty of getting visas), the lack of Western newspapers and magazines and the weakness of currency by Western standards. There were also the searches for contraband items at the borders, such as calculators, Bibles, or coffee. Bribery appeared to be part of the culture. Yes, a few people in the government were relatively well off, but very few others were.
In my opinion, one reason for the situation was the quality of those who ran the nation. Some Romanian communists, including Ceausescu, were Communists even when Romania was allied with Germany in World War Two. Back then, Communists were not exactly public servants: generally, they were misfits. When the Communists were victorious, these misfits wound up running the country, and they did a poor job of it.
In this book, written before Ceausescu was overthrown, Pacepa gives us some evidence (albeit, much of it anecdotal) that the Ceausescu regime was repressive and irresponsible in many respects.
We see Ceausescu giving very detailed advice and support to Arafat, a terrorist leader. We see some of the greed the Ceausescus were notorious for, as they stashed away huge amounts of money and goods. And we see that the Ceausescu government was a special threat to minorities such as Hungarians, Jews, and Germans.
This book was written well over 15 years ago, but I think it needs to be looked at even today, perhaps to remind us how counterproductive governments can be.
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Summary: SECURITATE'S PEOPLE STILL ACTIVE - READ THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS
Review: As a Romanian who lived in the Ceausescu's workers paradise for 26 years I know too well the tactics of the shady people who work for today's romanian secret police.
Why?
Because they are THE SAME PEOPLE who worked for Ceausescu's Securitate.
They only changed their organization name and their master,the president of Romania Ion Iliescu -the man who was elected 3 times even if the constitution of Romania allows only 2 mandates.
Comrade Ion Iliescu is an old KGB agent infiltrated by russians in Ceausescu's communist party (yes it's true, the russians didn't trusted nobody)
So if you read negative comments about Pacepa's book, keep in mind Securitate's people are alive and well. They hold high positions of power and privilege in today's Romania, running big companies, banks, holding senatorial seats in the parliament or running branches of the executive.
And sometimes they take a couple of minutes to write a bad review to Pacepa's book on Amazon.com trying to accuse Pacepa,
the man who was a consel to president Reagan in being a traitor and bleaching the miserable image of their ex-commander in chief the murderous dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking!
Review: Espionage, Middle Eastern politics, terrorism, repression, VIP lifestyles, all in this book, and what is more amazing, all true. This was one of the best and most interesting books I have ever read -- and that is saying a lot. What you may read in the newspaper or see on TV is not what is going on behind closed doors. But Pacepa revealed what went on behind closed doors in Ceausescu's Romania -- too scary to be true, but unfortunately it was true. To this day Pacepa is a hunted man, despite Ceausescu's fall, because he knows way too much -- and he is not afraid to make it public. Despite the fact that he did commit many atrocities before his defection, to me this book cleansed him of all of his sins.
Rating: 
Summary: You know what it's about
Review: Historic descriptions should be written like this - fast, personal, insightful - after all, Pacepa says that he has an amazing capacity to photographically remember. I already knew about the Ceaucescus (having lived nine years under their regime) but it was interesting finding out more about their characters. Pacepa rounds them off as intelligent - they managed to fool the Russians and Americans while appearing illiterate and idiotic to the general public. Nicolae's hypocracy comes across strongest of all - he sat in his study cradling precious volumes of Marx and then went about destroying the souls of a nation, making children slave in the fields, nurses crying of pain working weekends. Pacepa made a wise choice and he was lucky to escape. People always wonder whether such books are accurate, whether they're biased, but the truth of the matter is that all history is 'touched up' - Ceaucescu himself blocked out chunks of history because it spoilt his vision - the ultimate protelatarian lie.
Rating: 
Summary: Ridiculous
Review: I expected better from someone who was in charge of Romania's program of disinformation abroad -- this book is utterly unbelievable and unconvincing. One striking feature of the book, noticed by several other reviewers, is how self-serving it is. Pacepa has nothing self-incriminating to say, quite the opposite. He portrays himself as a deeply spiritual man: a devout Christian (prays daily and intensely); a connoiseour of music (concert-quality violin player), painting (his best friend is the subject of his favourite painting), and literature (he conforts himself by reciting Shelley). He hovers around the Ceausescus having minimal and dignified interaction with them, while everyone else is grovelling and debasing themselves in order to gain their favour. Pacepa's actions themselves are usually unclear, it always seems to be someone else who issues the order to have the dissident beaten or threatened. His sole role seems to be that of a witness, quitely gathering material for his book. This is quite laughable. He was the chief of the Securitate's external informations (i.e. espionage) operations. Just like the Nazi Gestapo, the Romanian Securitate was a highly politicized institution where it was virtually impossible for a cool and impassive professional to find himself promoted to a top position. The Securitate was not the Army or the Government, where professionals did occasionally and temporarily bubble up to top positions. Pacepa's bid to portray his relation to Ceausescu similarly to Canaris's relation to Hitler -- begrudging acquiescence leading to revolt -- is silly, if it wasn't despicable. It is far more likely that Pacepa was like a Kaltenbrunner or Heydrich, or at least a Schellenberg, to Ceausescu. It is little wonder we are told nothing about Pacepa's raise to one of the top positions in the Romanian Communist hierarchy. In addition to being highly implausible the book is poorly written and short on interesting historical detail. Potentially interesting information regarding Ceausescu's secrent foreign accounts and assassination attempts against dissidents is often alluded to, but never documented or detailed. This would have been helpful, because in post-Ceausescu Romania no such accounts or criminal actions could be found, and not for lack of trying. However, a lot of effort is put into painting a caricatural picure of the Ceausescus and their immediate coterie of subalterns -- which makes Pacepa's dignified self-portrayal even less believable. Every time Elena C is mentioned we are reminded that her teeth are yellow. Every time Nicolae C eats we are reminded of his poor manners. The emphasis on such personality details at the expense of serious historically relevant information undermines the credibility of the book even further. In conclusion this book is mildly entertaining and not very informative. It is a (most likely) highly fictionalized and sanitized memoirs. I am afraid that reading this book to learn about Pacepa is equivalent with watching the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' to learn about John Nash.
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Summary: about pacepa
Review: I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Pacepa while he was a client of the Jamestown Foundation, where I was working.
First, this book was not checked out in advance with the CIA or any other government agency as some reviewers have suggested. People would be very surprised at the frequently rough relationships between defectors and the US intelligence community. At any rate, the US does not dictate or control what these people write.
Rather than focus on some of the many titilating stories in the book, this work is best used as a window on a very strict, ruthless dictatorship. Not many works can provide the kind of insight as this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Interesting Work
Review: I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Pacepa while he was a client of the Jamestown Foundation, where I was working.
First, this book was not checked out in advance with the CIA or any other government agency as some reviewers have suggested. People would be very surprised at the frequently rough relationships between defectors and the US intelligence community. At any rate, the US does not dictate or control what these people write.
Rather than focus on some of the many titilating stories in the book, this work is best used as a window on a very strict, ruthless dictatorship. Not many works can provide the kind of insight as this one.
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