I am from Romania. I come from a relatively small and poor village so life wasn't too bad. It was a small community and people could grow their own stuff and together with what they could steal from the collectivized farms lived an okay life when compared with people living in cities that had to queue for hours to get some bread or meat. Since it was such a small community the Securitate weren't that big a deal and if someone mouthed off about the regime the local policemen would take them into the station and gave them a beating then let them go home. In cities people that mouthed off about the regime just disappeared. They sometimes disappeared even if they didn't talk, like if someone reported them maliciously. The Securitate wasn't too keen on spending time on actually investigating stuff since our Glorious Leader needed workers for his pet projects and inmates couldn't really say no.

After the 1989 Revolution where Ceausescu was killed the people that were best poised to take power were what was left over of the former communist elite. A lot of them had foreign currency set aside since they were allowed to leave the country or had ties with the authorities. This meant that when privatization happened they could afford to buy the industry and the valuable land since local currency was basically worthless. They also overtook political power with populist measures and outright bribes. They then just sold whatever they could to foreign interests and used the proceeds to maintain their grip on power. We had a huge brain drain after that as qualified people left towards other European countries where they could earn more money and it just made the situation worse. Now the country is honestly a mess and I'm kinda glad I left.