„The Wilder Shores of Marx” de Theodore Dalrymple

În 1988 Theodore Dalrymple a vizitat România comunistă și iată ce și-a notat el:

„When I arrived in Romania, it had been a communist state for over forty years.

Before the war, Romania was celebrated for the excellence of its cuisine.

In a tyranny such as Ceausescu’s, shortages of material goods, even necessities, were not a drawback but a great advantage for the rulers. These shortages were not accidental to the terror, but one of its most powerful instruments. Not only did shortages (which were known to be permanent, not temporary) keep people’s minds strictly on bread and sausage, and divert their energies to procuring them so that there was no time or inclination left over subversion, but they -the shortages- meant that people could be brought to inform, spy and betray each other very cheaply, for the sake of trivial material benefits that obviated the need to queue. (Let him who has not queued for hours a day cast the first stone.) And since everyone in Romania had to resort to the black market to live, everyone laid himself open to blackmail by the authorities, who could threaten him with ‘justice’ unless he co-operated.

Totalitarian regimes created a debilitating psychology of complicity. Because they owned and controlled everything, and recognised no limits to their own power, every mouthful of food, every moment of rest, every item of consumption, was enjoyed solely by their grace and favour, which could be withdrawn at a whim. Even freedom was a privilege, not a right, and a fragile one at that. 

I never met a Romanian who did not passionately abhor what had been done to its country.

Romanians longed for culture, the kind of genuine culture that was not decreed by the state for the purpose of the state, but was the product of free people trying to give meaning to their lives. Rather touchingly they associated this kind of culture with western Europe, and I grew ashamed of the use (or lack of it) to which so many of our citizens put their freedom, and of their not infrequent disparagement of that freedom itself. 
It seems one appreciates only what does not have.”

A fost un exercițiu interesant pentru mine să recitesc despre cozile interminabile la pâine și ouă, despre conflictele spontane izbucnite din cauza lipsei cartofilor. Mai ales acum, în 2025, când atât de mulți curieri livrează mâncare direct la ușile românilor.

Dar ceea ce m-a speriat cu adevărat a fost să citesc și să-mi amintesc frica profundă în care trăiam zi de zi. O frică atât de prezentă, încât astăzi ar merita, probabil, propriul ei cod în DSM.

Cred că ar fi un exercițiu necesar pentru fiecare dintre noi să citim astfel de cărți, ca să nu uităm prin ce am trecut acum 36 de ani.

Editura: Monday Books (2012)
(prima dată a fost tipărit sub numele Anthony Daniels în 1991 de Hutchinson)