Correspondents' Correspondence
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Travels with Ceausescu Bucharest-rumania's President...
...At the same time, it must sell more of its own goods in this rich market to pay the bills...
...The kibbutz, therefore, asked the Institute for Cardiac Evaluation of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer to investigate...
...The globe-trotting leader's itinerary in just the past year has included numerous capitals in the Middle East, sub-Sahara Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Western Europe, but only two Communist nations-the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia...
...Indeed, the kibbutznik, with his earthy outdoor activities and secure social environment, came to be considered the prototype of the new man-healthier spiritually and physically...
...As a result, the study was broadened to include 3,600 males, aged 30-59, in kibbutzim throughout the country...
...Interim findings of a cardiac study indicate that heart disease is becoming as frequent in some of Israel's collectivized settlements as in the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem...
...The survey originated more than five years ago, before the Six Day War, when a kibbutz not far from the tranquil town of Petach Tikva noticed an increase in the number of heart attacks among its inhabitants...
...Although the kibbutz was not far from the then Jordanian border, and was exposed to occasional terrorist attacks-obliging its members to keep guard at night in addition to performing their regular daytime duties?border tension" was quickly dismissed as an explanation: The kibbutz had been living with security problems for several years...
...The Poles or Hungarians may give a knowing wink when you bring up the question of relations with the Soviet Union...
...in between was the mildly Socialist Ihud (Labor party) affiliated kibbutz...
...But the second, and presumably more important, difference was in occupational structure...
...Later this year he will visit West Germany and Italy, and he may also make a grand tour of half a dozen Latin American countries...
...Part of the cost of this loss of innocence appears to be tension and heart attacks.-ELIAHU SALPETER...
...in the third, the figure fell almost exactly between the other two...
...The official communiques he carries back to Bucharest invariably proclaim his foreign hosts' belief that all nations are equal, sovereign and independent...
...Obviously, Ceausescu wants the propaganda machine to focus on him and create an aura of limitless popular support...
...In addition, Ceausescu is trying through his summit meetings to insure his country's economic future...
...Every need of the members is taken care of, from food and clothing to culture and old age retirement benefits...
...the Rumanians stand on a soapbox and extol the principles of national independence...
...But now it appears that the kibbutz, too, is being engulfed by the Tush of modern life-and its medical consequences...
...The doctors who checked all of the settlement's middle-aged male members discovered that 10 per cent either suffered from heart disease or showed clear signs of incipient coronary illness, a conclusion that both confirmed the initial impression in the kibbutz and aroused the curiosity of the Institute's researchers...
...It is naturally tempting to jump to the conclusion that ideological hypertension (evident in the heated debates of Leftist collectives) is not good for one's health, and that, conversely, people with a religious outlook have more inner tranquility or inner balance...
...That is roughly how Tito has handled tenuous relations with Moscow in times past, and Ceausescu thinks it will work with equal success for Rumania.-mark Hopkins Cardiac Questions Tel Aviv-The kibbutz is of course, first of all, a way of life: a social experiment in which Jews, returning to their ancient home and to the tilling of the soil, join together in the collective ownership of the means of production and the equal distribution of the fruits of their labor...
...In the low-incidence kibbutz almost all of the men were actively engaged in farming...
...Doctors found no variation in the average weight of the men surveyed (in fact, in all three kibbutzim they were about nine pounds overweight...
...Ceausescu apparently reasons that the more friends Rumania has in other continents and in other alliances, the better it can resist Soviet pressures...
...In bulk, these documents constitute a kind of political reserve to be paraded out at the needed time...
...Ceausescu is also investigating the possibilities for greater trade with the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia...
...But Ceausescu argues that unless Rumania joins the ranks of advanced industrial nations within that time, it will be doomed to poverty status as a raw materials supplier for generations...
...A 10 per cent rate was higher than the incidence registered among men of the same age group in sedentary managerial jobs in urban Tel Aviv...
...And his foreign policy, though necessarily restricted by Rumania's membership in the Warsaw Pact, is closer in wording to non-aligned Yugoslavia's than to that of the other satellite nations...
...moreover, other kibbutzim in the region were prey to similar hazards, yet had not registered any rise in the incidence of cardiac disease...
...Most Communist leaders confine their visiting chiefly to Warsaw Pact allies, letting the Soviet troika of Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgorny and Alexei Kosygin do most of the international road work...
...The two kibbutzim with the higher susceptibility to cardiac problems had industries other than agriculture, and most of their older members led fairly quiet lives...
...The data gathered from three of the collectives have now been analyzed by Dr...
...in the second, the rate was only 4 per cent...
...Jan J. Keller-mann, the head of the Institute, and they show a surprisingly wide divergence: In one kibbutz as many as 15 per cent of the men studied had some kind of heart disease...
...Like his neighbor Josip Broz Tito, Ceausescu seems to relish injecting himself and his country into larger international issues...
...This partly explains why he anxiously lobbies for favorable tariff treatment from the Common Market and the United States...
...Some observers explain that Ceausescu, mindful of Czechoslovakia's experience under liberal reformist Alexander Dubcek, is determined not to give the Soviets an opening for accusations that Rumanian Socialism is endangered...
...Rumania needs the sophisticated machinery, computer technology, managerial skills and capital funds the West can provide...
...Thus the kibbutz existence, it has been widely believed, produces little tension and ¦virtually eliminates the danger of stress-related illnesses like heart attacks...
...Nonetheless, the free-wheeling spirit Ceausescu has adopted in world affairs shrivels within the country itself...
...The industrialization of Israel's kibbutzim is an important step away from their original pristine state...
...Under his relentless direction, Rumania is stepping up an industrialization program that will keep its citizens on the low end of Eastern Europe's consumer scale for the next 10-20 years...
...The first difference to attract the attention of the researchers was in ideological affiliation...
...Ceausescu's travels have become a rather conspicuous exception to conventional Eastern European diplomacy...
...Thus the officially displayed picture shows Ceausescu and the Communist party in tight command, with the masses not only unequivocally behind them, but ready to defend their country to the last...
...Kellermann hesitates to rule out the role of a religious way of life as a contributing factor to the lower rate of heart attacks...
...Travels with Ceausescu Bucharest-rumania's President Nicolae Ceausescu, now a determined convert to personal diplomacy, hit the road again last month with trips to the Netherlands and Denmark...
...Ceausescu not only logs more miles these days, but in so doing makes a deliberate point about Rumania's independent foreign policy...
...The kibbutz with the highest frequency of heart trouble belonged to the Leftist Kibbutz Ha'artzi movement, while the one showing the lowest incidence was associated with the Mizrachi (religious) movement...
...Nor was there a significant dissimilarity in ethnic origin-most of those examined were of Eastern European background...
...But the main reason for cardiac disease, he believes, is the old familiar one: the lack of physical exercise...
...The official celebration of his recent 55th birthday was a heavy-handed adulation-the type of thing that is no longer good political manners in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union...
Vol. 56 • May 1973 • No. 11
