The Escape from Romania in 1989

Chapter 1: Romania under Ceausescu in August 1989. (preview)

After years of dreaming and planning that summer I was ready to succeed or die in my attempt to escape.

The plan was to get to the Danube River at night, and fully dressed swim across to Yugoslavia. Cross the socialist Yugoslavia border with capitalist Italy in free city Trieste, from there get help from some friends in France, and continue to expose Ceausescu to the world. Uncensored, I could explain from the outside what I learned in forty-five years under Communist regime, and especially the last ten years of "the golden era." I never completed this plan. My life took a different path.

...My responsibility was to provide accurate information about real technological problems on sites throughout the country. As engineer I had always been involved in programs with unrealistic duration and resources. At the ministry I was participating to program's proposal and I had access to behind-the-scene, close to top Romanian decision makers. My suspicion became a certainty. Our information was available to Ceausescu in the form we thought, and he and his wife were alone responsible for technical and tactical aberrations. All power was in Ceausescu’s hands. He used the Minister of Energy critical position, due to energy crises a very hot assignment, to discredit top government workers as no longer competent, to consolidate his power. The real, life critical problems for millions of Romanian people were cynically ignored.

He got the power twenty-six years ago and now exercises it evil against defenseless population. That was my story to tell and prove to the world. My professional mind repulsed the idea to waste any more resources for the advantage of a paranoid. Why such a bluffing leader, a media circus, and so much damage to Romanian souls?

I had already written and distributed articles about Romanian leaders' faulty economic policy in conditions of energy crisis, about the contradiction in socialism (inspired by Gorbachev "perestroika" literature), and a historical essay on socialism and Bolshevism (Kautsky - Lenin argument). The last helped me to understand some fundamental truths, and replace part of my brainwashed spots with solid, good value judgments...

How was it possible to think independently while at work for a tightly regulated communist ministry?..

Is "The Escape" the adrenaline boosting e-book you are looking for? Read it to know.

I know you do not need to read a book right now, but there is the dream for a better world in Communism w/o property, competition, social classes, etc. How did the socialism experiment worked in Romania at the most advanced stage in 1989?

Read “The Escape” to find out and get your opinion. You do not want to be left behind on critical matters. Do you?

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