A few years ago, when I was browsing the TV channels of the time, I came across a show in which Adrian Peunescu invited Stefan Andrey. I stopped a little longer out of personal curiosity (the principal of my high school, in the era when I was a student, was headed by the brother of a former minister, a minister who was usually represented in the camp of the most “open” minds). And that’s when Adrian Peunescu asks the interlocutor questions with an obvious symbolic meaning: “Tell me what plans the regime had for the next period, if what happened had not happened?” (obviously I’m quoting from memory, but that was the idea).

Of course, this topic of alternative history fascinates anyone, especially since nothing can be verified by reality; what if Napoleon had lost at Waterloo or if the referee had seen Maradona’s goal in the famous match. Or if, according to the famous saying, Cleopatra’s nose was shorter…

But Mr. Andrii did not belong to this category, so the answer puzzled me for some reason: one of the immediate plans was to purchase a more powerful engine for Romanian trucks. I’m not saying that as an engineer I appreciate people who have an appetite for specific things, but let’s put things in context: you’re in 1989, you’ve paid off the foreign debt, industry has almost irreparably degraded due to the technological gap (the 70s were years of growth electronics and computers, technologies acquired in the previous period have become obsolete for this very reason, bypassing the regime’s lack of maintenance and innovation), and you need to solve such a specific problem. A bigger engine would probably put the economy on wheels…

Later, I saw that in the drawers of various institutions and ministries lay an almost endless list of projects inherited from the old regime. When you least expect it, they reappear in the present with a consistency worthy of a better job…

Today, there are two large construction sites in the southern part of Bucharest. The new ring road will cross, among other things, the projected railway line to the future port on December 1 on the famous Bucharest-Danube Canal. To do this, although the line does not exist and probably never will, a huge bridge was built, which must have cost some money. Fortunately, a sort of “small understanding” was reached on the bridge over Argesh, but only for A0. The Bucharest-Giurgiu railway line is currently being reconstructed, and a monumental bridge is being built in Gradistea, under which ships will pass in a bright and entirely imaginable future.

I heard that in the meantime the Ministry of Agriculture also went with another canal, Siret-Bărăgan, for funding from the PNRR, although this type of irrigation is no longer in vogue these days, for perfectly rational reasons. Obviously, I also don’t expect ISPIF to be able to produce an updated draft; Like all our research institutes, the maximum of their capabilities is recycling old projects from the “good” days when they had hundreds of researchers, some of them even capable.

I didn’t check, but about ten years ago PSD still had the Vilcele – Rymnik-Vilce railway in its political program. It is obvious that no one did anything in the field except God gray naturewhich takes its turn, afforesting the slopes and embankment, capturing tunnels and viaducts and generally turning the project into history…

Recently, the Tarnytsia project has been heatedly discussed again. Surprisingly, while these discussions are taking place in the public space and in the leading online press, it has gone almost unnoticed that the first experimental battery capacity has been put into operation.

Recently heard again about the Romanian multi-purpose aircraft. I’m not entirely clear with who, as long as the Aeronave grads have graduation dates, not in Canada…

I think that the viability of these projects in the public space has several explanations. It is obvious that all the mythology that accompanies them comes from the revolutionary ideology of the 19th century, according to which man was the master of nature and his duty was to conquer it with the help of grandiose projects. Even if the latter period lives under the sway of another myth, that of the “sorcerer’s apprentice” who, behold, has played with unknown forces and is on the verge of provoking the apocalypse, we must admit that the grandeur of the first myth has considerable appeal even today.

Even if, for example, adding running water and generally urbanizing the country’s communes would be more useful efforts (moving the entire population into the 21st century) and perhaps even less costly, we must admit that these are not activities that have the same emotional charge… Therefore, people somehow feel the need to relate to them and to politicians, to make promises to them.

Another explanation is that in many areas global projects have not been implemented. In most cases, this is not even necessary; under communism, for example, someone had to calculate how many hectares of wheat to plant in CAP Mârsani, because being a planned economy, what you didn’t plan, you couldn’t eat (sometimes even what you planned, but that’s another discussion). Now no one cares, nor does anyone care, how many cars Dacia makes, because the market has simply taken over that task. For those who are curious, there are “big” numbers in the statistics, but people are used to reading them in Santaia. Or in the absence of updated projects (obviously, large private companies still have promising projects, only they have no reason to publish them, except in the event that they do some PR that would increase profits) the old ones are still recycled.

As I said before, another explanation is that the institutions that are supposed to deal with such projects no longer have the technical and organizational capacity to carry them out. From this point of view, socialism was something unique: on the one hand, specialists could not leave the country, so the personnel resource was relatively secured. Despite the disadvantages associated with the promotion of meritocracy, in the end each project institute managed to have a certain number of people who did the work – they were absolutely necessary even for those who ultimately took credit for them. In addition, designers usually had no material interests (since they could not sell products, as now, for example, someone could direct a project to purchase materials from his company or a road through which he has land to sell), so somehow technical considerations prevailed to a greater extent than now. So the designs of that era had certain advantages, and today’s designers still update them here and there, but without being able to walk through the main parts.

However, the last explanation I have has to do mainly with the origins of the current political class. Being a direct pedigree of the old nomenclature, these projects are in a way the projects of the first generation, the communist generation of the 70s. How could he get rid of them?

It is obvious that the world we live in has changed radically. It changed, on the one hand, because it is a law of nature (probably even communists would abandon some projects that would eventually become obsolete or useless), and on the other hand, because we wanted to change it. Many premises that were the basis of projects of the 70s and 80s are no longer active. There are technologies and restrictions that did not even exist at that time, on the other hand, some prerequisites (socialist society was more and more closed and the bet more and more on self-sufficiency, because Western goods and even those from the CAER bloc were for it increasingly inaccessible) are no longer valid at all.

It’s good that no one is interested in these projects anymore. But the bad part is that they are constantly in the public eye and, even worse, used as a counterweight to the supposed current economic decline. Ms Firea is one of the best examples: she promised the Bucharest-Danube canal when she was mayor, although the canal does not even pass through the territory of Bucharest, the ports are being designed in Glin and 1 December respectively. Besides the joy of the big promises, I can’t help but recall the way in which this promise functioned as an affirmation of membership in the “clan” of communist nomenclature and an implicit promise of survival in that mythology.

Recently, the rector of ASE wanted to demonstrate his political line as well, saying that he “sees too many rapes in this area.” Leaving aside the fact that he is in complete antithesis to Caragiale (- What a harvest, what a harvest? You didn’t see the rape?), the problem is clearly at the level of perception of “necessity”. We don’t have to have canola to sell, we need to have corn to eat (besides being a corn exporter). Since the goal is still self-sufficiency, we are part of the common market, apparently the planning committee is still working on the Roman market. – Read the whole article and comment on Contribuotrs.ro