A View From Bucharest

Abstract

As a Romanian mathematician and futurist, I have had the privilege to see ‘from within’ how intellectuals and the communist state can coexist in Eastern Europe. In my experience, East European intellectuals do not represent a threat to existing communist rule, although they can challenge it. [Few people — if any at all — could have foreseen the amplitude of the anti-communist upheaval in Romania in December 1989. At the same time, some of the predictions made in this paper retain their validity even after the breakdown of the Ceausescu regime. The new ruling body — the National Salvation Front — is overwhelmingly made up of former communists. Their strategy is to preserve some institutions of the old order by changing their names but not their functions. In the meantime, opposition parties have emerged in Romania and the transition to post-communism has proceeded faster than expected. (Eds)]