The Science of Hunger: Life on Rations in Ceaușescu’s Romania
Newly Declassified Securitate Documents Confirm a Systematic Starvation Policy
A recently declassified secret Securitate document reveals the harsh reality of food shortages in Bucharest during the final years of Romania’s communist regime. The two intelligence notes, made public by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), prove that Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Communist Party were fully aware that Romanians were starving and standing in enormous lines just to obtain basic food like meat. Despite this knowledge, the authorities allowed the crisis to continue. The document also shows that even in the days leading up to Christmas in 1989, food supplies to stores remained critically limited.
Even those who lived in the capital, Bucharest residents, were no better off than those in smaller towns. According to a declassified note from December 4, 1989, just weeks before the revolution, insufficient quantities of essential food products were distributed to grocery stores in the capital.
Detailed records from the Ministry of Domestic Trade reveal that deliveries of agro-food products consistently fell short of the planned targets:
Fresh meat: out of 383 tons, only 163 tons were delivered (42.5%)
Meat preparations: out of 347 tons, only 232 tons were delivered (66.8%)
Meat for culinary preparations and semi-prepared products: out of 110 tons, only 14 tons were delivered (12.7%)
Cheese: out of 109 tons, only 37 tons were delivered (33.9%)
Eggs: out of 2,322 thousand units, only 1,297 thousand were delivered (55.8%)
Vegetables: out of 871 tons, only 244 tons were delivered (28%)
Potatoes: out of 1,258 tons, only 366 tons were delivered (29%)
Rice: out of 129 tons, only 36.2 tons were delivered (28%)
Beans: out of 322 tons, only 14 tons were delivered (4.3%)
Fruits: out of 214 tons, 173 tons were delivered (80.8%)
The secret report concluded that the negative aspects regarding food supply in the capital persisted despite official promises and propaganda. This is yet another confirmation of the systemic shortages and daily struggles faced by ordinary Romanians at the end of Ceaușescu's regime.
But this was no accident.
The gradual descent into hunger in socialist Romania began quietly, almost bureaucratically, in the early 1980s. On December 19, 1980, the regime passed a chilling law. On the surface, it sounded dull and technical: "The Law on the Establishment, Distribution, and Use of Resources for Supplying the Population by County." In truth, it marked the start of institutionalized deprivation. From that point on, the state would dictate not only what we could eat, but also how much, when, and whether we could obtain it at all.
Ration cards became the new currency of survival, thin slips of hope stamped with our assigned worth. Sugar, flour, oil, eggs, milk, and meat—essentials in any kitchen—were distributed not by need but by demographic category.
To justify this cruel system, Ceaușescu and his inner circle ordered a team of so-called experts from the Central Committee to devise a program they called the "Scientific Nutrition Program for the Population." This document dictated how many calories we should consume, what our ideal weight should be, and what tiny morsels of food we were allowed each month. This had less to do with health and more with control.
Each year, under the shadow of this dictatorship, our lives were measured out in grams. We were permitted small rations of meat, fish, milk, dairy, eggs, fats, vegetables, potatoes, legumes, fruit, and sugar, but only on paper. In practice, even these meager allowances were rarely fulfilled.
Here is what the regime decided was enough for a human being:
300 grams of bread per day—barely enough to stave off hunger
500 grams of cheese per month
10 eggs per month
500 grams of pork or beef per month
1 kilogram of poultry per month
100 grams of butter per month
1 kilogram of sugar per month
1 liter of oil per month
1 kilogram of flour per month
But more often than not, these quantities were a cruel illusion. The stores were empty. Shelves stood bare. And even when whispers of a new shipment spread through a neighborhood, we were forced to wait in lines that began the night before, through cold, rain, or snow. Still, many went home empty-handed, their hands trembling not from the cold, but from hopelessness.
I couldn't afford those lines. I lived alone and worked full-time. There was no one to hold my place in the dead of night and go to work in the morning. My daily food became whatever I could carry quickly: small, dry pretzels, Covrigi Dobrogeni, some water, and, if I was lucky, fruit from the farmer's market. I often think how fortunate I was that I didn’t drink coffee. It was nowhere to be found in stores, and on the black market, it was a luxury priced beyond the reach of ordinary people.
This wasn’t really a diet. It was a gradual, intentional restriction that wore down both body and spirit. A government that disguised its cruelty in the language of science, while the people it ruled learned to live on crumbs, and yet, somehow, we still dared to dream of freedom.
Sources:
Additional historical details about food shortages and the Securitate records are based on:
Realitatea PLUS & Realitatea.net, reporting on declassified Securitate documents released by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI).
Available at: https://www.realitatea.net/stiri/actual/un-document-exploziv-arata-cum-erau-infometati-bucurestenii-in-comunism_5fd5ed0ab54b256bc241b437