Message-ID: <AH2i2MtWsK@mb.sorostm.ro> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 19:37:38 +0400 From: Florin Jurcovici <mailto:fljurcovici@MB.SOROSTM.RO> Subject: Re: Summary of some boring ideas To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
resolve wrote: > What were the spiritual beliefs of the majority of Romania before they
> were outlawed by the communist regime?
Most of us were orthodox (is this the right spelling?) christians.
> And again, I can't help wondering *why* they would be outlawed by a
> communist regime. Where's the rationale? Anyone?
Because religion offered some moral support. You not only have something to depend on (God, in heaven), but this god also tells you what's right and what's wrong. In a comunist regime (the sort which functioned in eastern europe), only the comunist party had the right to say what's right and hat's wrong. More than that, since the leader of the party was most of the times also leader of the army, of the itelligence services, and so on, he could really easy dictate what's right and what's wrong, so even top level party members were scared to death by their leader, and didn't even try to tell him their real opinions. There was a rumour at some time before 1989 (the year comunists lost the power in Romania), that the son of Ceausescu (the comunist leader at that time) told his opinion right away to his father. If it really happened, It must have been a shock to Ceausescu - it was probably the first and last time he heared such a saying. The people who judged him in December 1989 were only other comunists, so they didn't really say what they were thinking - this is a thing an ex-comunist cannot do, to express his thoughts straight out.
> I mean did the various communist parties think they
> were introducing a utopia when they started out? I wish I knew more
> about the history of it.
I'm not a historian myself. I think there is a mailing list at Stanford University specially for romanians and romanian problems. You might look for this list. however, I can tell you this: people which started this out were most probably people which had the ideal of Peters the first of the russians about the russian empire. To them, comunism was only a tool build this empire. Afterwards, since comunism has no explanation for such things, they had to use not very honest people to promote this sort of comunism in other countries.
Talking about this, I remember something else that might interest you. One of the criteria of choosing people in key positions was that they had to be quite foolish, at the limit of being able to do their work. The reason: such a man will never argue with his boss, and will do any foolish thing required from him, in order to save his position. In fact, he won#t even be able to judge what he is doing - he'll just do what he is told to do, with no bit of involvement.
> I understand that the situation in Russia was pretty bleak for that
> nation's citizens before communism, due to an inhospitable climate, lack
> of food and so on. I suppose communism has been employed as a religion
> unto itself in some circumstances, and to put it into practice, it was
> enforced upon the people in lieu of a concensus and thus "freedom"
> became a thing of the past for people in communist countries...
Comunists knew the saying "divide et impera" quite well. So the conditions of people in different countries were quite different. The best off were the russians. After them, any eastern european country with borders to western countries did better than countries with no borders to western countries. Especially bad it was for little nations that were part of the soviet union. Stalin, for instance, had at some time the idea to transport all moldavians from the soviet part of Moldavia to Siberia, and to exterminate the moldavians in this way. The only reason he didn't do it is that it was too much even for the ex-soviet union to transport more than six million people over such a long distance. think what happened in Cecenia. Do you think those people fought because they were doing too good?
-- Jurcovici Florin mailto:fljurcovici@mb.sorostm.ro