Broadcasting started at 6 o'clock a.m. with Romania's anthem and ended at midnight in the same way. There were Romanian and Russian radio sets. We had one, brand "Gloria". There was no equipment brought from the West. Radio was not free. It was a tool of the communists.

Those who wanted real information listened to foreign radio channels that addressed to Romanians. They were "Free Europe", "Voice of America" and BBC. They presented the real state of affairs and made us familiar to them. They were prohibited because they presented everything that happened overseas. They talked about oppressed people, squealers, starvation, lack of heating etc. You could have been sent to jail if you were caught listening to one of these channels. We did have a squealer in our block and always told my children not to tell I listened to "Free Europe" when they went out to play. This is what happened to the radio. You had to listen only to what the regime wanted. (F.Z.N., 117)

Oil and sugar suddenly disappeared from shops. When they did turn up, there were huge queues. As usual, media would told us that we were the victims of the smugglers who bought goods from the market and sold them illegally. The TV programs "Reflector" showed the "marmots" who stocked goods and allegedly disorganized national economy. The na?ve believed that. Some of them still do. Rationing settled a monthly amount of oil and sugar. One kilo of oil and one kilo and a half of sugar for each member of the family. We were registered to certain shops, the only ones who sold our "ration". Everyone meant food by "ration". The dictionaries of that time imposed the idea that "ration" and "rationing" are natural social means. Ration was "an amount of food consumed by a man or animal in a fixed period of time which contains all the necessary substances for the vital functions of the organism." According to the same dictionary, "to ration" meant, "to subject certain products (basic ones) to a guided consumption, in accordance with some norms previously settled". Nothing about poverty or inefficient government. On the contrary. Ration ensured the vital functions, and consuming more was considered abnormal and health damaging.

To ration did not mean to reduce, but to guide rationally. A short while before ration had been introduced, the poor clerks could still stand in queues to buy oil during their working hours. The director of a Research Institute reproached his subordinates that they had left their workplaces and replied ironically: "I could have stood in a queue as well". "Because the secretary bought you oil", a daring employee answered him. There were tuns of draft unrefined rape oil. Rations did not exclude queues. Neighbors practiced a kind of barter: oil for sugar. (7)