Stories of Communist Education: Part II

Following the introduction, part one of this series is a culmination of first-hand memories of what it was like to grow up in communist Romania. Starting with a child’s early years, luxuries such as purchased toys were unheard of, food limited, and trust a priceless jewel rarely found even within the family. All this was a weapon to keep the people subordinate to and solely dependent on the Communist Party.

George and Liana, and Alin and Mihaela are married couples who, husband and wife alike, were all born within the Transylvanian region of Romania between the years 1949 and 1956. ^[1]  Further west in the city of Oradea, Emil was born in 1976, just four years after his wife, Feli, who was born in a Transylvanian village. Daniel breathed his first breath just a year before Feli in Sǎlaj—a county about halfway between the hometowns of Emil and Feli. A few years earlier and south of Sǎlaj, Raluca, and Teodor, Daniel’s cousin, were both welcomed into the world. Aurelian and Gabi were born up north but on opposite ends of Romania near the Ukrainian border. Aurelian was born in 1966 in Suceava, a city very close to the Republic of Moldova, and Gabi a few years later in 1971 in Baia Mare, a city much farther west while still near Ukraine. Lastly, and somewhat surprisingly, Tania is the only interviewee born and educated within the nation’s Capital, Bucharest, or “Little Paris”; she was born in 1951. These are the characters who lived the history I will tell.  

Though many of these students went to different colleges and focused on subjects that differed from those studied by other students from their early years onward, it became difficult not to notice the key similarities in how they were educated. I learned very quickly that the education system was highly centralized under the guidance of “Tovarășul,” or Comrade Ceaușescu. His grasp was so powerful that Tania, who was born the same year as Ceaușescu’s younger son, Nicu, was personally affected by the President’s alterations of her curriculum and testing requirements right before she would have tested out of middle school. One can only wonder why Ceaușescu would concern himself with trimming the eighth-grade testing requirements unless, of course, it was to benefit his son, who happened to be in eighth grade at the time. This anecdote is only a small example of the great systemic control of Ceaușescu and the Communist Party over the Romanian people. 

When planning out these interviews, I expected the stories I would hear to be like those of my family, detailing communist indoctrination and restrictions on speech and religion, and I got just that. But I also saw something in addition to all this oppression, something founded on the communist philosophy of man as a material that could simply be molded into anything that is particularly poisonous within any system.

Childhood:

“It was nice,” said Emil when asked about his childhood. He was born in the countryside of Oradea in Western Romania and was raised there until he turned six—looking back on his childhood memories he said he would do it all over again if it were not for “all the ideas and ideology that were forced on us” during communism. Very few Romanians grew up with much, which forced the children to be creative, and it was “out of necessity” that his brothers set their minds to crafting and welding together a toy car from scraps of steel and wood. He recalled playing outside for hours, racing others with just a single wheel of a bicycle and, during the winter, skating on the ice with skates crafted from scraps of plastic molding and straps that they attached to their shoes. Following her husband’s response, Feli, who grew up on the outskirts of Cluj-Napoca a few hours away, said, “I just don’t think it was nice.” She told of the empty store shelves, food shortages, and the early morning lines in which people stood hoping to get the food rations allotted to their families based on their size. “Everyone was poor in Romania in communism,” and in light of this difficulty and struggle, Feli concluded that there was not much good she could remember. However, she once made herself a doll she called her baby. She concurred with Emil: they played outside a lot and had to be creative since this makeshift doll was her only toy. It was hard to live as a child in communist Romania. 

Mihaela and Tania remembered their childhoods in a similar vein. Mihaela, born near Feli but in the city of Cluj in 1956, said her childhood was good in that many kids played together on the street. But “we grew up staying in line for basic necessities.” Before they went to school, they had to wait in line to receive their rations of milk, flour, oil, or sugar to fill their hungry stomachs. Tania didn’t think much about her childhood—she remembers a sense of stability since her mom was a doctor and had many connections, meaning food and necessities were never a worry. She recalls her beginnings consisting of play, school, friends, and riding bikes. She knew very little of the privations surrounding her and was only disillusioned later when she witnessed the hypocrisy and censorship of the Communist Party firsthand.

Liana, a woman born in 1955 in the city of Brasov, surrounded by the Carpathians, recalled the time when she met Richard Wurmbrand—a Christian priest who was imprisoned twice under Gheorghiu-Dej’s regime. In his early years, Wurmbrand was an excellent student and went on to become a Moscow-trained communist who was certainly not Christian. But he later converted, and in 1948, he and his wife were separately imprisoned and brutally tortured and interrogated by the secret police because they refused to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party publicly. From that moment on, their fates as political prisoners were sealed. There was a brief lull when the communist police let Richard out of jail in 1956, but he was thrown back there in 1959. The charges against him always had something to do with his supposed denunciation of the Communist Party as he went around ministering.^[i] During his break from jail, Richard stayed with Liana’s family for a night or so and bathed in the only bath they had in the center of their living room. She remembered seeing the scars that covered his back (which he later famously showed to the U.S. Senate) and having been too scared to ask where they came from, she was left to wonder. At the age of ten, she simply did not understand how or why this man would be imprisoned and scarred in such a way, and neither did her younger sister, who naively told their neighbor—who happened to be a previous employee for the Party—that they had a prisoner in their house. This announcement could have easily brought the police to their home, so her father took Richard elsewhere for his safety and their own. 

Gabi remembered one particularly unique story from her time in Baia Mare, a city in Northwest Romania much closer to Ukraine and Hungary than the country’s Capital. She remembered her Christmas break even though Christmas wishes were not allowed to be mentioned in their secular schools; it was the one time of year when they had sweets like oranges and bananas since everything was rationed by the government, and her parents, who were unable to get these goods year-round, would find a way to treat them for Christmas. She remembered standing in line from three in the morning until seven when stores opened, and her brother would come to swap her out and collect the milk or butter necessary to make various foods for the festivities. However, there is one memory she will never forget. In eighth grade, she waited in-line for a bag of chicken legs, to her detriment. It was always chaotic as people would rush into the store when it opened to gather the ingredients they needed to live (and possibly find luxury items). However, this time, the crowd pushed her against a counter to the point where she broke a rib. She was then taken to the hospital, and even with this terrible injury, she refused to let go of the chicken legs since she understood them to be so valuable a commodity. Looking back on this memory, Gabi said, “I’m laughing, but it wasn’t that laughable back then.” The lengths people had to go to just to live their everyday lives and buy chicken were too great. 

Without connections, as Tania, Raluca, and Aurelian all acknowledged, the stress placed on a child to wait in line and gather food for the family was incredibly weighty. So much so that children were forced to grow up quickly, wake up very early, and bear a load that only they could since their parents worked full time to provide the money necessary to purchase the strictly rationed necessities of life—if they were even there to be bought. 

Often the Romanian children, like young Liana and Tania, and later her toddler, did not fully understand the struggle and horrors adults faced daily during the communist experience. As Feli mentioned on the topic of the propaganda taught to them all in school: “I think for our parents, it was harder; we just didn’t know.” Parents were left powerless before the government as they had to focus on providing. Children were often a liability to keep away from any private information in case they ignorantly slipped the wrong person incriminating information. After crafting their own toys and waiting in line for food, children were directed to act perfectly disciplined as they started school at the age of seven. Families struggled to obtain food and parents were forced to learn to rely on their young children to bear some of life’s burdens while keeping them distance from any secret information. What mattered more than anything was survival and safety from the ever-increasing reach of the Party within the family; if a child started to spew out and believe the propaganda mentioned by Feli and Emil there was little a parent could do to check their child’s lofty ideals without risking betrayal from their own offspring for the communist cause. Hindering and replacing parental provision, control, and trust for the young population was a great political weapon wielded by the party to train a new generation of communists. 

     ^[1] Wurmbrand, Richard. (2017) Tortured For Christ. Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook. 

     ^[2] Alin and Mihaela are the names that I changed for anonymity. 

Deniza Toma, an Arizona native, recently earned a Master’s degree in Classical Liberal Education and Civic Leadership. Growing up, she was deeply influenced by firsthand accounts of the terrors of communism shared by her grandparents and parents, who risked their lives to escape Romania. These personal narratives, combined with her curiosity about educational systems, motivated her to pursue further research into education during the Romanian communist regime. The opinions expressed by the author of this piece do not necessarily represent the views of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.