Book excerpt: In 1973, Romanians were beginning to recognize that the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, contrary to what his first five or six years in power seemed to imply, would bring no respite from communism. Instead, after a 1971 "mini cultural revolution" ended hope for a Bucharest "spring" and intellectual latitude was curtailed further in 1972-73, the ominous possibilities of Ceausescu were becoming evident. In 1973, I went to Romania on a dissertation research grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board. It was a year in which wide-ranging survey research was still possible. But it was also a time when historians and writers who had different ideas, or workers who gave thought to non-party union organization, felt the heavy hand of Ceausescu's Securitate. As happens to most graduate students and their field research, it was a formative experience with indelible impressions that remain today.