indeed Romania in the 80s was like North Korea
Romanian economy collapsed after fall of the Soviet union in 1988
First of all, Romania wasn't the one of the wealthiest countries in the Eastern bloc at almost any point. East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and even the USSR for a while were ahead.
Secondly, even if that were true, Ceaușescu went on a North Korean craze (the OG kpop fan), massive parades and autarky (economic self sufficiency) included. The Romanian economy reached its relative Communist peak before 1980, because Ceaușescu crashed it afterwards trying to pay all foreign debt. Not some, all of it. Oh, and he built the second largest building in the world (current day Palace of the Parliament), spending roughly 1 full state budget on it).
Romania crashed hard because we were making stuff nobody wanted. We were selling it inside the Eastern bloc to captive buyers. On top of that privatization was delayed and initially it was only to internal cronies.
The only leader from the East who was welcomed with full regards by the West at every opportunity. Understandable since as a dictator Ceaușescu only cared about himself not Communist ideology.
I gave a citation as well. You can also look here to see the strong per capita gdp growth rate pre 1989 in the 70s and 80s. Romania started off very poor.
https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/romania
https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/romania?year=1990
Romania grew to a per capita gdp of ~2600$ in 1988 from ~600$ in 1970, while N Korea has a gdp per capita of $600 today - after 50 years.
Also, I didn't comment about Ceaușescu. So, I am not sure what you are responding to.
Ceaușescu was the dictator for the entire period you're mentioning, any discussion about Romania in the 70s and 80s implicitly refers to him.
Other than that, Romania's growth was fake from many aspects and almost no Romanian alive at the time will agree with you that the 80s where better for Romania, economically, than the 70s.
Romania's economy was geared towards exporting everything useful, including food, to non competitive markets. Figures were inflated at every level. Vanity projects were taking up half the Romanian economy.
Backyard furnaces 2.0. Make stuff nobody wants or needs, of crap quality, while not feeding people.
And regarding North Korea, it's well documented that Ceaușescu was emulating Kim. But otherwise we were more developed than North Korea since at least the Korean War, so those numbers don't say much. If anything we went down, closer to their level, during the 80s.
Are you Romanian? Does one have to be Romanian to know Romanian history? Are the rest of the world ignorant to our comings and goings? Do only Romanian opinions on Romania count? Will a Romanian shepherd's opinion on the economy be more accurate than a professional Economist that just so happens to be unfortunate enough to not be born Romanian?
>Other than that, Romania's growth was fake from many aspects and almost no Romanian alive at the time will agree with you that the 80s where better for Romania, economically, than the 70s.
Romania's growth wasn't fake.
Yes, it was an economy geared towards exporting to other bloc countries. The act of exporting caused an economic boom for the country relative to other countries. Budgets were growing, more goods were being produced, and lots of money was being made year over year, but this money wasn't being redistributed back to Romanians. It was lining pockets of party members and used on megalomaniac projects, while food shortages and blackouts were increasingly common because most goods were produced for exporting. Ceausescu incompetently and ignorantly tightened the belt too much. His party members lied to him, and the delusion of the country's prosperity was no longer sustainable. This eventually resulted in a massive disconnect that we all know the end result of.
Finally, people were worse off in the 90s than the 80s. Everything was scrapped and industry in the country essentially died overnight. Whatever profitable entities existed were sold off. random314's comment is correct. No history was rewritten.
The fact that it felt worse for you, a Romanian, in the 80s isn't a result of a lack of growth. It's a result of austerity measures designed to increasingly deprive you while the benefits of growth were distributed unevenly.