And here we are, back in the house, with more stories and anecdotes about Romanian life during the communist regime. For those of you who missed Part 1, we have been talking about the so-called "adoration" for Nicolae Ceausescu and the restrictions that Romanians had to face in everyday life, as well as the alternative solutions they made recourse to in order to avoid hardship.
How about school and work? Well, one thing I can tell you is that there was a certain sense of discipline and commitment, which today has disappeared almost completely. When the Revolution arrived, I was barely in the second grade of primary school, but it was enough for myself and my generation to have those values related to school and study inoculated. In brief, school was serious business. Children and teenagers HAD to study, and have good grades, and have a general knowledge, and take part in all the activities which took place outside school hours, such as trips or voluntary work. We wore uniforms, and they were of several types. In kindergarten, we were Soimii Patriei (Falcons of the Country), with orange shirts, and blue skirts/trousers and hats. Later, in primary school, we became Pionieri (Pioneers), everything being marked by a special ceremony, in which we had to take an oath. To us, it was a big deal, and we were happy about it. Our uniforms consisted of white shirts and black skirts/trousers, white beret, and red tie (photo). Plus, children with the best grades were chosen as commanders, which also had various grades, to each of them corresponding a ribbon of a different colour. Everything at school was somehow "ceremonious", much more formal than these days, but in a way it made you proud and it made you want to take things seriously. Were there any incentives? Just honour and moral recognition. But that was more than enough for us.
As far as work was concerned, I have already told you in the last post that everyone had a job. Moreover, one of the things that communism did, ideologically speaking, was to promote and place added value on the working class and country life. Nowadays, everyone aspires to go to university, to live in the city, and to have a high-brow job or business. But at that time, all the professions mattered and were respected. And that was reflected even in children's literature of that time, or school books - I actually remember that many (adult) characters of those text were builders, coal miners, factory workers, and so forth. Even if you went to university, after graduation you were assigned a workplace, which might have been in a city (often different from your city of birth), or in the country-side. As far as I know, this distribution of professionals varied according to university grades and according to workplaces which became available following the retirement of predecessors. How many teachers and doctors were sent to the country-side, becoming even subject of comedy movies! :)
All work and no play? Definitely not! However, fun was conceived on a micro-universe, rather than macro. What do I mean? It was less likely for us to go to a bar, or to a disco, or to the restaurant. Instead, the best fun consisted of house parties or visits among friends and family members. Music, dancing, lots of home-made food (which is always better than the one at the restaurant), everything combined with the privacy of our own homes, avoiding to mix with unwanted crowd. The only impediment was the level of tollerance of your own neighbours, which might have been high or low. :) We have to mention that this practice lasted well into the 1990s, and we still like it, if we are given the chance.
Television did not play an important part in our everyday methods of entertainment, as we only had two hours of TV programme each day, apart from Sunday, which at that time it was the only free day of the week. Many people, in absence of television, turned to books and radio, and sometimes, a "clandestine" consumption of foreign movies and TV shows on videotapes, mostly offered by people who were lucky enough to travel abroad, then passed on from person to person and recorded.
What about holidays? Travelling abroad for pleasure was not really an option, apart from the other communist countries. Luckily enough, Romania is a very self-contained country in terms of holiday destinations, so we still had a wide variety of places to go to on holiday: seaside, mountains, Danube Delta, and so much more. The rare cases of travelling to the capitalist western world needed to have a serious reason behind it - you would go through formal invitation, or being sent there for work purposes. Romanian professionals were travelling in groups, and they were under surveillance from the Information Service (Securitate), in order not to do anything dangerous or detrimental to the communist regime, or not to attempt escaping. In general, there was a person within the group who was in charge of providing information to authorities, if anything was suspect. Contacts with foreigners also had to be limited to the minimum necessary, such as workplace interaction. But friendship with foreigners did not have to be cultivated outside work. People who had the chance to travel to the capitalist countries, for whatever duration or purpose, had a tough shock to bear. The abbundance on the foreign market, the shops full of everything you could possibly wish for, the elegant and fashionable people with fancy cars (as opposed to our good-old Dacia), in contrast with the scarcity that Romania was facing, represented yet another proverbial "nail in the coffin" for Ceausescu and his regime.
In the meantime, at home everything was getting tougher and increasingly absurd. Warm water, electricity and heat in the house were rationalized, and often entire neighbourhoods were left in the dark, or people had to go to bed all wrapped up like for an expedition to the North Pole. Not to mention the demolishing of houses and villas, in order to restructure the cities. Apartment blocks were being built, and the people whose houses were demolished were being given an apartment instead (this one actually happened to my grandparents, and many other people I know).
So, as you can see, it is not like we were being tortured, or starving, or living an overall traumatizing life. Some things were good and we regret them (especially older generations), such as the approach to school and work, but some things made our world very limited, and, I would add, unnecessarily limited. Some things were scary, some of them were sad, and some things we just laugh them off today, but at that time they were really annoying. And we endured, and endured, but at some point, it all needed to crash.
(photo: www.muzeulcotroceni.ro)
All work and no play? Definitely not! However, fun was conceived on a micro-universe, rather than macro. What do I mean? It was less likely for us to go to a bar, or to a disco, or to the restaurant. Instead, the best fun consisted of house parties or visits among friends and family members. Music, dancing, lots of home-made food (which is always better than the one at the restaurant), everything combined with the privacy of our own homes, avoiding to mix with unwanted crowd. The only impediment was the level of tollerance of your own neighbours, which might have been high or low. :) We have to mention that this practice lasted well into the 1990s, and we still like it, if we are given the chance.
Television did not play an important part in our everyday methods of entertainment, as we only had two hours of TV programme each day, apart from Sunday, which at that time it was the only free day of the week. Many people, in absence of television, turned to books and radio, and sometimes, a "clandestine" consumption of foreign movies and TV shows on videotapes, mostly offered by people who were lucky enough to travel abroad, then passed on from person to person and recorded.
What about holidays? Travelling abroad for pleasure was not really an option, apart from the other communist countries. Luckily enough, Romania is a very self-contained country in terms of holiday destinations, so we still had a wide variety of places to go to on holiday: seaside, mountains, Danube Delta, and so much more. The rare cases of travelling to the capitalist western world needed to have a serious reason behind it - you would go through formal invitation, or being sent there for work purposes. Romanian professionals were travelling in groups, and they were under surveillance from the Information Service (Securitate), in order not to do anything dangerous or detrimental to the communist regime, or not to attempt escaping. In general, there was a person within the group who was in charge of providing information to authorities, if anything was suspect. Contacts with foreigners also had to be limited to the minimum necessary, such as workplace interaction. But friendship with foreigners did not have to be cultivated outside work. People who had the chance to travel to the capitalist countries, for whatever duration or purpose, had a tough shock to bear. The abbundance on the foreign market, the shops full of everything you could possibly wish for, the elegant and fashionable people with fancy cars (as opposed to our good-old Dacia), in contrast with the scarcity that Romania was facing, represented yet another proverbial "nail in the coffin" for Ceausescu and his regime.
In the meantime, at home everything was getting tougher and increasingly absurd. Warm water, electricity and heat in the house were rationalized, and often entire neighbourhoods were left in the dark, or people had to go to bed all wrapped up like for an expedition to the North Pole. Not to mention the demolishing of houses and villas, in order to restructure the cities. Apartment blocks were being built, and the people whose houses were demolished were being given an apartment instead (this one actually happened to my grandparents, and many other people I know).
So, as you can see, it is not like we were being tortured, or starving, or living an overall traumatizing life. Some things were good and we regret them (especially older generations), such as the approach to school and work, but some things made our world very limited, and, I would add, unnecessarily limited. Some things were scary, some of them were sad, and some things we just laugh them off today, but at that time they were really annoying. And we endured, and endured, but at some point, it all needed to crash.
(photo: www.muzeulcotroceni.ro)
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