[theaeolist]

"The consumption of electricity in everyday life was limited (it was forbidden to use a refrigerator during the winter, and the use of a vacuum cleaner was banned all year round), hot water was supplied to apartments twice a week,"

This is all false. Source: I was there.

[gls2ro]

Maybe you were living in a big city like Bucharest, Timisoara ...

I was there before 1989 and grew in the small town in a house. Not a village, but a small town.

We had electricity only a couple of hours per day.

I don't know of any specific rule against refrigerator but it was not useful to buy one as you cannot connect it to anything.

The main source of light during winter was the fire and some kind of liquid gas (I don't know exacly what was that) that we used with a gas lamp.

The same goes for kitchen: most of the cooking was done using the stove or using some gas tanks that were limited - I think one per family per month or I am not sure. But the gas tank was a precious possession there.

The same was true for bread or any other food that was produced by the state. There were rations of how much we can buy.

[ido]

Why was it so limited? Didn't the former East Block had relatively abundant fuel (coal, oil, gas, uranium)?

[ggeorgovassilis]

Romania wasn't in the east block. Ceausescu ran an isolationist regime which antagonised both the UDSSR and the West.

[ChuckNorris89]

Yeah and all that went to export or industry where to could be used to make things for export.

[baybal2]

Because why spent coal on heating stables for the livestock, if the livestock doesn't die without it?

That's the mentality of a communist dictator.

[soco]

OP only meant it was not "forbidden". No need to forbid consumption, when there's nothing to consume...

[cristiioan]

Minunat, acum discutam despre romania in engleza.

[gls2ro]

We are discussing about all other countries in English why would we do it differently now just because it is Romania?

[simiones]

HN is an English-only site, so here we are. I'd love to see a Romanian HN, but given the general level of discourse I've seen in most Romanian communities online (and in most communities online period), I'm not holding my breath.

[cristiioan]

I know it is an EN only website and it was a joke :)

[jakzurr]

Pardon us, but yes we are!

[paganel]

Of course it is false but the regime was definitely monitoring private power consumption (I'm also from Romania).

My dad told me relatively recently how sometime during a winter from the late '80s a lady from the power company showed up at our apartment's door and told my father that we should lower our energy consumption, i.e. not use an electrical heater to, well, heat the house. That would have course meant having a freezing house, which wasn't ideal for kid me, so my dad, logically, called that lady some names and invited her inside the apartment to share the bed with all of us (because of the cold I was sleeping as a kid between my parents during the winter, we couldn't physically heat two rooms at the same time). Interesting times.

Bonus points for us, kids, booing and swearing out loud when the power was being cut off in the evening, and cheering when it was being restored, like true "freedom" fighters against the regime (I'm talking about the summer months when we were all outside to play well into the evening/dark hours).

[gls2ro]

So what is false from that expression in the article?

That the access to electricity was limited?

You are saying

> "the power was being cut off in the evening"

How is not the power limited if this was happening? :)

[paganel]

It's false because they weren't explicitly "prohibiting" refrigerator and vacuum cleaner use per se (as the article says), no need to do that, just cutting the power off completely was enough to do the trick.

But, yeah, on a more general level whoever was designing any electrical-related stuff had to have that in mind (the power cuts and the reduced power consumption asked from us, that is).

This discussion also reminded me that, as a kid, I was really in awe in how the (analogue) telephone network was still working even when the power went out, it seemed like magic. There was an article posted yesterday here on HN about how we're expecting rolling black-outs in our mobile phone network over parts of Europe, goes to show that in some ways the system back then that we had in Romania was a lot more resilient in face of power-cuts compared to what we have now available over most of Europe.

[nottorp]

> This is all false. Source: I was there.

Same. Pretty sure we vacuumed regularly and never unplugged the refrigerator.

If you were in a state heated apartment building after 1980, the heating was limited to non existent though. And there may have been a hot water schedule. More like twice per day not twice per week though.

[bluetomcat]

In Bulgaria, there were only two periods (1984-85 and 1990-91) during which electrical supply was interrupted on a planned basis. Rumour has it that the regime was starved for hard currency (US dollars) and was exporting everything it could. As a small kid, I remember spending 2-3 hours in the evening, relying on candles for light. In the rest of the time, electricity was cheap and abundant because the country had an economic profile based on heavy and light industry. Energy efficiency was something unheard of – appliances were power-hungry and inefficient, flats in residence blocks were badly insulated, but heating their home was never an issue for most people.

[tsimionescu]

There were periods when electricity was rationed, usually with rolling blackouts. I've also never heard of a ban on refrigerators at any particular time of year, nor a ban on vacuum cleaners. Problems with hot water were common, but I've also not heard of any particular schedule. Food scarcity was a much bigger problem for that period though, especially in major cities (people would queue for hours for a chance at meat or eggs, for example).

[gls2ro]

Well, there is no need to put a ban on refrigerators or vacuum cleaners if you could not safely assume that there will be electricity in general.

Also for other people reading this, please note that all stores in most of the country (with exception of capital city and a couple others) were controlled by the state. Leaving the country was forbidden in general.

So if they wanted people not to use refrigerators on large scale or vacuum cleaners they could just decide to not sell them. It was that simple to restrict something like electronics.

Just add more: again in most of the country there were very few cars running as there was a limited supply of petrol/gas for cars. You could have a fixed amount of gas.

They even decided at one point that on Sunday to restrict circulation of cars the following way: one Sunday cars that have an odd number are allowed, the other Sunday cars that have an even number were allowed.

[tsimionescu]

While the state could have prevented people from using refrigerators or vacuum cleaners in various ways (as you say, banning or limiting sales, but also making it illegal and relying on the near-ubiquitous network of infromants to tell on neighbours who vacuumed or used too much electricity), the point is that they didn't. Refrigerators were a common household item in Romanian cities at least, and so were vacuum cleaners. They were produced by Romanian factories and sold very much legally. While electrical blackouts were a problem, they were not prolonged enough to prevent the usefullness of a refrigerator (they commonly happened during the night, and a closed refrigerator can typically isolate well enough to preserve its temperature for 6-8h).

[soco]

Yes, and you also had to register to the waiting list to be able to buy one (refrigerator, TV, car...). Or you needed to know somebody who knew somebody who was able to get one for you faster, for an appropriate material reward.

[tsimionescu]

Agreed, "greasing the wheels" was a huge part of life in communist Romania...

[digikazi]

The hot water was "scheduled" - usually twice a day. I don't remember that well as I was quite young at the time, but I think I was meant to be on for a couple of hours in the morning and another couple of hours in the evening. In reality however, the hot water was never more than lukewarm at best and the schedule itself was very flexible: I remember whole weeks without hot water.

[soco]

Brushing teeth with a cup of water heated over the gas stove. Good memories.

[digikazi]

...having a bath with water warmed on the stove in huge pans. Equally good memories :)

[saiya-jin]

This was same in Czechoslovakia, I recall my parents standing queue in freezing cold during winter for 2-3 hours so that their sick son could have some mandarines or lemon juice in the tea.

The beauty of communist central planning, nothing really worked unless you were in communist party.

[gexla]

This is all normal in the Philippines. Electricity isn't limited, but many households only need to run phone chargers and a light for each room. Most people have fans, but you can get by without if you have an open design and some shade. I'm not sure I have ever seen anyone use a vacuum here (not many people have carpeting.) You might be surprised at how well you can get by without a fridge. Buy your meat and veggies fresh. Cook only the food people will eat (no leftovers.) Buy ice and other cold things from a community store. I'm assuming the hot water thing is for bathing during the winter, this isn't an issue in the Philippines.

[culi]

I wasn't there but my parents were and I also haven't heard of any of this. With most "life under communism" stories I'm sure it's a broad generalization that might've applied in a few localities but varied widely