Communism, like any virus or trauma, has a lingering effect that remains long after the initial impact – and that is certainly seen in Communist Romania.
What could be the subject matter for a top secret reunion of a freely elected Parliament? Is it allowed or not for certain members of Parliament’s technical staff to deal with the underpants size of the honorable MPs? Here is the story of a momentous issue the Romanian Parliament faced at the dawn of its newly-found democracy .
The House of Representatives Chairman had a dilemma. He knew how to keep under control any large-scale reunion. After all, he was a former Secretary General with the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Youth Union. The only rub was that formally the Union came to an end a half year before, at the end of year 1989. The people of Romania left behind a hard decade of co-existence with a national system of undernourishment and terror. And the former Secretary General had to deal with the outcome of the so-called free elections – a strange concept in Communist Romania. The assembly room was emptying at an alarming rate. The honorable MPs leaked in crowded rows … to the buffet of the House. Fresh butter has arrived! And everybody, except the presidium rushed out to buy butter for their family, friends, and relatives. In defending the democratic path of the country, he said: “I’m begging the Quaestors to take action: not to deliver goods to the buffet during the assembly because the honorable MPs should not be distracted from their duties!”
For many years following the 1990 regime change, the Romanian Parliament staff remained the old staff of the former (Communist) Great National Assembly. They queued up every morning at the entrance in rather disorderly fashion. The vigilant doormen thoroughly checked their freely elected representatives. The previously mentioned “national system” was unequivocal in prescribing short haircuts and no beard. The honorable MPs, smiled apologetically and rushed to their respective offices with their heads down. The ever watchful and heavily armed guard singled out a young man, with long hair and beard and wearing jeans. His verdict was: “Journalists are not allowed to use this entrance!” You may have guessed that the rebellious young man wasn’t a second-class citizen of the journalist kind, but an honorable MP himself – more exactly myself, quite proud at that moment of being singled out as a free thinker.
During the decades of fear and hunger, so-called “little packages” were the prerogative of the nomenclature of the (Communist) Party. While ordinary people endured shortages of virtually everything from eggs to sugar, the Communist elite was handed these “little packages”. This progressive tradition obviously was preserved for the new MPs. It was 1990 -1991. Post Communist Romania was still struggling with a monumental shortage of basic goods. A member of the Parliament’s staff had a list with the names of all MPs. If the MP was present in the assembly room, or someone was successful to stand in his stead, this very special member of the technical staff wrote a sticky note. The honorable was then directed to a secret room at basement level three, where in exchange for the sticky note and a ridiculously small amount of money he was handed the miraculous package containing: 100W light bulbs (2 pieces), maximum 2 small bags of (Chinese) salted peanuts, BT (Bulgarian Tobacco) cigarettes, shampoo, some tasteless chocolate and premium quality Chinese cotton underpants, from the times of poor comrade Mao.
And these underpants presented a real and very ponderous issue: How should the bright employees of the secret services (yes, the staff was entirely comprised of this elite group) figure out the underpants size of every MP? And what about the ladies? The Chinese industry was not exactly famous for producing fine lingerie for women. So the journalists in the house were already looking forward to the saucy half-day plenary session to solve this incredibly difficult issue.
And at this most difficult of times for a nascent democracy, an astonishingly sharp mind found the way to keep the curious noses of the press away from this delicate issue: he declared a closed session.Unfortunately, it was all for nothing: after half a day of debates behind closed doors, the brightest collective and elected minds of the House were unable to devise a method on how to get the proper size for each MP’s Chinese cotton underpants.
For more of the impact of Communism in Romania, you might be interested in So, What’s Freedom? – a movie about the communist deportation in Romania.
