We didn’t live in Romania during that part of the country’s history mistakenly known as ‘the communist period’ (mistakenly because genuine communism demands progression towards an age of abundance: what went on here and elsewhere in the so-called communist world was anything but, and more akin to state fascism), and although we – like many other westerners – visited the country it was difficult – while sitting in a hotel in Poiana Brasov – to gauge in any real depth just how barely tolerable life was for ordinary people.
Even in hotels there were clues as to what life might be like of course: bland food, dreadful service, frequent power cuts and a general lack of colour, be it in peoples’ dress, in the hotel, in the resort, or anywhere; Romania before 1989 was a country in black and white. Occassional news reports in major newpapers hinted at the awfulness but were few and far between.
It’s only when you sit down and talk to people who lived their lives as best they could in the Romania of the late 1970s and 1980s that you realise how atrocious things really were. For most people, every day – and we mean every day – was a struggle to provide enough food for the family. In winter, apartments regularly went unheated. In his book Romania Observed, leading Romania-scholar Dennis Deletant claims that there were even reports of new born babies in incubators dying because their was no oil available for hospital electricity generators.
In short, Ceausescu’s Romania, from the mid-1970s onwards, was a land of complete and utter austerity.
Fom 1984 a state of emergency persisted in the energy sector. Homes were lit (when there was electricity at all) with 25 or 40 watt light bulbs: it was impossible to find anything stronger in the shops (although one western journalist – reviewing a book on life in Ceausescu’s Romania – and who visited Romania in 1985, recalls a Foreign Office official having 50 watt bulbs in his office).
As late as February 1991, 13 months after the revolution, finding decent light bulbs was still something of a trial for many Romanians, as this New York Times report revealed.
Note, however, that 75 and 100 watt lightbulbs were never actually banned in Romania: simply unavailable.
If Ceausescu had lived, even he would therefore have been amazed (and probably delighted) that the European Union has managed to outdo him. For as of September 1st, 2009, it is illegal for stores in the European Union to sell 100 watt light bulbs. Over the next two years, 75 watt and 40 watt bulbs will also be outlawed. The Orwellian reality that was Ceausescu’s Romania is alive and well and living in Brussels.
Indeed, it is both striking and genuinely scary just how many similarities there are between the kind of world the environmentalist movement wants to create and Ceausescu’s Romania. For the similarities do not end at top-down edicts on the use of lightbulbs.
Take the rationing of petrol and strict controls on the use of motor cars. Petrol was rationed from 1984 onwards, while there was a total ban from 1986 on driving on Sundays (really: you could not drive your car on almost all Sundays in Romania from 1986-1989).
If you look at the manifesto of a modern environmentalist group such as the United Kingdom’s Green Party, you will see that they propose something similar: carbon quotas for all men and women (although not children, note).
The quota (they refrain from using the word ‘ration’) would be needed ‘for all purchases of electricity (if not from a renewable source), air flights and direct purchase of fossil fuels including gas, coal, petrol, diesel and fuel oil. Consideration would be given to also including long distance train travel.’
‘Let’s bring back rationing,’ in other words.
And it get’s worse…
This document should scare the crap out of anyone. Here are some edited highlights:
- Parents may receive a lower allocation on behalf of their children.
Note use of the word ‘may’ as opposed to ‘will’.
- What would happen to a poor pensioner who ran out of units in mid-winter?
Quotas would be allocated monthly rather than annually to make budgeting easier. Pensioners would receive the same quotas as every other adult, but extra help could be given to them to make sure they can live comfortably within their allocation, such as grants for insulation and energy efficient appliances.
Basically, they admit that it will be up to people to manage their quoatas properly. And if you use your ration up, tough.
- One return trip to New York would require around two thirds of the initial annual allocation.
No more Disneyland holidays under the Greenies.
- The [quoata] would be successively reduced each year in line with targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
This is where the comparisons with Ceausescu’s Romania end.
For while the rationing of energy under Ceausescu was never meant to be more than a temporary measure while the economy recovered (it never did of course: only the revolution ended rationing), what radical environmentalists now propose would be forever, for life.
Environmentalism is a life sentence of austerity.
Transport of Romania's bleak past, and our green future
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About the environmantalist move: yes, I agree with Davin – it’s better to be safe than sorry. I don’t know if those radical measures are indicated but definetly we have to start from somewhere. For example the United Nations could oblige every country to plant a number of trees each year.
The problem is that the population numbers have gone up and there aren’t enough provisions to feed them. We have to strike a balance between agricultural land and forrest land and take measures to reduce the demographic growth where needed (China and India for example).
Steps have been taken with the introduction of low-pollution cars and fuels in Europe and personally I already changed the lamps around my house with led lamps or what they’re called (those small 60 Watt LEDs because I can’t call them bulbs…).
Plain Capitalist propaganda in those articles. It wasn’t near as hard as Western newspapers described.
The truth was expressed by Elena Ceausescu, a few hours before her execution: “nobody died of hunger Romania”.
The economy was planned and each year stocks of consumers’ goods were approved for consuming so as to be enough for 23 million people. If they reached the stores or were sold at the backdoor it makes no importance from an economical point of view because the Romanian currency had no value anyway, the Central Bank could issue as much as it needed without fear of inflation as you can not inflate something with nothing.
The country had 10 billion $ of debt out of which it managed to pay 50% (according to Western figures) or 100% according to our figures. But now we have 80 billion $ of debt that we won’t be able to pay not even until the end of the world. Is it better now?!
About the light bulbs, yes, I remember I was like 3 years old and I wanted to turn on the lights in the living room during daytime and my grandfather told me that we can’t do that because Ceausescu will be upset. But we didn’t need them, we had what we needed in order to live.
Obviously no Western newspaper can come and tell me how we lived back then, maybe it wasn’t as easy as it is today but for once in history we had goals, we had ambitions, we weren’t a tolerated country anymore as we are today. We made sacrifices for Ceausescu and we were proud of it, we knew that he wanted the country to progress and we trusted him.
Ask the Germans how we fought in Stalingrad in WWII as we barely had any equipment, ask them how the Russians concentrated tanks in the sectors occupied by Romanians because they knew we didn’t have what to fight with. What kind of country was that?! Ceausescu came and took us out of misery and instead of gratitude we killed him on Christmas day. This land will be cursed forever.
Craig,
I see you have been going through the NY Times’ archive! I did that a while back too. The reports really give one a perspective on how bad it was here and it is much easier to see why Bucharest is the way it is today after reading them. If cars were banned in the winter and on sundays and Dacia 1310s at that, no wonder the city’s population has been been on a buying spree for BMWs and Mercedes and the like and no wonder the fitze love flashing them so much. No wonder people seem so high on life with the new consumer culture here. I mean I knew all this, but to read the 1980s accounts is harrowing. I am not sure you can equate Ceausecu’s austerity program with the environmental movement though. The way I see it is that there is no way to run a test on another planet to see what would happen if we don’t act fast about global warming. Yes, maybe not all the environmentalists’ predictions will come true, but it will be better to be safe than sorry. If they don’t, then the world can ratchet back it environmentalism in coming decades.
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