communism
Imagine publicly owned property, of a sudden, after having the right to what had been in your family for generations. Romania had what you'd call a personal dictatorship under Ceaucescu, presented as communism. Well, communism was always a dictatorship. Imagine a state run economy, and no markets that weren't for peasants. Even potatoes and onions are hard to find because personal land was so limited. Without land or private means, pulling a salary suddenly became very important. And if you had land you still worked it, but no longer had control over your means of subsistence. You pulled in the harvest and then gave it to the state, then they gave you back a handful and sent you to stand in line to buy bread.
Ioana remembers the propaganda on television. It's unthinkable really, that my good friend grew up in a different social system. I suppose it's because she speaks English and is so much smarter than I am. I can't conceive of not being able to leave and seek opportunity elsewhere. Although, now I can. This whole deportation thing has changed my worldview. When she was a child going to Eastern Germany was considered decadent and there was no way to do it. Russia or Bulgaria, also communist dictatorships, might happen, but how would you manage that? She was twelve when the Regime fell, at the beginning of consciousness, with vague memories of bananas and Sibiu salami. She remembers being in third grade writing a letter to Ceacescu that something was very wrong.
People had more time together, they may have worked six days a week and did not feel poor because no one had anything, except politicians, but the intensity to work was different. During power outages they would congregate around the flame on the stove and tell jokes until midnight. Political jokes that children almost understand. It's an interesting way to control a population. By dictating what is available, you dictate their motivation and their desire. Making things harder makes people that much more willing to follow directions and appreciate the state-run lottery where you could win a car! Or a bike! Those were huge.
No images were allowed to be printed, no personal journals, no personal representation on the back cover of your book. The only face that was known was Nicolae Ceaucescu's, along with his wife. And they were everywhere, while the tv programs were populated by legions of pleasantly garbed children marching in geometric formation. The first page of a child's primer had his picture on it, and he rode the wall behind every teacher's desk. After he fell, the common mistake was to replace him with another icon, Jesus Christ. The only message broadcasted during his reign was his own. It had become pathological. People bought what the state allowed them to buy, shortages thereby motivating the population to scramble to buy the things they didn't need like the brightly colored soaps, or shiny wrapped Danish cheese. It's not that it was any better as a product, but the packaging was something that could be displayed to warm your heart in the home. Romanian products, by contrast, were dull and uniform.
Society was structured in such a way that the population was in a constant state of debt. There were quotas of chestnuts and acorns, of paper, of wine corks gathered by schoolchildren, and glass. And the last was kept secret out of fear that young children would go and cut themselves trying to break windows in order to fill the baskets. Parents who worked in the glass factory would steal it and deliver it to the officials who would then return it to the glass factory. So the only thing that was actually consumed was gasoline. An informal network evolved, at least in this one pocket of Titan. Ioana says you'd have to read a lot of Eugene Ionescu, the father of absurd theater, to fully comprehend the extent of the idiocy.
Communism took a funny turn in Romania because it met a culture already used to dealing underground. Romania had weathered two hundred years of de facto Turkish administration, administered by the Greek oligarchy from Fanar, a Greek neighborhood in Istanbul. The Turks demanded bribery, and they fell in 1821 in both Wallachia and Moldova. People had begun to reconsider policy that kept them subservient to a foreign prince. Then, 1848, bourgeois in all of Eastern Europe, and modernization. France became the center of influence, pushing Istanbul aside. Young people studied abroad and brought back new shiny ideas. The Patrusoptist generation, they were called. In 1857 they fought the war of independence against the Turks but by that time the Ottoman Empire had been sufficiently weakened and in 1859 Walachia and Moldova united.
Romanians were what you might call versatile at navigating within the Balkanic system without overtly bucking it, and were reluctant to conform to the rigidity of the communist regime. Few challenged it openly, they were predisposed to more resourceful subversion. People were disloyal, and it was common knowledge. You could recognize that the glass collected was not scraps, as they were bottles that had never been used. No one was interested in confronting the idiocy of it; they were more focused on finding ways to live within the craziness, Ioana’s favorite word. Craziness. And it fits the culture. It was clearly wasteful and stupid but it was the system that people knew and therefore comfortable. No wonder there were shortages. Everything that could be was stolen, it's a miracle the system survived as long as it did.
For a while Romania patted itself on the back, famous for exporting so many tractors to Western Germany. It turned out that they were disassembling them because their tractors were cheaper than buying scrap iron. Ioana recommends a history by Lucian Boia, a new generation historian who gives the reader more than just dates and facts. He includes how Romanians see themselves as victims of history. But we had to return to pickling the peppers so I didn’t get to hear the end of that story.
All of this came up due to the question of what was advertised during communism? Not products, but product. The adverts were all joyful testaments of plenty. They showed that Romania was producing and that it was attractive and that everything was under control.
Political prisoners were many in the sixties, in the seventies the standard of living was pushed a bit higher. Then things constricted, everything grew tighter and tighter until the Revolution in 1989. It started on the 16th in Timisoara and the Regime suppressed it while Ceaucescu was abroad. He returned and ordered a convocation, but they were unable to stop all the footage of people booing and shouting, Gos Communismul, Gos Ceaucescu. So, the revolution was televised. The apparatus had tentacles and could mobilize the entire country; people being accustomed to the assemblies that took them away from their work. On the 21st, people cut out the communist symbol on their flags, and burned the red flag with the hammer and sickle along with communist member cards. And that was daring. If the uprising had been quelled, there would have been no anonymity for their audacity. They would have been paralyzed. But as it was the police began shooting people who had regrouped in the University Square. Demonstrators were killed, Ceaucescu fled in his helicopter and people broke into the television broadcast centers and spread the word. All of a sudden you could hear what was happening in the country and it was a huge moment. Absolute censorship broke before the tide of free media. Speech changed. Enormously. Everything was printed and all of it was devoured. The quality of the paper was very low but people had a thirst and bought seven, eight papers each day. Then books arrived, music, everything that had been stamped interzis was insanely popular.
In the next month the national fear was of counterrevolution, spurred by support from Ceaucesu's police. The other fear was that the Russian war tanks from the fifties would return and tell people what to do as they did in Prague in the spring of '68. Sometimes people backed up Iliescu, the former communist who was the first elected president in Romania. He had graduated from Russian university and was a high ranking communist in the 70s banished by Ceaucescu in the 80s. He remains a strong political figure to this day. Early in the revolution he was considered valuable because he could intervene on Romania's behalf, should they be forced to bow to Russia. Along with the terror, however, was euphoria. Everything had stopped. Everything was free. Vital industry ground back into gear fairly quickly because the political powers that rose up afterward were trained in management. Much of the structure of power remained in the same hands, monies disappeared and insiders took advantage and moved to secure their position before anyone woke up. And the people did wake up, in February and March, to find that things were actually much the same. Ceaucescu's cult of personality had made everyone else seem irrelevant, but those who followed his fall from grace were those who had followed his rise to power. And Iliescu spoke like Ceaucescu, comforting people who felt like they had lost dear old daddy. The number of votes he swayed was the one of the first bitter lessons of democracy.
Afterward you heard regret from the older generation, for what they had lost was financial stability. Her grandmother said that it was better before, because women were less victimized. But that wasn't true. It was only that the image of happy healthy housewives were promulgated, while so many things were unseen. Just the way the nation liked it. If you came to work with bruises on your face, your boss would supposedly contact your husband’s boss and he would be reprimanded. Only the state was allowed to beat you up. And prisons were teaming not only with criminals, but all the political prisoners. Now, their people are free and free to leave. And the world is full of Romanian and Russian prostitutes. You don't need a work visa because it's not legal, so you can go anywhere, never mind that you’re vulnerable.
God, it's morbidly fascinating. Much like examining the ingredients in embalming fluid at the morgue.
Ioana remembers the propaganda on television. It's unthinkable really, that my good friend grew up in a different social system. I suppose it's because she speaks English and is so much smarter than I am. I can't conceive of not being able to leave and seek opportunity elsewhere. Although, now I can. This whole deportation thing has changed my worldview. When she was a child going to Eastern Germany was considered decadent and there was no way to do it. Russia or Bulgaria, also communist dictatorships, might happen, but how would you manage that? She was twelve when the Regime fell, at the beginning of consciousness, with vague memories of bananas and Sibiu salami. She remembers being in third grade writing a letter to Ceacescu that something was very wrong.
People had more time together, they may have worked six days a week and did not feel poor because no one had anything, except politicians, but the intensity to work was different. During power outages they would congregate around the flame on the stove and tell jokes until midnight. Political jokes that children almost understand. It's an interesting way to control a population. By dictating what is available, you dictate their motivation and their desire. Making things harder makes people that much more willing to follow directions and appreciate the state-run lottery where you could win a car! Or a bike! Those were huge.
No images were allowed to be printed, no personal journals, no personal representation on the back cover of your book. The only face that was known was Nicolae Ceaucescu's, along with his wife. And they were everywhere, while the tv programs were populated by legions of pleasantly garbed children marching in geometric formation. The first page of a child's primer had his picture on it, and he rode the wall behind every teacher's desk. After he fell, the common mistake was to replace him with another icon, Jesus Christ. The only message broadcasted during his reign was his own. It had become pathological. People bought what the state allowed them to buy, shortages thereby motivating the population to scramble to buy the things they didn't need like the brightly colored soaps, or shiny wrapped Danish cheese. It's not that it was any better as a product, but the packaging was something that could be displayed to warm your heart in the home. Romanian products, by contrast, were dull and uniform.
Society was structured in such a way that the population was in a constant state of debt. There were quotas of chestnuts and acorns, of paper, of wine corks gathered by schoolchildren, and glass. And the last was kept secret out of fear that young children would go and cut themselves trying to break windows in order to fill the baskets. Parents who worked in the glass factory would steal it and deliver it to the officials who would then return it to the glass factory. So the only thing that was actually consumed was gasoline. An informal network evolved, at least in this one pocket of Titan. Ioana says you'd have to read a lot of Eugene Ionescu, the father of absurd theater, to fully comprehend the extent of the idiocy.
Communism took a funny turn in Romania because it met a culture already used to dealing underground. Romania had weathered two hundred years of de facto Turkish administration, administered by the Greek oligarchy from Fanar, a Greek neighborhood in Istanbul. The Turks demanded bribery, and they fell in 1821 in both Wallachia and Moldova. People had begun to reconsider policy that kept them subservient to a foreign prince. Then, 1848, bourgeois in all of Eastern Europe, and modernization. France became the center of influence, pushing Istanbul aside. Young people studied abroad and brought back new shiny ideas. The Patrusoptist generation, they were called. In 1857 they fought the war of independence against the Turks but by that time the Ottoman Empire had been sufficiently weakened and in 1859 Walachia and Moldova united.
Romanians were what you might call versatile at navigating within the Balkanic system without overtly bucking it, and were reluctant to conform to the rigidity of the communist regime. Few challenged it openly, they were predisposed to more resourceful subversion. People were disloyal, and it was common knowledge. You could recognize that the glass collected was not scraps, as they were bottles that had never been used. No one was interested in confronting the idiocy of it; they were more focused on finding ways to live within the craziness, Ioana’s favorite word. Craziness. And it fits the culture. It was clearly wasteful and stupid but it was the system that people knew and therefore comfortable. No wonder there were shortages. Everything that could be was stolen, it's a miracle the system survived as long as it did.
For a while Romania patted itself on the back, famous for exporting so many tractors to Western Germany. It turned out that they were disassembling them because their tractors were cheaper than buying scrap iron. Ioana recommends a history by Lucian Boia, a new generation historian who gives the reader more than just dates and facts. He includes how Romanians see themselves as victims of history. But we had to return to pickling the peppers so I didn’t get to hear the end of that story.
All of this came up due to the question of what was advertised during communism? Not products, but product. The adverts were all joyful testaments of plenty. They showed that Romania was producing and that it was attractive and that everything was under control.
Political prisoners were many in the sixties, in the seventies the standard of living was pushed a bit higher. Then things constricted, everything grew tighter and tighter until the Revolution in 1989. It started on the 16th in Timisoara and the Regime suppressed it while Ceaucescu was abroad. He returned and ordered a convocation, but they were unable to stop all the footage of people booing and shouting, Gos Communismul, Gos Ceaucescu. So, the revolution was televised. The apparatus had tentacles and could mobilize the entire country; people being accustomed to the assemblies that took them away from their work. On the 21st, people cut out the communist symbol on their flags, and burned the red flag with the hammer and sickle along with communist member cards. And that was daring. If the uprising had been quelled, there would have been no anonymity for their audacity. They would have been paralyzed. But as it was the police began shooting people who had regrouped in the University Square. Demonstrators were killed, Ceaucescu fled in his helicopter and people broke into the television broadcast centers and spread the word. All of a sudden you could hear what was happening in the country and it was a huge moment. Absolute censorship broke before the tide of free media. Speech changed. Enormously. Everything was printed and all of it was devoured. The quality of the paper was very low but people had a thirst and bought seven, eight papers each day. Then books arrived, music, everything that had been stamped interzis was insanely popular.
In the next month the national fear was of counterrevolution, spurred by support from Ceaucesu's police. The other fear was that the Russian war tanks from the fifties would return and tell people what to do as they did in Prague in the spring of '68. Sometimes people backed up Iliescu, the former communist who was the first elected president in Romania. He had graduated from Russian university and was a high ranking communist in the 70s banished by Ceaucescu in the 80s. He remains a strong political figure to this day. Early in the revolution he was considered valuable because he could intervene on Romania's behalf, should they be forced to bow to Russia. Along with the terror, however, was euphoria. Everything had stopped. Everything was free. Vital industry ground back into gear fairly quickly because the political powers that rose up afterward were trained in management. Much of the structure of power remained in the same hands, monies disappeared and insiders took advantage and moved to secure their position before anyone woke up. And the people did wake up, in February and March, to find that things were actually much the same. Ceaucescu's cult of personality had made everyone else seem irrelevant, but those who followed his fall from grace were those who had followed his rise to power. And Iliescu spoke like Ceaucescu, comforting people who felt like they had lost dear old daddy. The number of votes he swayed was the one of the first bitter lessons of democracy.
Afterward you heard regret from the older generation, for what they had lost was financial stability. Her grandmother said that it was better before, because women were less victimized. But that wasn't true. It was only that the image of happy healthy housewives were promulgated, while so many things were unseen. Just the way the nation liked it. If you came to work with bruises on your face, your boss would supposedly contact your husband’s boss and he would be reprimanded. Only the state was allowed to beat you up. And prisons were teaming not only with criminals, but all the political prisoners. Now, their people are free and free to leave. And the world is full of Romanian and Russian prostitutes. You don't need a work visa because it's not legal, so you can go anywhere, never mind that you’re vulnerable.
God, it's morbidly fascinating. Much like examining the ingredients in embalming fluid at the morgue.