As far as discontentment is concerned, people were discontent all right. I remember that in the forging section we had a crane operator who went to Oltenia to spend his holidays and on his return, we had a Party meeting. The proposal of all organizations was to reelect the president. The crane operator said in the middle of the meeting, ?well I don?t agree with the reelection of Ceausescu, he?s old, he cannot cope anymore, we want a younger one who can work, look I have been home to see my parents and we did not have a piece of bread?. That?s what the man said in the middle of the meeting. Like in any meeting the election problem was tackled upwards, so there were party men from the sector attending the meeting. Who is the comrade who dares criticize comrade Ceausescu during the meeting? He told who he was, that he was a worker, a poor crane operator. Well, the next day, a task force arrived from the sector, those from the city council, the factory, dressed up in suits; I saw them myself, they gathered to discuss the elimination of that man, his elimination from the party. Those from the factory section, his direct chief, the section chief went there and started threatening people: ?you have a family, if you do not say this and that and if you don?t vote against that man, it?s over with you? so of course they took him out. They eliminated him, gave him the sack, sued him, emprisoned him at Jilava, and after the Revolution he came back to the factory. What I remember is that he was continually followed by another convict who allegedly was an electrician, but in fact a secret police man, who would ask him all kind of questions; it seems that they gave him some injections to brainwash him because he had become a bit senile after that. ( 22)

Ceausescu wanted to build a Disneyland and they thought of the Vacaresti area for that, there was a lake there, a nice one so they pulled down Vacaresti area. I took part in it in a way. There was a new section inside the factory of building and assembling lifts, in fact another factory that built entertainment equipment (we were making ?octopuses?, go-carts, those who crush at tivolis, games, pokers and all kinds of electronic games). I used to be the chief of the design group at this company. We had other 4 collaborators. (C. M., 142)

When you graduated, you got a repartition you were obliged "to honor" for three years. Any possibility to pay the equivalent value of your studies and "escape" was excluded. Young people managed to escape distribution - deplorable most of the time - resorting to high influential persons and false health certificates. (111)