Half of Romanians now believe life under communist regime was better

Roughly half (48%) of Romanians believe that the communist regime was a good thing for Romania, according to a new survey conducted by INSCOP for News.ro. Over 46% also believe that life before 1989 was better compared to the present situation.

In the opinion of 48.1% of Romanians, the communist regime was a good thing for Romania (compared to 45.5% in November 2013), while 42.3% believe the opposite (compared to 44.7% in November 2013). 9.7% of respondents do not know or did not answer this question.

The same survey revealed that 46.4% of Romanians believe that life before 1989, when the Revolution that led to the collapse of communism in the country, was better compared to the present situation (compared to 44.4% in November 2013), 34.2% think it was worse (33.6% in November 2013), and 13.7% think it was the same (15.6% in November 2013).

“The objective reality and all data clearly show that the standard of living today, national wealth, rights, and freedoms are far superior to the situation before 1989. However, public perception is different, with some explanations being partially objective and others partially subjective, fueling this acute sense of nostalgia,” said Remus Ștefureac, director of INSCOP Research, cited by News.ro.

Successive crises in recent years, rampant inflation, the lowering standard of living, the unequal distribution of present national wealth, and personal nostalgia for youth all play a factor, according to the INSCOP head. This is especially true for people with primary education, those potentially active but currently inactive, those in rural areas, those with lower income, or those in the southern or eastern regions of the country.

“All these have led to a mythologization of the benefits of communism for increasingly wider layers of the population, fueling, on the background of the atrophy of collective memory, unfortunate political choices. Countering this trend is a broader responsibility that falls on the intellectual, political, economic elites, and the media,” Ștefureac concludes.

The opinion poll was conducted by INSCOP Research at the request of News.ro. The data were collected between November 20 and 27, using the CATI method (telephone interviews), through a questionnaire. The sample volume, simple and stratified, is 1,100 people, representative of significant socio-demographic categories (gender, age, occupation) for the non-institutionalized population of Romania, aged 18 and over.