Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:47:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: Caro Stewart <papusi_marionete-AT-yahoo.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Pshycological word games


Dear Mirjana,
 
 Yugoslavia (those times), was the gate of freedom for Romanians, who tried to cross the border illegally pursuing their way to West. Marshal Tito allowed this to happen. Indeed, your country was a heaven for us. I do have relatives in the western Romania and I spent summer vacations there. I was mesmerized watching TV channels (Romania had only 2, that ran 3 hours per day during the weekdays). The first TV advertisements I saw were on Serbian TV channels and... I loved it. My godfather was Serbian (small world :O). His son's name is Dragoslav!
 Religion was forbidden in Romania too. Ceausescu did not want people to get together to complot against him. Parties were forbidden for the same reason, but we still organized them :O) Cooking oil, gasoline, stove gas, flour, rice, potatoes and many other very important goods was rationalized. The lines for buying food were hundreds people long, for goods like butter, olives, meat, milk, cheese, citruses etc. People would fight and get hurt for food.
 In Bucharest was a little better. But many times, they would not have hot water or gas stove. The heating system was shut down... 
 And then the intellectuals were heavily watched and prosecuted. Tens of thousands were thrown in prison, tortured and killed. My aunt had her phone bugged for many years and she was followed by security when traveled outside the country. Oh, of course, people were forbidden to travel into other countries, but she was a publisher who had many powerful friends in West (journalists and writers) and they had to let her go, otherwise her friends would have made this problem public. The communists did not want that.
 Romania did not have small businesses owed by people. My father worked as an accountant for a Mechanical State farm. Together with his manager they decided one year when the Farm was placed 1st between in a national competition held between farms, to award the workers with food for Christmas, because they had worked so hard to make the Farm prosperous. As a result of them taking such a liberty, the communist threw them into prison charging them with stealing form the farm in behalf of the workers (over 100 workers). Also, my father was refusing to shake hands with the communists and humiliated them repeatedly with sarcastic jokes and they hated him for that. He was convicted 19 years and a half, but my aunt helped him to get out in one year and a half. The story was making headlines in 1974-75.
 The irony of the whole thing is that in year 2000, while living in Canada in Queen Charlotte Islands, I invited my parents to join me. My father was honest and declared at the Canadian Consulate that he was incarcerated. Although he brought documentation to prove his innocence and unfair incarceration also paper of acquittal of that "made up" guilt for which he was taken to prison, Canadians still denied entrance to my BOTH parents in Canada and to ALL my relatives. I was so hurt by this huge injustice done by the West in whose ideology we Romanians believed in, and I left Canada forever. 
 And again, I am not in any way a nostalgic of the communist times as everyone can see, but it's true that puppetry was highly regarded by the Communist State. 

Hoping that I did not upset the Puptcriters with this subject not related enough :O) to puppetry,
 
 Caro
       
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