The Reform Mindset
„Din două una, daţi-mi voie: ori să se revizuiască, primesc! Dar să nu se schimbe nimica; ori să nu se revizuiască, primesc! dar atunci să se schimbe pe ici pe colo, şi anume în punctele… esenţiale”
(Caragiale, “O scrisoare pierduta”)
“ […] an important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation” & “ […] the purposes of subunits may add up to an overall behavior that no one wants.”
(Donella Meadows, “Thinking in Systems)
On 4th of December 1989 in Bucharest took place the last meeting between Nicolae Ceausescu and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last one arriving directly from Malta where he had met George W Bush Sr.
At that time in all the former communist countries the long-time, hard-core communist leaders had made place for new reformist ones. The Scorpions’ “Wind of Change” was the unofficial anthem not only of German Reunification but also reflecting the emotions and the mood of all East Europeans.
Ceausescu was the only that did not step back and we all know how it ended for him.
But … let’s imagine (!) – a “what if” exercise: let’s imagine for a moment that, looking around and understanding the reality and the international context Ceausescu would have realized where the history goes – with or without him. Or let’s imagine that, thinking about his individual or his regime self-preservation, he would have decided to just “go with the flow” … how it would have looked like?
Would have been plausible to see the Romanian communist hot shots like Ilie Verdet or Constantin Dascalescu thinking about free elections and designing the road to market economy? Some say that they would have never done it (they were convinced communists after all), some say that they would have done it to save their skin.
We will never know but this is only because they didn’t get the chance.
What is sure is that all the former propaganda apparatus switched immediately sides favoring the new “2nd layer” echelon. On 21st of December the TV presenter George Marinescu was energetically condemning “the hooligans” and “the de-stabilizing factors endangering the great socialist achievements in Romania”. After just two weeks, after a perfect U-Turn, he was demonizing Ceausescu and was among the top PR bodyguards of the new regime.
As a rebranding exercise - in January 1990 all the communist organizations re-baptized themselves as organizations of the newly founded National Salvation Front, FSN. And after four-months FSN was to win the elections with an overwhelming majority.
What is also sure – following this window-dressing reformation Romania (sadly, the only place where people died in 1989 during regime change) was the east- european country that struggled the most (and maybe still struggling) renewing its economy and political system.
