When I visited Romania as a young journalist during the winter of 1986, the capital Bucharest’s streets were dark. The stores were empty. The little available food was inedible. After it snowed, the country’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu banned cars and buses, leaving sad, fur-capped Romanians to fill the streets, sullenly walking to work. On my second visit in early 1989, the Securitate secret police arrested and expelled me for attempting to interview a dissident.
This summer, I returned to celebrate a good friend’s 40th birthday. My multilingual friend and his wife had worked with cutting-edge tech companies. At his birthday party, the crowd of multilingual young professionals, often educated abroad, resembled a gathering of upwardly mobile people in Paris, London, or any other Western capital. As we enjoyed fine food and wine, I marveled at how they enjoyed the same opportunities as my own privileged children.
And yet, this success looks fragile. Public spending is out of control. Poverty rates are rising. The nearby war in Ukraine looms over the country, with Russia attacking merchant ships in the Black Sea without warning. Politics are fractured, poisoned by the rise of a backward-looking, populist nationalist far-right – and a strange nostalgia for the deposed dictator Ceaușescu. It’s a theme in many of our fractious Western democracies, though particularly striking in former communist Europe, which has benefited so much from joining NATO and the European Union.
The day after the birthday party, I visited Ceaușescu’s Spring Palace, now a museum. It’s a luxurious, gaudy mansion, a mishmash of Renaissance, Rococo, and Louis XIV decoration. Crystal chandeliers, Venetian mirrors, and silk fabric cover the walls. Dark wood paneling and massive marble staircases frame the hallways. Lavish bathrooms feature gold-plated pipes, taps, and mosaics. Instead of detailing the dictator’s brutality, paranoia, and self-aggrandizement, it celebrates his supposed achievements, erasing the country’s foreign debt and building heavy industry.
The messages shocked me. My former beat included all the countries behind the Iron Curtain, from Poland in the north to Yugoslavia in the south. Romania frightened me the most. The regime modeled itself after North Korea – literally. Ceaușescu traveled to Pyongyang and came away impressed by the giant, flag-waving, choreographed public parades of absolute, god-like idolization directed toward Kim Il Sung. The North Korean state philosophy of Juche (extreme national self-reliance and independence from foreign influence) appealed to him. After his visit, he introduced his own heavy-handed personality cult and drastic austerity plan to rid Romania of foreign debt.
Ceaușescu even allowed Romanian ethnic German and Jewish citizens to leave – in return for hard cash. Israel paid an average of $2,000-7,000 per person, though the price tag for doctors, engineers, or scientists reached as much as $25,000. Germany paid an estimated 2 billion Deutschmarks (equivalent to roughly $1.1bn today) to secure visas for hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans. One of the emigres, Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, now lives in Berlin and won the 2009 Nobel Prize; her books dissect Ceaușescu’s dystopia.
In December 1989, the revolution erupted. Around 1,100 died, and 3,300 were wounded. The army arrested and executed Ceaușescu by firing squad. It was the only violent revolution in communist Central and Eastern Europe, and an incomplete break. Former communists and Securitate officials retained control of the new state apparatus.
Eventually, democratic pushback and Western pressure prevailed. Romania joined NATO in 2004 and joined the EU in 2007. The country boomed. In 2000, Romania’s per capita income was just 26% of the EU average. By recent Eurostat metrics, it climbed to nearly 78%-80%. Millions of Romanians have escaped poverty. Life expectancy has grown by more than 10 years; child mortality has fallen by two-thirds.
For me, the changes are striking and positive. Food, once inedible, is fresh, bountiful, and appetizing. Although the Michelin Guide has not yet arrived in the country, the Noa restaurant in Bucharest would certainly earn a star. My meal included creative creations of tuna carpaccio and sea bass fillet with truffle. Hotels are comfortable, if not luxurious, far from the dingy, creepy contraptions of the Ceaușescu era. Streets in Bucharest and provincial cities Brasov, Sighisoara, and Sibiu brim with energy. Historic buildings have been lovingly restored.
But the progress is not distributed equally, provoking a virulent backlash, especially in rural areas – thus the dangerous nostalgia for Ceaușescu’s crooked communism. Though Bucharest thrives, much of the countryside is without internet, and some villages even lack electricity, clean water, and proper sanitation.
My prosperous, Westernized friends speak of how their grandparents long for the “security” of the 1970s, when communism guaranteed housing and lifetime employment. A striking 66% of Romanians consider Ceaușescu to have been a “good leader” for the country, according to an INSCOP Research survey. Almost 50% believe life was better under communism, while 35% disagree. Three-quarters claim public safety was superior and two-thirds claim that corruption was lower.
These sentiments translate into political instability. In 2024, a far-right fringe figure, Călin Georgescu, won a stunning first-round presidential victory, only to have the Supreme Court annul his victory over allegations of campaign fraud and Russian interference. Liberal Nicușor Dan ended up capturing the post.
The country’s security remains fragile. Russian threats are mounting; recent drone attacks off the country’s coast have sunk merchant ships, killing at least two. Russian drone attacks regularly violate Romanian airspace. Although mainstream political parties support the Western alliance, the hardline far-right parties challenge the consensus, demanding an end to military and financial aid for Ukraine.
Since the presidential election, the government has been paralyzed. A pro-European coalition collapsed in May. Because the paralyzed interim government failed to pass mandatory public-sector budget cuts, Romania forfeited at least €770m ($862m) in EU pandemic recovery funds. The country suffers a budget deficit estimated at 8% of GDP.
Backsliding is visible in other ways, too. During the first two decades of this century, Romania made a valiant effort to come to terms with the dark periods of its past. It acknowledged for the first time Romanian responsibility in deporting its Jewish citizens to Auschwitz. But during visits to synagogues, Jewish leaders spoke of encounters with virulent antisemitism – including the repetition of old myths about Jews sucking Christian blood.
Despite all these clouds, Romania’s future trajectory is far from doomed. After months of political paralysis, a pro-European coalition has managed to put together a parliamentary majority, ending at least for now the country’s political drift. Prime Minister-designate Luca Niculescu has pledged to win approval for tough budget cuts by the end of the year.
I left Romania wondering how much its ills have infected the rest of post-Communist Europe. Poland and the Baltics remain resounding success stories, resolutely anti-Russian and free market. Neighboring Hungary recently shook off almost two decades of “illiberal democracy,” and on October 25, Serbia followed suit. Everywhere in the region, overall living standards are objectively much higher than behind the Iron Curtain.
But Romania represents a stark warning. In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, right-wing populists have regained power. In Bulgaria, left-wing populists with a pro-Russian undercurrent won the last election, the eighth in just five years.
The glittering success of Bucharest’s young professionals proves what is possible when a nation breaks free from totalitarian chains. But the gaudy excesses of communist dictators should remain confined to museums.
William Echikson served as the Central European correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor from 1985 to 1991. His book Lighting the Night: Revolution in Eastern Europe recounts the politics and personalities involved in the collapse of communism. He is now a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and editor of its tech Bandwidth blog.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
