Politics, Economy and Social Culture in Romania during the Transition

After the 1989 revolution, new politicians in the transition period who had to adapt to unfamiliar political atmosphere shared three visions for the future of the country. The first was the restoration of pre-communist history and politics, the second was the declaration of liberalism, and the last was the realization of a social project and political design for this purpose. However, the political situation in the 1990s was grim due to the deterioration of the National Salvation Front (Frontul Salvării Naţionale) and the unrest in the university square, and the new world was slowly approaching because of the old communists. On one hand, Romania in transition had the dual goal of creating representative democracy systems and practices, and establishing a free market economy system on the other hand. This double transformation was premised on the introduction and settlement of neoliberal ideology according to policy decisions between ‘representative democracy’ and ‘market economy’, and social consensus on democratization and transition to a market economy. A successful transition was a task given to president Ion Iliescu, who had to lead at a major turning point in 1990~1996, but the historical reality was far more complex and difficult than could have been anticipated and programmed. From president Emil Constantinescu, who made the first democratic transfer of power in 1996, to Prime Minister Adrian Năstase in 2002, the political declarations and experiments of ‘the end of the transition’ and ‘the beginning of a new era’ were repeated over and over again. Society in the transition had to abandon the paternalistic and authoritarian mindset left behind by the communist ideology and dictatorship of the past. The most important change is the transition from a monolithic system such as a dictatorship to a plural system. Free access to mass media, the opening of the free movement right, and the promise of restoration to Europe have led to a radical acceleration of social change. In that sense, EU accession in 2007 can be regarded as the end of the transition to the post-communist regime. Romania was officially linked with Europe again politically and economically, as it had been before socialism. This long historical process suggests how the experience of communism affected Romanians’ worldview and how real their integration into Europe was.