Undoubtedly, December 22nd 1989 has been one of the days I could never forget. To this day, it still stands at the crossroad of my life. Twenty years ago I was a little younger but much more restless unwilling to buy all that propaganda cooked-up by a communist regime and put in practice through a mad dictatorship. Amongst many things that have been said about the so-called Romanian Revolution one part is indisputable: it was a coup d’etat well designed by Moscow and blessed at the Malta Summit. In 1989, one country after the other – from Hungary to Bulgaria, was removing from power the leaders of the Communist Party. Romania remained the last soviet bastion in Eastern Europe where Ceausescu seemed like he had not received the Warsaw Pact memo labeled “The Communism Is Dead”.
Though, Moscow could have removed the Romanian leader by force, they chose not to exercise that option, simply because they refused to end the communism the same way they started it. Instead, they preferred to prepare the checkmate move by using Radio Free Europe and the popular riots followed by the seizure of power by the second tier of the Communist Party leadership and the plotting secret service. It all culminated with that charade of trial that lasted less than two hours and sentenced the Ceausescu couple to death. Though, the sentence was allegedly carried by the firing squad, the whole world watched how a couple of soldiers were shooting already dead bodies.
What I remember most about the communist era is the degree of dehumanization the majority of people was facing with every single day. The 80s were years of unimaginable poor standard of living, starting with food rationing, electricity blackouts and freezing homes and ending with a single TV channel broadcasting 120 minutes per day mostly communist propaganda and Ceausescu’s personality cult. People were mainly preoccupied with acquiring basic food supplies and they used a multitude of methods to survive. Many intellectuals who turned down a bribe were in a horrible position to queue for hours and hours while a small group of uneducated food warehouse-keepers held one of the most envied positions in the society.
Starting with 1977, Romania has been completely isolated from the rest of the world, with virtually very limited amount of imported goods and extremely restricted access to information and technology. Since the same amount of disposable income was chasing less and less volume of merchandise, money was rapidly losing its purchasing power. Consequently, many economic anomalies and paradoxes were occurring:
• People were paying the equivalent of a studio apartment for a VHS player
• People were paying almost half of their monthly salary for a pair of jeans
• People were exchanging apartments with domestic cars, at 1-to-1 ratio
• People were paying the equivalent of a lifetime savings account for a color TV set
We should remember the joke about the paradox and communism: “the paradox is when you have money, but there is no food to buy with it; when there is no food to buy, but your refrigerator is full; when your refrigerator is full, but you are still angry; when you are angry, but when asked to vote you would vote for the communists”.
I also remember how most of the people were afraid to talk not only in public places but also in their own homes. They were afraid to express freely or to be against the system. Since the day-to-day life did not differ significantly from the life of a political prisoner, I was always wondering how come that my countrymen remained quiet while 1956 Hungary and 1968 Prague events shocked the communism system. Instead, one in three Romanians was an informant for the secret police.
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