RSS
Almost 50 percent of Romanians believe communism is a good idea, improperly applied
An opinion poll conducted by the Institute for the Investigation of Communism Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (ICCMER) and by the Centre for Opinion and Market Study (CSOP) shows that 47 percent of Romanians believe communism is 'a good idea, but improperly applied,' 14 percent think it is 'a good idea, which was well applied' and 27 percent called communism 'a wrong idea.'
The opinion poll was conducted nationwide, on a population sample over 15 years old, and it interviewed 1,123 persons. The estimated error is plusminus 3 percent, the interviews being carried out in the period October 22-November 1, 2010.
The respondents equally consider (38 percent) the establishment of the communist regime in Romania at the end of the Second World War to be both 'a good thing and a bad thing.' Twenty-five percent said they did not know or did not answer this question.
As far as the decisive role in the communist regime establishment in Romania is concerned, 48 percent of the polled think that the Soviet Union had the most significant role in this case.
Seventy-one percent of the interviewed believe that the leaders of the communist regime benefited from privileges compared with the rest of the population, and 63 percent of the respondents considered that the Securitate was a main factor in the political repression during the communist era, followed by the militia, 37 percent, and the Romanian Communist Party, 35 percent.
Almost three out of four Romanians (70 percent) believe the state should ensure jobs.
The CSOP representatives told a press conference on Thursday that young people aged between 15 and 25 did not know too much about communism and were not too interested in this matter either.
The opinion poll is the second stage of the partnership between ICCMER and CSOP, which has the objective of planning a public policies' strategy for a democratic education grounded on the knowledge and assumption of the communist past.