Life is Better

Twenty years after the fall of communism, Romania is the seventh largest member of the European Union and an active participant in NATO; it provides its people with an array of consumer goods never dreamed of under communist rule; and an entire generation has grown up in freedom. While older Romanians have not forgotten just how awful life was when Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu ran the country - the abject misery, the suffering, the oppression and the fear – most Romanians today are focused upon the unfulfilled expectation of a far better future.

The fall of communism in Europe was the final recognition that common ownership of property was not the highway to happiness. The Romanian people knew the true horror of communist rule better than most of their neighbors. Too many Romanians gave their lives in prison camps and on the ramparts erected in December 1989 to bring about its end. Unfortunately, the idealism of December 1989 turned into a distended materialism in which a few well-connected individuals have prospered obscenely while many others have seen their economic expectations eroded into anguish and misfortune.

Disappointingly, democracy and the turn towards a market economy have not yet brought Romanians as much happiness as they had anticipated. The unbridled optimism of 1989 has been replaced by a resignation that prosperity, the substantial curtailment of official corruption and a truly democratic system will have to await the advent into power of a new generation of Romanians unspoiled by decades of communist abuse.

Nevertheless, the lives of average Romanians have markedly improved since the terrible days of Nicolae Ceauşescu. Romanians are totally free – they no longer live in fear; they have an unfettered future and a chance to work where they like, doing what they want and traveling where they wish