Bucharest 20 Years Later

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Bucharest 20 Years Later (In Progress)

Recent pictures from Bucharest capturing the youth scene, the nouveaux riche and the fashions as the
20th Anniversary of The Fall of Communism and The Romanian Revolution approaches.

Romania suffered the worst of the former Eastern Bloc Communist regimes under dictator Nicolae
Ceausescu. By 1989, Romania was a police state akin to North Korea with the feared Securitate
(secret police) waging a war of...
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Bucharest 20 Years Later (In Progress)

Recent pictures from Bucharest capturing the youth scene, the nouveaux riche and the fashions as the
20th Anniversary of The Fall of Communism and The Romanian Revolution approaches.

Romania suffered the worst of the former Eastern Bloc Communist regimes under dictator Nicolae
Ceausescu. By 1989, Romania was a police state akin to North Korea with the feared Securitate
(secret police) waging a war of psychological oppression against ordinary Romanians. In order to pay
off the foreign debt and to fund megalomaniacal buildings schemes such as constructing the world's
second largest building in Bucharest, Ceausescu starved his own people and, at the end, shops were
empty and electricity and heat intermittent.

While economic progress was slow in the 1990s, the last five years have seen dramatic change as
banks began to make loans and the entire population went on a shopping spree for the first time.
Almost overnight top of the range BMWs and Mercedes flooded the streets, hip fashions appeared and
trendy cafes and restaurants opened everywhere. Yet Bucharest is still plagued with myriad problems
such as one of the most corrupt governments in Europe with remnants of the former Communist
regime still operating, a crumbling infrastructure and an obsession with consumer culture even though
their continues to be only a small middle class. It remains to be seen what will become of the city
once known between The World Wars as 'The Paris of the East'.
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