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UCHAREST, ROMANIA — An ongoing battle between the prime minister and the president amid a tanking economy has left many Romanians longing for a return to communism because they think the democratic and free-market reforms of the past two decades have failed.
They view communism as a system that guaranteed stability and safety, said Lucian Boia, author of the book “History and Myth in the Romanian Consciousness.”


“Today, Romania has become unpredictable. Those who care more about safety than about freedom end up looking back nostalgically,” he said.
More than 53 percent of Romanians last month told the Public Affairs polling agency that they would prefer to live once again under the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. The dictator, who terrorized Romanians for 24 years, was toppled and executed with his wife, Elena, on Christmas Day in 1989.
Two years ago, the polling firm found that 44 percent of Romanians favored a restoration of the communist regime.
The increasing disenchantment with democracy and market capitalism follows years of economic and political turmoil.

The country received a substantial loan from the International Monetary Fund, which in turn has imposed harsh economic austerity measures that include public-sector wage cuts of 25 percent and taxes on pensions for the first time.
Ioan Ivascu, 59, a computer scientist in Bucharest, is one of those who remembers the past and says the situation is far worse today.
“Now, young people have no idea what will happen with them after they finish school,” he said. “We never had such problems. We had a future perspective. We knew from the first year what we would do.”
With the fall of communism, a free-market economy offered opportunities to create wealth, but it also spawned a culture of capitalist corruption.

The corruption has contributed to a sharp divide between rich and poor, visible everywhere, especially on the country roads where luxury cars encounter old horse-drawn carriages.
New glass buildings rise next to half-collapsed houses. The capital, Bucharest, boasts dozens of high-end designer stores, although the country’s gross domestic product per capita is $12,600 annually.
Backlash at EU

Protesters in Bucharest can be seen holding signs telling the EU, “Remember, this is not your country.”
Confidence in the European Union decreased sharply in 2011, with just 46 percent of Romanians expressing trust in the 27-nation alliance. That is a drop of 14 percentage points from the previous year, according to a Eurobarometer poll.

n the meantime, the political and economical instability are causing the country’s communist past to seem particularly attractive.
Cristina Dan, 27, an archivist in Bucharest, likened the sentiment to a failed love affair.
“Nostalgia for the past is like when you break up with a girlfriend that you fought with all the time. You date another woman after, and the relationship is even worse,” she said. “In that situation, it’s normal to be nostalgic for that first girlfriend.”
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