and all the shops in the country. All the segments of life were affected by the physical and ideological terror that seeped into the darkest corners. The cultural life was ”purified” and banalized, the structure of education was led from the top by Stalinist dogmas, the United Church with over one million members was liquidated as the Catholic Church was brutally chased. Starting with 1952 it was even forbidden to change apartment without special permission. Within the country you could travel only for ”job purposes” or for medical reasons, and if you stayed in a place another than at home for more than 24 hours you had to register with the Mili t, ia as did hotel visitors or people passing by to visit relatives. Everything and everybody were affected and distorted - a whole people was turning the lights off and pulling back the curtains. Soon after street lights and shop-windows were also turned off while private houses, apartments and pubs became real refrigerators. It was even said that the arty secretary general had mounted faulty thermometers showing 19-20º all the time in the rooms where he himself was working or receiving guests.
9 SUREN SPANDARIAN STREET, SECTOR 2
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It was by no means an accident that the gigantic dam and the equally monumental power plant of Djerdap in the Danube at the border between ”free” Yugoslavia and Romania close to the Bulgarian border were identified with the legendary Iron Gates at which the Roman general Caius Scribonius Curio stood in 74 AD being not too enthusiastic at the thought of dashing into the deep forests across the Danube. It was as if this representative of a wellorganized Latin civilization felt an unease about what he would be confronted with in the unknown country. The decision to build the plant taken by Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and Josif Broz Tito during Ceausescu´s visit to Belgrade in 1963 resulted in, among other things, the , obliteration of the island of Ada Kaleh together with its mosques, cafes and the whole Turkish population coinciding at the same time with an equally tragic set of further measures intended to mark Romania’s newly-awakened distaste for stepping in line with the USSR after Stalin’s death in 1953 and the Hungarian revolt of 1956. In the same year, in Bucharest, the Russian Institute was closed, while Stalin town in the Carpathians was re-named Brasov. , Also, the requirement of learning Russian in schools was abolished and Russian streetnames were replaced with Romanian ones. The Romanian academy started again stressing the Latin origin of the Romanian language and Mihai Eminescu again became the national poet of Romania after having been banned because of his anti-Russian visions. For the Constantinescu family, however, the year 1963 did not seem as hopeful and happy as the temporary de-Stalinization promised to mean, on the contrary. When Nicolae Ceausescu, the newly elected Secretary General, took the floor at the 9th Congress of the , Romanian Workers´ Party in July 1965 and promised loud and clear that the liberalization process would continue, at the same time he publicly condemned Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and his regime, Constantinescu´s house on Strada Laptari Tei was already torn to the ground to