How do you topple a regime?
John Adams said that the American Revolution was effected in “the hearts and minds of the people” before a single shot was fired. But there are many ways to influence hearts and minds in the run-up to a revolution.
In the Romania of the 1980s, one means was the dubbing of bootlegged foreign movies. It was a one-woman job: Margareta Nistor’s. She dubbed thousands of films, making hers the best-known voice in the country.
In a New York Times article and video, “VHS vs. Communism,” Romanian documentary maker Ilinca Calugareanu recalls her childhood under a Communist regime “that, among countless repressions, reduced television to two hours a day of dull propaganda” and other bland, censored fare. But one day, her parents borrowed a VCR and played Hollywood movies all night long. It was “like walking into a secret, magical and free world.”
The female voice translating the dialogue was always the same.
After the 1989 revolution that led to the demise of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, Calugareanu learned about Margareta Nistor. Once a translator for state television — which carefully repressed any hints that life was better in the West — Nistor had then teamed up with a “mysterious entrepreneur” who was smuggling in foreign movies.
For many Romanians, the movies provided a lifeline. Their forbidden, exotic glimpses into another way of life helped them both to escape the all-controlling regime and to resist it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.