Florin Feşnic, “Radical Nationalism East and West”
of Soviet citizens provide significant indirect evidence of what their main grievances
might have been. Both the Harvard Project, carried immediately after World War II, and
the Soviet Interview Project, carried in the late 1980s, showed widespread support for
private ownership of land as well as maintaining the extensive social benefits provided by
the system: free health care, education, subsidized housing and transportation (Inkeles &
Bauer 1959, Millar 1987). It is reasonable to assume that in Romania, where the social
and economic policies carried by the Communist regime were similar to the Soviet ones,
with similar effects, people had comparable preferences.
Following the overthrow of the Communist regime, collective farms were
abolished and land was privatized, thus fulfilling the most important wish of rural
Romanians. Initially, urban workers saw mostly good thing coming as well. After years
of shortages, shops were full with foodstuff and consumer goods at subsidized prices.
There was even an “explosion of workplace democracy” (Kideckel 1993: 216-7), where
managers were voted out by low-level service staff. For urban blue-collars, the months
following the regime change can almost be described as a reversed version of Davies’ J-
curve, where actual need satisfaction exceeded expectations. Obviously, such a situation
was unsustainable in the long run. Whether the regime encouraged or at least tolerated
such policies with the best intentions or for electoral purposes is irrelevant here. Either
way, the consequence was to create even higher expectations when the means to fulfill
them were diminishing.
According to relative deprivation theory, radical political behavior is the result of
a wide gap between what people receive (value capability) and what they expect (value
expectation) (Davies 1962, Hague and Harrop 2001: 124-5). By contrast, “absolute
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Convention