Current political events are bringing up too many memories that shouldn’t be brought back, let me take you on a little journey and then I will get back to current events.
The beginning
I was born in Romania which was a communist country at that time, can‘t really say I grew up there since I lived there only until the age of 7 but there are still memories from that time and also the period I visited after leaving Romania. It is hard to describe the emotional part to someone who hasn’t experienced that time. It is one thing describing the scarcity of food and other daily things, but there are more layers to that than just not being able to buy things. Recently watched „Anul nou care n-a fost” - The new year that never came a Romanian movie that brings up all these memories with small things that make no sense to outsiders and little things that also make no sense to people that didn’t experience it.
The scarcity
Just seeing the furniture, or something as small as the light switches releases this flood of memories and thoughts from that time, things like daily blackouts, not having warm water all the time.
Around June–July 1982 the currency crisis was in full swing, which pushed the government to initiate the rationalisation of electricity for private households, as well as the reduction of street lighting. Taking into consideration the fact that Romania produced more electricity than Spain or Italy at the time, these developments seemed rather ironic.
Images like these were a constant daily thing. Standing in line to buy basic things like bread, not knowing if by the time it’s your turn there will still be any bread left.
source: rarehistoricalphotos.com
So when in the movie the sentence “we’ve got warm water” fell, it means nothing to people who haven’t experienced it but brings up all these memories of having to heat up water to take a bath, because even warm water was rationed and not constantly available.
The fear
One thing everyone my age remembers from that time, is the constant instruction from our paren “you do not talk about what is being said at home”. To try to explain this, let me use a scene from the movie. This little kid wrote a letter to Santa (which was called father frost by the way because Santa was something Imperialistic and forbidden in Romania). In this letter he wrote what he wishes but also what his parents wish and wrote that his dad wished for Nicu to die. Nicu being the nickname of our dictator (Nicu coming from Nicolae, his first name). It seems funny watching this scene now, I really had to laugh but also felt the fear coming back at the same time. The parents of this kid where outraged by the kids actions and scared shitless of going to prison, because the kid also put the letter in the mailbox and as instructed by his mom he wrote on the letter his full name, address, school he is going to …. Now the parents were trying to come up with a solution on how to destroy that letter.
You could get in trouble with the government for anything that could be interpreted as it going against the government or the communistic idea. There were snitches and paid informants everywhere. Your neighbor could be a spy or a snitch which most likely was not into it because of the love of the government but because of fear. I remember the one day where our apartment got raided by the police, they found a tin can I used as piggy bank. This brought two problems. The tin can was some juice that was from the western countries which already got you in trouble but the content contained a coin, a german 2 DM coin (that’s about 50 Euro cents). Holding currency was forbidden in Romania at that time so this got my dad in trouble.
On 27th January 1984, a military tribunal sentenced Iuga to 12 years in prison. Moreover, he was denied certain rights for being accused of conspiracy against the state. On 21st September 1985, engineer, writer, and dissident Gheorghe Ursu was arrested. He died in Rahov after endless inhumane treatment by the Securitate. The reason for his arrest was entirely fabricated; Ursu was accused of holding the currency, which was illegal at the time.
Now imagine the trouble I was in when I told my best friend and neighbor that we are leaving Romania and heading towards Australia. You see, leaving the country wasn’t allowed or easily possible. At least not for the regular citizens. When my parents found out that I told my neighbor, and she told her parents, I was in so much trouble. This seams very hard to understand in today’s terms, why should someone be in trouble for leaving the country? Why the outrage of a kid writing something bad about the president?
What displeased the common people was that certain categories of people were privileged. The nomenklatura had access to protocol houses and could procure food from closed circuit networks. Moreover, unlike ordinary citizens, the nomenklatura could go on vacation abroad and have access to the country’s foreign currency accounts.
Trying to leave the country would end up with you either going to prison or shot at the border. Non the less, people tried over and over, some succeeded, some didn’t.
source: rarehistoricalphotos.com
Parallels to current times
It’s hard to see current US politics going in the very same direction as the dictatorship we had back in the day in Romania. The one country that every one seeking freedom was looking up to. The rise of a personality cult towards a single person being the beloved leader and savior from all problems, existing ones or fabricated ones. Deportations and violence against immigrants, it causes a base level of fear towards the government. The taking over government agencies by DOGE and a guy who should have nothing to do with politics and further more the vice president questioning ”authority of US judges to challenge Trump” This is a very dangerous path to take and reminds of the Romanian government being able to make up things as they go and this fear towards the current leader. Reading this in the news seems like a story from the communist Romania and not like something from the US:
Every federal agency in the U.S. is currently trying to figure out how to purge forbidden words from documents posted online, in a desperate attempt to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order to purge “DEI”
– gizmodo
Let’s go back to that little kid from the movie, read the list of forbidden words (Gender, LGBT, equality, Female - yes, female is on that list, I can’t even wrap my head around most words on that list being forbidden). Now put yourself in the position of you being a parent are you kid being gay? Or just stating something like “equality for every ethnicity“, that’s two words from the forbidden list already. While this list is aimed for government institutions, how long do you think it will take for that list to become a requirement for everyone? Might not be a law, it might be just very patriotic MAGA people, that start demanding these from schools (like demanding the removal of books) and then demanding it from their neighbors and friends and so on, until everyone will be in fear not using any of the words from the list.
The other things that has a lot of resemblance with communist rhetoric is the constant claiming that “we are the best”, “everyone want’s to be like us”, “they all want to steal something from our great country” you get the picture. This causes such a big damage that will last generations. Communism in Romania lasted from 1947 until 1989, that’s 40 years. The damage is still present, 36 years after the fall of communism. People still think that everyone is trying to steal something from this great country of Romania, that it’s better than the others. It goes so far as people earning their money from EU funds voting for the pro Russian, anti EU presidential candidate who want’s to leave the EU. I can’t faceplam myself so hard and can’t yell “what the fuck is wrong with you” so loud to expres my rage. Someone who has lived those times, has suffered and lived in the scarcity and fear wanting “their country back”.
There are so many more parallels to draw between the past and current events. There is no holding back people leaving the US, but look at twitter. I know, it’s just a social media propaganda platform and shouldn’t compare to real life or political events. But see, this guy that owns it, is running parts of the government. You say something bad about him, your account is gone, you post links to other platforms (trying to leave), those links are blocked.
- Twitter blocks users from sharing Mastodon links
- Meta admits it deleted links to decentralized Instagram alternative Pixelfed
While again we can claim these super rich pricks, suffering from fragile masculinity, are just some idiots and have nothing to do with politics, these are the people that surrounded the US President during the inauguration.
Let’s take this again:
What displeased the common people was that certain categories of people were privileged. The nomenklatura had access to protocol houses and could procure food from closed circuit networks. Moreover, unlike ordinary citizens, the nomenklatura could go on vacation abroad and have access to the country’s foreign currency accounts.
While claiming the orange dude want’s to deport immigrants and reduce workers visa, his prick buddies get a different treatment as you can read in this article about the H-1B Visa
only the US?
Unfortunately this isn’t happening only in the US. Some countries might have barely made it or still have elections soon and are being flooded with Russian propaganda to influence elections. This is nothing less than a war going on currently. In some places the war that we learnt about in school, with arms and soldiers, in other places with new methods like propaganda, interruptions of communication systems or infrastructure. I hope that events in the US will wake up people and make them understand how fast shit turn ugly and that we have no chance if we do not hold together as Europe and face these difficult times. Any illusion you might have about your “great country” is nothing more than just an illusion. No small country can compete with the current big blocks, not economically, not military.
I’ll end this with my memories of the 25th December 1989, I was watching the news in Vienna when they announced that Ceaușescu and his wife where arrested and executed. I went to my parents and told them: “He’s dead, they shot him, Ceaușescu is dead” Nobody should feel relieved and hopeful for the feature when delivering such a message.
