THE "GOLDEN AGE"
(1980-1989)
Motto:
"so
we may no longer need to take foreign credits." (Nicolae Ceausescu)
Obsessed with repaying the national debt and megalomaniac building
projects Ceausescu orders a ban on importation of any consumer
products and commands exportation of all goods produced in Romania
except minimum food supplies. Severe restrictions of civil rights
are imposed.
By the 1980s
life for the average person was very difficult as Austerity measures
became ever more severe - food, oil and all quality goods were all
exported to provide hard currency to repay international debts.
However, the fear of the
Securitate
, the secret police, ensured that any criticism of the regime or
uprising was immediately suppressed. They pervaded all aspects of
society, it was often quoted that as many as 1 in 3 people were
Securitate or informers of the Securitate, so you couldn't even
trust close friends or family members. The reality was that the
population was suppressed more by carefully spread rumour and the
threat of arrest and imprisonment for the most trivial of reasons.
Phones were routinely bugged and calls taped, though mainly in the
workplace. Control was virtually total yet it was not until the
latter years of the decade when Gorbachev began to bring a degree of
liberalisation, that human rights abuses in Romania began to receive
press attention in the West. By then Romania had served its purpose
as a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union.
