A major new piece of opinion research on public perception of the pre-1989 Communist regime has shocked the tender sensibilities of Romania’s intelligentsia and of the wider “educated classes”. It turns out that 66 per cent of Romanians today believe that Nicolai Ceausescu was a good leader for Romania. The country’s last Communist dictator, swiftly executed by firing squad on Christmas Day in 1989 after a pathetic show trial, is back – back in fashion, and come to haunt his political executioners and their descendants’ rotten “democracy”.
But there is more. The polling delivers an unambiguous verdict: 36 years on, a majority of the Romanian population has positive and very positive views about a great many aspects of life under the former Communist regime. 55.8 per cent of respondents believe that the Communist regime did more good things for Romania, on balance, rather than bad; only 34.5 disagree. A plurality, but not outright majority (48.4 per cent v. 34.7 for the opposite view), think life was better before 1989 than today.
These findings have been met with horror and extreme alarm by “experts”, pundits, politicians and other “influencers”. Who could possibly have anything good to say – in an EU country, in 2025 – about a murderous, totalitarian, anti-Christian regime that has brought so much misery and suffering not just in Romania but across the world? Whose depraved philosophy of egalitarianism and materialism, mocks Nature itself. And especially an ideology whose core economic theory – the supposed unique strength and “genius” of Marxist thought – has been proven wrong again and again. All these things are entirely true. So, how? Why?
