My BIOGRAPHY

Olga Magdalena Lazn, Biography[footnoteRef:1] [1: Revised January 2017]

(PROFMEX and UCLA)

INTRODUCTION

I was born in stupendous Transylvania, North Western Romania, in a town called Satu Mare on the Hungarian. At age three, my mother was transferred by her employer (The Logging Company). Thus, my parents and I moved to the isolated Transylvanian town of Sighet, where I grew up like Alice in Wonderland:

On the one hand I was friends with the children of intellectuals, as well as also lovely Gypsy children to whom I taught the Romanian language as early as the first and second grade.

On the other hand, my family had a difficult life because my parents were always working until late hours at night. My younger brother Alex and I read while waiting for mother, Magdalena, to arrive turn off our lights even as she continued into the wee hours her accounting work at home. She was compounding the lengths and width of the wooden logs that were being exported to Russia year by year.

During the day, Magdalena let us play all day long to our hearts content. So unique, and we felt so free exploring nature in Sighet. When I entered primary school, I learned that Sighet was officially named Sighetu Marmaiei (on Romanias northwest border facing Ukraines southwestern border with Romania and Hungary).

In 1973, at age 10 as a fifth grader, I had to make a fateful decision about my choice of foreign-language study: Russian or English. The pressure was on us to take up Russian, this proving that we were all students loyal to the Dictator Nicole Ceausescus Socialist Government (read Romanian Communist Government allied with Moscow), but consciously I detested that

system. Although I wanted to learn English, I did not then how fateful that choice would be until 1991, when at almost 27 years of age, I met Jim Wilkie who had been advised by his brother Richard to include my town of Sighet in his journey to assess the how Eastern Europe was faring after the fall of the BerlReviin Wall, short for the long wall that kept the people of Communist countries locked and unable to escape. But more later about how Jim found me as he sought an English-speaking intellectual and social guide to Eastern Europe.

In the meantime, growing up in Sighet with a population of only 30,000 people, we were proud to recognize Elie "Elie" Wiesel (born 1928) as our most prominent citizen long before he won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. He helped us get past the terrible history of Sighet Communist Prison where enemies of the state were confined until death due to natural cause.

In my early years I had a hard time understanding how the green and flowered valley of Sighet (elevation 1,000 feet, on the Tisa River at the foot of our forested Carpathian Mountains) could be so beautiful, yet we lived under the terribly cruel eye of the Securitate to protect the wretched Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu,[footnoteRef:2] is the modern spelling of the Dictators name; and he ruled from 1965 to his execution in 1989 as the harshest leader of all the countries behind Russias Wall against Western Europe. [2: Ceauescu is the non-modern spelling of the name.]

Oddly enough, in the Transylvania of the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, supposedly I was living the Golden Age of Romanian Socialism, but even to myself as a young student; I could see that the promised full progress was clearly a lie. Most adults agreed but feared to speak so bluntly.

Even though the English-Speaking USA had been supposedly always threatening to invade Romania, I continued to study English language and literature. That I chose to study English even though the act alone brought suspicion on me because all society was taught to believe since 1945 that we were fighting off the Great Satin USA.[footnoteRef:3] America was officially seen as a threat to Romania and it allies under Russias COMECON,[footnoteRef:4] all of which I became only fully aware as I grew older and had to buy the English Course textbooks on the risky, expensive Black Market. [3: As in the case of Oceania always being threatened by eternal war alternating between Eurasia or Eastasia, portrayed in George Orwells 1984 (1948). Cf. my article Orwells 1984 and the Case Studies of Stalin and Ceausescu, in Elitelore Varieties (Edited by James Wilkie et al.): http://elitelore.org/Capitulos/cap16_elitelore.pdf

] [4: COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) dates from the January 1949 communiqu agreed upon in Moscow by the USSR (including its 15 Constituent Republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan) and its five Independent Satellite Republics (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The communiqu involved the refusal of all these countries to "subordinate themselves to the dictates of the Marshall Plan. Thus, they organized an economic cooperation among these new peoples democracies. (USSR born 1922, died 1991). Cf.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Comecon]

In the meantime, without rarely granted permission, we were forbidden to meet and visit with foreigners, especially those who spoke English and who wanted to hear from us about Sighet and its nearby wooden hamlets of the Maramures Province, where I have my first memories. The region is ethnically diverse, with a stimulating climate ranging from very hot summers and very cold winters. Geographically, we lived in the valleys and Mountains of Gutinul through which the rivers of Iza and Tisa flow. Geographically, the beautiful forested Tisa River is the natural border with Southern Ukraine.

As folklore has it in the West, vampires are native to Transylvania. We had vampires, werewolves, and wolverines, but all the mythological characters were actually members of the Communist Party, which everyone had to join--except for me because with my knowledge, I was considered a security risk!

Fortunately, when in 1982 I entered the University Babes Boljay, in Cluj-Napoca, to earn my M.A. in 1990, for my sociology classes, I decided to conduct my field research project into the rural life of the North of Romania, recording the folklore (especially myths) invented and passed down by rural folks (including small merchants, farmers, fisherman, loggers) had had used that lore to help them survive for centuries.

Further, much of my research conducted among the outlying farmers, delved deeply into Transylvania Folklore, which prepared me well to understand Communist Party Lore.

Thus, for the second time, my fateful choice of a field research project had further prepared me, unknowingly, for my future with Jim Wilkie.

Once I had been admitted to the Babes Boljay University, which was called the heart and brain of Transylvania, I also further expanded and deepened deep studies in American language and literature. Also I studied Romanian language and literature in the Department of Philology. The Bolyai University Is considered the best University in Transylvania.

Upon beginning my mentoring for other students, I was happy to find a sense of freedom. Reading and writing comprehension were my fort during my four years at Cluj. I had always dreamt of being a professor and a writer and seemed to be off to a great start.

But I soon realized that our professors opened the day by reading the mounds of new Decrees just signed by Ceausescu. Thus, I began laughing, and other students join me in mocking the wooden language of Central Plannings attempt to befuddle us with words from a wooden language, totally bent toward twisting our brains into confused submission. Professors and Securitate officers were acting as sweaty bureaucrats trying to teach us how to sharpen our mental images . Not one professor asked us, What do each of you really think of all this Ceausescu propaganda of decrees harming the educational process?

Professors had their favorite students and made sure they pointed this out in class, stifling any competition as they show openly their favoritism or nepotism.

When I reached the age of 22 in1985, I started to be argumentative, criticizing professors, especially the history professor who only knew only the History of the Romanian Communist Party.

Further, as a woman in academia, I resented being forced to do the military service. The Russians, having been directing Romanian politicians since 1945, pressured we Romanians to dig useless trenches as well as learn to disassemble and assemble the AK47.

Meanwhile in my University Cluj the atmosphere was dreadful in classes. Restrictions were plentiful and absurd. Speech was not free; one couldnt discuss issues freely in class, or make any real analysis or debate. One had to regurgitate what the professors were telling us. Modern economics led by and read whatever was there in the old books stacked in the communist library. Until I escaped Romania in 1992, I learned that the so-called economics classes we took taught nothing about money, credit, and such terms as GDP. The Marxian economics involved only fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as We Romanians have to fight-off the running dogs of capitalism, without the word capitalism ever being defined except in unrealistic theory laced with epithets.

Even as an English major, I not permittd to speak with foreigners in English --answering one question was a crime, according to the tendentious Security Decrees. Abortion was a crime punishable for up to 20 years in prison. Doctors performing it ended up in jail, and so did the pregnant women. Punishments were ridiculousthe Anti-Abortion Law lasted for 40 years, until 1990.

Furthermore if my uncle from Canada visited us, we were all under surveil