> On 1/13/07, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> You're funny. Joanna has never lauded Communist-era Romania.
>
>
> Joanna drove me home a couple of years ago after Doug talked at
> Modern Times bookstore and we had dinner w/Joel Schalit on Valencia
> St. She enthused about Communist Romania to me.
"Communist" stretches all the way from 1945 to 1980. It includes real reforms that benefitted the vast majority of people -- free medical care, free education, pensions, vacations. It includes a mini-renaissance in the arts, after the death of Stalin. It also includes the Ceausescu era, our tin pot dictator with delusions of grandeur, who (with the help of the IMF) destroyed the economy, caused some of the most beautiful buildings in the capital to be razed, and discredited any meaningful idea of socialism in Romania.
It is true that Romania's long tradition of colonial servitude, feudalism, curruption, nepotism, and general cravenness was not undone by the 20 years of the Russian-imposed "communist" post war regime. It would be very surprising if it had. Those habits, that modus vivendi, found ways to disguise themselves in the politically correct garb until they could be tossed aside.
If I enthused, it was about the real gains that were made for a space of twenty years. These were gains that allowed my mother, the daughter of a porter to get as good an education as could be had in the Western world and to become a nationally recognized writer by her late twenties. As such, she was able to devote her entire life to writing; sejourning for months in the liberated castles of the aristocracy in order to finish a novel or to get a new one started. These were gains that allowed my dirt poor grandparents to get medical care when they fell ill and which allowed my grandfather to retire in his early sixties.
"Communist" Romania is a mixed story; some parts worth cheering for and others not. Perhaps a few decades serving as the Mexico of Europe will convince Romanians that world capital does not have their best interests at heart and perhaps there will another, more successful revolution. I hope to see that day.
Joanna