The reluctant nostalgic

How we also take part in the public exposure of this problem, we must say something. Repeatedly in recent years, in one form or another, INSCOP has studied the nostalgia for the communist period, as it appears in today's public opinion (our latest study of this type is from July 2025, the conclusions can be found here: https://www.inscop.ro/iulie-2025-sondaj-de-opinie-inscop-research-perceptia-populatiei-cu-privire-la-regimul-comunist-reperele-nostalgiei/). We are neither the first nor the last to study the theme. The 90s and the early 2000s had many interesting studies about residual communism, many synchronized with what was happening in the sociology of other Eastern European countries, others inspired by the methodologies of studies prompted by the denazification efforts regarding post-war Germany. The small paradox is that the theme of communist nostalgia remains current – not only for us – even 35 years after the end of the Cold War.
It is simple to think that a person who is 65 years old in today's Romania was 30 years old at the Revolution. In research about residual communism, it is usually explained to us how those who had passed the first age of maturity or even aged under the communist regime, attached to values of stability and ignorant of capitalism, democracy, and the West, were more horrified by the post-December chaos than by the known problems of a barely overcome society. But you see that today we no longer talk about the elderly educated during Stalin's time, nor even about those who left the country as children during Gheorghiu-Dej's time – and became masters or even engineers under Nicolae Ceaușescu's Golden Age. Today we even talk about people who do not have a good knowledge or experience of that era, but seem to regret it.
Of course, we can discuss whether the metaphor of nostalgia is methodologically correct, but we must recognize that it is a concept that marks and raises certain precautions. There are two interpretations that draw attention when the idea of nostalgia is somehow criticized. After all, both are correct and do not conflict with each other. The first interpretation applies to those who had real contact with the era and says that people do not regret communism, nor the type of state back then, nor the type of society, nor do they think in a real way about what daily life was actually like, about restrictions, abuses, and shortages: they regret their youth, others their childhood, biological health, beginnings, even the hope that after that regime a transformation towards prosperity would follow, the impression that everything would get better and better. The second interpretation also includes those who did not have relevant contact with the period – primarily due to age – and presents nostalgia as being more about today than about yesterday. It is about a today with clear and specific grievances, dominated by inequality and the impression (perhaps in many cases true) that others, less deserving, if not even outside the law, are doing better and are rewarded by society, not sanctioned. And then the term of comparison arises, for each grievance on one side, not so much real, but constructed as a golden age: for some it is communism, which provided homes, jobs, did not tolerate parasitism, and simulated meritocracy and egalitarianism quite well (each chooses what interests them from here, as not everything fits everyone); others turn to the voivodal eras when the Lords were just, preserved the language, tradition, identity, and religion, and there was no need for parliaments or a justice system.
Of course, here nostalgia overlaps with our public's appetite for enlightened despotism, rather than for authentic democracy (which, perhaps, is more worrying than the descriptive nostalgia for communism).
Some of the supporters of the above interpretations believe that the fear of communist nostalgia is exaggerated, precisely because they have disillusioned this nostalgia. Even accepting the aforementioned explanations, valid both together and separately, but also in conjunction with the addition I made regarding enlightened despotism (which we can detail in a future material), I see no reason for calm. Neonazis did not appear because they were perfect and objective connoisseurs of the Nazi political phenomenon. Similarly, neocommunists are not perfect historians of communism. Apologists for the past do not view it rationally: some deny its crimes, others justify them, others glorify them. After all, when these ideologies appeared, do not imagine that they were followed because some people read the foundational books for entire weeks and came to the philosophical conclusion of their truth. No. People follow bizarre ideologies because others do so, because they are attracted to their charismatic image vectors, because their expectations have been ignited, because they have failed professionally or personally, because they feel the need for belonging, because they are fascinated by the great collective phenomena that come with the feeling of power and impunity, because they can focus on a tempting scapegoat, because they are given the impression that they have a purpose in life, etc.
So if the authoritarian temptation exists and if people find a historical reference, we have a problem. Because that dissatisfied person, meanwhile radicalized, has not read all the foundational literature of the far right or the far left carefully, it has no relevance. It is not reading that is in discussion here.
Perhaps it would be useful to conduct a study that operationally describes, not graphically, the nostalgia for communism. Perhaps something more sophisticated than what has been done so far, in such a way that we can clearly see how much ideology is there and how much authoritarian temptation and the myth of the golden age. There is also a small intellectual challenge here. The authoritarian personality described by Theodor Adorno could be broadly placed over all forms of radical ideologies, not just over fascism, as he initially believed, at least.