Centre for Romanian Studies

With the occupation of the Soviet armies in 1944 and sudden imposition of a new (communist) order those professionals who resisted the change, who run liberal professions (in Pharmacy, medicine, law, finance or other businesses) and did not join the Communist Party were at best expropriated, or marginalised without means of survival or simply sent to prison camps of hard labour, digging the Danube-Black sea canal, harvesting reeds in the Danube Delta or as political prisoners in the Carpathians copper mines. From 1949 a fast track for “reliable” replacements was set up for people with no previous college education to “qualify” as engineers, leaders of Industry or hospitals following a few months of “intensive” education (…).

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