Photo: Compliments of DeWitt E. |
It is inconceivable for those born
after 1989, who never experienced want of anything, that at one time, the
proletariat of the communist dear leader Ceausescu had to survive on a decreed daily
rations of food and to stand in line from the middle of the night until stores
opened and people fought for the food delivered in the morning.
Standing in food lines had become a
method of survival and a national sport. Families involved their children, as
young as five, to stand in lines to keep the place for a relative waiting in
another line, always carrying an expanding string shopping bag reminiscent of a
fishing net and extra cash.
Experiencing shortages of food because
of war is something that even developed nations had to endure willingly to make
sure that nutrition was available to all. For example, during WWII, there was a
ration card issued to shoppers. The reason was obvious, the men were fighting a
war and there were less people engaged in the economy to produce enough supply
to satisfy demand while more resources were going to the war machine.
But the shortage of food people
experienced for decades under Nicolae Ceausescu had to do with his ambitious
communist plan to develop the heavy industry, no matter how unprofitable, and
to pay off the debt to the west at the expense of the standard of living of the
population.
The Communist Party had developed
norms of “rational nutrition” based on medical criteria of age, gender, profession,
physical condition, and energy expended on the job since the 1964. In case you
wonder why they would embark on such endeavor, it was because communists do not
leave anything to chance, everything you do must be controlled and enforced by
law.
As shortages became more pronounced in
the 1980s, the Communist Party issued new legal guidelines for nutrition. A
huge control apparatus of propaganda was put into motion: doctors, college
professors, the health ministry, the agriculture ministry, nutritional
specialists, the communist press, the labor unions, and other political
organizations sanctioned by the Communist Party. The declared official scope
was to improve the population’s health. But the reality had all to do with the financial
situation at the time. The economy was suffocated by Ceausescu’s ambition to
pay off western debt and by his very expensive megalomaniacal projects to
glorify him and his communist rule. He was, after all, the “maverick.”
A specialized commission proposed by
the Health Minister in 1976 took its sweet time to develop norms of “rational
nutrition.” It was not officially approved by the Communist Party’s “The Great
National Gathering” until 1984. This “rational” program of nutrition led to a
general suffering of the entire population unlike any other before.
People were starved but did not have
to eat grass, leather, or engage in cannibalism as was the case in Ukraine. The
man-made famine in Holodomor (Ukrainian for ‘murder by hunger’) happened in
1932-1933 when 28,000 people a day died of starvation. Stalin’s Soviet regime
had taught Ukrainian farmers a lesson they never forgot. http://holodomorct.org/
An article in “Financial Times” of October
25, 1984, mentions that “Romania surprised its skeptical creditors by paying
off a debt of $1.5 billion in the first 9 months of the year.” The same article
mentions the fact that the payoff was achieved at the expense of the deplorable
standard of living of the population, as evidenced by “the sad lines in front
of all stores.”
Speaking about Romania paying its debt
off ahead of schedule, Washington Post quoted Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Arizona)
in April 1989: "Fuel and electricity have been
rationed for years. Staple foods, including milk, bread and flour, are
rationed, and in many localities even these are unavailable. Meat is a rarity;
soup bones only occasionally appear in stores. Decades of financial
mis-planning and inefficient industrial development have led to the dire
condition of the Romanian economy, making it the poorest in Europe after Albania."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/04/14/debts-paid-romania-says/89557c5f-9f4d-4810-8e15-91538f134a3f/?utm_term=.c580cd34e479
The communist party leaders concealed the
draconian rationing of food to pay off its debt by implementing the “scientific
program of feeding the proletariat.”
The severe food shortages gave rise to
black markets and hoarding, even though having excess food was punishable with
jail time. People also bartered food and services to survive. Food lines became
an economic input and the “entire social life developed around the obsession of
finding food.” The terms “malnutrition” and “starvation” were replaced by the
euphemistic concept of “rational nutrition.” http://www.istorie-pe-scurt.ro/cum-arata-o-cartela-pe-vremea-lui-ceausescu-programul-de-alimentatie-rationala/
An American who lived in Romania in
1983-1986 attested to the many horrors of Ceausescu’s reign of terror called
the Golden Epoch. Speaking of food rationing and long-term malnutrition, she
said, “I regularly saw people stand in line all day to buy a Styrofoam cup with
a few broken eggs in it. Unrefrigerated
raw milk was sold on street corners on hot summer days.”
She continued, “Romania was rich in
oil but Ceausescu shut down the urban heating grids [villagers burned wood for
heat and there was no running water or indoor plumbing] in the middle of winter
so that he could export the oil to the west for hard currency. The very young and the very old dropped like
flies. We had no heat, no hot water and
no cooking gas for 5 months out of the year.
We actually saw miles long gas lines right next to oil refineries.”
Joe Keller, an attaché to the American
Embassy in the mid-80s, told another interesting story about food. He had picked
up two bags of cherries from a street vendor at the airport. He was having
friends over that evening to watch a movie. One of the children went into the
kitchen to get a glass of water and came back horrified, telling her parents
that there were worms in the kitchen. Sure enough, the table was covered in
fruit flies’ worms. Some had crawled out of the cherries they had all consumed
in the dark while watching the movie.
I don’t think I had ever eaten fruits in
my childhood that did not have fruit flies’ worms. It was extra protein. Years
later I wrote a story about that called Wormy Banana. https://ileanawrites.blogspot.com/2012/06/wormy-banana.html
Unscientific and chaotic means of
running the socialist economy gave rise to decades of misery caused entirely by
the communist dictatorship with its “golden” dear leader Ceausescu and his wife
Elena.
The arbitrary and forced industrialization
of Romania under his reign of terror gave rise to industrial giants which
produced goods inefficiently, with massive energy consumption, massive raw
material use, and high costs at the expense of the destitute people. Food and
water were always rationed and in short supply and electricity and thermal
energy were delivered arbitrarily on the whims of the apparatchiks in charge.
Nobody dared to object as the
communist ideology ruled supreme. This perverse philosophy intended to shape
the “new man,” a human being willing to enthusiastically approve and cheer the
dictator’s random and destructive political and economic decisions.
Copying North Korea and China,
Ceausescu developed his cult of personality. Millions were required to idolize
and sing praises to the dear leader and his wife. Revisionist history placed
him and his wife in the hall of revolutionaries, turning them into “the mother
and father of the country.” Ceausescu, with just an elementary education,
became the Honorary President of the Academy. https://istoriiregasite.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/romania-in-timpul-regimului-ceausescu/
While malnourished
proletarians lived in Spartan conditions, barely heated concrete block
apartments often without hot water and even cold water, the dear leader was
chauffeured to different residences and his family luxuriated in the “Spring
Palace” in Bucharest, built in the mid-60s. This permanent family residence was decorated
with one of a kind gold leaf mosaics, indoor and outdoor swimming pools,
mahogany, rose, and teakwood furniture, hand-made brocaded draperies and
tapestries, an extensive collection of original paintings and sculptures by
famous Romanian artists, a trophy room, a wine cellar, and a bunker. There was Limoges,
Baccarat, Mainz and other expensive porcelains and crystals. The 5,000 square
meters residence had 170 rooms spread on two levels and a basement (88 rooms). His
Swiss bank account was flush with millions of dollars. https://www.punctul.ro/in-vizita-la-fosta-resedinta-a-familiei-nicolae-ceausescu/
While the proletariat stood in food
lines, subjected to “scientific nutrition,” the communists engaged in obscene
excesses.
Unfortunately due to the declining economic conditions both here and abroad and in the event of unplanned crop losses due to weather events, rationing could very well be initiated again by hard put governments.
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