Between Limits, Lures and Excitement: Socialist Romanian Holidays Abroad during the 1960s–80s

  • Adelina Oana Stefan
Chapter

Abstract

‘I was off to Sofia to spend the New Years Eve of 1953’ wrote Romanian poet A E Baconsky in his travel memoirs published in 1968 (Baconsky 1968: 9). While this may seem like banal information given the vicinity of Bulgaria and Romania and their shared belonging to socialist space, it was in fact quite an event. Travelling abroad was a troublesome undertaking for Romanian citizens during the early communist period and only certain categories of people such as those belonging to the nomenklatura, sportsmen, prominent writers or members of folkloric ensembles were able to take short trips, mostly to neighbouring socialist countries. This situation was to change in the late 1950s-early 1960s with the consolidation of power of the Romanian socialist regime. As the regime aimed at legitimizing itself not only through force, as had happened in the early 1950s, but also through a program of social welfare, ordinary women and men received better access to consumer goods, housing, and last but not least vacations, including those abroad (Murgescu 2010: 132). From the first law to regulate foreign travel, issued in 1957,1 a gradual liberation ensued. The law of 1957 only set up general principles about how a Romanian citizen could temporarily leave the country.2 As a response to Romanians’ increased interest in taking vacations abroad, the Council of Ministers issued further, more thorough regulations in 1967.3

Keywords

Foreign Currency National Archive Socialist Country Communist Regime Socialist Society 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Adelina Oana Stefan 2014

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  • Adelina Oana Stefan

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