Communism has cast a long shadow over Romania. The passage of little
over a quarter of a century since the overthrow in December 1989 of
Romania's last Communist leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu, offers a symbolic
standpoint from which to penetrate that shadow and to throw light upon
the entire period of Communist rule in the country. An appropriate point
of departure is the observation that Romania's trajectory as a Communist
state within the Soviet bloc was unlike that of any other. That
trajectory has its origins in the social structures, attitudes and
policies in the pre-Communist period. The course of that trajectory is
the subject of this inquiry.