ABSTRACT
For the first two years after the fall of the Ceauşescus the new regime retained a form of paternalist, semi-authoritarian rule. Civil liberties were allowed but the authorities were still capable of exploiting nationalism and violence for political purposes. That there was not greater popular pressure for further reform was primarily because the motive force of the Romanian revolution had not been a desire to change the system but rather a simple desperation to remove the Ceauşescus and to secure enough food and heat to survive in reasonably tolerable conditions. The 1990s were to show, however, that Romania's leaders were reluctant to commit themselves to thorough-going reform. This was in part because the economic situation in Romania was even more difficult than in other post-communist states. Romanian manufacturing was characterised by huge, state-controlled, heavy-industrial concerns. These had been promoted by Ceauşescu as part of his drive to make Romania economically self-reliant and had become bywords for inefficiency, pollution and waste; the situation had been made even worse by the debt-repayment crusade of the 1980s which had prevented investment in new technology. In the first post-communist decade successive Romanian governments showed little inclination to tackle this problem, and their reluctance to do so was intensified by the violent reaction which even moderate reform provoked among the work-force. The 1990s also showed great instability within political parties and within ruling coalitions; frequently the country's leaders appeared more concerned with politics and politicking than with administration and government.
