The Not So Golden Epoch of Communism

Photo: Web

A photograph came across my desk depicting an arch of triumph of sorts which declared 1965-1985 “The Ceausescu Epoch – The Golden Epoch of Romania.”

If you ask any Romanian, this twenty-year period was one of the most tyrannical and oppressive regimes in its known history. It was a painful period of dark and repressive communist dictatorship maintained and characterized by brute force, fear, mental control, and constant food rationing.

The young pioneers, communists in training, “soimii patriei” (The Country’s Eagles), euphemistically “named” by Ceausescu himself, adopted the motto “Tot inainte,” (Ever Forward). A pioneer’s guide indoctrinated them how to behave as young communists. It seems that both communists and Socialist Democrat lefties are very fond of pathetic euphemisms which misrepresent reality.

On any given day the self-described Democrat Socialist left is trampling on the opposition’s rights, turning us into a collective guy facing a communist rolling tank in Tiananmen Square.

The two communist run television channels broadcast from 1 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily with a heavy dose of political indoctrination via carefully crafted and chosen entertainment and documentaries such as “The works of Comrade Ceausescu – Huge horizons opened for the revolutionary theory and practice,” the unfailing and tireless activity devoted to increasing the communist party role in society, “Science and Scientific Socialism as remarkable forces of production,” “We live decades of grandiose fulfillments,” choreographed literary-musical production aimed at bamboozling the proletariat into blind submission, and “From the big book of communism, the patriotic revolutionary responsibility of youth in Romania’s future in the Ceausescu Epoch,” more indoctrination for the generation of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Epoch, euphemistically and deceptively named “the generation of the revolutionary spirit and actions.”

In the painful daily reality, the proletariat and their children were forced to sing, march, and praise the dear leader, and the population in general was starved on a meager diet and bombarded with a false sense of wellbeing and daily doses of deviously crafted lies.

The communist subjects of all ages were forced to “recognize, apply, and respect the principles and norms of the labor and life of communists, of the ethic and equity of socialism – order, discipline, responsibility, and liability in all activities.”

Western visitors commented on how beautiful Romanian women were, thin as twigs but foreign guests did not understand the real reason for this forced thinness – the lack of food, the rationing of food via stamped cards, the endless daily lines, and the Communist Party prescribed caloric rations.

“The Program of Scientific Nutrition” decreed in July 1982 that men should have 37 g of protein and women 29 g of protein per day. The recommended caloric intake based on the type of activity - light, medium, forte, and exceptional - ranged from 2,000 to 2,700 calories for women and 2,700 to 4,000 for men. It seemed like a reasonable schedule except for the fact that most people would have been hard-pressed to find much food to deliver enough protein and nutrition. The obvious thinness of the population bore testimony to the lack of food. https://adevarul.ro/locale/ploiesti/programul-alimentatie-stiintifica-populatiei-comunism-trebuia-manance-cantareasca-persoana-1_57ac8f245ab6550cb8ab50f6/index.html

The “recommended” food intake was even lower for the rural population and their rationing cards entitled them to less food. If a villager wanted to raise a pig for his family’s use, he had to raise another one and donate it to the state.

People were not allowed to buy food anywhere else except in the area in which they lived. In other words, the rationing cards were valid only in one’s neighborhood stores.

The light activity category was comprised of office workers and housewives who owned stoves and other electric appliances.

The medium activity referred to workers in the light industry, men in construction industry, agriculture, students, and the military.

The forte activity category included miners, workers in the heavy industry, women in agriculture, soldiers in the field, dancers, and athletes.

The exceptional activity category encompassed metal workers, workers in abattoirs and butcher shops, dock workers in ports, and women in construction. https://cultural.bzi.ro/programul-de-alimentatie-stiintifica-a-populatiei-elena-ceausescu-daca-vor-sa-manance-mai-mult-riscul-este-al-lor-7053

Monthly rations of food for the average adult included:

-          300 g of daily bread

-          Chicken (1 kg)

-          Beef or pork (500 g); in case of severe food shortages, the party guidelines suggested buying canned meat from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

-          Cheese (500 g every three months)

-          Butter (100 g)

-          Sugar (1 kg)

-          Corn meal (1 kg)

-          Flour (1 kg every three months)

-          Eggs (8-12)

Workers involved in harder labor were entitled to extra 300 g of basic foods listed every month. Their families had to stand in line for the extra food, if available, and present extra rationing coupons issued to them by the state.

Depending on the year and the type of shortages, usually caused by irrational exportation of food to foreign countries in exchange for hard currency and bad centralized planning by communist ideologues who had no idea how to run any economy, rationing cards were issued for shoes, clothing, food like flour, beans, cooking oil, sugar, rice, and other necessities.

Ceausescu’s Golden epoch of failed socialist rule by the Communist Party was nothing but a tarnished and empty goblet of promises and lies for the hapless proletariat who barely survived on an equal pay survival level that would have shocked even other Stalinist satellite countries.

The Marxist Paradise of Millennials

Tide pod  Photo: Wikipedia

I watched countless videos of Millennials interviewed on various campuses around the nation by people with knowledge of history or survivors of communism who were lucky enough to escape to this country or other western nations whose economies are based on the capitalist free market model and not the socialist one.

In every video, the well-fed and cared for Millennials, in their indoctrinated and delusional rage, shout the praises of socialism and communism without having any idea what socialism and communism are, how deprived and mistreated citizens are under such regimes, and how many millions of innocents were killed in the name of this failed Marxist philosophy they proudly advocate.

If communism failed to deliver on whatever utopia, they say, it is because it was not implemented correctly. If given the chance, they would create communism the right way. And what would this right way be? They have no idea but they are sure they would succeed because their progressive professors told them so in revisionist history, social justice, racial justice, and gender studies classes.

In reality, communism would still be achieved at the barrel of a gun when only the government would own guns and the citizens would give up theirs in a kumbaya society where people adore each other, the government knows best, and takes care of the needs of its subjects they oppress.

Millennials should look in the eyes of Venezuelan mothers who are giving up their children to orphanages and abandonment centers because they can’t feed them thanks to the mismanagement of Maduro’s socialist economy even though Venezuela used to be a rich country with the largest oil reserves. The public system is overwhelmed and the private help is inadequate.

Like food and most necessities for daily life which American Millennials take for granted, contraceptives are in short supply in communist Venezuela.

Children placed in these orphanages are no longer coming from homes where they were abused and neglected, they are now mostly children from families who lost their jobs and can no longer feed them. They watched their children get thinner and thinner and made the agonizing decision to give them up. Many are turned down as there are waiting lists for placement. Foster families are adopting some older children and fewer infants because baby formulas and diapers are expensive due to escalating inflation and ever more difficult to find.

Even abandonment centers are closing in Venezuela for lack of funding and resources. Maduro’s communist handling of the economy is even worse than Hugo Chavez’s who at least pretended to be caring for the downtrodden by giving them free medical clinics staffed by communist Cuban doctors. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuelas-economy-is-so-bad-parents-are-leaving-their-children-at-orphanages/2018/02/12/8021d180-0545-11e8-aa61-f3391373867e_story.html?utm_term=.4a9a5fd74b2b

It has never crossed the minds of these moronic American Millennial students that socialism and communism starve their citizens either on purpose to keep them under strict control or through their disastrous economic policies, very similar to Venezuela’s collapsing economy. Communist elites are never very good at planning and running a centralized economy, they can’t even deliver basic food, services, and toilet paper.

Millennials should read about the orphans who survived the harsh orphanages of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Marxist regime. If they survived, they are scarred for life after having been abandoned in cribs where workers seldom touched them or picked them up. These children learned to soothe themselves by rocking themselves incessantly.

Revisionist history classes in the U.S. do not teach Americans about Operation Peter Pan, a mass exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to the United States during 1960-1962. Desperate parents sent their children alone to the U.S. in order to escape Castro’s communism. The program created by Father Bryan O. Walsh provided air transportation. If communism was so great, why would so many thousands of families send their children away from communism?

How brainwashed are our American students that they believe the communist indoctrination dished out by their Marxist professors daily and not the reality of millions of naturalized Americans who had risked life and limb, left everything behind they knew and loved, in order to escape from an oppressive dictatorship and a communist regime?

Since liberal minds are already made up and cannot be confused with facts, Adam J. MacLeod, Associate Professor of Law at Faulkner Law, has decided to undo the indoctrination and mis-education of his Millennial students who come to class with a heavy baggage of Marxist views of the world around them fashioned by the “elite culture.”

During his legal reasoning class, Professor MacLeod told his students the following:

“Reasoning requires you to understand truth claims, even truth claims that you think are false or bad or just icky. Most of you have been taught to label things with various ‘isms’ which prevent you from understanding claims you find uncomfortable or difficult.

Reasoning requires correct judgment. Judgment involves making distinctions, discriminating. Most of you have been taught how to avoid critical, evaluative judgments by appealing to simplistic terms such as ‘diversity’ and ‘equality.’

Reasoning requires you to understand the difference between true and false. And reasoning requires coherence and logic. Most of you have been taught to embrace incoherence and illogic. You have learned to associate truth with your subjective feelings, which are neither true nor false but only yours, and which are constantly changeful.” http://newbostonpost.com/2017/11/09/undoing-the-dis-education-of-millennials/

It would serve American Millennials well if they could intern in Cuba or North Korea for a few months and witness firsthand the communist paradise of their choice.

The unfortunate young man who was tortured and beaten to death in North Korea for a foolish prank was returned to his parents a few short days before he passed away. The details of his horrible life in custody and how he died are just now coming to the surface.

On the other hand, who expects rational thought from Millennials who ingest toxic Tide detergent pods and then post the videos on social media?

Toilet Paper with Wood Chips

Photo: Ileana Johnson

Huffing and puffing, I lug the large package of toilet paper from our local Costco into the house. It’s not that the price is better; I just don’t want to go to the store more often than I have to. I stood in lines enough during my twenty years of living under the boot of communism.

I am always tempted to ask the cashier if that’s enough toilet paper for the average food intake. I never do it because the cashiers are all foreign, barely speak English, and my meek attempt at potty humor would be met by strange stares.

I kept a pink sample of pink toilet paper I brought with me from our first trip back to Romania after communism had “fallen” 25 years earlier. The tissue looks like crepe paper with splinters of wood embedded here and there, visible to the naked eye and painful to the rear end. Progress after decades of dictatorial communism is very slow in some aspects and fast in others.

It is still an improvement from the years I grew up when toilet paper and other necessities Americans take for granted were so scarce, people lined up for blocks to buy a couple of rolls and many left disappointed when the month’s delivery ran out.

People carried emergency walking-around cash and jute expandable shopping bags just in case they ran into a long line which may have been formed for something they needed, i.e., toilet paper, shampoo, oranges, butter, bananas, flour, oil, and sugar. Nobody knew exactly what was on sale that day; asking people around did not help, they did not know either; eventually, as they inched closer to the window, they found out what was delivered that day that people lined up for blocks for a chance to get the rationed amount.

Now in the twenty-first century America, the Snowflake college students are “triggered” by banana peels carelessly discarded on a tree. It makes one wonder, what is the progressive-approved non-racist method of disposing of banana peels after one eats a banana?

During the 1977 earthquake in Romania, the American Bible Society donated Bibles printed in Romanian which were meant to be distributed to the thousands of people who had lost their homes, their loved ones, and felt defeated. Biblical passages would have been inspirational and calming at such a time of profound grief. Instead of distributing them, Ceausescu’s regime recycled them into toilet paper. The print was so good or their recycling so bad that, one day, I found an entire roll of toilet paper with faint words, still legible, which turned out to be passages from the Bible. As scarce as toilet paper was, we kept it in the pantry because it was too sacrilegious to use it in this way.

As Americans, we never think how grateful we should be every day to the Scott Brothers of Watertown, Massachusetts, who invented the toilet paper in the 19th century!

Since people were embarrassed to buy it, the Scott Brothers thought they had a dud invention on their hands until they had the brilliant idea to give it freely to hotels. Hotels agreed to place it in rooms because they were fed up with their small pipes being clogged all the time. Until then, people used corn husks and newspapers which clogged the small sewer pipes. Customers loved the toilet paper for that very reason too and began buying it. And the rest is history.

In Romania's outhouses, we used corn husks and communist party propaganda newspapers because we did not have Sears and Roebucks catalogs or any catalogs for that matter. Once in a while a German tourist would leave behind one of their catalogs and we enjoyed looking at the abundance of everything we did not have, so we never used those for toilet paper. We especially enjoyed wiping with pages which had the dear leader Ceausescu's face on them.

Later on, when toilet paper was finally made, it was coarse light brown paper with wood chips still embedded in the paper, or, if white, it had faintly visible words on it from the books which were recycled into toilet paper.

I still have the few strips of pink toilet paper embedded with wood chips. I showed it to a lot of my former students but it did not seem to make any impact on brain-washed students who love communism and Che Guevara. Listening day and night to Hollywood and the academia extolling the wonderful virtues of communism, young people aspire to overturn their wonderful country built by capitalism and replace it with the tyrannical and egalitarian notion of communism. They believe this because they are young, idealist, often fat and well fed, restless for violent action, and never had to stand in line for anything except the latest electronic gadgets or concert tickets.

 

 

Vladimir and His Journey to Freedom

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”             -  Albert Einstein

Klevan, Ukraine
Photo: Wikipedia Commons

My friend Vladimir came to the United States legally in 1979. It was almost impossible to come illegally from the former Soviet communist state, USSR. It was the first and last time in his life when being Jewish helped him a lot, he said. If he would have been a member of the communist party, Vladimir would not have been allowed to immigrate to the United States at that time or to become an American citizen.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s agents of the immigration office loved America and did their best to protect it from invasion by flotsam and jetsam from third world dictatorships, especially communist ones.

Being a member of a communist party today is a badge of foolish smugness since academia and the Obama administration have advanced the global communist platform continuously. Who would have thought that, after escaping communism in the late 1970s, Vladimir would eventually have to live again under communism in the 21^st century America, where it is worshipped by a large percentage of the American people. Did America not fight a war in Vietnam to prevent the spread of communism? How many millions died in the fight against communism and as a result of the oppressive exploitation of the utopian ideas of a professorial bum called Karl Marx?

Vladimir’s escape from Kiev was immigration based on religious beliefs. One could argue today that the mostly male, young, and military age “refugees” from Syria and the Middle East are refugees from tribal wars and religious beliefs.

The fundamental difference between Jewish immigrants then from the Soviet Union and other communist satellite countries and today’s “Syrian refugees” is that Judaism is a religion while Islam is a theocracy and a legal system of governance based on Sharia Law. These “refugees” are economic refugees who are not interested in assimilating and contributing to make America great as Jews did. These Muslims want to take over our country and change our Constitution to Sharia Law.  As statistics show, a large percentage of these immigrants become immediate welfare dependents and remain so in perpetuity.

The Communist bloc nations severely restricted freedom and human rights to their populations. Vladimir would not have been able to immigrate to the U.S. had it not been for the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974. Two Democrats, Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, and Rep. Charles Vanik of Ohio, sponsored the bill which passed both houses unanimously. President Gerald Ford signed the bill into law on January 3, 1975. Vladimir and his family were beneficiaries of the Jackson-Vanik amendment which allowed Jewish people to immigrate to the West.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Jewish immigration loophole closed. Vladimir was lucky and escaped with his wife and son two months before the border closed. Immigration resumed in the late 1980s, generally for economic reasons, hence it was called the “sausage expatriation.” This was descriptive of the lone sausage or salami hanging in the windows of grocery stores during the communist era when shortages of food plagued every centrally planned economy. Socialist Venezuela is going through severe shortages of food, diapers, and toilet paper, in a country with huge oil reserves. Cuba is a classic example of a country exploited for 59 years by the communist junta of Fidel Castro.

In December 2012, President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that gave freedom from the communist oppression to so many Jewish people.

The Soviets and even the former dictator Ceausescu took advantage of this Jackson-Vanik Amendment. The Soviets imposed a “diploma” tax on immigration.  The tax was so high that, after the outcry from the West, it was removed after being in effect for over a year. Ceausescu allegedly charged Jewish émigrés $1,000 per head. His regime charged me for my education before I was allowed to leave.

Vladimir’s family paid $500 per person to renounce their Soviet citizenship. Consequently, instead of a passport, they received a piece of paper with a handwritten note under citizenship, “stateless.” They were “stateless” but free.

Although this amendment only applied to Jews and Germans under the “family reunification” egis, the Russians used this opportunity to also expel quite a few dissidents, Soviet writers and other top intelligentsia, who were too much in the public eye to make them disappear, and were thorns in the side of the Soviet regime.

Vladimir remembered that there was no synagogue in Kiev when he grew up, they worshipped underground. A few Christian cathedrals were left for baptisms, weddings, and burials. If people attended church, special agents from each factory were sent to spy on their employees who would pray on Christmas, Easter, or other special holidays. They wrote names down and made sure that such worshippers were given a really hard time in society. They oppressed everybody.

No entrepreneurs were allowed in the former Soviet Union. Those who tried were caught and severely punished. It was easy to go to Siberia for 15 years for a small infraction. His best friend’s parents tried to make candy at home and sell it to friends and neighbors. Because the father was found to have extra cash in the home, over and above his allowed salary, he was arrested by police and later summarily shot. If the commies really wanted to catch someone and make them disappear, it was easy to set them up, to put something incriminating in their homes, and then arrest them for the set-up crime.

Living on the edge of fear was something people got used to. People worried about families, friends, and children. “Soft pressure” was exerted often instead of jail or execution. “Soft pressure” meant that, if you were not in line with the communists, you and your children were not allowed to find jobs, or decent jobs, housing, attend good schools, or universities. And you were constantly watched by the neighborhood informer.

It was a psychological game to keep you suppressed and oppressed at the hands of the state. It was a faceless type of oppression; you never knew who ordered it or exactly why. “They might let you know somehow but you never knew to whom to apologize for your infraction. In Vladimir’s estimation, at least 25 percent of the population was treated this way and they had no recourse.

Vladimir described how getting permission to immigrate took from six months to seven years for some people. Anybody attempting to leave was considered a traitor to the state.  In order to protect your boss from punishment for keeping a traitor employed, you had to leave your job; it was shameful and unpatriotic to keep such a person employed, such a “quisling.”

Wondering how the Soviets knew he was Jewish, Vladimir explained that everything had to be disclosed on the employment forms and it became part of the employment record that followed workers everywhere. Most places, once they found out that the applicants were Jewish, they were told they were wasting their time, they would not be hired.

Vladimir’s case was different because he was an exceptional professional. He was a geophysical engineer in the oil and gas field, working in a Soviet institute of 550 people, with many geologists, engineers, researchers, oil and gas explorers, specialists who knew how to put out oil fires through geological drilling and detonation, and many involved in research and development.

Once he was part of a small group that came up with a plan to put out a difficult oil well fire which they were able to extinguish in six days, a spectacular result, devising a plan to drill sideways in hard rock. For his part, Vladimir was given a bonus of 60 rubles, and a personal visit from the minister of energy. But Vladimir was happy with the personal satisfaction of a job well-done.

Forty-year old Vladimir, his younger wife, and eight-year old son left USSR on the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, November 7. The customs officers, armed to their teeth, reminded them that everybody was celebrating the Soviet Revolution and “you traitors are leaving the country.”

They were allowed to take 72 pounds per person and, not knowing where they would end up, they took forks, pillows, a frying pan, winter shoes, and other implements for survival. I remember when I left legally in 1978 with two sets of sheets that never fit any bed in America.

They were allowed to exchange from rubles the equivalent of $100 per person, $300 for his family, and he still has the money in an envelope. “This was our life-line. We did not have much family to leave our personal property with since most perished in WWII. We gave friends our books, we could not give away photographs older than ten years, and everything was strictly catalogued.” A person was only allowed a wedding band, a pair of earrings, nothing more expensive than 50 rubles, no paintings, and no art objects, nothing that was not on the approved list. Anything extra had to be given to the state. “My friend had given me some paintings, I had to give them back; if I hadn't, the state would have confiscated them.”

It took six months to a year to get paperwork to prove that they did not owe anything to the state. It was a terrible life to extricate from the clutches of communism and to gain freedom in the west. They would get the run around from every office. They had to prove so many things, they had to go to archives to prove everything and run the gauntlet of the Soviet red tape. “That was my life for six months.” Vladimir cannot understand why ignorant Americans are so eager to become communist!

A church in New York help them start their new life in America, got jobs, and eventually built a professional career that took him to Virginia where I met him a few years ago.

Since they left, Vladimir never went back to Kiev, now part of Ukraine. Many others, who left like him, did go back. He would like an apology from the state for what they have put them through. The chance of getting such an apology is zero. The country is no longer the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, it is now Ukraine.

© Ileana Johnson 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Keller's Story

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Ileana Johnson

https://www.facebook.com/notes/joe-keller/the-sew-girls-daughter/1407168982628709

Do You Take Your Grocery Store for Granted?

Bread line during the 1980s
Photo credit: adevarul.com

The Ceausescu clan and their communist useful idiots were quick to remind us of what an enchanted life we lived under his leadership and how terrible life was under evil capitalism and how their people suffered under the boot of the bourgeoisie.  We were so protected and full of hope under “mother” Elena and “father” Nicolae’s leadership, we were told ad nauseam, while the opposite reality hit us in the face every day.

Commies lied to us in order to cover up their mismanagement of the economy, the disastrous five-year plans, the gross misuse of the land, squandered resources, sold produce and grain to the west for hard currency while people were on rationing cards and hungry, and funds stolen from the treasury or from citizens accused under dubious circumstances of treasonous activities such as enemy of the proletariat.

The five-year plans had impossible to achieve goals set by those apparatchiks with high ranking in the Communist Party.  People would go to jail for not meeting these goals in the time frame dictated by the Stalinist bureaucrats, illiterate community organizers, who understood nothing about the economy, about industrial or agricultural planning.  When things went missing in factories, and they did often, accountants and managers would go to jail as theft occurred under their blind watch.

More tight lines for food
Photo credit: adevarul.com

At some point, they ran out of cattle feed and Ceausescu had to distress-slaughter cows. I remember mom saying that beef was tough to chew and purple-looking. To this day, we don’t eat beef. The meat was rationed to 2.5 kg per family per month.  Butchers would chop up bones in the meat which turned it into a purplish grey mass thrown on the counter with contempt. We had to bring our own wrapping newspapers and expandable jute shopping bags to carry food home. In addition to this shopping jute bag, people carried extra cash in case a line developed somewhere which meant that they could not pass up the opportunity to buy whatever was on sale.

This type of pathological lying to the people is not unlike the Democrats covering up their failed economic policies by telling Americans for eight years now how the economic status quo is our new normal, we should get used to the global economy, to the manufacturing sector moving entirely outside of the U.S., and how our jobs are never coming back.

Living under the boot of communism, we could not compare our meager existence with how other people lived because we were forbidden to travel, television programming was tightly controlled, and so were radio broadcasting and the press. 

Once in a while those in power slipped and broadcast successful mini-series like “Dallas” which gave us a glimpse of the opulent and dreamy life of the Ewings in Texas, the faraway Shangri La where money grew on trees and oil bubbled out of the ground.  American movies were smuggled into Romania, translated by a very courageous lady, and sold on the black market when VCRs became available.

Romania was not the only Iron Curtain communist regime to treat their people this way, but it was one of the worst.  Joe Keller described in a recent post, “When Victor Belenko defected and flew his Mig-25 Foxbat into Japan, he was taken to a safe house in Warrenton, Virginia, for debriefing and subsequent resettlement. Warrenton was not much of a town at the time. We had Peebles, shoe stores, grocery stores, an IHop and a couple of other restaurants and a bunch of gas stations. Belenko thought the Agency had staged the entire town for his benefit and did not believe stores had clothes, and restaurants had food in America. It ran against everything he had been told.”

The dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a man with no formal education, ordered in 1982 the passage of the “Program of Scientific Nutrition for the Population,” a law that established the rationing of food, how many calories a person could eat, and how much one could weigh.  Two years later, the nutritional standards were reduced even more.

Portions and consumption were controlled through the issuance of cards which could only be used at the local neighborhood grocery store where residents had to register each family member, present proof of identity and residence, and the number of people living in the house, including renters or temporary visitors.  Food could only be bought based on the number of people registered.

Lying was impossible as the police informers, the beat cops, and the housing registration office knew exactly where each person lived or if they moved and where. Cards were color-coded by cities and towns. Urban residents could buy more food while farmers were given less rations on the assumption that they grew some themselves. Those who tried to purchase in excess of their rations, when found out, were sent to jail. It was considered speculation punishable by law if a person tried to barter goods or sell food on the black market.  Many enterprising Romanians were clever enough and were never caught. http://adevarul.ro/locale/alexandria/ce-mancau-romanii-vremea-ceausescu-jumatate-paine-zi-litru-ulei-kilogram-zahar-luna-pui-marimea-porumbeilor-1_555f0c0acfbe376e3578994d/index.html

Imagine how mesmerized I was when I first entered the one and only grocery store in a small town in the south, population 3,000, Horn’s Big Star. It was filled with food to the rafters.  I was in awe and I kept filling the cart to the brim. My husband was laughing, putting things back and telling me that they will be there tomorrow. I did not believe him at first, I expected empty store shelves on my second trip.

I was so incredulous! I went to the grocery store every day to buy nectarines and Red Delicious apples. I was so shocked that I could buy fresh fruit in early January. I just knew that it was all staged for my benefit. Albert, the owner, who was a friend of the family, always greeted me with a big smile which I thought odd. Why is this man always smiling?  I was used to sour employees, shouting and treating us like animals, while we pushed and shoved each other in endless lines, often getting to the front of the line and finding out that they ran out of whatever we were waiting to buy.

We have an abundance of food and people get irritated in the U.S. when they can’t find their particular brand. Few have any idea that our grocery stores only stock a three-day supply of food. When major storms strike or even the potential of inclement weather in the U.S., shelves of milk, water, and bread disappear really fast at Walmart. 

Until you have to stand in endless lines to buy food and basics for survival, such as bread, milk, sugar, oil, flour, butter, or toilet paper and vitamins, until you have to live in the dark and cold when lights, heat, and electricity go out daily, when you have no running water at all or hot water is a rare occurrence, you cannot claim that you are poor, living in an “unjust country.” What you really need is a lesson in history, a trip to Cuba, to some other third world country, and an attitude adjustment to reality.

Interview Across Cyber Space with Mircea Brenciu - Part II

On the question, why would people put their faith in career politicians, fighting with each other fiercely on social media, looking for purity, honesty, and perfection in a person’s character, qualities that are often lacking in the political world, Mircea Brenciu’s answer was not a surprise.

The main stream media models and shapes the news and the thinking of the voting populace based on the candidates and what platform they offer – the more socialist, the more popular. The problem arises after the election when, in the “laboratories of democracy,” the two Parliamentary chambers, behind closed doors, unabashedly vacate the will of the voting people.

There is no law that prohibits the candidates elected to migrate to other parties and to change representation to that party’s interest and ideology. “Influenced by blackmail, bribery, and other means, some representatives leave their parties under whose banner they ran for office, and join another party or political organization, thus altering the results of the general vote.” This way, a party or an alliance that was previously in a majority, becomes a minority, further eroding the will of the voters.

These Machiavellian political alliances, made before or after the election, often lack the ideological unity necessary to address the strategic, political, or economic issues of the day and thus decisions are generally made arbitrarily and not in the best interest of the population.

Parliament members are inhibited by fear that they will be arrested under real or trumped up charges and would have to defend themselves for years in a court of law and potentially serve time. Romanian politics must pass through the microscope of the bureaucracy called the National Anti-Corruption Directorate. (DNA)

In Brenciu’s opinion, the DNA is necessary but often abusive. Those who control this institution, also control the direction of national politics. For example, Brenciu added, the “infractors of the Social Democrat Party (PSD) are treated differently than the Liberal Democrat Party (PDL) of former President Traian Basescu.”

Some corrupt politicians are better protected under the law than others, escaping prison, which results in a loss of trust by the general public in the fairness and justice of government.  Using this loss of trust, other politicians shamelessly campaign under the slogan of curbing abuse, corruption, and illegality, and deliver nothing.

While the politics of corruption continue unabated, national interest is forgotten, “with a disgrace and arrogance worthy of historical traitors,” said Brenciu, and the idea of nation-state and sovereignty overlooked in the wave of internationalism coming from Brussels.  “The negotiation of individual liberty is the only politics in Romania that seem worthy of sincere, huge, and herculean efforts.”

Take for example, the development funds allocated to Romania by the European Union in Brussels. Based on passed history, under the banner of curbing corruption, the funds are draconically controlled, and those who are charged with dispersing them realize that it is almost impossible to obtain or demand bribes, and it is thus not in their interest to try very hard to allocate the funds to those who need them for development.

It is difficult to prove such financial corruption; however, why should someone complicate their lives with foreign funds from EU when there is nothing to be gained from the effort, only a lot of paperwork, hard to obtain approvals, and the long wait for funds that must be spent exactly as they were earmarked and in the given amount of time.

“For the EU bureaucrats, this would justify to view Romanians as an inferior category in the grand multinational scheme of EU wannabes.” Romania’s membership in the EU is important but their land, strategic, and economic potential are much more important to these globalist elites.

As Brenciu explained, following in the footstep of history when colonists eliminated people who already resided on the lands sought after, history has an annoying tendency to repeat itself.  He explained, “Romania must be emptied of Romanians, as they are incapable to resist the western bulldozer, and must leave the gold for the explorers who came to the Old Continent in the name of the Crown with 12 gold stars and a blue flag.”

On the question of the economic situation in Romania, following the execution of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, Brenciu had this to say.

After the Revolution of December 1989, the first government, that of Petre Roman, launched the competition which Brenciu dubbed, “Getting Rich at Any Cost,” an effort to privatize the economy.

One such method of privatization called MEBO, gave factories, industrial complexes, and economic centers to the new managers, chosen by workers’ meetings, supposedly democratic. In this new brand of “savage and primitive capitalism, devoid of any rules and regulations,” the newly appointed managers robbed everything and anything that belonged to Ceausescu’s communist state and thus became owners without any payment made to the state.  The “proletariat,” who continued to work for the new owners, received shares in this new “enterprise,” shares which they later sold to the new owners/directors who became millionaires overnight.

Brenciu clarified that the majority of the new owners/directors were former security officers and communist apparatchiks who were traitors to the communist regime, turning the anti-communist tide into their financial favor. They were opportunists, aided and abetted by a corrupt judicial system and a mentality of two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner.

The poor of yesterday, members of the proletariat, the much touted “workers,” remain the poor of today.  Many jobs have disappeared thanks to the sale of unproductive factories, piece by piece, or the sale to foreign investors who bought entire plants, whether productive or unproductive, to dismantle them or to modernize them, and thus eliminate any competition possible.

Even though Romanian economy functioned under communism with old and outdated technology, it had an industrial base. Today, Brenciu added, Romania has become an “industrial-agrarian, tourist, and service economy.” And the agricultural sector is also suffering as more arable land is left unused, while food is imported from far away.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

 

The Memorial to the Victims of Communism and Sighet Museum

I was digging furiously through my book shelves, looking for one special volume which I had brought with me from Romania when I immigrated to the United States. After half an hour I found my May 1977 first edition of Romulus Rusan’s book, “Greyhound’s America,” published in Romanian during the brutal communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.

I never understood how such a book that told the truth about life in the west escaped his publishing censoring goons. I was going to finally find out as I was going to meet Romulus Rusan and his equally famous and lovely wife, the poet Ana Blandiana.

Romulus Rusan told me that his editor revealed to him that, of the 100,000 plus copies of his first edition book that were sold in Ceausescu’s Romania, probably half of the readers immigrated to the U.S. He could not understand why Rusan was not arrested by the communist regime. His wife joked that they must have labored under a lucky star, under divine protection.

Romanian Ambassador at Washington
Romulus Rusan and Ana Blandiana
(Photo: Ileana Johnson, June 3, 2015)

I met Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan at a Romanian Embassy serata honoring their literary work and their untiring efforts to bring to light the horrors of communism in the First Memorial to the Victims of Communism at Sighet, Romania. A true labor of love, their work began in 1993 with the acquisition of the Sighet Prison, a condemned ruin.

The former prison built in 1897 to incarcerate common criminals, was used during First and Second World Wars for political inmates, priests, Polish revolutionaries, and Romanian deserters. During the period of 1948 to 1950, resistance fighters from Maramures, peasants and students, were imprisoned here.

Between May 1950 and July 1955, it served as a maximum-security facility, holding ministers, members of Parliament, journalists, officers, priests, and other religious leaders. During this time, 54 of those held died while in custody and were buried in unmarked graves. In 1955 the prison became again a jail for common criminals with more creature “comforts.” Because of a decree in 1975 which ruled that prison sentences had to be served in the workplace, the prison was closed and abandoned.

Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan petitioned the Council of Europe to open a museum in the former prison which had become, as they described it, an “insalubrious ruin.”

Sighet Museum
(photo: Wikipedia)

With funds from the Civic Academy Foundation, the International Centre for Studies of Communism, and the untiring efforts of Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan, the former prison became the first museum of its kind in the world, dedicated to the victims of communism in Romania and in all former communist countries of the Iron Curtain.

Each cell became a separately-themed room with its own chronology of death and destruction of the human body and spirit caused by the most oppressive form of dictatorship in history – communism.

After the Civic Academy Foundation was established to create the museum at Sighet, the 175 founding members chose Ana Blandiana to be President.

The exterior of the building was repaired with help from Hanns Seidel Foundation and from private donations. The actual repair work commenced on July 1, 1996 and the Memorial was inaugurated on June 20, 1997.

Former political prisoners, Orthodox priest Constantin Voiculescu and Graeco-Catholic priest Eugen Popa, held the religious service to consecrate the Space for Recollection and Prayer.

I was amazed that a husband and wife team was able to bring to life such a significant memorial with limited resources and a gargantuan effort, yet the west is still struggling to raise funds to build a similar museum.

In addition to the Civic Academy which is attended by students and professors from Europe, the International Center for Studies into Communism, the Memorial to the Victims of Communism and to the Resistance, the Sighet Museum has been visited to date by more than one million people.

The Cortege of the Sacrificial Victims by Aurel I. Vlad

(Photo: Widipedia)

 

The symbolic statuary entitled “The Cortege of the Sacrificial Victims” by Aurel Vlad depicts humans walking in various stances of resignation, heads bowed down or raised to the sky, some with hands up, begging, imploring, appealing to a higher power, and wondering why. When it rains, the rivulets make the statues appear as if the victims are crying.

Sighet prison cells

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Dozens and dozens of rooms in the museum tell the horrible stories of the most oppressive period in Romania’s modern history:

-          More than 10,000 trials were held according to the Communist Party template – accusations of  ‘treason,’ ‘plotting against the social order,’ ‘espionage,’ ‘sabotage,’ ‘diversion,’ ‘inimical attitude,’ ‘public instigation,’ ‘fraudulent crossing of the border,’ ‘omitting to make a denunciation,’ and ‘dissemination of forbidden publications;’ they were always followed by hard prison time and sometimes death.

-          More than 2 million people were persecuted politically using “coercive methods,” with hundreds of thousands arrested administratively, without trial, some up to ten years.

-          600,000 Romanians were arrested and sentenced to prison between 1945-1989

-          200,000 Romanians were deported to forced labor camps.

-          Destruction of traditional parties, National Peasant Party, National Liberal and Social Democrat Party, and installation of one party, the Communist Party, replacing a multi-party democratic regime with a one-party state.

-          Repression against the Romanian Orthodox Church, Graeco-Catholic Church, Protestant and Evangelical churches.

-          Installation of the dreaded Securitate by decree in August 1948, following the infiltration by communists of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1944.

-          Use of political detainees in hard labor camps for various building projects.

-          How individual farmers were forced into collectivization, the peasants’ resistance, and their swift repressions.

-          The sovietization of the population, forced submission into communism by purging, beatings, and confiscation of personal property.

-          Orchestrated by communist organizers like Emil Bodnaras, Ana Pauker, and other Moscow agents, the army, the police, and the justice system were forcefully transformed into communist arms of the police-state.

-          Firing and assignment to manual jobs or labor camps of any teachers opposed to the communist regime; those remaining and the new teachers had to become the “new man” through violent ideological and propaganda subjects, becoming tools of the Marxist-Leninist education based on Soviet-style textbooks.

-          Ethnic repression, accusations of “Zionism” and the maltreatment of gypsies.

-          Deportation of 44,000 people to the Baragan steppe; 1,700 of the deportees died; the oldest person was deported at the age of 95 and lasted until he turned 100.

-          Anti-communist resistance in the Fagaras Mountains and Western Carpathians.

-          Women who gave birth in prison and their children were removed and sent to orphanages; 4,200 women, mothers, wives, or daughters of political prisoners were also imprisoned as “dangers to the social order.”

-          The famous historian Gheorghe I. Bratianu was imprisoned at Sighet for twenty-four months and died there in April 1953; on August 6, 1953, the Interior Ministry decided to increase the prison sentence of a dead man by 60 months.

-          High school students were deported and served time in communist prisons for either running into the mountains to join the partisans or defacing/tearing up official posters and portraits, telling jokes, writing epigrams, and drawing cartoons.

-          Doctors and medical students were imprisoned for refusing to adopt communist jargon and for not rejecting “all that was western.”

-          Room 9 is the cell where the famous Iuliu Maniu died in 1953 (1873-1953); his cell was left untouched, with thick bars and the broken bed with wires sticking out from the dirty mattress; Maniu, the architect of the unification of Transylvania with Romania in 1918, the former Romanian Prime Minister, leader of the National Peasant Party and of the National Romanian Party, former Parliament member in Bucharest and Budapest, attorney for the Graeco-Catholic Church, landowner  and leader of the Democratic opposition, a man who dedicated his entire life to public service, died alone in his frigid cell, without a candle or the presence of another human being.

-          Those who died in prison at Sighet from 1952 on were buried secretly at night on the banks of the River Tisa at the border with the former USSR. (Romulus Rusan, Museum Archives and Guide, 1993-2014)

Horrible details about the prison life had emerged slowly from those who survived, from guards, and from those forced to clean and sweep the hallways and the prison courtyard. They would sometimes exchange a few words with political prisoners who were stronger and able to stand up and speak. Those who became very ill were usually isolated and deprived of medical treatment until it was too late to assimilate extra food such as potatoes, and they expired.

The food served was inadequate for survival. The communist guards hoped the prisoners would die quickly of malnutrition and starvation. Cardinal Iuliu Hossu of the Cluj Graeco-Catholic Church wrote in his memoirs that the “soup was water with a piece of vegetable floating in it.” It was considered a delicacy to find a “hard piece of a cow’s hairy lip” bobbing in this watery soup. http://www.romanialibera.ro/aldine/history/cum-a-murit-iuliu-maniu-la-sighet-215636

The inmates received no medical assistance. Knowing that dying men and women were unable to metabolize the extra calories, the guards would give them extra food. And if the lack of proper nutrition and medical care did not kill the political prisoners, the bitter cold of northern Romania exacerbated by the thick walls most certainly caused hypothermia and death.

The Sighet Museum is a living monument to the cruelty of communism and to the inhumane treatment that millions of innocent citizens were subjected to by tyrants and their failed ideology, an ideology concocted by a dangerous man named Karl Marx whose theories ultimately destroyed the human spirit, imprisoned free men, and killed over 100 million worldwide in the name of collectivism, equality, and social justice. http://www.memorialsighet.ro/index.php?lang=en