@RexValachorum created an excellent Twitter thread ridiculing the socialist life. He described in vivid detail the harsh reality of surviving in socialist Romania. Unfortunately, the account was suspended (and all the tweets were lost).
I have stitched back this thread from a Scribd doc and Wayback machine archives. I have tried to keep the text as it was tweeted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t restore all the images. Nevertheless, the thread does its job of showing the day-to-day life of a person in a socialist world.
Part I: Socialism vs Communism
“Thread dedicated to all leftists who believe the grass is greener and cows are fatter inside the collectivist pastures.”
“First, let’s make something clear, since I can already hear you whining “But…but…you are talking about life in a communist country, we don’t want communism, socialism is different!” Yes it is, you little snowflakes. Communism is the final goal in the Marxist philosophy.”
“In communism, all people are equal, one works to the best of his ability and it is provided with subsistence goods in accordance to what the State says the person needs. There is no need for money, no salaries, no banks, no financial system. That is communism.”
“No socialist country in the world has ever achieved the predicted final stage, that of communism. Not USSR, not Cuba, not Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, China or North Korea. All these countries were (and some still are) SOCIALIST. They still use money, people get salaries, private…”
“…property still exists to an extent or another (for example in Socialist Romania you could buy your own home or a small parcel of land, grow food and take it to the farmers market although the price you could sell it for was regulated, thus discouraging private producers).”
“IN CONCLUSION: there were never real communist countries anywhere in the world. They were all socialist. They all had socialist economies and they were ruled by communist Parties. Communism was the goal, this is why the ruling political class and their Party were called communist.”
“About the other claim, that socialism isn’t the same with democratic socialism, the kind of kinder, gentler strain of Bernie socialism the millennials are so enamored of. The only difference between the two is how much political power each has at a given moment.”
“When Democratic-Socialists achieve enough political and military power, they invariably become full blown socialists. Last case in point, Venezuela. Democrat-Socialists under Hugo Chavez first won democratic elections. At first they pledged to respect political plurality, free…”
“…press and protect private property, just like our friend Bernie promises. Everything was tolerable for a couple of years. Then little by little Chavez started nationalizing industry after industry, started persecutions against free speech, shut down opposition TV and newspapers rigged…”
“…elections, used military and police force against the opposition, declared himself President for life and generally speaking ruined one of the most prosperous Latin American countries transforming it in a shithole under the thunderous applause of brain dead American liberals…”
“…like Sean Penn, Danny Glover as well as other imbeciles enrolled in public colleges across the US. Maduro, the present socialist dictator of Venezuela is just continuing the destruction and he’ll probably pay for it with his life, like Ceausescu did in 1989.”
“In conclusion: socialist-democrats are just ordinary socialists who didn’t confiscated all guns (so they are still afraid of us free citizens) and didn’t managed to grab all the political power. Yet. Now that all of this is cleared, let’s see how beautiful life is in socialism.”
Part II: The Queue - Trademark of Socialism
“One had to wait in line hours, sometime even days, and quite often without even knowing for what. People were just lining up, hoping for any kind of food or other necessities delivery the store. You could hire a person to stand for you.”
“Usually working age people who couldn’t skip work sent their elderly retired parents to stay in line. If parents were in another city or they were dead or incapacitated, you could pay a neighbor who was a pensioner to stay in line for you.”
“What were people waiting in line for? Practically anything. Bread; chicken feet (AKA Adidas); pig heads (AKA computers); rarely whole chicken with a questionable smell and color and was available (AKA roadkill), potatoes, onion and any other kind of vegetables you may think of…”
“…sugar, cooking oil, milk, butter, eggs, flour, rice…you name it. And don’t imagine people were staying in line for hours to buy all of the above in one single swoop. No, the stores were completely EMPTY, today the delivery truck was bringing chicken feet, you were waiting in…”
“…line 5 hours for chicken feet. Tomorrow, you go back and stay in line for another 6 hours. The truck comes, people in line ask the driver “Hey what you brought us today?” “Couple of boxes of pork lard and marmalade” driver answers. “Excellent!”, people rejoice. “And tomorrow?” ”
“Tomorrow? I don’t know, maybe onions or some eggs, but only enough for the first 50 people in line or so.” “Great,” says grandpa. He goes to a public phone, calls home and asks his niece to bring the most comfortable seat in the home since he’s going to stay in line overnight.”
“And this madness is only for how you obtain food stuff in socialism. There are also lines for soap, detergent, propane, shampoo, cotton wool (instead of tampons), shoes, clothes, bed sheets, area rugs, pots and pans, engine oil, gasoline, tires, socks, gloves…list is so long…”
“…that it would be more practical to imagine one’s home completely empty, then add 3-4 items in it that you could find without staying in line; then the rest of the stuff you have in your home and take for granted, is only obtainable by staying in line or paying triple on the…black market.”
Part III: Transportation and Automobiles
“Transportation: socialists were ahead of their time. They promoted a green Earth and fought against global warming by reducing the number of privately owned automobiles and (literally) pushing and shoving everybody in buses and trams. As you can see, people were…”
“…so enthusiastic about reducing their carbon footprint they traveled to and from work, both inside and outside the buses, sometimes between the tram cars and on their rear bumpers. No need for A/C in the summer, and a true delightful adventure during the winter months in…”
“…sub-zero temperatures or when it was raining. No sacrifice too great in order to prevent global warming, comrades!”
“Automobiles: the technological marvels of socialism. Ours were so fast, hardly anyone could see one on the road. USSR had Lada and Moskvich. The Czechoslovakians had Skoda. Yugoslavians had the Yugo. East Germans had the 2 stroke Trabant and the Wartburg.”
“Us Romanians, had Dacia. And every car owner in any of the aforementioned country had problems. First, the price. In order to buy a car you were expected to save your entire income (that means all paychecks) for 6-7 years, living only on your wife’s income.”
“After saving the money to buy the car in a special account you deposit the full payment which amounted to 70,000 lei (consider a young worker salary in a large factory was starting at 1,200 /mo) into the car manufacturer bank account. Then you get the car, yes?”
“No, of course not. You don’t get no car comrade. Where do you think you are, in a rotten consumerist capitalist economy? Once you paid the car in full, your name gets added to the waiting list. But don’t worry, you won’t have to wait for your Dacia forever! Dacia 1300 Wiki.”
“Another 7 years until you get the much awaited letter in the mail that it’s your turn to have your own wheels. So you take the train and go to the factory dealership - which is also the factory itself, because that’s the only place where the cars are sold - in the city of Pitesti”
“… and show those people the letter that it’s your turn to get the car for which you saved money for 7 years and waited a total of 14 years. You already made the plans with your wife to leave in [sic] a vacation to her parents and she’s going to show them your brand new red Dacia but…”
“…the man at the factory dealership comes with your car keys and says: car is at the front, congratulations! You look outside and see a green Dacia waiting for you. “Comrade” you protest, “I promised my wife a red car”. “That is all we have, green” Take it or leave it. Or come…”
“…back in 2 months when we will have red cars rolling out the assembly line” Hey, a car it’s a car you say and take the key and leave as a proud owner of a technological marvel first designed in 1969 and still manufactured without any major changes until 2006. But you can’t get..”
“…very far in your automobile since the car rolls out the assembly line with only 2 liters of gas in the tank. So you stop a the first gas station down the road and you pump your entire monthly ration of gasoline which is exactly 7 liters. That should last you about half way of the…”
“…trip home. But if you were a man who knew how to anticipate and solve such minor inconveniences, you also asked a friend to wait somewhere along the road home in his car, with a jerry can of gas in the trunk you purchased ahead of time on the black market. Americans didn’t…”
“…invented in-flight refueling to extend range, Romanians did!”
“You finally make it home and next morning you wake up at 4 AM and go stay in line at the police precinct where automobile registrations are paid and processed. There’s only one place with one policeman sitting behind one counter and serving an entire city of 2.5 million people).”
“And you thought the DMV lines are bad…LOL! Later in the afternoon you finally made it in front of the line. You pay for registration and new license plates which you need to pick up from the same single manned counter 1 month later…and after another 8-9 hour waiting in line.”
“And by the way, you cannot drive the car without the license plates so by the time you get them, your summer vacation is over. “No worries honey. We’ll be visiting your parents for Christmas. Oops, no we cannot go for Christmas either!” “Oh no, why is that?” “Because December 24…”
“…is the third Sunday of the month, and the number on our license plates is an uneven number so we are allowed to drive on the road only the 2nd and the 4th Sunday, of course. Cars with even number license plates are allowed on the road the first and third Sunday of the month. So..”
Part IV: Healthcare
“I assume if you are a millenial snowflake you already watched Michael Moore’s propaganda crock-umentary “Sicko” in which he denigrates the American healthcare system and sings praises to the socialized Cuban healthcare system.”
“You wanna know the truth about about that movie? It’s quite simple: it’s complete and utter bullshit. In Cuba (as well as in all socialist countries in Eastern Europe during the days before the fall of the communist regimes), healthcare was a 3-tier system.”
“First, there were the clinics and the hospitals where only the Communist Party notabilities had access. Logically, we used to call them the Party Hospitals. The best doctors, most advanced medical technology, cutting edge treatments and drugs, no expense spared - only the best…”
“…for the best comrades. In Bucharest was the largest one, the hospital where Ceausescu and his family were taken care of. I knew a nurse who worked at this hospital who helped me save my cousin’s life, but more about that later.”
“Second tier healthcare: they were the clinics for healthcare tourists - foreign citizens from western countries who came to Romania for treatment and paid in foreign currency for it. Also no expense spared, best doctors, imported western medical tech. Patients were coming…”
“…because of the more affordable treatment prices made possible simply because all medical personnel was paid peanuts compared with their Western counterparts (a doctor’s salary was $3,000-$5,000/month, equivalent with the buying power of $150. This 2nd tier healthcare exclusively.” [Corrected Later: “I meant 3,000-5,00 lei, not US dollars. The amount had the approx buying power of $150 in the US”]
“…for Western tourists is what Michael Moore is presenting in his movie Sicko as “socialized healthcare for all Cubans”. It’s a crock of propagandistic shit from the lying sack of shit that Moore is. In real life, Cubans can’t even dream setting foot in those clinics and hospitals.”
“The third tier socialized healthcare is for everyone else. Yes, it was free. But it also was a disaster of epic proportions. Truly horror movie like. You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Countless people died because of lack of medicine, filthy operating rooms,…”
“…lack of heat in the winter, broken down ambulances, overcrowded emergency rooms and last but not least doctors who were so poorly paid that they had to accept bribes in order to give proper attention to patients. This situation remained a disaster for another decade after…”
“… Ceausescu was overthrown, and the public healthcare system in Romania is still incapable of fully recovering 28 years later. Luckily privately owned clinics had appeared and people are starting to see a difference in the way they are treated and taken care of.”
“I’m going to tell you a true stories that affected members in my family. I grew up in the same house with my two cousins who were 10 and 12 years older than me, so we always considered all three of us like brothers. Both cousins were merchant marines, the oldest one Alexandru…”
“…a boatswain, the youngest brother Gabriel was a chief mate. I was a radioman on an offshore oil drilling rig. Seafaring was a family tradition. One day Alexandru just drops down on the kitchen floor and loses conscience.”
“We call the ambulance, next available one in the area is in 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours. So we call a neighbor who owned a car, and take him to the hospital. ER doctor sees him, sends him to neurology and the specialist gives the diagnostic: brain stroke.”
“ER doc comes and tells us he’s unlikely to survive because the hospital doesn’t have a tomography machine to see the location of the ruptured vessel or any hemostatic drugs to stop the bleeding inside the brain. The doctor also opposes him to be transported…”
“…to the capital Bucharest where there is Romania’s largest neuro-psych hospital and where the best neurosurgeon in the country works, because he may not survive the trip. The ambulances made of 50’s design military vans are unsuitable (their suspension is like that of an oxcart),…”
“…and as long as the internal bleeding isn’t stopped he cannot sign the transfer papers. So me and Gabriel spring into action. Gabriel goes to his former commander from the Naval Academy who is a Counter-Admiral. Luckily since Gabriel is a seaman he doesn’t go to him empty handed: …”
“…sack full of cartons of American cigarettes, couple boxes of Johnny Walker scotch, couple of kilos of Brazilian coffee. The Admiral calls in a favor with an aviation General: when the doctor says patient is transportable, a military helicopter from the aviation base at Tuzla…”
“…20 miles South of my hometown will be ready to fly him to Bucharest. Meanwhile I go to Bucharest by train. My step-sister’s best friend is a nurse at Romania’s most coveted hospital. A hospital where there is no shortage of medicine, heat, food and top specialists.”
“The hospital where only Ceausescu, his family and the big bosses of the communist Party have access, and nobody else. So I meet with this girl and give her the name of the hemostatic injections my cousin needs. They are imported from Switzerland and her hospital is the only …”
“…in the entire country that has them. But she tells me cannot steal them from the hospital pharmacy, they are under lock and key. And she doesn’t have the key. So what she does? She takes them from her patients. Simply, instead of injecting them the full dosage prescribed…”
“…by the doctor, she injects half of the dosage medicine, half saline. Because my cousin Alexandru needs 6 vials every day and she cannot steal for me more than 6 at the time, for the next 3 weeks I ride the train every single day 350 miles round trip, leaving in the evening…”
“…and travelling all night, getting the medicine from her then returning at noon to deliver them to the doctor. Three weeks after beginning the treatment Alexandru stabilized and was transported by military helicopter to the hospital in the capital.”
“The hemostatic medicine costed me a fortune, I paid for each day of treatment the equivalent of what it was 1/3 average monthly income. Thank God I had a very good salary, working on a offshore drilling rig was dangerous but I was making 3 times the salary of an ordinary…”
“…Romanian worker so I had some money under the mattress, then when those were gone I borrowed more from friends. I don’t blame that nurse girl for charging me that much because what she did could have resulted not in years of prison but simply her death. Because she was stealing…”
“…from patients who were heads of the communist Party she could have been simply “disappeared” rather than put in prison. And I don’t blame myself for obtaining the medicine through stealing from other patients. Those mother-flakers big communist activists the drug was stolen from…”
“…were responsible for supporting a murderous regime and benefiting from it. So frack them, no regrets for me. My cousin Alexandru is still alive today, has two daughters (one of which became a Danish citizen through marriage and lives abroad) and a grandfather.”
“His brother (and my cousin) Gabriel became an oil tanker commander and unfortunately passed away couple of years after the Romanian revolution of a heart attack. One thing I remember with great sadness: three days after my cousin was checked in at the hospital I saw an absolutely…”
“…blonde girl laying on a hospital bed in the same ICU unit as my cousin. I remember her because she was laying there unconscious, her face was like the face of a Saint in one of those Byzantine icons. I was there looking for the doctor to hand him over the first of the hemostatic…”
“…vials I brought from Bucharest. I asked the doctor what’s wrong with her and he said “Same as your cousin. She’s only 26 and her parents are poor simple people who don’t have the means or connections so I can’t do anything for her,…”
“I have no drugs to try to stop her brain from bleeding, no tomography machine to see where the broken blood vessel is” She died 10 days later. Any of you Bernie bros and other leftist snowflakes still thinking socialized medicine is great? Think again.”
“That’s my cousin Alexandru on the left, the one who we saved from being killed by socialized medicine - on the left. Behind, his wife and my niece from San Diego, she’s like a surfing champion, visiting Romania with her American dad.”
“In front two out of three sister matriarchs of the family, my mom and my cousin’s mom Adele on the right. The oldest one Eugenia couldn’t be present but she’s still around at 99 years old. My mom is 87 and the youngest is 84.”
“I am ending this chapter today (more to come tomorrow) by proposing you to watch a Romanian feature drama about the wonders of socialized medicine. It was awarded several international festival prizes and it is worth watching & sharing.”
“The movie is called “The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu”. Close captioned in English. Watch the full movie right here: ”
Part V: Serving in the Armed Forces of Socialist Romania
“Unlike in the Western countries, any male citizen of the Socialist Republic was automatically drafted and served in the military once he turned 18. This conscripted military system was abandoned after the 89 revolution…”
“…and by 2004 when Romania joined NATO, the Romanian military had became an all volunteer, professional force which has participated in joint operations alongside the US and other allies in Iraq and Afghanistan earning praise for their professionalism and bravery. But this wasn’t…”
“…always the case. During the decades of socialism the service in the Romanian military was compulsory. One could not pick and choose what branch of the military wanted to join. Once you turned 18 you expected a letter in the mail asking you to go to the nearest recruitment center…”
“…at a certain date. Once arrived there, (it was a high school gym) you were asked to fill up a form and get naked and in stay in a long line so you can be examined by an army doctor. Short of missing a limb or an eye, or being completely deaf you were declared able to serve…”
“…and sent to an office down the hall where three men in uniform decided your fate for the next 1 1/2 and up to 2 years of your life. With the exception of the Navy, service in all branches of the military was 18 months. I was selected for the Navy and had to serve 2 years. What…”
“…a joy, got half an year more than all my friends! Service in the military was starting pretty much like one would lived, imagine, or seen in a movie here in the US. You step report to the military unit you were assigned, they put you on a chair, a barber comes with a clipper…”
“…and in less than 2 minutes you have no hair left on your head. They give you an uniform and a pair of used boots (mine were too small and without insoles). Then you get herded into the barracks and this is where the similarities are ending, because in the West military recruits…”
“…are starting boot camp training, while in Socialist Romania we became forced agricultural laborers on the collectivized farms of the next 4 months. Due to the forced industrialization of Romania combined with farming collectivization, huge numbers of peasants left their villages, …”
“…moved into cities and became industrial workers. It was preferable to work in a factory for a meager salary and get a pension when you retire rather than work in the fields that used to be but were no longer yours, for no salary and no pension at all. Well, maybe, I’m exagerating [sic]…”
“…a little, those who remained in the villages were usually paid 1/6 of what an average paid worker was making in a factory; as for the pension, imagine yourself retiring and surviving on $25 a month after a life of working in a chicken farm like my aunt did. Luckily…”
“…she is the mother of my cousin who became a famous international national soccer player in the 80’s and presently the president of the club where he started his career. But millions of other peasants were not that lucky so they moved into the cities, leaving behind the…”
“…“collectiva” as the collectivized farms were called. Suffering severe labor shortages, the leaders of the Communist Party decided the solution was to use the military and the students as young as 10 to work the fields. They were called mostly during…”
“…the harvest season, September through late November and sometimes even December. Housed in improvised barracks with no heat and most times no electricity, fed meager portions of bad food - mostly boiled beans, pork fat, black bread and margarine with fruit jam on a good day.”
“The brave Romanian military was happily joining hand in hand with the students and the peasants helping them to achieve record harvests and unmatched prosperity in the collectivized farms” the Romanian television and newspapers were trumpeting. Oh, we were so happy working…”
“…sunset to sundown, sometime in sweltering heat and sometimes in freezing temperatures, no gloves, boots with no thermal insulation, being threatened by the always present Party comissar with jail if we didn’t accomplished the daily “norma,” marched back to the barracks …”
“…falling asleep on filthy straw filled mattresses crawling with lice and mange under a single blanket that was too thin to ever get warm under, so you had to wake up 6-7 times every night to go pee outside. Yes, I got mange out there from those beds and from the changes of clothes…”
“…that were coming back from the laundry dirtier than we sent them because the laundry didn’t had hot water and detergent to wash our underwear. And let me tell you, smearing that stinking, sticky sulphur anti-mange cream all over your body and slipping into a damp uniform in the…”
“…morning after a night in which you managed to sleep maybe an hour or two, isn’t something very pleasant that you want to remember for the rest of your life. Finally, around late November the peasant-student-military brotherhood was disbanded and we were sent back, us the troops…”
“…to the military barracks, the students to their classrooms. For the next to months, the boot camp training. Pretty similar with what we have here in the US military, but also a couple of major differences. While here the troops are trained and learn discipline and fighting skills…”
“…then perform their cleaning and other duties around the barracks, for us it was 8 hours of marching, crawling, formation drills, running, crawling again, then back to the barracks, gathering in the classroom, listening to the Political commissar droning for 2 hours nothing…”
“…but Communist Party propaganda, reading from the comrade Secretary General Ceausescu’s speeches, Marxist-Leninist theory and much more of the same bullcrap, while all of us were literally fighting to keep our eyes open and our heads up, otherwise we would have ended in the brig.”
“In all honesty, I would have preferred to endure another 2 hours more a day of marching, running and crawling with the gas mask on my face rather than spending the 2 hours of political indoctrination, barely awake and under the threat of jail if I got caught napping.”
“Only after these 2 hours of torture we were sent to perform the daily routine - cleaning, kitchen duty, barracks and headquarter sentry duty and so on.”
“Bootcamp was finally over: for the next 4 months I enjoyed a relatively civilized life in the school for naval radio operators. After graduation I was assigned to a troop and supply transport ship in the town of Braila.”
“The ship was docked in the shipyard for the 1 year warranty repairs and it stayed there for more than 6 months. The food aboard the Escort 283 ship (presently re-assigned the role of diving operations base ship) was execrable - same beans or potatoes and slices of pork fat…”
“…over and over again. The cockroaches were infesting everything and this may shock you but we had to go to sleep with cotton balls in our ears to prevent them from crawling inside the ear canals. We had two such cases and the sailors ended up in the military hospital.”
“When we were assigned galley duty, we went to the food pantry, got the bread out, put a table outside on the heli deck and sliced it an hour before breakfast so the cockroaches had enough time to get out from inside the holes they dug inside the bread.”
“Rats were also everywhere, but at least we had some entertainment when catching them alive in cage traps then drowning them in an elaborate ceremony involving saluting, lowering the ship flag half mast and intoning the national anthem.”
“By fall, we finally got out of the shipyard and headed back home to our naval unit base. The following winter we had to endure a severe lack of electricity and fuel for heating and power generators. Basically all we had was 2 hours of electricity every 24 hours and no diesel…”
“…for the ship generators when the power was cut off. The galley had to cook all 3 meals, breakfast lunch and dinner in those 2 hours when the electricity was on. At night, there was no heating whatsoever - we were sleeping in our bunks below water level, …”
“…only a ⅕ on an inch of steel separating us from the freezing sea water outside. Honest to God, if the US military and the NATO forces would have had the plan to invade Romania or any other Eastern European country all they would have to do in order to make us surrender…”
“…was to air drop food, sleeping bags and American cigarettes over our naval unit. One day I got in serious trouble with the naval base political komissar. Being the ship radio specialist I also had the PA system in my care. Most afternoons after the ship officers…”
“…and the headquarters brass were going home I was hooking up the ship loudspeakers (only those inside the living quarters) to the shortwave radio receiver and played imperialist pop and rock music to the crew.””
“Radio Free Europe which was a prohibited anti-government radio station broadcasting from Germany in Romanian had an evening top 100 pop show which we listened to. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” were first listened by my ship’s crew not on vinyl or cassette…”
“…tapes but on my illegal radio DJ show. Until the day someone reported me to the political komissar (probably hoping to get a 48 hour leave as a reward) and I got called to the headquarters. The politruc officer called me an imperialist agent, …”
“…threatened me with the court martial and said “The only reason you’re not arrested is because your ship commander asked me not to and I owe him a favor. But if I hear from you again, I’ll have you both you and him arrested and court-martialed for treason”.”
“Yes, in socialism you could get court martialed and go to military prison for listening to pop music. I remember later the following spring the same imbecile political commissar was doing Easter food fare inspection at the naval unit visiting room on Easter Sunday and making sure…”
“…our moms and dads didn’t brought us dyed Easter eggs because they were representing religious beliefs. Those parents caught with dyed eggs in the food packs were stopped at the gate by him and ordered to peel the eggs before he allowed them access inside the visiting room.”
“I finished my military service after exactly 2 years with another 2 months of agricultural labor in a vineyard at Ostrov, some 50 miles away from my hometown. Same food and housing conditions like before; on the plus side we drank plenty of wine we made…”
“…ourselves in polyethylene bags hidden in plain sight on the rooftop of the barracks. On the negative side, the political komissar hounded me every day looking for the tiniest reason to have me thrown in the brig since I wasn’t under the protection of my ship commander.”
“I somehow managed to avoid that and after two months, I was a free (relatively speaking), man again.”
Part VI: Women In The Socialist Paradise
“Let’s start with 100% pure, certified organic, fair trade and completely renewable BULLSHIT the leftist media is peddling about how good women had it in socialism. Here is just an example mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opi…”
“The truth: for the Party powerful, a woman in socialist Romania was nothing more nothing less than slave workforce combined with a reproductive machine. Everything Western women take for granted in everyday life was a struggle for Romanian women. Take the ubiquitous tampons…”
“…you can buy at the store. In Romania, they were not available. Over there, women were using cotton wool (vata) that came packed paper logs the size of a bologna salami. That, if they could find in in pharmacies, because 95% of the time it was not available. So what they…”
“…were using when cotton wool wasn’t available? I really don’t know because I’m not a woman, but I invite any female followers who lived in Romania during those days to contribute to this subject with their knowledge.”
“Same with diapers for small children: such an item didn’t existed until 1990, after the revolution. Women were using pieces of cotton fabric instead. Which had to be hand washed (but with no hot water running and no detergent available), then dried outside on the clothes rope…”
“…which was relatively OK during the warm months but a pain in the ass during the winter or when it was raining. A Western woman takes a shower daily. Romanian women couldn’t do that, since hot water was rationed and running only Sundays for 2 hours between 6PM and 8PM. That, if…”
“…her apartment wasn’t on top floor, in which case the water was barely dripping from the bathtub faucet because everyone under her in the apartment building was taking showers and washing laundry. A Western woman is spends 1 hour in the store trying to make up her mind…”
“…what shampoo, what deodorant, what kind of tooth paste and what fragrance she wants to buy. A Romanian woman in the socialist workers paradise didn’t had to spend a single minute thinking about that because none of the personal hygiene products I mentioned were available. And when…”
“—by a stroke of luck—a Romanian woman was lucky enough to walk by a store that happened to have have shampoo laundry detergent for sale, she would suddenly drop whatever she had to do next, get in line and after a good 2-3 hour waiting she could emerge victorious from the store…”
“…with a couple of little single use dose, 1/2 square inch plastic pillows filled with a questionable smelling shampoo called Larex, or a box of Perlan Alb laundry detergent that smelled like…well…nothing, really.”
“The Party wanted the women to be in good shape. This is why they encouraged women to do weightlifting by keeping most elevators in most tall 10 story apartment buildings out of order. Ask my wife and she’ll tell you how much her fitness level improved by carrying our baby boy…”
“…up the stairs to our apartment on the 7th floor, leaving him inside, then running down to the first floor and hauling his stroller up to the 7th floor, then if she happened to find some food at the market while she was walking, go down again pick the grocery bags, up to 7th floor…”
“The Party also wanted the women to have children. Many children. In fact, Ceausescu wanted all women to make and raise at least 4 children. This is why birth control methods like the contraceptive pill was prohibited. Abortion was a crime punished by years in prison, …”
“…for both the mother and the abortionist. This is why all abortions were performed “back alley” style, they were extremely risky and often resulted in women’s deaths. Any woman that had a botched abortion performed on her or got sick because of septic shock and was looking for…”
“…life saving medical care in a hospital was not treated if she refused to inform the police first who was the abortionist. My wife lost her cousin this way, she refused to give up the person who did the abortion and died on a hospital bed with a police investigator at her bedside…”
“…who made sure no doctor or nurse would attempt to save her life. You may have heard of a Romanian movie titled “4 months 3 weeks and 2 days” that won the 2007 grand prize (Palme D’Or) at Cannes Film Festival. The movie is about this subject of how women were risking prison or…”
“…even losing their lives because the Party wanted their children at any cost. It’s a very hard to watch film that will make you sick to your stomach and shake you to your core because it portrays the unspeakable horror and humiliation suffered by a young woman and her best friend…”
“…while attempting to have an illegal abortion. I know in the pro-life conservative circles this subject may be controversial but please consider the social and economic conditions of that time and place. Without the possibility of using contraceptives, with a Party that was…”
“…telling women how many children to have at a minimum, in a country where people were struggling in poverty, without food, heat in their homes and no electricity, without the prospects of a better life in the future, there was a very hard choice to have a child.”
“But say the woman wanted to keep her baby and after 9 months she gave birth in the hospital maternity. I remember that day 27 years ago on a cold late January day. It was 2 years after the revolution. The baby was late over a week so the doctor who was my mother’s friend and…”
“…the hospital’s chief ObGyn got a little worried and told my wife to come to the hospital that night. I took her there and the doc decided to perform a C-section just before midnight. Everything went well, you got a boy, congratulations new dad! Hold your baby, kiss your wife, now…”
“…go and get me these antibiotics from the black market because they are not available at the hospital pharmacy. And since you’re leaving, make a stop at home and bring your electric heater because we have no heat in the maternity, or nowhere else in the hospital for that matter.”
“Yes, this is how my boy was born. The same night when operation Desert Storm I started, in a run down Romanian hospital with on antibiotics and no heat. Such was the wonderful life of women in Socialism. But hey, at least NY Times says they had great sex.”
“I spoke with my wife about the subject of women’s condition in socialism and she suggested me to post a paper she published in college. It is called ”Censorship in a Totalitarian Regime: Three Women’s Stories of Creative Resistance in the Socialist Republic of Romania“”
“The paper is about three courageous Romanian dissident women: a poetess named Ana Blandiana, a French language and literature professor named Doina Cornea and a German ethnic minority novelist named Herta Mueller who later became a Nobel Prize winner for literature. Their stories…”
“…are inspirational and worth reading. They were true feminists fighting oppression and discrimination. The ones calling themselves feminists today in America aren’t. They are actually socialists with a Marxist agenda masquerading as feminists.”
Part VII: The People’s House
“Quiz: The Pentagon building in Washington DC is the largest building in the world. Do you know where is the second largest in the world (and also the world’s heaviest?)
Anybody guessing?”
[Clarification: Pentagon isn’t world’s largest building, it’s world’s largest administrative building.]
“It’s The People’s Palace (Palatul Poporului) in Bucharest, Romania. You probably had no idea, didn’t you? Built at the apogee of the socialist regime, the building consumed 40% of Romania’s GDP between 1983-1989. Yes, you read that right: 40% of the country’s GDP for 6 years…”
“No wonder we Romanian were starving, there were no money left in the State budget for food, other goods or healthcare. To make room for this monstrosity in the middle of Bucharest, Ceausescu razed entire neighborhoods in the historical center of the city.”
“Many of the buildings and the churches he demolished were of priceless historical importance; one of them built in 1918 by by a famous French architect was the home where my maternal grandmother was living at the time…”
“I was an eye witness when the bulldozers started tearing down the walls of the Brancovenesc hospital, Romania’s oldest hospital in existence and a historical architectural landmark.”
“Built in 1838 for the city poor it survived the German artillery shelling in WWI and allied bombings in WWII only to be turned to rubble in 1984. By a one in a million chance I was waiting at the bus station when the demolition started and I remember people watching and crying…”
“Here is a list of the churches turned to rubble to make room for People’s Monstrosity (partial list) -The Postavari White Church, attested in existence in 1595; at 420 year old it was the second oldest in Bucharest, …”
“…built 181 years before the American Revolution, 25 years before Mayflower -Cotroceni church, built between 1679-1682. Turned to rubble after 302 years. In this church was located the printing press where the first Bible in Romanian language was printed …”
“-St. Nicolae Jitnița church, built 1590 -Pantelimon Monastery church, built 1745 -Văcărești Monastery, built 1716, largest monastery in all South-East Europe -Spirea Veche Church, built 1740”
“-St. Nicolae Crîngași church, built 1564 -St Nicolae Sirbi church built, 1692 -St. Vineri Herasca church, built 1641”
“Back to the (socialist) People’s Palace: At the time the socialist regime was overthrown the building was still in construction. There are 1,100 rooms of which only 400 and 2 large halls are in used today by Romania’s democratically elected Parliament.”
“The rest are just sitting empty because nobody found a way to make a use of them. For the next couple of tweets I will post two pics side by side, first from the People’s Palace built for the Party elite, second from regular working class people’s dwellings built during the era.”
[Unfortunately, many of the images were not archived.]
“The People’s Palace has 12 floors plus 8 levels underground, 84 acres of floor space and an unknown number of secret escape tunnels. The entire building is naturally ventilated, no A/C. Socialist Romania was green before green movement was trendy in the West.”
“There are 480 crystal chandeliers in the palace, some of them have 7,000 bulbs each. For decorations they used 3,500 tons of crystal, 1 million square meters of marble, 900,000 square meters of wood essences, 220,000 square meters of carpet, 3,500 square meters of calf skin.”
“All the materials used to build it were obtained domestically - the wood, the crystal, the marble, you name it. There was no cheaping out on on inferior products like granite or glass. 400 architects had drawn the plans and the chief architect was a 28 year old woman.”
“According to some historians over 160 construction workers died in work related accidents while working on this building. Urban legends say most of them were “accidented” while on the underground tunnels built for Ceausescu’s planned escape.”
“And now that you already seen how wonderful living conditions in socialism used to be, let’s see how awful capitalism is, after my misguided generation decided to abandon and discard the socialist utopia.”
“Of course, not everyone can afford to buy a new apartment in a new building, and the majority of Romanians still live in the socialist era dwellings, but things are starting to look up.
“So my dear Bernie bro socialist millennials, please tell me where would you rather live? In a capitalist built and owned apartment building or in a socialist one?”
“It is estimated Romania will need more than 70 years to get rid of all the socialist era eyesores in which people live in apartments the size of a shoe box. Socialism ended 28 years ago but its legacy will still be visible in the urban landscape for another two generations.”