I don?t know much about the Party meetings, I used to sleep or read books then. During those times, we weren?t so kept up to date, like today; this is a good thing.  There wasn?t a TV program before 10 o?clock in the evening; the evening news lasted for half an hour, the night news the same, a movie series one hour and on Wednesdays we had the Cinematheque, a movie with Bette Davis, from 100 years ago.  But I used to read a lot. When I didn?t read, I met my bunch of sensational friends. On Saturdays we left and we took our tents and came back on Sundays night. Cars with even registration numbers were allowed in the traffic one Sunday; cars with odd registration numbers in the other Sunday.  Now everybody is trying to make business, to work, to have money? (A. M., 115)

POLITICAL EDUCATION

In the ?80s, no one was taking communist ideology seriously any more. Both its adepts and its patients came to see it simply as a language, of indifferent substance, solely used for exhibiting and imposing the capricious will of the dictatorial family. That August 1968, when many had been convinced of Ceausescu?s anti-Soviet and ?national? attitude, was long gone. All interviewees remember that in those times party education was nearly or even entirely treated as a formality. (87)

I was a party member and, as a conscientious person, I was appointed manager of the political education sessions for a group of operators at the Accounting Center of the Ministry of Chemistry. On the one hand, I did not dare evade the painful task. On the other, I organized ludicrous sessions, which would never last more than 15 minutes: I?d babble on some speech that sort of made me sick uttering, possibly mimicked some discussion afterwards and that was it. For a whole year, no one reacted, no one complained. (A. M., 88)

As we approached the ?90s, party education grew more and more lax, the sessions became ever shorter, the speakers were appointed beforehand. The bibliography included brochures on various ideological themes, newspaper articles, particularly Ceausescu?s Congress speeches. There was an ample and omnipresent party literature. I would say that we turned these sessions into some sort of anti-propaganda. As we were talking of grand economic successes, which we exemplified by referring to immediate reality, which everyone knew closely, this was clearly not an apology for the regime. The somewhat more realist bent of my speeches shunned off any possible contesting at the Institute, immediately after 1989. (A. M., 9)

The only thing I remember about party education is that I was constantly trying to skip it. Especially whenever the session manager announced me it was my turn to speak. She warned me that in the long run I would still have to show up and speak. (A. M., 115)