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PARADOX FILM
presents

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A film realised with the help of
National Centre of Cinematography

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In collaboration with
ROMANIAN SOCIETY OF TELEVISION

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With the support of
BORSEC ROM AQUA

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THE NOSTALGIA OF DICTATORSHIP

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A film by
MARIUS TH. BARNA

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"Even though Ceauşescu led a regime,
everyone had something to eat

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and there was no discrepancy
between the rich and the poor."

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Mădălina Ghenea (model and actress)

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"I would have liked to catch those times.

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I saw on TV how Nicolae Ceauşescu
filled the town-squares with people.

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It was cool seeing how
many people applauded him,

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{\an8}I think he's the biggest MC up until now.

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He also invented
the working 1st of May holiday.

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My message is "Let's
party with MC Ceauşescu.

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A happy 1st of May for everyone
and keep going ahead, comrades."

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Bijou
(Singer. Real name, Elena Turcu)

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"Ceauşescu shouldn't have been murdered.

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Ceauşescu impressed me with
all he has achieved for Romania,

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especially the buildings he left behind
as a heritage for all Romanians."

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Andreea Bănică (singer)

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{\an8}NICOLAE CEAUŞESCU'S COMMEMORATION
GHENCEA CEMETERY - 26TH OF JANUARY, 2018

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How was it before?

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Listen, if you are smart now and if you
were smart before, you're living well.

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As well as being honest.

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If you're stupid,
I can't do anything about it.

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Don't worry 'cause it wasn't, don't worry.
Who voted Firea? Who's Firea, mister?

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If you have a smart president like he was,
but everyone went behind his back,

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we also lived well.
With him or without him...

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The most beautiful period of my life
was during Ceauşescu's time.

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Us, the middle class,
what can we do with it?

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We didn't know how to protect our fortune.

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Speak up, why won't you speak up?

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They won't shoot all of Romania.
Down with them!

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Make a prognosis for all politicians:

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when will Romania ever
have zero debt? External.

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Look where Firea is living,

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the house she has,
with that stupid mayor. Pandele!

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Because we were not united and
we're all divided now. That's my opinion.

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Do you know who can get
this country out of its mess? The army.

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They must put a gun in them,

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arrest everyone
and the money obtained from them

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should be given to the people,
so they have something to eat.

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It would've been Nicolae Ceauşescu's
100 year birthday today.

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It was better during his time.
You had something to eat,

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something to live off of.

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But now, with the 530 RON
received from the sickness pension,

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I only eat a loaf of bread daily. I can't
live like this, I'm a downcast now,

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not even God helps me now.

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During Ceauşescu's time you had a home,
now I'm a wretch and a downcast.

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{\an8}ADA MILEA - singer

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{\an8}<i>Ceauşescu didn't die,</i>

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<i>He watches us vigilantly,</i>
<i>Ceauşescu is a school!</i>

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<i>Ceauşescu is a disease.</i>

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<i>It's in me, it's in you,</i>
<i>it's in blocks and factories,</i>

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<i>It's in everyone today!</i>

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<i>Ceauşescu never dies!</i>

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According to various opinion polls,

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30 years after the revolution,

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if Nicolae Ceauşescu would run
for the presidential elections in Romania,

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he would win very detached.

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Perhaps even from the first round.

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{\an8}There's a nostalgia that is not
necessarily linked to the regime itself,

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{\an8}rather to youth, a childhood,
a certain type of stability.

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A certain type of safety,
a certain type of lifestyle

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that remained in safe
and constant parameters.

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People, in general,

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want nothing more from life itself
than a family and a stable life,

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a stable job, as well the bread from
tomorrow's table and the safety.

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{\an8}(Actor): Everyone managed.

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The greatest gift a human
can receive is kindness.

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This state of humanity,

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as time passed,

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has degraded.

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I caught it however,

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I was a child and my parents were
quite young, under the age of 40

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and we would go for a couple of days

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and visit close relatives,
brothers or sisters of my parents.

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They would party and share stories,
these were extraordinary things.

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And when they left, they said,
"Thank you for your kindness."

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{\an8}(Professor and sociologist): In 1989

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{\an8}there were almost 8 million paid jobs,

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almost the entire population,
if we add the coworkers,

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the entire population was busy
in an organized state-run system.

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Between 1991 and 1992,
out of 8 million something employees,

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almost 4 million paid jobs disappeared.

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The indoctrination decades
left their mark.

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Even if many people accept

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that the overall system
was a tragic error in history,

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they remain convinced that the idea itself
was good, but it was wrongfully applied.

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WAS IT BETTER BEFORE?

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THE JOB IS LIKE A GOLDEN BRACELET!

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{\an8}(Literary secretary
from Fantasio Theatre):

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{\an8}All college graduates benefited
from this governmental repartition.

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{\an8}From this governmental repartition.

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There were professional categories
who were obligated,

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post graduating
and obtaining this position,

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to spend some time
in a certain institution

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be it artistic,
be it a factory, or a hospital

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that trial period, if I can call it that,
was overall very welcomed.

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{\an8}(Freelancer):
It was a much better situation than now.

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As this overall hurry in finding a job

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in order to be able to provide
everyday living was not an issue.

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{\an8}(Retired):
Ceauşescu was one of the biggest patriots.

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{\an8}I wasn't a member of the party at the
time, but I lived during those years.

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And I swear, I can assure you

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that it was 1000 times better
than it is now.

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{\an8}(Retired): Everyone had a job,

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you could've afforded to make a loan

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out of any income.

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The interest rates were
not extraordinarily high,

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people used to make
CARs (mutual help homes)

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and leave on holiday wherever they wanted.

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{\an8}(Journalist): Out of my very first salary,

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{\an8}which I thought to be
very high at the time: 800 lei.

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I spent it all on a pair of luxury shoes.

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I was very proud of them.

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And a bunch of sweets.

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Out of my next salary I bought
a whole bunch of bananas

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and I ate them with a colleague of mine

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out of the desire I had for a long time.

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The man, through his nature,

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prioritizes the satisfaction
of basic needs:

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having something to eat
both himself and his family,

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and having somewhere to live,

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even if it's minimum decent living.

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For all of that, he needed a job.

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The communist regime offered him that job.

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In a rigidly built
and perfectly controlled system.

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{\an8}Every time I eat a steak at a restaurant,
I always remember my first salary,

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because that was when I ate
the best steak in the world.

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Truth is, everything
was different back then,

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I was a sports teacher
near Jibou at Surduc

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and when I got my first salary I entered
a restaurant to grab a beer.

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I drank that beer and ate a pork neck.

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I will never forget it
for the rest of my life

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as I keep comparing it
with the trash I eat now,

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even at the best restaurants.

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{\an8}(Political scientist): You had a job,
usually a job to which the state

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would assign you after you graduated.

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Where you wanted to work and how
or what you wanted to work did not matter.

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You were assigned according
to a government division,

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and you would go to that place.

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If you ended up in a small village
or a small industrial town,

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the location on your I.D
would be your work place

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it was kind of a "glue-binding".

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{\an8}GETTING MARRIED TODAY,
MOVING INTO AN APARTMENT TOMORROW!

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{\an8}I received, in the beginning,
a house from the editorial office.

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A very modest apartment.

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I then added myself on a list,

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at the recommendation
of the editorial office,

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and I bought in installments
with the money borrowed from CEC,

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a bigger apartment.
It was a 3-room apartment

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and I paid for it in installments,
in 25 years.

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{\an8}(Retired):
They would borrow money from CAR

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{\an8}and buy everything
necessary for a studio apartment,

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{\an8}for example:

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a bedroom composed out of a bed,

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wardrobe, a mirror
and something else

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was worth about 10,000 lei,
very cheap.

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A stove was worth 1,700 lei,

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a fridge was 5,000 lei,

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a black and white TV was 3,000 lei.

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If a college graduate was
employed with a 3,000 lei salary,

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everything I've mentioned
above was very easily bought.

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{\an8}(Tourism Agency Director): The enterprise
was preoccupied about the people.

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I received from the very first day
a sort of studio apartment,

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so basically from the first day of work.

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I was a newly-wed, I had no children
and my wife was a sports teacher as well.

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The first time I felt...
the feeling of an owner,

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a feeling which nowadays
is considered debatable

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and we don't know what it really is.

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I felt a sense of freedom

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because I had an intimate place,

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meaning that it was an intimacy overall,

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in a world that allows you up until
one point a place in this intimacy;

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but in the world who says
it's going to give you all,

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it leaves you nothing in the end.

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The communist regime
offered everyone a place to live.

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With rent due, as most of the private
properties created inequalities,

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then, tip-toeing around it,
with money up front - buying it.

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Most of the living places
were in neighborhoods

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filled with monotonous blocks, grey,
with no intimacy whatsoever,

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in which the man would plunge
into the anonymity of the faithful mass,

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grateful to the party.

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Therefore, it was much easier
to supervise and control.

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{\an8}(Sociologist): The state was the biggest
real estate agent at the time.

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It was the owner
of all the neighborhoods,

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of all the houses which have been built.

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Oddly enough, the houses were built off
the backs of the working people, right?

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00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:05,080
And the working people would
receive them after years and years

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00:14:05,160 --> 00:14:09,760
of waiting on the famous
waiting lists of the houses

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00:14:09,840 --> 00:14:15,760
on a very rigorous score in which
they actually lived as tenants.

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00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:18,600
{\an8}We can't throw it away
just because it was communism.

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00:14:18,680 --> 00:14:22,440
{\an8}It's similar to us demolishing our blocks
because they were built during communism.

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00:14:22,520 --> 00:14:25,760
We can't demolish them. They're ours,
we live in them and we enjoy them.

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THE LAW IS THE LAW FOR EVERYONE!

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The law was the law!

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Especially for the majority.

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Less for the red bourgeoisie.

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For the "ştabi",
as they were known before 1989.

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{\an8}(Retired): You could walk on the street,

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00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:52,000
day or night,
without having any issues,

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00:14:53,720 --> 00:14:57,560
all you needed to have was a job.

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00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:00,640
If the police stopped you by any chance,

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00:15:00,720 --> 00:15:05,640
they would ask for your I.D,
especially your work I.D first.

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00:15:07,240 --> 00:15:09,960
If you had a job,
you were in the system,

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00:15:10,280 --> 00:15:13,640
and you would've benefited
from the weekly classes

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00:15:13,720 --> 00:15:15,560
of political education during work hours.

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If you didn't have a job,
you were arrested for vagrancy.

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No one could stay out of the system.

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AFTER A LIFETIME OF WORK,
YOU HAD A WELL-DESERVED PENSION!

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00:15:27,920 --> 00:15:31,000
So the pension system was functional,

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00:15:31,080 --> 00:15:36,440
there was small pensions
but they would come when planned,

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people would retire at an established age,

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the undertakings would usually create
a ceremony dedicated to them.

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{\an8}(Ecologist): I know my grandfather
had a pension but he was happy.

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00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:57,480
I don't know much, I mean, he never
complained about the pension situation;

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be it either not on time, or increased.

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Because then, there was a stability.

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This was regarding the prices as well,

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00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:09,920
he knew for a fact that month after month
he would receive his pension

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and that there would be
no inflation differences.

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{\an8}Actors were considered to have a hard job,
especially puppeteers.

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Women, ladies, they would
retire at 45 years old,

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00:16:24,360 --> 00:16:28,200
whilst men at 50 years old,
it was considered a hard job,

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00:16:28,280 --> 00:16:31,880
like pilots, miners, aviators,

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and they would benefit by receiving
important pensions for that money.

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{\an8}The system was simpler and clearer before,

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the state was dealing with the hiring,

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00:16:46,920 --> 00:16:51,080
everyone knew the wages,
the working places, etc.

233
00:16:51,160 --> 00:16:55,040
It was relatively easy
to calculate your pension.

234
00:16:55,400 --> 00:16:57,920
Nowadays, things are much more complex.

235
00:16:58,400 --> 00:17:01,880
A job, a house and, of course, a pension

236
00:17:01,960 --> 00:17:05,960
so that everyone's existence
can run smoothly

237
00:17:06,040 --> 00:17:08,520
in order to avoid social convulsions.

238
00:17:09,720 --> 00:17:12,240
The man knew that,
if he respects the rules,

239
00:17:12,320 --> 00:17:14,880
he'll have his future assured.

240
00:17:14,960 --> 00:17:17,000
In Romania, nowadays,

241
00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:22,000
I am glad that pensions themselves are,

242
00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:25,800
made after a biblical word:

243
00:17:26,920 --> 00:17:30,040
increasingly decreasing;

244
00:17:30,960 --> 00:17:35,880
even my increased pension

245
00:17:36,320 --> 00:17:38,880
has decreased with 51 lei.

246
00:17:38,960 --> 00:17:44,560
MAMAIA, PREDEAL, CĂCIULATA,
FOR ALL THE WORKING CLASS!

247
00:17:44,640 --> 00:17:47,240
How were holidays planned before?

248
00:17:47,320 --> 00:17:50,240
It was simple,
we would settle upon a route,

249
00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:54,320
we had a Dacia 1100 as it was popular,

250
00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:59,440
the gas was rationalized,
therefore we had colleagues

251
00:17:59,520 --> 00:18:02,920
and we'd settle upon a route
through the country,

252
00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:09,080
in each county a colleague
would get me a gasoline canister

253
00:18:09,160 --> 00:18:11,960
and in exchange,
I would keep his gasoline

254
00:18:12,040 --> 00:18:16,400
and when we arrived to the seaside
it felt like a barter,

255
00:18:16,480 --> 00:18:18,600
but I've seen the country,

256
00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:22,240
I saw the beauties of the country
which was important.

257
00:18:22,320 --> 00:18:26,360
So, we would have a holiday
with a group of friends,

258
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:32,880
which nowadays we lack of,
meaning that fewer people gather,

259
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:36,400
people travel together

260
00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:41,440
and it's a certain way of consuming
loneliness in the family

261
00:18:41,520 --> 00:18:42,920
or even in yourself.

262
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:46,960
I remembered my first holiday
being at Voineasa.

263
00:18:48,240 --> 00:18:52,200
It was with my parents,
after they've bought the Dacia 1300.

264
00:18:53,200 --> 00:18:55,520
We went on the Transfăgărăşanu route

265
00:18:55,600 --> 00:19:01,120
and we spent either a week or two,

266
00:19:02,040 --> 00:19:06,560
We would go on holiday once or twice per
year without encountering any problem.

267
00:19:07,120 --> 00:19:11,160
{\an8}I would travel with my parents
up in the mountains

268
00:19:11,480 --> 00:19:18,480
on Valea Prahovei, Valea Oltului,
Slănic Prahova, all the time.

269
00:19:18,560 --> 00:19:21,440
No year would pass by
without us having a trip to the mountains.

270
00:19:22,720 --> 00:19:25,720
{\an8}(Actor): Being born in 1965,

271
00:19:25,800 --> 00:19:30,800
{\an8}I know very little about
the spiritual life from the 70s.

272
00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:32,760
I lived, I had something to eat,

273
00:19:32,840 --> 00:19:37,360
I saw that a lot of tourists
would come to Romania on trips.

274
00:19:37,440 --> 00:19:38,920
We were an attraction spot.

275
00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:45,560
Well, I was living on the western border
of Romania, in Oradea,

276
00:19:46,280 --> 00:19:48,520
where foreigners would come very quickly.

277
00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:54,040
Especially Czechs, Czechoslovaks,
I'm sorry, Poles, Germans, Hungarians.

278
00:19:54,120 --> 00:19:57,840
At Băile Felix and Băile Herculane,
and so on.

279
00:19:57,920 --> 00:20:00,600
{\an8}(Worker):
I had my first holiday after I got married

280
00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:03,240
{\an8}and had my first child, I went with him

281
00:20:03,320 --> 00:20:06,600
in a resort, in Mamaia.

282
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:10,400
Oddly enough, nowadays, I cannot
afford to have a holiday in Mamaia.

283
00:20:10,480 --> 00:20:14,560
{\an8}(Worker): On May 25th
they sent us over to the seaside,

284
00:20:14,640 --> 00:20:16,760
{\an8}they made us front workers
in the production,

285
00:20:16,840 --> 00:20:23,480
I was barely 18 and we'd open up
the seaside season on the 25th.

286
00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:30,680
We had 12 days of holiday, you would've
worked at night, left for the seaside,

287
00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:32,880
come back from the seaside
in the morning only to get back to work.

288
00:20:33,680 --> 00:20:37,600
Truth be told, the prices
were different back then

289
00:20:38,160 --> 00:20:42,200
and before any trip to the seaside
they would call us to the party

290
00:20:42,280 --> 00:20:47,080
and they would instruct us on
what the wear and how to act

291
00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:51,400
we were supposed to honor
the factory from which we left.

292
00:20:51,720 --> 00:20:54,760
{\an8}I just became a mother

293
00:20:54,840 --> 00:21:00,600
{\an8}and my maternal holiday
was either at my in-law's

294
00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:03,440
or my parents as we didn't
have our own house yet,

295
00:21:03,520 --> 00:21:04,840
we were travelling.

296
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:09,560
The Berceni apartment
was not finished yet

297
00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:13,080
and we were living with a host
even though it was quite scary,

298
00:21:13,640 --> 00:21:17,600
we were doing a kind of pilgrimage
to my child's grandparents.

299
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:22,080
Scholar and youth camps,
following the rest leave,

300
00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:24,400
the trips to the balneare treatments,

301
00:21:24,480 --> 00:21:25,960
all of them were carefully planned

302
00:21:26,040 --> 00:21:28,840
and they would take place
in a very organized environment,

303
00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:31,760
usually under the
supervision of the trade unions,

304
00:21:32,120 --> 00:21:36,520
"Communist party transmission belts",
as Lenin called them.

305
00:21:37,360 --> 00:21:39,920
How many Romanians are able
to afford holidays nowadays?

306
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:42,480
They would rely on trade unions
before for them.

307
00:21:42,560 --> 00:21:45,240
Be them good or bad, the everyday peasant

308
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:49,520
would get to see the seaside or
the mountains once or twice in his life.

309
00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:52,960
Today, you're going to the countryside
as if no one has seen

310
00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:54,880
the seaside in the last 25 - 30 years.

311
00:21:55,160 --> 00:21:59,040
These are the things which affect
a certain type of social life.

312
00:21:59,120 --> 00:22:04,480
YOU HAVE A BOOK,
YOU HAVE A PART!

313
00:22:04,560 --> 00:22:10,200
It was an education, in my opinion,

314
00:22:10,560 --> 00:22:12,600
where teachers had
a greater responsibility.

315
00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:15,400
The children could
actually learn something

316
00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:18,040
as there were prepared teachers.

317
00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:22,080
Even by looking at myself,

318
00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:26,520
I learned something from my teachers
even if I wasn't one of the best students

319
00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:29,640
The education was free,
I had a scholarship,

320
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:33,160
and from that 331 lei scholarship

321
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:37,680
I managed to pay the rent and the card.

322
00:22:38,600 --> 00:22:42,560
And even have a little extra on the side
for transport, eventually.

323
00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:51,600
So, when it was time to wash the curtains,
the parents would do it.

324
00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:54,680
The concept of buying curtains
did not exist.

325
00:22:55,480 --> 00:23:00,600
Nowadays, however, there's a bigger
emphasis on contribution,

326
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:03,560
giving money for something, year by year.

327
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:09,040
There was an access before regarding
a reasonable education

328
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:13,120
and it was cheap, it was pretty cheap.

329
00:23:14,560 --> 00:23:20,840
The old system's problem was the problem
of accessing the higher education.

330
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:27,560
Jobs and university places
were very low in Romania

331
00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:31,480
as a proportion
from the younger generation.

332
00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:32,560
When I arrived outside the country

333
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:35,280
I realized I was just as educated
as the people there.

334
00:23:35,360 --> 00:23:40,240
I had an average education level,
acceptable for the western level.

335
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:44,680
Basically, these are a few of the
important things we nowadays lose slowly.

336
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:46,680
{\an8}(Professor):
Here we were doing agricultural work,

337
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:50,880
{\an8}doing the singing of Romania,
while also getting educated.

338
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:53,760
People were receiving education.

339
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:55,160
I don't know how everything
worked out that way,

340
00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:57,000
but things were going very well.

341
00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:02,960
In communism, the "new man's" formation
began at the earliest age.

342
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:07,200
School textbooks were carefully
monitored to be censorship free,

343
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:10,920
the history was rewritten
in the communist "key",

344
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:14,880
ideology passed through
any educational subject.

345
00:24:15,120 --> 00:24:17,720
Nothing was left to chance.

346
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:21,320
But nothing and no one
was talking about indoctrination.

347
00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:27,040
Very many simple, unprivileged children,

348
00:24:27,120 --> 00:24:31,120
workers from lower social strata,

349
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:35,600
because they had access
to free universal education

350
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:39,680
and a very low price
that anyone could've afforded.

351
00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:44,160
In a few new generations
we managed to produce

352
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:48,040
sort of a very educated
new middle class:

353
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:50,960
doctors, engineers, agronomists.

354
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:53,080
I'm not even going to
mention the other areas,

355
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:55,520
areas which are quite widespread.

356
00:24:57,120 --> 00:25:03,560
HEALTH BEFORE ANYTHING!

357
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:06,160
<i>It's not right, fellow professor.</i>

358
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,840
<i>The rhythm should be accelerated.</i>
<i>More alert, more lively.</i>

359
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:12,080
<i>Don't be so pretentious, Sănduco.</i>
<i>You'll get tired.</i>

360
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:16,080
<i>If needed, you don't ever get tired.</i>
<i>Please, let's take it from the top.</i>

361
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,640
<i>Take it from the top?</i>
<i>That's just Sanda being ambitious.</i>

362
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:22,280
<i>The guys from the park are playing soccer</i>
<i>and I'm the goal-keeper of the team.</i>

363
00:25:22,360 --> 00:25:25,680
<i>At least today, Nicuşor,</i>
<i>on my birthday. Leave the soccer.</i>

364
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:29,200
<i>You promised me you'll do</i>
<i>the honor of being my guest.</i>

365
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:31,120
<i>Kids, a more lively rhythm.</i>

366
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:33,760
<i>1, 2, 3, go!</i>

367
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:42,200
{\an8}(Engineer):
The health system was favorable,

368
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:46,640
{\an8}you could go and present
yourself in front of a doctor,

369
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:49,400
indeed, like any other system,

370
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:56,040
it had its ups and downs

371
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:01,520
but you could've benefited
from certain services

372
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:06,240
from multiple hospitals,

373
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,200
anything which regarded healthcare.

374
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:14,600
Medical offices could've been found
in every school or high school

375
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:19,640
medical offices which today
have gone missing,

376
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,520
I can state that if
we start counting in a county,

377
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,400
we'll find only a few of them.

378
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:30,800
Back then there were doctors in offices,

379
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:35,680
every neighborhood had a medical office
with a children's doctor

380
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:40,200
with a children's doctor
as well as an adult doctor.

381
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:44,840
Medicine was free,
so the medical service

382
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:48,640
and the hospitalization was free,
but I want to tell you something

383
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:54,600
I've learned from my own experience,
it really matters in this field,

384
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:57,560
the humanity of the doctors matters a lot.

385
00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:04,440
It was free because there
was a well-controlled state system,

386
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:12,240
even though the health system
relied a lot on personal relations,

387
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:17,880
on good doctors, specialized doctors.

388
00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:24,360
We've always had a good number
of professional doctors,

389
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:29,400
they couldn't compare themselves to
others but overall, they were very good.

390
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:35,720
{\an8}I knew doctors
who wouldn't accept a bribe;

391
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:40,680
someone actually advised me once
when I was visiting a doctor

392
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,480
to not even think of giving him anything

393
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:45,880
as he would tell me to get out
and never speak to me again.

394
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,240
However, the ones beneath him

395
00:27:49,320 --> 00:27:52,880
always had their pockets wide opened

396
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:56,080
waiting for cigarettes, coffee, whatever
you might get as a gift back then.

397
00:27:56,600 --> 00:27:59,600
Even though healthcare services were free,

398
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:02,520
their quality began
decreasing over time,

399
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,680
mainly due to
the overused medical equipment.

400
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:10,680
For better services,
the "bribes" offered to the doctors

401
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:14,160
and the nurses
became something common.

402
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:17,320
You would've felt
an acute mental discomfort

403
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,120
if you ended up at the doctor
or the hospital

404
00:28:20,360 --> 00:28:24,200
without an envelope with money,
coffee or a Kent cartridge.

405
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:28,440
There were a few important things
gained during Communism.

406
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:30,800
We either like it or we don't.

407
00:28:31,120 --> 00:28:34,840
Free, universal and compulsory education,

408
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:37,400
free healthcare access which is very
important and a certain type of access,

409
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:44,280
and when the urbanization
process took place.

410
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:51,080
WITHOUT DEBTS,
ESPECIALLY TO STRANGERS!

411
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:56,880
Ceauşescu was a well-intentioned guy

412
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:02,760
who brought the country
to a stage without debts,

413
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,640
even though this annoyed
many people outside the country.

414
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:10,880
The factory has professional schools

415
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:15,640
which allow the youth
to qualify for various jobs.

416
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:19,080
Strating from electricians
to chemist operators.

417
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:23,600
The external debt was paid through
the sacrifices of the Romanian people

418
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:27,920
through work, through
what everyone could do.

419
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:32,600
Our parents having these jobs,
everything was good, you know?

420
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:35,840
All of these were possible through
the work of the Romanian people,

421
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:41,040
enterprises which produced

422
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:47,760
and secured the money
to pay the external debt.

423
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:53,440
There were unpaid Saturdays and Sundays

424
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:58,080
and part of the work was patriotic;

425
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:02,840
the army, the scholars and the students.

426
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:05,960
Which meant cleaning
the corn or the grapes

427
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,480
from the vineyard found in Dobrogea.

428
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,640
There were high-schools and schools
which instead of keeping

429
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:14,520
to the regular teaching schedule,

430
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:19,440
they would go and collect the grain
of the country for a month.

431
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,160
The payment of external debt of Romania,

432
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:27,320
essentially as a result of a policy
lacking economic vision,

433
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:32,240
the catastrophic decrease
in the quality of life

434
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:35,160
{\an8}for the bigger majority of the population

435
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:38,360
in the last decade
of the communist regime.

436
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:42,640
{\an8}(Political scientist): We have documents
in the Free Europe's archive in Prague

437
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:45,720
which shows that Nicolae Ceauşescu

438
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,800
was tougher than
the Monetary International Fund

439
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,920
due to the fear
he had towards the occident.

440
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:55,440
Romania entered twice
in the incapacity of pay,

441
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:57,840
once in 1981 and once in 1989.

442
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:03,040
Nicolae Ceauşescu, not understanding
the basics of the economic process,

443
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:09,040
wished to rapidly pay
Romania's entire debt

444
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:10,920
which led to a fundamental
economical mistake.

445
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:15,720
Many people talk, but in 1990 we were
debt free with a finished economy.

446
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:17,720
Do you know what
we've lost during the 80s

447
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:21,280
due to the incapacity of the
ruling class led by Nicolae Ceauşescu?

448
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:27,400
We lost the essential moment
in the evolution of occidental economy.

449
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:29,040
The computerization.

450
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:33,920
THE PEOPLE, CEAUŞESCU, ROMANIA!

451
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:36,280
The society

452
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:42,640
always tried to constrain the individual,

453
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:44,880
it was also a theory
at some point that

454
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:50,400
as the individual is more constrained,
the society is more free,

455
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:53,760
When we talk about communism,
we cannot forget two things.

456
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:58,400
First of all, the communist project was
a project of rapid modernization.

457
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,400
This produced a lot of violence.

458
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:06,960
So, communism cannot be reduced
just to repression,

459
00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:10,440
for example, our
intellectual tradition says

460
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,320
that communism equals
violence and repression.

461
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:15,400
After the first decade's terror

462
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:19,440
in which any form of opposition
was physically exterminated,

463
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,440
the communist regime generated
an undeniable economic leap

464
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:25,920
through massive industrialization

465
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,640
through infrastructure's work
and housing construction.

466
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:34,440
In time, however, the pace of
modernization slowed down

467
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:38,560
and the gaps between the parameters
of the occidental economy market

468
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,840
and that of
the centralized communist economy,

469
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:44,280
increased continuously.

470
00:32:44,360 --> 00:32:48,200
{\an8}The majority of the people
left due to hunger;

471
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:54,960
so extraordinary careers of writers,

472
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,080
artists, or whatever else

473
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:04,720
left because of the dictatorship as
couldn't freely exercise their profession.

474
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:08,240
They left because they said that

475
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:14,960
they've had enough with
the rationalized food and facilities.

476
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:17,680
The man cannot handle himself alone.

477
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:23,800
There's a character by Dostoievski,
I love Dostoievski very much

478
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:27,960
as he is the biggest
spiritual of the world.

479
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:33,480
Galiov is the character's name,
I think it's from "Demons",

480
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:40,160
who says that all the
human societies are absurdities.

481
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:47,280
Because they were created
by some dreamers

482
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:51,080
and fantasists

483
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:54,480
who debated against themselves

484
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:58,680
and who didn't keep tabs
of two fundamental things:

485
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:04,040
nature and the psychology
of this animal we call human,

486
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:07,920
A lot happened during the communism,
a lot of phenomenon,

487
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:11,520
as industrialization, urbanization

488
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:13,840
and the massive education
of the population,

489
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:19,040
a growth and a modernization which Romania
has not known for the last 100 years,

490
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:24,160
at least since Carol was in a rapid,
dynamic and great form.

491
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:53,800
IT WASN'T BETTER BEFORE!

492
00:35:12,720 --> 00:35:16,760
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
IS GUARANTEED BY THE LAW!

493
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:19,960
ARTICLE 30 OF THE ROMANIAN CONSTITUTION

494
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:22,720
{\an8}During Ceauşescu's time

495
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:28,120
you were not allowed to speak,

496
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:33,520
to stand up for yourself,
to think freely without being affected.

497
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:38,600
Everything you said,

498
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:43,280
you had to be very careful
who you were talking to,

499
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:45,200
what you talked about
and where you did it.

500
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,560
{\an8}(Former Political Prisoner): Freedom of
speech and manifestation did not exist.

501
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:53,240
{\an8}We were a crowd of people
who had to keep their mouths shut,

502
00:35:55,760 --> 00:36:02,760
we needed to follow the rules
that the system imposed on us.

503
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:07,040
Any violation had its repercussions.

504
00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:08,840
All of those years

505
00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:13,120
induced a painful frustration

506
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,120
inside every human
who had a conscience

507
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:18,960
and who felt the need
to speak its mind.

508
00:36:19,720 --> 00:36:24,320
{\an8}(Doctor): And the fact that in all
of those years, coming back to that,

509
00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:30,280
people were limited
through fear and through terror,

510
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:37,760
the ability of people expressing
themselves had terrible consequences.

511
00:36:38,240 --> 00:36:41,840
There were always
these censorship committees.

512
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,680
There were three comrades
who came to the viewing committee:

513
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:50,840
one was from the county, one from the
party and one from I don't know where.

514
00:36:51,720 --> 00:36:54,600
And there were the comrades:
Abscess, Paw and Cucumber,

515
00:36:56,080 --> 00:37:00,400
who assumed things.

516
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:02,560
They would judge everything
that was being said there,

517
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:05,920
everything they supposedly understood.

518
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:10,360
They rarely understood
what was actually being told

519
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:15,400
and they would frequently
hang on to non-essential things.

520
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:17,920
That was our luck.

521
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:22,640
It was, of course, this ongoing battle
with the viewing committee

522
00:37:22,720 --> 00:37:24,080
which you had to fool.

523
00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:27,520
There were people who were forbidden

524
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:32,360
to work in the country or in Bucharest.

525
00:37:32,720 --> 00:37:38,360
{\an8}Freedom of speech was one of
the harshest consequences

526
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:41,080
of the successive dictatorship regimes,

527
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:43,040
because we're talking about
the communist regime,

528
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:47,000
but this regime comes after
two previous dictatorships:

529
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:49,520
the royal one and
the (antonesciana) one,

530
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:56,240
with a small fascist period in 1940
until the January of 1941.

531
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,320
Well, during this period,
there was no freedom of speech.

532
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,040
Some of them showed
their frustrations and paid.

533
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:05,600
The prisons were full.
Because freedom of speech had its price.

534
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:10,160
{\an8}(Worker): During that time,
everyone listened to Free Europe,

535
00:38:10,240 --> 00:38:12,400
America's voice and so on.

536
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:17,240
I was a simple human, I had
nothing to do with the police

537
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:19,800
or the security until 15th of November.

538
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:26,200
However, a form of freedom of speech
is the religious freedom

539
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:28,800
that was obviously cooped up
during the communist regime,

540
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:32,320
even though the communist took
advantage of the known cults

541
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:34,520
and especially of the orthodox church

542
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:37,680
which was not equally
persecuted of everything

543
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:40,320
that happened in other communist states
or in the Soviet Union.

544
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:46,360
Freedom of speech was reduced
to the use of language in accordance

545
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:49,000
with the canons of communist ideology.

546
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:51,880
Any deviation
could have been interpreted

547
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:54,400
as a deviation from
the line of the party,

548
00:38:54,480 --> 00:39:00,360
or even worse, as a hostile action of
undermining the socialist order.

549
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:04,880
Freedom of speech
equaled with the "crime to think"

550
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:07,520
and it was harshly sanctioned

551
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:10,440
in order to avoid the disruption
of the collective mentality

552
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:13,360
of the huge army
formed of "new people".

553
00:39:14,720 --> 00:39:18,320
{\an8}Basically, the golden rule
of the communist regime

554
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:25,080
was keeping the quiet
about the less honorable truths

555
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:27,280
connected to the regime.

556
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:32,440
Instead, through a well-designed
propaganda apparatus,

557
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:36,720
the regime outlined
its so-called achievements.

558
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:44,920
IT'S 10 O'CLOCK, THE BLACK MAN ARRIVED!

559
00:39:46,240 --> 00:39:48,960
It was fear everywhere. Fear.

560
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:54,600
Fear was the embedded word
in our consciousness

561
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:57,040
that we could not forget.

562
00:40:01,720 --> 00:40:06,000
Sure, the idea that "Free Europe"

563
00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:09,720
and "Voice of America" had to be poorly
listened due to the jammed sound

564
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:14,080
because you had to place the radio in a
certain type of position near the window

565
00:40:14,240 --> 00:40:21,040
so you could end up barely hearing
what they were saying,

566
00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:23,520
as well as understanding
them, every day.

567
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:27,560
Every day you had to
adjust the radio's intensity

568
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:30,160
so that you neighbors would not hear you.

569
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:34,040
{\an8}(Worker): I wasn't the only one afraid,
we were all afraid of security;

570
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:39,280
if you were at work or
on the street or anywhere,

571
00:40:39,720 --> 00:40:45,800
even keeping your line at
a market waiting for food,

572
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:51,480
if two of them were speaking,
the third one was listening in

573
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:54,160
and he would snitch to the security

574
00:40:54,240 --> 00:40:58,000
and then the on second or the third day
you were called in to give a statement

575
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:00,280
as to what you talked about or
why you talked against the party.

576
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:05,400
You had to be very careful
who you were talking to,

577
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:07,960
what you were talking about,
as well as where you talked.

578
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:14,440
Informants from the outside
would tell everyone,

579
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:18,400
they all generally had a pseudonym.

580
00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:21,320
{\an8}There was a joke back then

581
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:23,640
{\an8}about this guy who arrived
into a city and asked:

582
00:41:23,720 --> 00:41:26,880
Where's the security?

583
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:31,920
And then a really scared guy answered:
It's everywhere!

584
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:34,520
It happened to me once at the border,

585
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:36,040
I was with the
theatre crew from Constanţa

586
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,520
and we took from
the second-hand bookshop a book

587
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:42,120
about the history of religion.

588
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:46,440
A book was very cheap, around 5 RON.

589
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:49,200
It wasn't a valuable book.

590
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,640
And when we were at the border

591
00:41:52,720 --> 00:41:55,720
and they were doing their check-up,
they found this book.

592
00:41:55,800 --> 00:42:00,000
They made a whole big deal out of it,

593
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:02,160
they took me out of the car

594
00:42:02,240 --> 00:42:04,080
by threatening me
with the machine gun

595
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:05,600
telling me that I'll go back
to where I came from,

596
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:11,840
the head of the tour who was also
the head of our station pledged for me,

597
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,600
looking back on it I think he was
a snitch working for the security,

598
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:19,640
and the guy talked,
took them aside and told them

599
00:42:19,720 --> 00:42:24,240
that if I won't come
they cannot play the show

600
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:26,560
as I was actually a backup.

601
00:42:26,640 --> 00:42:29,840
I didn't go there
as an actor, as a director,

602
00:42:31,720 --> 00:42:33,440
I was going there to replace an actor

603
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:37,560
who did not get
his passport and visa in time.

604
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:40,400
{\an8}(Worker): The investigation was
very tough, especially for me.

605
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:43,720
{\an8}I was first arrested on a Tuesday

606
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,720
and they let me go home at night
because I lied in my statement

607
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:53,000
that I was at the country side
to bring wine for the baptism.

608
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:58,480
Meanwhile, my colleagues
from the station were arrested

609
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:03,480
and I kept waiting daily
for them to get me as well.

610
00:43:04,240 --> 00:43:06,560
Meanwhile, my colleagues
from the station were arrested

611
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:08,520
on Thursday evening
I was working the second shift

612
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:10,120
and they left me a note
where I was being summoned,

613
00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:13,160
my wife and mother
where in the house

614
00:43:13,240 --> 00:43:17,200
and they told me to go
to the police on Friday morning

615
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:19,240
to go over some details.

616
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:23,640
I knew right there
what was going to happen,

617
00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:30,960
I was sure that this time
there was no escape.

618
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:34,840
They came with me in the car and they
dropped me off at the police station,

619
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:36,840
a nephew dropped me off,

620
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:41,880
husband of some niece of mine
dropped me off with my nephew

621
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:47,360
and I told them that if I don't get out
by 9 o'clock, it means I'm there to stay.

622
00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:50,840
When I reached the office,

623
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:54,640
they took me from
the gate at 9 o'clock,

624
00:43:54,720 --> 00:43:57,760
they have been
eagerly awaiting me.

625
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:01,760
They started their investigations,
the beatings started

626
00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:05,480
at around 9 a.m. and kept going
continuously until 7 p.m.

627
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:07,440
I had a break around 3 p.m.

628
00:44:08,720 --> 00:44:13,920
when Captain Ionaş at the time,
the head of the Police

629
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:16,840
promised me he'd let me
to go reach my baptism

630
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:21,440
and he told me
to go upstairs to get my I.D,

631
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:25,360
but the beatings kept going
until 7 p.m. at night.

632
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:29,400
I had a tortured investigation,
if I can call it that.

633
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:32,480
{\an8}(Worker): Yes, we were tortured,

634
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:37,240
{\an8}the investigation
lasted almost non-stop,

635
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:43,880
we were deprived of
our necessities such as food,

636
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:47,320
every time we sat down to eat
we would be called for the investigation.

637
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:50,160
When I entered my home,
after the investigation was over,

638
00:44:50,240 --> 00:44:51,880
my mother didn't recognize me,

639
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:54,520
she yelled at my dad
that the thief is back.

640
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:58,400
I lost around 20
something kilos in 3 weeks,

641
00:44:58,480 --> 00:44:59,760
only because of the torture
and the investigation.

642
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:01,800
They kicked me in my feet,

643
00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:04,960
the first time
they put me on a chair,

644
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:09,880
an investigator picked me up
at 9 a.m. from Cluj,

645
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:14,080
he was a captain
from what I understood.

646
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,040
He tried hitting me
only in the stomach

647
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:20,400
even though he knew
I suffered from an ulcer,

648
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:29,440
but I don't know, he got very angry
as I wasn't the type to scream,

649
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:31,960
I didn't whine, I was resisting his kicks

650
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:36,520
and they tried to get me
on a chair with my knees

651
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:40,160
and he would only hit me
on the soles of my feet and on my hands.

652
00:45:40,240 --> 00:45:45,560
At 9 p.m. when he took me
to a cell in the basement

653
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:47,520
I couldn't even hold a cup
of water in my hands.

654
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:57,400
The security,
the armed party,

655
00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:01,040
became a vast supra-state organization

656
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:04,720
that had developed
a huge network of informants.

657
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:06,520
Security was everywhere

658
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:11,080
and they would exert a total control
over the entire population.

659
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:16,720
The regime's main weapon,

660
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:22,720
also known as the self-appointed

661
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:26,600
armed part of the party
itself was the Security.

662
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:32,720
Since its establishment in 1948
on the 30th of August through Decree 221,

663
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:37,920
the security has been defined as that
one institution who can defend the regime

664
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:40,320
from the popular democracy

665
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:44,600
against the enemies from within
and from the outside, by any means.

666
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:50,200
EGGS, SUGAR, OIL,
THEY'RE ALL RATIONALIZED!

667
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:05,840
I was in the 3rd shift
or 12 hours of nightshift,

668
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:08,640
he kids were playing outside,

669
00:47:08,720 --> 00:47:11,320
it didn't matter:
"Dad, to they give something there?"

670
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,320
One of the kids waited in line,
go quick and take something.

671
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:16,560
"What were they giving away?"
"I don't know, but it must be something."

672
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:18,760
The fridges were usually empty.

673
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:22,640
And if you were going...
you guys are young, you don't know,

674
00:47:22,720 --> 00:47:26,960
you could've went to a market shop
without waiting in a line.

675
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:29,440
You wouldn't find anything else besides
corn shrimps or I don't know what.

676
00:47:30,720 --> 00:47:33,000
Towards the end of the communist era,

677
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,840
the increasing inefficiency
of the centralized economy

678
00:47:37,720 --> 00:47:40,640
and Nicolae Ceauşescu's
absurd ambition

679
00:47:41,240 --> 00:47:45,240
to pay Romania's external debt
quickly and fully

680
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:50,120
led to an unimaginable deterioration
in the standard of living.

681
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:54,480
Necessary food was missing,

682
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:56,960
the rationalizations had begun

683
00:47:57,040 --> 00:47:59,920
and the waiting lines
were bigger and longer.

684
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:02,000
Food was missing,

685
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:06,000
the bread was rationalized,
we had half of a loaf of bread per day,

686
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:10,720
4 eggs I remember up until this day,
4 eggs per month.

687
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:14,120
Half a packet of butter per week

688
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:18,320
and a kilo of meat three times per year,

689
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:21,960
during new year's, on the
23rd of August and on the 1st of May.

690
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:26,640
{\an8}Every time I met
with one of my friends

691
00:48:26,720 --> 00:48:30,960
we never asked each other if we have
time for soccer or some tennis,

692
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:32,640
he would ask me what's
new at the market shop.

693
00:48:32,720 --> 00:48:35,640
He'd tell me that his
mother is going to kill him

694
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,160
for not buying bread, cheese or chicken,

695
00:48:38,240 --> 00:48:41,600
the chicken back then was very rare,
the waiting lines were extremely long

696
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:43,240
and everybody
was curious what's new.

697
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:45,800
{\an8}It was considered a humiliation

698
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:53,040
to carry a bottle around in order to fill
it up with a couple hundred grams of oil,

699
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:58,800
to take a half or
three quarters of butter

700
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:05,120
and other ingredients
who might have been rationalized.

701
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:27,280
I was a mother

702
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:31,240
and a professional during the 80s,

703
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:35,680
and the waiting lines
were part of our daily lives,

704
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:39,640
even waiting in line at 4 a.m.

705
00:49:39,720 --> 00:49:45,360
or on the route back home from work.

706
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:49,960
I kept the habit of having two bags
which me at all times up until 2000.

707
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:20,920
The entire Romanian society was weakened.

708
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:25,440
Even the members of the party
did not possess personal fortunes

709
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:27,760
and if they did,
they tried to hide them.

710
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:31,680
They would benefit from
the positions they occupied,

711
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,640
but when they lost it,
they lost the benefits as well.

712
00:50:34,720 --> 00:50:36,760
This way they were being
controlled by the system.

713
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:40,960
Gradually, all food goods
started disappearing

714
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:45,440
from the majorities of the shops
around the country.

715
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,240
This food crisis

716
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:54,640
would reach its peak in the late 80s.

717
00:50:56,440 --> 00:51:00,400
The food ingredients
were drastically rationalized,

718
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:07,040
especially the commodities
produced here in Romania,

719
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:12,080
because as everyone knows,
they were destined to be exported.

720
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:19,440
DEATH COMES THROUGH THE HEATING SYSTEM!

721
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:21,680
I had a car

722
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:26,040
and in the evening I would take the
storage battery and bring it in the house,

723
00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:28,000
I already had a wire
connection with lights

724
00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:31,240
so that my children could do
their homework in their own rooms.

725
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:33,960
From the basement
and until the 6th floor,

726
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:36,200
I would carry
buckets filled with water

727
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:40,440
because we were 4 people we needed
enough for cooking and washing ourselves

728
00:51:40,520 --> 00:51:43,880
We always had a 60 liters bucket
full of water in the house.

729
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:47,920
The power outage would turn itself
off automatically at a planned time

730
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:51,040
we had a truck battery

731
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:56,040
that we used to tie
to a bulb so we can gain

732
00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:58,440
a minimum light source in the house,

733
00:51:58,520 --> 00:52:01,320
there were very many restrictions.

734
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:02,880
Another humiliation.

735
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:08,960
Leaving work and coming home,

736
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:12,440
the people who lived in flats

737
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:15,720
had to go in blind
in climbing the stairs

738
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:20,240
if we didn't have a flashlight.

739
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:28,520
It was cold in the house as we were
depending upon central heating

740
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:31,960
and in this situation,
that didn't work.

741
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:38,760
The only heating method
remained the stove.

742
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:43,880
As you couldn't listen to any radio

743
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:46,560
as you couldn't
listen to any radio.

744
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:50,480
And every other activity
was being shut down,

745
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:56,640
a lady once told me about it
and we were laughing

746
00:52:56,720 --> 00:52:59,320
even though it's very sad.
She had an electric stove

747
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:06,320
and she would always schedule her
cooking so she could be finished on time.

748
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:09,800
That day, something might have
happened and she couldn't make it,

749
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:13,360
and without knowing
when the light would be on,

750
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:15,280
she left the radio open.

751
00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:20,120
And when the light came back on,
the song "Ode to Joy" was playing.

752
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:26,760
Romania's population was always
put second by the system,

753
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:33,280
regarding its decent living lifestyle
as well as its wellbeing.

754
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:39,120
The man was
not looked at as a human,

755
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:44,040
rather as how many hours
he was capable of working,

756
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:49,720
that's what mattered back then,
his working capacity and nothing else.

757
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:54,160
Electricity and fuel savings

758
00:53:54,240 --> 00:53:57,960
brought darkness
and cold to homes.

759
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:02,480
A bleak,
end-of-the-world atmosphere

760
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:05,720
marked the last decade
of the communist regime.

761
00:54:08,720 --> 00:54:15,720
TV MAKES YOU DUMB!

762
00:54:16,920 --> 00:54:20,440
Should I tell you about the TV
which was only on for two hours?

763
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:27,280
Or about the radios
which were only full of praise

764
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:29,520
regarding Ceauşescu and the regime?

765
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:31,520
It was horrible.

766
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:35,960
We had a saying back then,
we kept thinking that

767
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:41,360
we were afraid to open up a can
without hearing Ceauşescu.

768
00:54:41,440 --> 00:54:45,600
We perceived
the communist propaganda

769
00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:49,360
as the ongoing
voice of Ceauşescu,

770
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:52,840
because you would turn
on your TV at 8 p.m.

771
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:55,600
and there was Ceauşescu
for about an hour.

772
00:54:55,680 --> 00:55:00,040
You would turn on
the radio and hear him,

773
00:55:00,120 --> 00:55:04,280
read a newspaper and
there he was on the first page,

774
00:55:04,360 --> 00:55:09,320
you would open up a textbook and
he was always placed on the first page.

775
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:10,680
We wanted to communicate,

776
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:14,160
the theatre wanted
to communicate something else

777
00:55:14,240 --> 00:55:19,400
rather than the false reality
we've seen on TV

778
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,760
or heard on the radio
or in "The Spark" newspaper.

779
00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:26,480
We can never forget
that the forms of repression

780
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:28,400
existed during the communism.

781
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:32,200
Sometimes it was violent,
whilst sometimes it was level-headed.

782
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:36,760
Censorship existed,
the freedom of speech existed,

783
00:55:36,840 --> 00:55:38,600
and it was ruled
fragrantly against it.

784
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:41,160
These are things
we have to convict, not accept.

785
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:48,000
FROM SCYTHE TO IMGB!

786
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:51,840
In the belief that I have formed myself
at the countryside,

787
00:55:55,200 --> 00:56:02,080
the rural environment for the population
of Romania was fundamental

788
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:09,360
because there was not only
eternity born there, as Lucian Blaga says,

789
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:12,280
but common sense as well.

790
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:18,520
A relationship with
Divinity was born there,

791
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:21,240
as I call it, God was
a part of the family

792
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:24,800
and the relationship with Divinity

793
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:29,880
puts the man
in a state of restraint.

794
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:33,720
If this relationship is broken

795
00:56:34,320 --> 00:56:35,920
and the city breaks it

796
00:56:36,680 --> 00:56:42,360
due to the city's life
being more permissive

797
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:45,560
regarding the alienation of man

798
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:51,840
for a sense of freedom,

799
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:54,760
an irrational freedom
which lies inside the man.

800
00:56:54,840 --> 00:56:58,520
This didn't happen in the village,
the village controlled these things,

801
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:01,280
if a child did a bad thing
and someone saw him,

802
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:03,480
he was always asked:
"Who do you belong to?"

803
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:05,200
"Does your dad know what you do?"

804
00:57:05,680 --> 00:57:06,840
Since everyone
wants to move into the city,

805
00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:09,720
you don't have people
working in agriculture anymore.

806
00:57:10,080 --> 00:57:13,560
But there are a few elements which bind
us all together, it's not that bad.

807
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:19,600
We got to see things as they are.

808
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:22,720
I think the Romanian society is going
through a social depression

809
00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:26,440
but I believe there are
enough resources

810
00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:29,640
as we are a country with a population
of approximately 20 million,

811
00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:31,800
plus or minus taking into consideration
people who left the country.

812
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:34,600
There are enough resources

813
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:39,880
to recharge a certain type of life hope.

814
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:44,440
The growing children needed food

815
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:48,560
high in protein and carbs.

816
00:57:48,640 --> 00:57:53,080
You saw children who were not being fed

817
00:57:54,800 --> 00:57:59,680
properly every day.

818
00:57:59,960 --> 00:58:04,080
They were
undernourished sometimes.

819
00:58:04,280 --> 00:58:09,000
In any case, there were obvious
deficiencies in their diet.

820
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:12,200
It was a planned poverty

821
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:15,600
because wealth
was considered to be

822
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:21,960
unacceptable from the point of view
of the ruling (egalitare) ideology.

823
00:58:22,040 --> 00:58:28,800
But what happened in the 80s was the
result of a political management failure.

824
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:34,680
An increase in
infantile mortality was inevitable.

825
00:58:36,800 --> 00:58:38,560
Unhealthy conditions.

826
00:58:40,200 --> 00:58:42,560
The power outage was interrupted.

827
00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:45,360
Can you imagine that
those people had no heat

828
00:58:45,600 --> 00:58:48,960
no electricity,
they couldn't do anything.

829
00:58:49,320 --> 00:58:54,440
Several times, their children
were left feeling cold and hungry.

830
00:58:56,400 --> 00:58:57,840
Precarity.

831
00:58:57,920 --> 00:58:59,840
Institutionalized fear.

832
00:59:00,280 --> 00:59:02,600
Lack of hope.

833
00:59:03,040 --> 00:59:06,080
Isolation.
Cultural constrains.

834
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:10,800
Are the unforgettable problems
of the communist period.

835
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:13,080
IS TODAY BETTER?

836
00:59:13,160 --> 00:59:16,360
<i>He's in me, he's in you,</i>
<i>he's in blocks and factories,</i>

837
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:19,720
<i>Everyone carries him today.</i>

838
00:59:22,200 --> 00:59:24,640
<i>Ceauşescu never dies.</i>

839
00:59:26,640 --> 00:59:29,000
<i>Ceauşescu didn't die,</i>

840
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:31,880
<i>The history tricked us,</i>

841
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:38,120
<i>His tongue of wood is walking slowly</i>
<i>through our own.</i>

842
00:59:42,400 --> 00:59:45,320
<i>Ceauşescu didn't die.</i>

843
01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:06,320
THE LAND OF ABSURDITY NO.1
HOW MANY RICH AND HOW MANY POOR?

844
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:09,520
In the last 20 years,

845
01:00:09,600 --> 01:00:14,840
Romania is living a risky development

846
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:19,040
a small number of people

847
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:25,240
can have access to resources
and great fortunes.

848
01:00:25,320 --> 01:00:28,400
Meaning that the greatest
fortune of this country

849
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:32,120
is reduced and controlled by a very small
number of the entire population.

850
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:37,200
Yes, for thieves,
we have a saying,

851
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:42,800
"The one who works and struggles
is either stupid or can't think."

852
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:46,160
What's concerning is that

853
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:49,640
the wealthy people of our country
are involved with politics,

854
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:57,840
not only the entrepreneurs.

855
01:00:57,920 --> 01:01:02,560
The ones with their own society, the ones
who did something, the private ones.

856
01:01:02,640 --> 01:01:08,760
Sure, the society is divided
between the rich and the poor.

857
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:13,640
And there's also
a parallel society, to paraphrase,

858
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:19,880
where the rich have their own spot,

859
01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:21,560
their own connections.

860
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:25,920
They help each other only by
passing a certain standard of wealth.

861
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:33,240
I don't want to label everyone

862
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:39,840
but the society is formed out of
two categories: the rich and the poor.

863
01:01:39,920 --> 01:01:42,680
The situation in post-communist Romania

864
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:47,360
is far from the hopes of December 1989.

865
01:01:48,400 --> 01:01:50,880
The political leaders of the transitions,

866
01:01:50,960 --> 01:01:55,360
a great part of them coming from
the 2nd echelon of the communists.

867
01:01:55,440 --> 01:01:57,760
And the former political police,

868
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:01,640
are the great beneficiaries
of this troubled period.

869
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:03,040
On the other hand,

870
01:02:04,680 --> 01:02:09,640
a huge number of this population
has no access to minimal resources.

871
01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:13,640
And that has a lot to do
with the tax-method.

872
01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:16,400
Everyone has been
threatening us for a long time

873
01:02:16,480 --> 01:02:23,360
that labor being taxed more

874
01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:24,920
than the capital is not normal.

875
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:26,320
Meaning that wealth is not taxed.

876
01:02:26,880 --> 01:02:31,640
Meaning that international
transactions are rarely taxed

877
01:02:32,040 --> 01:02:37,320
and the poor are more taxed than the rich.

878
01:02:37,720 --> 01:02:40,240
{\an8}(Economist): Ion Ţiriac,
for example, who is very rich

879
01:02:40,320 --> 01:02:43,680
{\an8}cannot eat 1000 times more
than a regular person.

880
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:50,200
Meaning that for a man
with a 1000 LEI salary,

881
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:53,280
100 LEI will matter a lot more

882
01:02:53,360 --> 01:02:56,680
than 1000 LEI for a man
with a 10.000 LEI salary.

883
01:02:57,160 --> 01:03:02,160
{\an8}THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT IS BEING CRASHED

884
01:03:05,480 --> 01:03:08,200
{\an8}Give it to them, can't you hear?

885
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:11,280
{\an8}(Reporter): No one left empty handed
from Becali's yard.

886
01:03:11,360 --> 01:03:16,080
{\an8}80.000 LEI, almost 20.000 Euro
the carol singers have received.

887
01:03:16,160 --> 01:03:17,920
{\an8}I will stay here

888
01:03:18,280 --> 01:03:22,000
{\an8}and they will leave when they will see
that the money are on the other side.

889
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:25,640
It's hard to find a job nowadays.

890
01:03:25,720 --> 01:03:28,520
You graduate college

891
01:03:28,600 --> 01:03:33,680
and you go into a work place.

892
01:03:33,760 --> 01:03:35,480
They will ask for experience.

893
01:03:35,560 --> 01:03:37,040
Experience from where?

894
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:38,680
He just graduated

895
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:43,400
how could've he gained experience
in the work he's about to do?

896
01:03:43,480 --> 01:03:47,960
At this time, living in this historical

897
01:03:48,040 --> 01:03:51,040
Romanian loop after December 1989,

898
01:03:51,640 --> 01:03:54,160
we have a big labor crisis.

899
01:03:54,240 --> 01:03:58,040
We don't have enough jobs
to equal the labor crisis.

900
01:03:59,160 --> 01:04:04,080
With 20% of the population
of Romania leaving,

901
01:04:04,160 --> 01:04:08,400
particularly the young
or the actively mature ones,

902
01:04:08,480 --> 01:04:13,400
we were left with no people
to work in multiple domains.

903
01:04:13,880 --> 01:04:15,320
For millions of people

904
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:19,840
another period
lacking hope came after them.

905
01:04:20,240 --> 01:04:22,120
A lot of people emigrated.

906
01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:24,200
And for those left behind,

907
01:04:24,280 --> 01:04:30,280
finding a job without connections
became a huge problem.

908
01:04:31,600 --> 01:04:36,360
This whole transition
produced a lot of inequalities,

909
01:04:36,440 --> 01:04:37,720
a lot of problems.

910
01:04:38,160 --> 01:04:40,560
An unprecedented social polarization;

911
01:04:40,640 --> 01:04:42,800
we've had a previous one
during the inter-war period.

912
01:04:43,800 --> 01:04:47,680
On the medium and long-term,
this is very dangerous for us

913
01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:52,920
as we transform our society
into a sort of levelled one

914
01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:54,360
with multiple levels.

915
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:57,120
And it's very hard to go from
a poor class to a richer one.

916
01:05:02,560 --> 01:05:08,960
THE LAND OF ABSURDITY NO.2
IF YOU ARE RICH, THE LAW PROTECTS YOU!

917
01:05:09,040 --> 01:05:11,920
Especially in the first
period of the transition,

918
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:20,440
it was a bigger tolerance when it
came to violation of the law.

919
01:05:22,000 --> 01:05:23,840
I will give you an example.

920
01:05:26,920 --> 01:05:30,840
We all know that,
during the transition period,

921
01:05:30,920 --> 01:05:35,080
a lot of illegalities took place.

922
01:05:37,560 --> 01:05:40,760
The human is a sociable being.

923
01:05:41,680 --> 01:05:43,720
In order to thrive,

924
01:05:43,800 --> 01:05:48,800
A society should have a strict system
of rules and principles.

925
01:05:49,440 --> 01:05:51,320
If this system is missing

926
01:05:51,400 --> 01:05:55,160
or it's applied incorrectly

927
01:05:55,240 --> 01:06:01,400
there will be a free way for
illegalities, abuse and inequities

928
01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:05,240
that society is closer than ever

929
01:06:05,320 --> 01:06:09,240
from a survival one.

930
01:06:09,320 --> 01:06:11,200
The freedom of the Revolutions

931
01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:15,160
always

932
01:06:17,360 --> 01:06:18,360
into

933
01:06:19,960 --> 01:06:22,640
the exact opposite.

934
01:06:24,160 --> 01:06:27,080
Freud said the masses never

935
01:06:27,160 --> 01:06:30,520
never fight for justice and for truth.

936
01:06:31,600 --> 01:06:34,480
They fight only for
their unsatisfied ambitions.

937
01:06:35,640 --> 01:06:37,600
It was the same in Romania.

938
01:06:37,680 --> 01:06:39,600
We couldn't find meat,

939
01:06:39,680 --> 01:06:42,240
we ate soy salami,

940
01:06:42,320 --> 01:06:46,720
now we ate only soy and it's bad
because it's genetically modified.

941
01:06:47,720 --> 01:06:50,480
THE LAND OF ABSURDITY NO.3
SUCKERS AND SLICKERS

942
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:53,760
<i>The suckers sleep</i>

943
01:06:53,840 --> 01:06:59,200
<i>While the slickers make the money</i>

944
01:06:59,280 --> 01:07:03,640
<i>The suckers sleep</i>

945
01:07:03,720 --> 01:07:09,520
<i>While the slickers make the money</i>

946
01:07:09,840 --> 01:07:15,320
I think the conscious of
the people need to change

947
01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:16,600
because,

948
01:07:17,720 --> 01:07:19,320
In my opinion,

949
01:07:19,800 --> 01:07:25,000
we all have this conception

950
01:07:25,120 --> 01:07:29,560
that we deserve it all,
but without any effort.

951
01:07:29,640 --> 01:07:33,400
We need a reality check to realize

952
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:36,960
that we also need to move a muscle

953
01:07:37,040 --> 01:07:41,400
if we want to have a decent living.

954
01:07:41,480 --> 01:07:46,480
We had a saying
during the communist era,

955
01:07:46,560 --> 01:07:50,120
that still applies nowadays
and it goes like this:

956
01:07:50,200 --> 01:07:55,080
The law is a fence that the mastiff jump

957
01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:59,720
in front of which the bullocks stop,
and under which the puppies pass.

958
01:07:59,800 --> 01:08:03,360
So the suckers would be
the bullocks in relation with the law.

959
01:08:03,440 --> 01:08:06,880
The world is composed
by a bunch of bullocks

960
01:08:06,960 --> 01:08:09,640
who want to play by the rules.

961
01:08:09,720 --> 01:08:15,360
And this would be us, the losers
of a bad implemented system.

962
01:08:20,800 --> 01:08:25,480
The little thieves
try to blend with the bigger ones,

963
01:08:25,560 --> 01:08:30,720
And the mastiffs who can
also change the law

964
01:08:31,640 --> 01:08:36,000
to be in the benefit
of their fortunes.

965
01:08:36,480 --> 01:08:39,080
So, in the near future,
we should expect

966
01:08:39,400 --> 01:08:42,040
some very bad and serious
social convulsion

967
01:08:42,520 --> 01:08:46,720
We should not forget that
the majority of revolutions, civil wars

968
01:08:46,800 --> 01:08:51,720
and other social problems appeared
because of this huge inequalities.

969
01:08:51,800 --> 01:08:53,720
Do we want a society like this?
I don't think so.

970
01:08:53,800 --> 01:08:56,040
<i>Put your hand in the pocket</i>

971
01:08:56,120 --> 01:08:58,440
<i>The girls want you to be a bachelor.</i>

972
01:08:58,520 --> 01:09:00,800
<i>The policemen want you</i>
<i>in the law court</i>

973
01:09:00,880 --> 01:09:02,120
<i>But the truth is that</i>

974
01:09:02,200 --> 01:09:06,000
<i>The suckers are sleeping</i>

975
01:09:06,560 --> 01:09:11,520
<i>While the slicks are making money</i>

976
01:09:12,680 --> 01:09:17,360
WHO AM I GOING TO VOTE?

977
01:09:19,320 --> 01:09:20,400
Deceived? Yes.

978
01:09:20,840 --> 01:09:23,080
Fooled? Many times.

979
01:09:24,760 --> 01:09:26,320
People and their promises.

980
01:09:27,200 --> 01:09:31,560
I do my job,

981
01:09:31,640 --> 01:09:36,520
we agree on a certain
amount of money

982
01:09:36,600 --> 01:09:39,040
and the problems arouse.

983
01:09:39,960 --> 01:09:41,240
More and more often.

984
01:09:41,720 --> 01:09:47,520
Because all the political parties
that were in charge till now

985
01:09:47,600 --> 01:09:49,080
were a big disappointment.

986
01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:56,280
They didn't care about the country at all.

987
01:09:56,800 --> 01:10:01,000
Their main desire

988
01:10:01,080 --> 01:10:05,200
wasn't to fight for this country

989
01:10:05,560 --> 01:10:08,280
but they only cared
about themselves.

990
01:10:08,360 --> 01:10:13,280
They modified the laws in their favor.

991
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:17,520
The fundamental difference
between bad and good,

992
01:10:17,600 --> 01:10:19,800
between legal and illegal,

993
01:10:20,320 --> 01:10:22,840
was turned by the ones
who took advantage of the transition.

994
01:10:23,320 --> 01:10:26,040
Into the difference
between sucker and slickers.

995
01:10:26,800 --> 01:10:28,920
There's no shame in stealing.

996
01:10:29,000 --> 01:10:32,040
More important is how
and how much do you steal.

997
01:10:32,120 --> 01:10:34,960
If you steal by yourself
and also a little, you're dumb.

998
01:10:35,040 --> 01:10:36,920
And you will also receive
many years of prison.

999
01:10:37,000 --> 01:10:41,560
If you plan to steal with a group
and having a political protection,

1000
01:10:41,640 --> 01:10:45,520
you're a slick, you get respected
and even envied.

1001
01:10:46,160 --> 01:10:51,680
The solidarity weakened
thanks to the transition.

1002
01:10:52,240 --> 01:10:58,320
In my opinion, it was
a priority privatization

1003
01:10:58,920 --> 01:11:03,320
without any plan
for a better living

1004
01:11:03,640 --> 01:11:06,600
And of course,
this way of thinking

1005
01:11:06,680 --> 01:11:11,600
has generated a rupture
between individuals

1006
01:11:12,160 --> 01:11:18,200
and the promotion of selfishness

1007
01:11:18,320 --> 01:11:20,960
and the fight for survival.

1008
01:11:21,040 --> 01:11:24,200
We created a new society,
because we had to,

1009
01:11:24,280 --> 01:11:27,840
But we didn't pay attention
to the moral effects.

1010
01:11:28,880 --> 01:11:33,800
The evolution of capitalism
should also mean a better way of living.

1011
01:11:33,880 --> 01:11:40,600
But on the other hand,
capitalism is intrinsic and unstable.

1012
01:11:40,680 --> 01:11:43,040
That keeps people

1013
01:11:43,120 --> 01:11:48,680
on a floating line of survival.

1014
01:11:50,440 --> 01:11:53,600
And it comes to the need
of compensation.

1015
01:11:54,040 --> 01:11:57,640
That is not given

1016
01:11:58,960 --> 01:12:03,880
by the means
of stimulating the laziness.

1017
01:12:04,360 --> 01:12:07,720
It's more like a technical stuff

1018
01:12:07,800 --> 01:12:11,440
that has to do with
the well function of an economy.

1019
01:12:11,520 --> 01:12:17,200
A proper economy can't function
if what is produced is not bought.

1020
01:12:17,480 --> 01:12:23,520
This political class doesn't represent
anymore the needs of the people.

1021
01:12:24,200 --> 01:12:25,520
What we see,

1022
01:12:26,640 --> 01:12:33,200
the way some laws are approved

1023
01:12:33,280 --> 01:12:38,880
proves us that worldwide,
in the last 20 years,

1024
01:12:39,200 --> 01:12:45,400
there's this trend worldwide

1025
01:12:46,600 --> 01:12:51,440
of voting laws in the
favour of some groups,

1026
01:12:52,320 --> 01:12:55,640
and in the expense of the masses.

1027
01:12:55,720 --> 01:12:59,240
But let's talk about
nowadays society

1028
01:13:01,280 --> 01:13:03,520
doesn't give you

1029
01:13:04,960 --> 01:13:09,920
the possibility of cultural developing.

1030
01:13:10,000 --> 01:13:12,760
It's not a priority anymore.

1031
01:13:13,080 --> 01:13:15,960
Now there are only two priorities:

1032
01:13:16,040 --> 01:13:19,520
mastering the means of production

1033
01:13:19,600 --> 01:13:21,560
and having the political power.

1034
01:13:21,640 --> 01:13:24,120
That's what Marx said
and it's still applicable.

1035
01:13:24,200 --> 01:13:25,720
What's going on now?

1036
01:13:26,840 --> 01:13:31,280
People thought we will have
a new way of structure

1037
01:13:31,360 --> 01:13:35,920
where we can make
our own decisions.

1038
01:13:36,720 --> 01:13:38,760
But we see

1039
01:13:38,840 --> 01:13:43,920
that some external factors
have a bigger role.

1040
01:13:44,360 --> 01:13:49,640
And now we have a process
of constant changing

1041
01:13:49,800 --> 01:13:51,800
The change was absolutely necessary.

1042
01:13:52,160 --> 01:13:53,920
But it was a little confusing

1043
01:13:54,200 --> 01:13:59,400
and the people had to suffer for that.

1044
01:13:59,960 --> 01:14:03,080
And I will give you
a very interesting example:

1045
01:14:05,000 --> 01:14:06,880
We usually wonder if

1046
01:14:07,000 --> 01:14:09,960
people think

1047
01:14:10,040 --> 01:14:14,120
that this transition
process was good or bad.

1048
01:14:15,480 --> 01:14:20,440
And as we always do opinion polls

1049
01:14:20,520 --> 01:14:23,600
the results are shocking:

1050
01:14:23,800 --> 01:14:28,480
70-80% of the people think

1051
01:14:28,560 --> 01:14:32,560
that the direction we are heading is bad.

1052
01:14:33,040 --> 01:14:34,440
So this three principle:

1053
01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:39,360
Freedom, Equality and Fraternity

1054
01:14:40,360 --> 01:14:43,880
can't be understood
till this very day.

1055
01:14:44,520 --> 01:14:49,960
Because the freedom is the
sovereignty over himself.

1056
01:14:52,240 --> 01:14:57,400
When man is sovereign over
himself, then he is free.

1057
01:14:57,480 --> 01:15:02,880
Because that's when he understands
that he will never be free.

1058
01:15:03,120 --> 01:15:07,800
If more sovereignties gather,

1059
01:15:08,160 --> 01:15:11,600
they can form a state.

1060
01:15:13,640 --> 01:15:15,920
A free nation.

1061
01:15:16,720 --> 01:15:20,160
But each one has to give up
a little of their sovereignty

1062
01:15:20,240 --> 01:15:23,240
to form the universal law,

1063
01:15:23,320 --> 01:15:27,320
and each one
gives up an equal part.

1064
01:15:28,440 --> 01:15:32,320
So, a free and equal state,

1065
01:15:32,400 --> 01:15:36,880
has to take care of everyone,

1066
01:15:36,960 --> 01:15:40,640
and everyone should
take care of the state.

1067
01:15:40,720 --> 01:15:43,120
This is fraternity.

1068
01:15:43,680 --> 01:15:49,120
None of this revolution principles
are applicable today.

1069
01:15:49,880 --> 01:15:56,800
None of them, even they are
the basic principles of democracy.

1070
01:15:57,240 --> 01:16:02,280
And our nowadays
economical systems

1071
01:16:02,360 --> 01:16:05,800
militates for
the perfect human being.

1072
01:16:06,040 --> 01:16:09,360
Sure, this is also an hypocrisy.

1073
01:16:09,440 --> 01:16:15,520
But this economical system
produces a lot of inequalities

1074
01:16:16,920 --> 01:16:19,120
between countries
and in each of them.

1075
01:16:19,640 --> 01:16:25,600
Giving prosperity
only for a few people.

1076
01:16:26,200 --> 01:16:32,960
And it also puts an accent
on individualism.

1077
01:16:33,040 --> 01:16:35,760
Solidarity weakened.

1078
01:16:36,160 --> 01:16:39,040
We have a huge problem with solidarity.

1079
01:16:39,120 --> 01:16:45,960
It's very hard to find
a common cause to become solidary.

1080
01:16:46,840 --> 01:16:49,240
We have different interests.

1081
01:16:50,320 --> 01:16:54,880
The "Elite" doesn't care

1082
01:16:54,960 --> 01:17:00,520
about people's basic needs.

1083
01:17:01,200 --> 01:17:06,400
And a vast majority
of the poor feel abandoned.

1084
01:17:07,040 --> 01:17:12,280
FROM THE 5TH DAY OF THE MONTH,
THE MEDICAL TESTS ARE NOT REDDEMED.

1085
01:17:12,360 --> 01:17:17,920
The access to health was bad
before and it's the same now,

1086
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:20,280
but from different reasons.

1087
01:17:20,680 --> 01:17:26,400
Before, it was a so called "free access".

1088
01:17:26,800 --> 01:17:31,160
But the problem was
a sociological one.

1089
01:17:31,360 --> 01:17:36,280
Because we don't know how
to distribute the reality.

1090
01:17:36,360 --> 01:17:41,120
The socialist system didn't knew
how to distribute the reality.

1091
01:17:41,480 --> 01:17:45,360
A lot of goods became rare.

1092
01:17:45,560 --> 01:17:50,040
You go to the store and
you don't find what you need.

1093
01:17:50,480 --> 01:17:53,920
How do you obtain it?
With intercessions.

1094
01:17:54,680 --> 01:18:01,000
A new cost appeared.
It was the same for the medical system.

1095
01:18:01,920 --> 01:18:06,120
If you want better medical services,

1096
01:18:06,200 --> 01:18:09,840
you have to give bribe.

1097
01:18:10,320 --> 01:18:13,880
It's the reality.

1098
01:18:14,280 --> 01:18:18,520
Drugs are rare
and hard to obtain.

1099
01:18:19,000 --> 01:18:22,160
There are numerous situations when

1100
01:18:22,680 --> 01:18:29,520
I couldn't give
the proper treatments,

1101
01:18:30,720 --> 01:18:35,200
There were multiple times
when I was forced

1102
01:18:35,800 --> 01:18:39,480
to give less pills and treatments

1103
01:18:40,000 --> 01:18:42,440
knowing the consequences.

1104
01:18:43,280 --> 01:18:47,280
That's not going
to be fixed soon.

1105
01:18:47,720 --> 01:18:53,720
I don't have any faith
that things will get better soon.

1106
01:18:54,960 --> 01:19:00,200
Now, the reality is the same
in the medical system.

1107
01:19:00,560 --> 01:19:05,560
Sure, you have the possibility
to buy many drugs,

1108
01:19:05,640 --> 01:19:10,040
of high quality.

1109
01:19:10,480 --> 01:19:13,480
But the people don't have
enough money to buy them.

1110
01:19:13,680 --> 01:19:19,320
And it can be solved with money

1111
01:19:19,760 --> 01:19:24,040
But the nowadays political system

1112
01:19:24,120 --> 01:19:28,600
is disastrous for the people.

1113
01:19:28,960 --> 01:19:31,520
How can you be ok
with the fact that

1114
01:19:31,600 --> 01:19:36,400
some doctors haw a lower
income than the door man?

1115
01:19:36,880 --> 01:19:42,240
EDUCATION IS ON THE GROUND

1116
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:44,360
Bad, very bad.

1117
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:47,120
Education is very bad.

1118
01:19:47,200 --> 01:19:51,360
I mean, they only care

1119
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:56,480
about the presence or the absence.

1120
01:19:56,800 --> 01:20:01,240
{\an8}(Educational expert): Firstly,
the young are very opened for the new.

1121
01:20:01,320 --> 01:20:06,800
More precisely, if they want
to go to a university abroad

1122
01:20:06,880 --> 01:20:12,400
they need a lot of courage
and they are also very curious.

1123
01:20:12,760 --> 01:20:19,720
The nowadays educational
system it's not a proper one.

1124
01:20:21,800 --> 01:20:27,720
There are a lot of things missing
from the Romanian educational system.

1125
01:20:27,920 --> 01:20:32,640
It doesn't have a perspective.

1126
01:20:32,720 --> 01:20:39,720
The students don't have a perspective for
the future through what they are studying.

1127
01:20:39,800 --> 01:20:45,120
What should he do in the future.

1128
01:20:45,640 --> 01:20:48,720
I think no one is concerned about this.

1129
01:20:49,200 --> 01:20:54,720
There are graduates
who are still looking for a job.

1130
01:20:54,800 --> 01:21:00,680
We forget that the education
should be free

1131
01:21:00,760 --> 01:21:02,720
and mandatory by law.

1132
01:21:02,800 --> 01:21:06,000
And every day there
is a new tax for education.

1133
01:21:06,640 --> 01:21:13,640
If we would want a private
educational and health system,

1134
01:21:14,280 --> 01:21:19,000
that would mean to ban the access
of a vast majority of population,

1135
01:21:19,080 --> 01:21:21,840
because of the lack of money.

1136
01:21:21,920 --> 01:21:26,680
Because more than a half of this country
lives at the edge of poverty.

1137
01:21:26,760 --> 01:21:31,200
And those kids will never
have access to education.

1138
01:21:32,040 --> 01:21:38,040
The young Romanians,
when they decide to leave abroad to study

1139
01:21:38,320 --> 01:21:43,000
keep in mind what is
the probability to get a job after.

1140
01:21:43,080 --> 01:21:49,000
And there is a vast majority
of jobs where they can chose.

1141
01:21:49,640 --> 01:21:53,560
Restructuring the educational system

1142
01:21:53,640 --> 01:22:00,080
involves a honest concern
regarding the future of the country.

1143
01:22:03,080 --> 01:22:07,320
One month of private kindergarten
has the same price

1144
01:22:07,400 --> 01:22:09,400
as one year of state university.

1145
01:22:10,120 --> 01:22:12,960
This tells us a lot.

1146
01:22:13,240 --> 01:22:19,800
One month of private
kindergarten is almost 200 Euro

1147
01:22:20,760 --> 01:22:26,880
And for a student at a state university,

1148
01:22:27,320 --> 01:22:33,080
the state gives almost 35.000 Lei,

1149
01:22:33,160 --> 01:22:38,800
around 700-800 Euro/year.

1150
01:22:39,360 --> 01:22:46,080
Just try to send your kid
to a summer camp.

1151
01:22:46,160 --> 01:22:50,280
Everything is measured by money.
Even the education.

1152
01:22:50,360 --> 01:22:54,800
If I would show you
the parents groups chat from school

1153
01:22:55,080 --> 01:22:59,040
99% is about money.
Education is only 1%.

1154
01:22:59,480 --> 01:23:04,120
The pressure of giving money is so high,

1155
01:23:04,200 --> 01:23:07,480
that the kid became a
good that needs money.

1156
01:23:08,360 --> 01:23:11,320
And we are all stressed
about the money.

1157
01:23:11,400 --> 01:23:15,760
During communism I was going
to camps in every summer.

1158
01:23:15,840 --> 01:23:21,480
My mom was a pharmacist
and my dad an economist.

1159
01:23:21,560 --> 01:23:24,040
They were simple people.

1160
01:23:24,280 --> 01:23:25,640
But we were five kids

1161
01:23:25,720 --> 01:23:28,760
and we would all
go to the summer camp.

1162
01:23:28,840 --> 01:23:34,120
And now I can hardly provide for a kid,
because the costs are very high.

1163
01:23:35,920 --> 01:23:38,480
<i>The history tricked us.</i>

1164
01:23:38,560 --> 01:23:44,240
<i>We are alive and dead.</i>

1165
01:23:49,120 --> 01:23:53,000
<i>We're all Ceauşescu.</i>

1166
01:23:55,720 --> 01:23:58,840
EPILOGUE

1167
01:24:00,280 --> 01:24:02,400
The nostalgic people
of the communist period

1168
01:24:02,800 --> 01:24:05,840
are in fact the non-ferocity
of the transition.

1169
01:24:08,760 --> 01:24:12,520
They seem to be somewhere
between two worlds:

1170
01:24:12,920 --> 01:24:16,040
The totalitarian one
and the democratic one.

1171
01:24:16,400 --> 01:24:19,800
From the totalitarian one
is the feeling of safety

1172
01:24:19,880 --> 01:24:23,520
of a calm and predictable life.

1173
01:24:23,600 --> 01:24:28,920
The memory of a wonderful
but utopic world,

1174
01:24:29,040 --> 01:24:32,600
promised by the communist propaganda.

1175
01:24:33,200 --> 01:24:34,920
And on top of that

1176
01:24:35,280 --> 01:24:40,480
is the lack of safety
over the original democracy.

1177
01:24:40,880 --> 01:24:43,440
As a sociologist, I blame the system.

1178
01:24:43,960 --> 01:24:49,320
A sociologist always looks for
the sources of the social system

1179
01:24:49,400 --> 01:24:55,240
which make an individual
to act in a certain way.

1180
01:24:55,320 --> 01:24:58,920
So yes, the solidarity has weakened

1181
01:24:59,160 --> 01:25:01,600
thanks to this transition.

1182
01:25:01,680 --> 01:25:03,560
Looks are always deceiving.

1183
01:25:04,000 --> 01:25:07,720
If the communist society,
the Romanian one,

1184
01:25:07,800 --> 01:25:12,320
that was different from
the Hungarian or the German one,

1185
01:25:12,400 --> 01:25:13,920
would have good results,

1186
01:25:14,000 --> 01:25:17,720
Ceuaşescu wouldn't be dead
because of a street manifestation.

1187
01:25:18,120 --> 01:25:24,400
A lot think that if he wouldn't give that
less food, that tragedy wouldn't happen.

1188
01:25:24,480 --> 01:25:27,480
That's not true.
That was part of the system's concept.

1189
01:25:27,560 --> 01:25:31,280
The system wasn't able to provide
a good living for everybody

1190
01:25:31,360 --> 01:25:34,560
but only an equality
on an inferior level.

1191
01:25:34,640 --> 01:25:37,440
They were all equal
or partially equal,

1192
01:25:37,520 --> 01:25:42,600
because the party members
had more privileges,

1193
01:25:42,680 --> 01:25:47,760
but they all had a single
or 2 room apartment,

1194
01:25:47,840 --> 01:25:50,720
some standard furniture
and a Dacia 1300.

1195
01:25:51,200 --> 01:25:55,680
Nostalgia is a general human reflex.

1196
01:25:55,960 --> 01:26:02,080
A protection inhibition
of the human brain.

1197
01:26:02,440 --> 01:26:09,240
A reflex that makes us
not to remember mostly the bad stuff.

1198
01:26:09,840 --> 01:26:16,400
Gradually, the memory
erases the bad memories

1199
01:26:16,640 --> 01:26:19,800
because otherwise
we would go nuts

1200
01:26:20,080 --> 01:26:25,560
if we could remember
all the bad stuff from our life.

1201
01:26:25,840 --> 01:26:32,680
So thanks to this reflex,
we will only remember

1202
01:26:33,360 --> 01:26:36,920
only the good stuff
from the communist period.

1203
01:26:37,400 --> 01:26:42,200
We forgot all the time
we've lost at the queues.

1204
01:26:42,280 --> 01:26:47,440
The humiliation
from the party meetings.

1205
01:26:47,520 --> 01:26:53,200
The humiliation we endured
then and we refused to realize.

1206
01:26:53,280 --> 01:26:59,120
To subdue us to some
truth we did not believe.

1207
01:26:59,720 --> 01:27:04,240
To do everything like the others,
to be humble.

1208
01:27:04,600 --> 01:27:08,720
So we can all say that The King
is dressed in jewels

1209
01:27:08,800 --> 01:27:11,840
and that we live in a Golden Age,
even if The King was naked.

1210
01:27:15,000 --> 01:27:20,000
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1211
01:27:21,305 --> 01:28:21,900
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