Centre for Romanian Studies

What has President Nicolas Maduro got in common with the late (dearly departed) President Nicolae Ceausescu?

BBC News: “The Venezuelan government has taken over a toilet paper factory to avoid any scarcity of the product.”

Maduro’s Venezuela – Shortages of Toilet Paper

Well, you may well ask, one has more answers to this question than one would like to give: not just Marxism and an admiration for dictatorship, not only Communist practice and humbug, or reducing a whole, once-prosperous nation to despair: one has to live through such Kafkaesque reality in order to believe it can exists! The examples are legion, but the latest news on the International media deserves particular attention, not just as unimaginable developments in this Venezuelan Absurdistan, no! But because of the inevitable degrading of human nature, under Communist practice.

Venezuela – Food Shortages

Apparently, the blueprint of a five-year plan to reach “Communist Paradise” got into trouble, when such goods, as basic as lavatory paper, were no longer available in shops. Such crisis compelled Maduro to order emergency imports, to no avail, as the shortage was too severe – one graphic example of the bankruptcy of communist ideology, in sufficing to such bare necessities!
But let us comfort President Maduro by reassuring him that even in Ceauasescu’s Romania, one could not enjoy the luxury of importing toilet paper, because foreign currency was needed, instead, for securing a “bright Socialist Future”, through the import of technology from Capitalist countries… Have you ever imagined how much would have cost the regime, in equivalent US dollars, to import miles-long rolls of toilet paper for 20 million Romanians? Maybe the equivalent of buying a nuclear factory of the size of Fokushima!
Well, unlike the ‘sensible’ Maduro, Ceuasescu would simply deny a whole nation the luxury of importing toilet paper: he would look the other way and pretend that such urgent problem did not exist! But what did the resourceful Romanian people do in face of such pressing cataclysm? they were reduced, instead, to using the Communist Party newspaper “Scinteia”, as a substitute – the only item in plentiful supply…
Of course, the downside of this Marxist solution, in solving such bare necessities (excuse the pun), was that the printers ink would smear the users’ private parts with black ink!

Romania – Food Shortages under Communism

Such crisis, remained enshrined in the popular folklore of Romania, in a Parody sung by Gypsy children, instead of a Christmas Carol: this ditty is quoted in the Introduction of the Antolgy:
“Blouse Roumaine – The Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”: http.www.blouseroumaine.com:

Christmas Carol, 1980 –
(A Parody sung by Romanian Gypsy Children)

Father Christmas we do beg
Bring us butter, bring us egg.
If you ever come on foot
Bring some cabbage, or beetroot
If your bag is large enough
Add some maize and garlic cloves.
Christmas Father don’t miss either
The potatoes and the flour.
Should you come, though, in a sleigh
Don’t forget for the New Year
Toilet paper that’s so sparse,
To wipe at least our arse.”

(Translated by Constantin Roman, from the French version,
published in the magazine “L’Alternative (Paris),
supplement 20, 1981, pp. 96)

English version first published in the Introduction of the Anthology:
“Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html
read more on:
http://www.romanianstudies.org/content/2010/12/1980-thirty-years-ago-romanias-communist-christmas/