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Interviewed by a BBC journalist between the two electoral rounds of the presidential elections, a student in Bucharest declared that he had voted for Vadim because he was hoping he "would hit the big shots". So the ones the young man had in mind were not the thieves, but the "big shots". His proletarian-like complaint might seem anachronous, but it represents a deep reality of today’s Romania. It should dray the attention of those who, be them political men or intellectuals, think hat the youth are the ones who will lead the country on its good way. The starting premise is that the biological extinction of the generations impregnated with communism is going to deeply change the Romanian society, which will step by step adopt the capitalism as economic formula and the democracy as political one. It is a way to calm down by assuring ourselves that God will handle what we cannot. To believe in miracles and to hope that exterior solutions to our direct actions will appear are believes that will keep on lingering in our minds. Until 1989, we believed in Nicolae Ceausescu being overthrown by Gorbachev; more recently, NATO and the European Union should handle the security and the prosperity of our country.
The faith that Romania’s salvation will come by the young people is also pretty well printed in the politicians’ minds. Petre Roman has already announced that he would start a reconstruction program for the Democratic Party starting form the youth. Former President Emil Constantinescu also relates his hopes for the future to the youth. For now, the only one who had an electoral gain out of all this was Vadim. The latest elections proved that, if the retired nostalgically remain by Ion Iliescu’s sides, a massive group of young electors directed towards the PRM leader. Consequently, the only obvious thing, unfortunately, is the dramatic diminishing of the explicit support for capitalism, free market and liberal democracy.
As it usually happens, such generalizing judgments prove to be simplistic and incorrect. If the older generations are frightened by the changes around and hanker after the predictability that a figure as Ion Iliescu seems to be able to offer, in exchange, a good part of the young people doesn’t see at all the change as a process they are part of. Somebody in the top is forced to provoke it, and very soon, in the direction they want. On the occasion of the same opinion poll we were mentioning at the beginning, another young mean was saying "What big thing do we want, after all? To have money for a nightclub, for a billiards game, to afford to spend our holidays somewhere to enjoy ourselves!" It is quite unclear who should give the money for the billiards: the President of the country, the government, the Parliament?
The differences of social statute become more and more visible and hurtful, and the psychological pressure increases impatience.
Everybody’s reaction to this daily challenge is so different that it is too hard to look at the young people as at a homogenous category. There are a series of constants and geographical nuances – between Bucharest and the rest of the country, between Moldavia and Transylvania, not insignificant. The cynicism increasing quota and the eroding of the fundamental values are, unfortunately, good examples.
Among Vadim’s electors there were few that were expecting from him a miraculous economic solution. But they were hoping he would act inversely, by "hitting the ones who have". Capitalism provokes inherent inequalities. And accepting it is a simple rule, essential, eventually, for Romania’s modernization.
The major changes in the Romanian society affect all generation. The youth are not at all immune to the influences of a collective mental, modeled over tenths or even hundreds of years. So, unfortunately, the problem of a deep transformation of Romania has no solution of biological nature.
(Alexandru LAZESCU)
