I can't speak to the rest of it, but about Romanians who "would have voted for Ceausescu": they overwhelmingly tend to be village hicks or people directly hurt by the mad scramble during the post-soviet period where communist party officials sold themselves everything that wasn't nailed down for nothing.

It's also worth mentioning that PSD is overwhelmingly the old communist party under a new name, and they are despised by a large number of Romanians.

EDIT: Also, to address the "better off" part: yes, that is true. If you were white, male and ethnically Romanian. Minorities like the Hungarians and Roma had a really bad time. To be a "good communist woman" you were expected to be a baby factory to increase the population and denied birth control.

[–] LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

It is clear just exactly who ruled the party during communism when you look at PSD's policy. Being in favour of a privatised energy sector is not very socialist at all. To me this just shows how little value they put on socialist values and paradigms back then too.

No socialist project can work long term when built with a small number of people at the top, determining everything. Power needs to be as spread out as possible.