RomCom1989 [he/him, any]
May be self doxing a bit,but i feel like I have to do something to distract myself I’m in my home rn and the ruskies are striking the Ukrainian city over in the distance hard I try to sleep but it’s too hot and I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack Fuck,strike after strike,even though it’s far in the distance I can see flashes of light and the shockwaves shake up the windows of the house I feel so goddamn scared even though I’m supposedly safe seeing as I don’t live in Ukraine directly For one fucking year this circus has been going on and off and it’s fucked my sleep schedule because every time night comes I pray this shit doesn’t happen And the alarms are the worst, fucking announcing “unidentified flying objects” coming Death to NATO for making this shit possible and turning a region that was thought to be a quiet backwater into a fucking warzone I hate the fact that I can’t feel safe in my own home anymore
Sorry if I’m coming across as attention seeking,but venting about it takes my mind off it
That being said,I’ve come to absolutely despise these fucking things
Depends on a multitude of factors
- whether or not they’re born in Romania
- whether or not they’re born after the Revolution
- family’s social position during communism (working class, apparatchik or other)
- family’s social position now (working class, bourgeois or peasants) and whether they moved with them or are still in Romania
- (less so but still important) opinion on Roma, many dislike communism because the Roma were treated marginally better then they are now
- (less important) which part of Romania they’re from (east is poor, Transylvania is richer and has more wannabe euros, think western lib mindset or worst case scenario Iron Guard fetishists, this applies for Bucharest too)
I’m Romanian,living in Romania, but I will admit my knowledge of the communist period doesn’t go far from what we’re taught in school and some less anti communist sources, but it’s not much, so I won’t be giving out any takes on what we had more than, some good,some bad
Pre Ceausescu mostly alright, considering WW2 had ended, initial Ceausescu ok, started to go far into nationalism, spilt from the Warsaw Pact wasn’t good, tried to act more independently,ended up somewhat cozying to US, attempted industrialization financed with IMF loans-very bad move, led to austerity, this is where most criticism of the regime comes,seeing as there were actual shortages and people had to wait in line for basic goods this being done to pay off the loans, ironically the debt was paid in full in early 1989, too little too late, legitimate discontent used as fig leaf for military coup backed by western interests in December,start of shock therapy and abysmal poverty,and till now mostly corruption scandals and trying to recover from that period
Plenty to criticize (draconian abortion ban, abysmal orphanage conditions that scarred a generation of kids, excesses like the People’s Palace that replaced an entire old quarter of Bucharest, poorly trying to copy the real popularity the Kim family had in Korea, nationalistic historical revisionism, obsessive focus on the dacian side of the Romanian ethnogenesis as the core of Romanian identity, trying to appeal to both sides in Israel and Palestine), but overall created the basis of what we have today (we still depend on the housing they built and the infrastructure from those times) and took a mostly illiterate and poorly developed nation into the modern age with all the growing pains that process involves
That’s the extent of what I can say, I would welcome more well read commrades to correct and add to my very limited summary and provide additional context that could help you
To close off, you should expect this to be a lengthy process, I know from experience how deep the anticommunism runs in Romanians, this having to do with it being imposed by the USSR for a good reason, but still tapping into more or less two centuries worth of previous attempts by Tzarist Russia to add Romania to itself led people to believe the communist period was a continuation of previous Russian imperialism, and the previous things I mentioned, and this goes doubly for those who left,as they were the ones most disillusioned by the failure of capitalism to save post communist Romania, leading them to develop an inferiority complex and blame the “communist heritage” the country had
Oh,and as a final addition,if they make any mention of the “Social Democratic” party that is in power in a coalition with the liberals at the moment as being some “red plague”, dismiss that out of hand
Both big right wing parties in Romania at the moment have their roots in the “Front of National Salvation” in the nineties, a political party created by those who orchestrated the military coup and were in power for most of the nineties, they are as communist as Labor is, though forced to be somewhat less rabid in the neoliberalism department due to the circumstances present here,they are peoples favorite thing to point to and pretend the PCR(communist party) is still alive and to blame for all of modern Romania’s ills (corruption mostly)
Extinct like the dodo bird for now
Old people love to reminisce,but the sentiment doesn’t translate to any meaningful political movement
The Social Democrats are kind of a cartel party, offering benefits for votes, backroom deals type of stuff Young people are eurobrained to the max if they’re not apolitical anticommunists
The only “reform” party that sprung up after a massive corruption scandal in the Social Democratic party was a mish mash of various currents,some leftish sentiment,but the euroatlanticist libs came out on top and now the party barely exists as a political force
So to give my very limited and not at all authoritative analysis about how the current political climate is, I’d say business as usual since the 90’s, the SocDem Liberal coalition that’s in power now we jokingly call the reunified National Salvation Front,since both parties are splinters from it,one “left” and one “right”, the reformists (Save Romania Union) are a spent force and now any reform minded youth goes for independents as far as I know
Still,the youth don’t really have any actual goals in mind, mostly wanting to toss the old guard out so we can be like the “proper Europeans” in the West, all anti-corruption,but pro-EU and pro-NATO
The Socialist party just barely exists and consists of two old guys who love Ceausescu
People like me are like the needle in the haystack for now
We aren’t in any significant crisis that I know of(but maybe that’s me being sheltered) so nothing to create radicalism
I’d say we’re in some sort of very small and incremental improvement due to NATO pumping funds into our infrastructure and the war in Ukraine being an economic boon for now, with them having to use our ports to transport grains and such after the sea corridor thing went bust
The average Romanian isn’t impacted by the war,unless they live in a border region like yours truly so it’s out of sight out of mind for most people
Oh,and we had our own Far Right party rising up after 2020, but the people leading it were incompetent and now are stagnating at 15% or something like that for a while
And they splintered too,the mainstream one is pro NATO anti Eu and there’s also a smaller one that broke away that’s pro-Russia,but they’re not really a significant political force
So I guess that’s another sad thing,you z post in here, people will think you’re a right wing crank
Still, Romanians aren’t too happy with Ukraine either, mainly due to a minority rights issue concerning the “Moldovan” identity which is a big sticking point for Romanians seeing as they think the Romanians and Moldovans are one and the same and that the usage of that term is a holdover from the USSR and it has to do with Russian imperialism
Ukraine also has regions which were part of Romania so that’s another sticking point for the nationalists
Sorry for the tangent
So,to finish it off,I’d say the left is kind of dead for now, barring some old farts who reminisce about Ceausescu and westoid type Anarcho-NATOists in the youth if they have any vaguely leftist sentiment
I haven’t read enough theory to properly say where I fall specifically on the ideological spectrum,but I’d say I’m in the ML ballpark
People like me are probably very few and far between, especially if you wanna look for socially progressive ML’s
LGBTQ people here have a very hard time and they’re only now beginning to see some degree of acceptance in the biggest cities
I can’t speak on the political sentiment in the LGBTQ community here,as I have not had the occasion to really interact with it,but the vibe I got was sadly pro-western and pro-NATO as is the case with most of the youth
Keep in mind I don’t go out much,so this is what I gathered mostly from vibes, interaction with my friend group and reading the news,so it is in no way a comprehensive analysis
LMAO
What,got a douche tea infusion up your ass,Mr Gammon?
Fuck right off with this snobbish language elitism you seasoning averse,wannabe aristocrat,island living fuck.
Your fucking “lAnGuAgE” doesn’t deserve a lick of respect,Mr “I’m so fucking superior because I was born in the delusional ruined remnants of an empire of evil”.
The fucking gall on this one,to turn up their fucking pig snout nose at AAVE as if it’s some crime against god and their beautiful pristine language! I hope that when you die,they bury you right next to Maggie so you can both nourish yourselves with warm piss for an eternity in hell, you worthless goddamn Anglo!
Go slobber all over your precious fucking kings genitals or whatever it is you do for a national pastime in that rain soaked shithole you live in.