In the 80s, it was very bad after you graduated as you had to carry out a three-year probation in the field of production. No matter what you graduated, you were forced to do it. (S.R.-B., D.R.-B., 138)

In case of divorce one had to go to the party as well, why does comrade X to divorce comrade Y? Then they would take you to the Reconciliation Commission which was somewhere at the law court, where they tried to convince you that what you tried to do wasn?t good and if, in spite of all that, nothing was solved and reconciled, then one would have to go to court, to file for a divorce and the misery began, they would take you from Anna to Caiapha until they drove you crazy, and extend the whole divorce procedure by 5 years. That?s what happened to me. Only that, same thing as today, if one had money, everything was much easier. (O. S., 120)

Various studies point out that divorce is one of the main stress factors. Mine lasted 2 years and a half, because the proletarian morale condemned the unhappy marriages to mummification in the name of mutual respect, especially if mutual respect had generated children.

An additional difficulty was that both of us worked in the same institution, whose Basic Organization must not find out, so that they could ? destroy our file?. During those times, between ?85 and ?87, everything could be disclosed. Rumor had it that if three friends gathered one of them would be an informer. I don?t know how, but they found out I was divorcing my husband so the Director in office then, a former responsible with collectivizing the agricultural farms, called me and told me a big secret, namely that a new wave of restructuring was to come and the first ones to go would be the divorcees or those about to divorce and those who had relatives abroad. In fact, this was a way of scaring me and determining me to give up my divorce procedure. It really scared me, but I was too determined so I pretended to be immune to threats. Then he changed the tone and told me- as confidential as before- in fact, everything was very secretive then- that he had ?signals? according to which my still-then-husband would be excluded from the party because of that divorce and it would be such a pity for him to suffer because of me. There he almost got me and I hesitated, but I found out at home that he had called my husband as well and had threatened him with the fact that the divorce would lead to the reconsidering of our files and one would thus find out that I had relatives abroad whom I had never mentioned. The Director knew everything!