After graduating from ? Stefan Gheorghiu?, I completely changed my mentality towards the party and the doctrine. Not for the worse, for the better. I realized that we were claiming in vain that we were communists, we were socialists. I realized that the socialist doctrine was badly applied.  Because we were invaded by opportunists who only cared for their positions.   There was not any selection based on a person?s quality.  The result was that everybody had to be a party member. If the members had been fewer, the party would have been more powerful. And they would have stayed in power. And we would have started to live better. (I. H., 29)

PARTY AND STATE LANGUAGE

In party discourses it is words that shape reality. An Executive Committee report on a rise in prices of agro-alimentary products speaks of the ?readjustment?, ?correlation?, ?actualization? or ?improvement? of prices, and only rarely, when there is no other solution, of ?increase?. On the other hand, the same discourse assures us of the growth in retribution (the new appellation for the bourgeois salary), in allocations for children and pensions. ?To grow? is a verb fundamental to the party and state. Growth is a verbal reality of: production, productivity, natural produce, life standards, the role of the party organs and organizations, individual and collective responsibility, fodder digestibility, value. Everything is ceaselessly developing, opening, rising, expanding and flourishing. Conversely, you can feel the fist, the monolithic unity of the party, closing in. The people hold tightly together, relationships are strengthened. Progress is an on-going process for which we have to ?militate? tirelessly and ?unflinchingly?. Tasks are ?carried out in an exemplary way?, projects ?unanimously approved?. ?We will do everything? are Ceausescu?s ritualistic words. This is a language of absolute superlatives, of perfection and totality. War was total, and of the entire people. So was control. Each piece manufactured in a factory had to be rigorously checked, and each pregnant woman supervised: ?The party organs and organizations will strengthen their control on the way in which the sanitary units ensure the woman?s state of health and will improve supervision of the pregnant woman.? The pathologically police-like will to surveillance is obvious. Nothing should remain beyond the reach of the party?s hand, which will sneak into people?s bed, into their childhood, and into their soul in order to make them happy. Supreme happiness was undoubtedly due to completion of the annual, five-year or long-term plans, at the ?new and powerful urge? coming from comrade Nicolae Ceausescu who, by his ?crucial contributions?, lay foundations, devised strategies and ?stimulated the energies of the whole nation?, and so ?transposed the programs into actual life?. The existence of all Romanians coincided with the application of the ?divine? project, almost like in the Old Testament: ?Inspired by the urges, indications and orientations given by the General Secretary of the Party, the participants in the congress have expressed the unanimous will of their community, of all workmen, to act firmly, with commitment and revolutionary pathos, in order to give and example and accomplish this year?s plan, as well as all objectives of the present five-year plan, and to stand unflinchingly by the decisions of the 12^th Congress and of the National Conference of the Party.? (7)