Tag #136014 - Interview #78511 (Vasile Grunea)

And 1989 was obviously a relief, the time had finally come when you didn't have to live in duplicity any longer, saying one thing to your wife at home with the door locked [and something else at your workplace]. And saying nothing to the kid, lest he would blurt out something and both he and you would get into trouble because of this. Obviously, I felt a big relief that the time had finally come when you could be whatever you wanted to be and express things the way you wanted to express them. What had a very bad effect on me, however, was that I had hoped, like everybody else, that the change of regime in 1989 [following the Romanian Revolution of 1989] [36] would bring a radical and rapid turn in a positive direction, and unfortunately it brought negative developments in many respects. Nationalism, open anti-Semitism and xenophobia, and anti-Hungarianism especially, became much more emphasized. It was like a boiler that had been suppressed politically and then suddenly exploded after 1989, and this brought a great disillusionment to us.