I notice from my personal memories and the interviews, that everything connected to the ideology, institutions, the apparatus of the communist politics was perceived by the population as an oppressive nebula. Just about nobody thought of this domain as a structure one could initiate a rational dialogue with, as a system which had a certain logic, certain laws, certain relations between its components. The good will of the powerful, on one hand, and the desire of the population to protect oneself as much as possibly led to the fact that ? the communist system? was perceived as a non system. It was a kind of amorphous burden and one tried to defend oneself from the unpredictable pressures being forced though to live daily in its atmosphere. (87)

How did we feel the political dimension? We felt it as a lie one gets used to. We had one reality, comprising one?s family, one?s friends, and besides that, there was the official reality.  One generally took care to preserve the distinction line between the private and public behavior, but this care was not exaggerate. In the ?80s, we stopped hiding a secret. We thought that anyway, anybody knew about this lie. And as long as one didn?t programmatically oppose the system, the power did not pay any attention to you.  We did not take excessive care. (A.M., 141)

I consider that I lived outside this political system. Practically I ignored it all the time. I minded school, my private life, friends, family. I didn?t hold any official top positions. I knew from the beginning when my sister left abroad, that this was not a problem: promotion, the gates of professional advancement were closed to me. It was very clear: that was the situation. I consider everything as fate and I had to get used to it.  It was an abnormal situation and we tried to live in it, to feel well, to do what we could with our lives. What saved us was the group of friends where we lived like in an enclave, and the children. (A.M., 140)

I lived better during Ceausescu?s regime. I managed not very well, but extraordinarily well. I had clients who worked at the food stores. They used to call me and give me packages, with the price written on them; I didn?t know what was inside them. When arriving home, I opened them: a piece of salami, cheese, two or three hens, eggs. My refrigerator was full. Everything was cheap, the food, the holidays and the apartment costs. One could feel though the lack of freedom. There were constraints. We weren?t free in the true sense of the word. To be able to say what you wanted, to be able to see what you wanted, as today: you have so many TV channels, you can watch anything, that?s why we stopped reading.  I don?t even get to read the newspaper, let alone a book. Now there is freedom, you can shout anything you want, nobody bothers. The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on. You can do whatever you want, you?re free to go wherever you wish, but what with? Before we had this problem: you couldn?t do whatever you wanted to do. You could go fishing, have fun, as long as one did not exceed a certain limit, to offend anybody- you had to mind your own business. I remember that we celebrated my or my father?s name day by making meals, steaks, grilled sausages. My father used to say: ? Aren?t we going to get rid of these communists, they enslaved us.? He had lived during the monarchy and he knew how it had been then. ? When I was young, there were rivers of milk and honey. Peasants used to come and sell fish.? I used to say: ? Shut up, father. Look what we have on the table, if the militia comes and asks where we have this from, they can arrest us all, I cannot tell them anything, there is nothing in the shops.?