As a child in school, I discovered that communism is a dead end. In 1950s Romania, the propaganda was pasted and sung everywhere: “Communism is the ideal society.” “We are all devoted to constructing communism.” And then there was Lenin’s slogan: “Always forward!” 

The reality that bread was on rations and meat stores were empty was justified by the promise: “We are not there yet. We are still on the pre-communism step, called socialism.” 

Education in Romania was serious, thanks to historical interaction with neighbors from the West. The education system had been founded long before communism. The study of language and mathematics drew heavily on French traditions, physics on British scholarship, technology on German advances, and language and music on Italian influences. Underlying all these disciplines was the Greco-Roman intellectual and cultural heritage that laid the foundations for modern science and art.

Because the teaching of history was systematic, an animated drawing appeared in my mind. “Systematic” means that I was taught world history in two cycles — middle school (grades 5th – 7th) and high school (grades 8th – 11th). Each cycle covered the evolution of society the same way, chronologically and geographically. The high school cycle was an in-depth repetition of the middle school cycle, and it reinforced the movie of history in my mind.