According to a recent poll, many Romanians remain nostalgic for communism, over two decades after dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown. The INSCOP Research poll revealed that 44.4 percent of the respondents believed that living conditions were better under communism, 15.6 said that they had stayed the same, while only 33.6 claimed that life was worse back then. When asked about dictator Ceausescu, 47.5 of the respondents claimed that he had a relatively positive role in Romania’s recent history, while 46.9 said that his role was rather negative. The recent poll was conducted between November 7 and 14, 2014, on a sample of 1,055 participants, with a 3 percent margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level.

A 2010 poll conducted by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy provided similar results. Of the 1,460 respondents, 54 percent claimed that they had better living standards during communism, while 16 percent said that they were worse. Moreover, 49 percent claimed that Ceausescu was a good leader, 30 percent believed he was neither good nor bad, while 15 said he was bad. The survey has a 2.7 percent margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level.

How does that change the point made and the actual Romanian people's experience living under communism?