179204

Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History
Faith, Hope, and Caritas in the Land of the Pyramids: Romania, 1990 to 1994
Author(s): Katherine Verdery
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 625-669
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Faith, Hope, and Caritas in the Land
of the Pyramids: Romania,
1990 to 1994
KATHERINE VERDERY
Johns Hopkins University
Caritashas become not just an obsession but indeed emblematicof the profoundcrisis
of the times in which we live. In such times, markedby social and political upheaval
and by shortagesof all kinds, prophetsandquacksariseto heal everything,the coming
end of the world gets a precise date, and every day a miracle or two happens. People
crushed by hardshipand without hope can hardlywait to believe in these things. The
Caritasphenomenonis such a miracle.'
To everyone who has will more be given . . . but from him who has not, even what he
has will be taken away.
-Matthew 25:29
Even before entering Romania in September 1993 for a year's research, I had
begun hearing about Caritas.2 As I lunched one day that summer with a
Romanian friend visiting Washington D.C., I learned that she had just bought
an apartment in an expensive quarter of Bucharest. "How did you manage
that?" I asked, and she replied, " I bought it with the money I got from
This essay was presentedas a paperat the GraduateCenterof the City Universityof New York
and at the University of Michigan, whose audiences offered much helpful comment. I am also
gratefulfor the assistanceof PamelaBallinger,EytanBercovitch, ElizabethDunn, AshrafGhani,
ChristopherHann, Robert Hayden, Claude Karoouh, David Kideckel, Gail Kligman, Kirstie
McClure, and Jane Schneider.
I ConslantaCorpade,"FenomenulCaritas:intre iluzie Si ingrijorare,"Adevdrul,November2,
1993, 6.
2 That
project, an inquiryinto decollectivization, was supportedby a grantfrom the Interna-
tional Researchand Exchanges Board (IREX). Among IREX's fundersare the NationalEndow-
ment for the Humanities,the United States (U.S.) InformationAgency, and the U.S. Department
of State, which administersthe Russian, Eurasian,and East EuropeanResearchProgram(Title
VIII) set up by the U.S. Congress.
Because my researchfocused on a topic otherthanCaritas,I did not collect dataon Caritassys-
tematically.Far from being an opportunisticsample, mine is serendipitous;the newspapersfrom
which I clipped Caritasstories (primarilyRomdnialiberd, Evenimentulzilei, Adevdrul,Expres,
and Cuvintulliber-Free Romania, Event of the Day, The Truth,Express, and The Free Word)
tended to be critical of the scheme. I sought to compensate for these deficiencies with some
pro-Caritasbrochuresand by talkingwith a wide varietyof people from variouspartsof Romania
(though concentratedin Transylvania):Germans, Hungarians,and Romanians;farmers, indus-
trial workers, and white-collarworkers, in both urbanand ruralareas. AlthoughI cannotpresent
statisticallysound results, I believe my databroadlycapturethe so-called "Caritasphenomenon."
0010-4175/95/4179-0194 $7.50 + .10 ? 1995Societyfor Comparative
Studyof SocietyandHistory
625
626 KATHERINE VERDERY
Caritas."That same day, an official at the RomanianEmbassy told me that

deposits in Caritaswere rivaling those in the RomanianNationalBank.
Later, when I stopped in early Septemberto visit Romanianfriends living
in Germany,I discoveredthat Caritaswas all they wantedto talk about. The
hitchhikersI picked up after I crossed the Romanianborder had the same
preoccupation,as did my closest friends in the communityto which I was
returningfor my research.3When my friendsdiscoveredthat I was drivingto
Cluj, they immediatelyasked if I was going there "to put money in Caritas?"
A primaryrespondentfrom earlier visits greeted my arrivalwith the words,
"We have money in Caritas!I have a lot to tell you." Before I was properly
unpacked,friends were urging me to let them deposit money for me on their
next trip to Cluj. Obligingly,I gave them $3504-and suddenlyfound myself
as obsessed with the subject as anyone else.
For the next several months, talk about Caritas formed the thread that
joined my encounterswith hitchhikers,people in the village, friends and new
acquaintancesin all the towns and cities I visited, andthe reportsI readduring
my daily assaulton the mountainof newspapersto which I subscribed.It also
dominatedconversationsI overheard.If I passed animatedtalk by people on
city streets, Caritaswas likely to be the subject. Shopkeeperswould discuss it
with theircustomers,bus driverswith passengers,people standingin line with
others near them, judges with their plaintiffs in court. Caritaswas the com-
mon coin of all social relationsin Romaniafor that year. Its ubiquitymade it
an excellent mediumthroughwhich Romania'stransitionfrom socialism can
be examined:the anxieties and challenges thatpeople faced, the pressurethat
was exerted on their conceptions of money and value, and the alterationof
their ambientsocial and political structures.
WHAT WAS CARITAS?

Caritaswas the largest and most far-flungof perhapshundredsof pyramid
schemesthatsprangup in Romaniabetween 1990and 1994. Farmoreextensive
than similar schemes that appearedin otherEast Europeancountries(such as
the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria,and Yugoslavia),Caritasequalledor
even surpassedthe mammothMMM scheme in much-largerRussia.5Reliable
3 The site of my researchwas the communityof Aurel Vlaicu, in the county of Hunedoara,
south-centralTransylvania.Fora social historyof thiscommunity,see my TransylvanianVillagers:
ThreeCenturiesof Political, Economic,andEthnicChange(BerkeleyandLos Angeles:University
of CaliforniaPress, 1983).
4 This was worth350,000 lei at the time,
representingperhaps5 months'salaryfor a professor
(see note 11 below).
5 The differentschemesin these countriesoperatedaccordingto a varietyof rules. Forexample,
the largestones in Yugoslavia(Serbia)were bankspromisinghigh interest;they workedonly with
hardcurrencyand are thoughtto have been a mechanismby which the governmentaimedto seize
the hard currency reserves of the populace (Robert Hayden, personal communication, letter,
September 1994). The best-known Czech schemes and the Russian MMM were complicated
investmentschemes that sold sharesin themselvesand promisedexcessive dividends, ratherthan
turningover people's savings as Caritasdid.
MMM was reportedto have had one to two million investorsas of August 1993 (its organizer,
FAITH, HOPE, AND CARITAS IN ROMANIA 627
informationconcerningits founder,loan Stoica, is sparse. Before 1989 he is

said to have worked as an accountant,6a fixer for the Communist Party
apparatus,7and a currencytraderin the black market.8He had also apparently
been imprisonedfor embezzlement.9Stoica opened Caritasin April 1992 as a
limited liability company with assets of 100,000 lei,10 moving its first head-
quartersfromthe Transylvaniancity of Brasovto Clujtwo monthslater.Billed
as a mutual-aidgame designedto help needy Romaniansweatherthe transition,
the scheme promisedto multiplydepositors'funds eightfold in three months.
At first, deposits were fairly small: People put in 2,000 or 4,000 or perhaps
10,000 lei (maybe a month's pension)."ILater, initial deposits were set at a
minimumof 20,000 anda maximumof 160,000,12buttherewas no limit to the
amountone could subsequentlydepositor retrieve.People who hadbegunwith
10,000 lei and were on their fourthround by the summerof 1993 might be
picking up and redepositing40 million lei (over thirty times a professor's
annualsalary)or even more. While at first only residentsof Cluj could make
deposits-they became financial agents for their friends and relatives
elsewhere-during the summerof 1993, this restrictionwas lifted. To make a
deposit, one had only to be a citizen of Romania-or have a Romanianfriend,
as I did, or some other link directly to the source.
Like all things Romanian,Caritassoon developed two paralleltracks:one
for people with inside connectionsand anotherfor everybodyelse. People in
the latter group would stand in line to make their deposit, then do so again
Sergei Mavrodi, claimed ten million) (Financial Times, July, 30-31 1993, p. 9). Tax police
following the scheme's closure estimatedthe worth of its sharesat ten trillion rubles. Although
these figures equal or exceed those for Caritas,the populationof Russia is many times largerthan
Romania's23 million. (Fordetails on MMM, see the Financial Timesfor July throughSeptember
1994, as well as the Foreign BroadcastInformationService and RFE-RLreportsfor this same
period.)
6 This is the most widespreadof the rumorsabout his formeroccupation. See, for example,
Business Central Europe, October 1993, p. 55; Financial Times, October 18, 1993, p. 3.
7 I have this from a memberof the Hungarianparliament.
8 Michael Shafir,"TheCaritasAffair:a Transylvanian Eldorado,"RFE-RLReports2 (Septem-
ber 24, 1993), 24.
9 This was confirmedby the prosecutorin chargeof the case againsthim following his August
1994 arrest. See Romania libera (InternationalEnglish Edition), September3-9, 1994, p. 12.
10 The Romaniancurrencyunit is the leu (pl. lei). It is difficultto give equivalentsfor figures
in lei, owing to the 250 to 300 percent inflation rate and the discrepancybetween official and
black-marketexchange rates. Stoica's 100,000 lei would have been worth about $300 (at the
official rate) in the spring of 1992; by September 1993 it was worth $100; and by May 1994,
when the scheme collapsed, $60.
11 Owing to ever-wideningdiscrepanciesin income after 1989 (as well as the factors in the
preceding note), it is difficult to express in terms of averagesalaries the magnitudeof monetary
sums for Romanianswho deposited in Caritas.In summer1993, when many people were putting
in 20,000 to 40,000 as a first deposit, some Romanianswere receiving collective-farmpensions
of 5,000 lei per month, universityprofessorswere earning60 to 80,000, while industrialworkers
might have (on paper, at least) over 100,000 and miners (Romania's best-paid workers) over
250,000.
12 I obtained these figures from a cashier at one of the deposit centers in Cluj, in September
1993.
three months later to receive their earnings. By the fall of 1993, these lines
could take whole days, despite a stunning degree of organization. The in-
creased delays came partlyfrom an odd featureof the system: Regardlessof
the size of the deposit or withdrawal,a separatereceipt was issued for each
20,000-lei increment. To roll over a pay out of twenty million lei meant
obtainingmoney for 1,000 receipts, then waiting for another1,000 receiptsat
the deposit window. Caritasthus became like all those otheritems of value for
which people hadqueuedinterminablyundersocialism.13 Because one's earn-
ings could not be turnedover without physically moving mountainsof bills
from one cash registerto another,many people had the novel tactile experi-
ence of handlinglarge sums-their size reflected in the time needed to pro-
cess them-the disposition of which was theirs to determine.
People with connections, however, did not have to stand in line but gave
their money to whateverfriendthey had among the employees-or to Stoica
himself or one of his associates-and picked up theirreceiptssometime later.
An entire sub-industryfor making connections, a sort of parallel banking
system, came into being, with informalbranchesrunby people having inside
connections who would deposit other people's money for a commission,
usually 10 percent.14 It was rumoredthat some of these people with inside
connections received their eightfold pay out faster than the rest. Indeed, one
of the many lawsuitspendingagainstCaritasby June 1994 alleged thatcertain
membersof parliamenthad sent their money to Cluj on Fridaysand received
their pay out not in three months but in three days, while others who helped
Caritasbecome establishedwere paid almost on the spot.15
This hidden dimension of Caritas endows all informationabout it with
uncertainty.Friendstold me that working-classfamilies and pensionersmade
the first deposits, but the secretive participationof formerapparatchiks,cur-
rent politicians, and the nouveaux riches is certain, if difficult to prove.16
While in a formal sense only people from Cluj made deposits at first, the
tentaclesof Caritaswithoutdoubtspreadnot only to theirrelativesand friends
elsewhere in Transylvaniaand beyondbut to those in the corridorsof power in
13 See my "The 'Etatization'of Time in Ceau?escu'sRomania,"in ThePolitics of Time, Henry

Rutz, ed. (Washington:American Ethnological Society, 1992), 37-61, and Pavel Campeanu,
Romdnia:coada pentru hrand, un mod de viafa (Bucharest:Ed. Litera, 1994). Several publica-
tions noted that the "psychology of the queue" was an importantpart of Caritas'ssuccess (for
example, Romania liberd, July 22, 1993, p. 1).
14 Shafir, "El Dorado," 24; Adevdrul,
August 10, 1993, p. 3. There were differentsorts of
inside tracks, as well, for regulardepositorswho found a way to circumventthe queue and for
those who were well-placed cronies of the organizerand his patron, for instance.
15 See Romdnialiberd, InternationalEnglish Edition, May 26-June 3, 1994, p. 3, and Sep-
tember 10-16, 1994, p. 4. Comparealso Romdnialiberd (InternationalEnglish Edition), July
23-29, 1994, p. 11, concerninghiddenlists andprematurerewardin another"mutual-aidgame."
16 See, for
example, storiesin Evenimentulzilei, October9, 1993, p. 4, andOctober16, 1993,
p. 8; Adevdrul,October 15, 1993, p. 1, andMarch19-20, 1994, p. 1;Romanialiberd, March21,
1994, p. 1, and May 4, 1994, p. 16.
Bucharestas well. 7 The fact thatso much aboutCaritaswas not visible to the
public makes my analysis here tentativeand exploratory.
Although Caritas'sinside track obscures its true magnitude, some indica-
tion of its size is necessaryto show its significance. 8 Estimatesof the number
of depositors in Caritasrange from two million to as many as eight million,
although the latter figure, used by some of Stoica's supporters, is surely
exaggerated.19The numberthat appearsmost often in Romaniannewspapers
is four million.20Foreignnewspaperstendedto be more conservative, gener-
ally placing the total at two million, or about 10 percentof the population.21
For each of three randomly selected dates in autumn 1993 (September24,
October 1, and October 18), I counted roughly 22,000 names in the Transyl-
vanian Messenger, a newspaperlisting the names of all personsto be paid on
a given day for deposits made three months earlier.This figure suggests that
duringJune and July 1993-the periodof the scheme's maximalexpansion-
monthly deposits would have totalled 660,000.22 A report attributedto the
secret service claimed that 1.2 million people had made deposits in the first
17 One
politician close to Caritas claimed that 260 parliamentarianshad deposited in the
scheme (Adevarul,October 29, 1993, p. 2).
18 Officials at the U.S.
Departmentof State told me that reliable figures on the numbersof
depositors cannot be obtained. The Departmentof State was sufficiently concerned about the
possible effects of Caritasto have arrangedfor regularreportson it, both classified and unclas-
sified. The InternationalMonetaryFund (IMF) was at that time negotiatinga new stand-byloan
with Romania. Given the scheme's apparentmagnitude, IMF negotiatorswere doubtless con-
cerned about its possible impacton Romania'sfinances;but the IMF was not able to provide me
with reliable figures on its size. (My thanksto MarkAsquino and Brady Kiesling for discussion
of this point.)
19 See Dan Zamfirescuand DumitruCema, FenomenulCaritas sau mdntuirearomdnilorprin
ei insisi (Bucharest:Ed. Roza Vanturilor,1993), 17. Cluj mayor Funar also used these large
figures.
20 For example, Evenimentulzilei, October 27, 1993, p. 3; Adevdrul,March 18, 1994, p. 8;
Mesagerul, December 7, 1993, p. 5.

21 For example, AdamLe Bor, "Pyramidgame
grips Romania,"LondonTimes, November 19,
1993, p. 11; "Ponzi, by Any OtherName,"Economist,328, September18-24, 1993, p. 87; Peter
Maass, "RomaniansGrasp a Straw,"WashingtonPost, October 17, 1993, p. A25; Jane Perlez,
"PyramidScheme a Trapfor ManyRomanians,"New YorkTimes, November 13, 1993, pp. 1, 47;
VirginiaMarsh, "Faith,Hope and Caritas,"Business CentralEurope,October 1993, p. 55; Hugo
Dixon, "Pyramidswith Giddy Heights,"Financial Times, October 18, 1993, p. 3; CharlesLane,
"Ubi Caritas,"New Republic, November 8, 1993, p. 9.
22 The chief editor of the
TransylvanianMessenger said in an undated interview (before
October6, 1993) thatthe paperwas publishing16,000 namesdaily; this would mean abouthalf a
million per month (see GheorgheSmeoreanuet al., Caritas: radiografiaunui miracol [Rimnicul
Vilcea: Ed. Antim Ivireanul], 23.) There are problemswith estimatingthe numberof depositors
by the numberof names in the Messenger, since a given person might deposit several times in a
single month;thus, the figure of 2 million for threemonthscould include many duplicates. But at
the same time, a single person might deposit for many others under his or her own name; the
friend who deposited my money was also depositingfor at least six otherswhose names appeared
on no lists. Moreover, people on the inside track might not have their names on the lists either.
For these reasons, the numberof names in the Messenger may in fact underestimatethe total
numberof people depositing.
five monthsof 1993, which was beforethe scheme reallytook off.23The most
startlingestimatecomes from Dan Pascariu,the head of the RomanianDevel-
opment Bank at that time, who put the number of Romanian households
involved in the scheme at three to four in eight, or 35 to 50 percent of all
Romanianhouseholds.24But even the lowest plausiblefigure-a total of two
million depositors-is still a very large numberof people.
Other estimates of the total amount of money that passed through the
scheme rangefrom 1 billion to 1.4 trillionlei, which representeda staggering
portion of the country's entire liquid assets. The secret service report men-
tioned above gave the amounts deposited in the six-month period between
January 1 and June 1, 1993, as 43 billion lei, or somewhere around $80
million.25One newspaperdeclaredthat Caritashad managed 1.4 trillion lei,
or an amountmore than 20 percentof the government'stotal expendituresfor
1993 of 6.6 trillion.26Accordingto a November 1993 New YorkTimes story,
economists estimated the scheme had pulled in a total of $1 billion to $5
billion; an earlierstory in the Economisthad placed the pay outs at about 75
million lei per week, a rate that would have overtaken Romania's Gross
Domestic Productwithin three months.27In autumn 1993, the president of
Romania'sNationalBank estimatedthat Caritasheld a full thirdof the coun-
try's banknotes-a sizable proportionof its liquid reserves, which amounted
then to over 2.5 trillion lei.28 The extent of participationcan be indicatedby
other figures. The Romaniangovernmentreportedlyreceived 41 billion lei in
taxes from Caritasin 1993.29Similarly,the substantialnumberof participants
shows in such anecdotal evidence as figures for automobile registrationin
Cluj, the city with the largest numberof winners, where the numberof cars
owned per person placed it fifth highest among Europeancities. Beggars on
Cluj's streetswere said to take home 300,000 lei per day, an amountsix times
higher than the average worker's monthly take-home pay of about 50,000
lei.30 The influx of people increased traffic so much that travel agencies
23 Evenimentulzilei, November 10, 1993, p. 3.
24 New YorkTimes, November 13, 1993, p. 1.
25 Evenimentul
zilei, November 10, 1993, p. 3. For dollar equivalents, see note 10.
26 Romdnialiberd
(InternationalEnglish Edition), September3-9, 1994, p. 12, cites this as
the state prosecutor'sfigure for the total amount circulatedthroughCaritas. In August 1994,
Stoica himself claimed to owe depositors$700 billion, which would be approximately1.2 trillion
lei (Romdnialiberd [InternationalEnglish Edition], August 6-12, 1994, p. 5). I have the figure
for governmentexpendituresfrom the IMF.
27 New YorkTimes, November 13, 1993; Economist, September18-25, 1993.
28 My thanksto bankpresidentMugurIsarescufor this information.The 2.5 trillionfigure for
liquid reservesis from the IMF, for the monthof June. A Romaniansourcegives the figure of 2.9
trillion lei for July and 3.1 trillion for August (Romdnialiberd, October20, 1994, p. 4).
29 Romanialiberd (InternationalEnglish Edition), September3-9, 1994, p. 12. Caritaspaid
taxes on profits (Stoica designated 10 percentof the proceeds as profit, used to pay employees,
makedonations,and so forth), and a value-addedtax was additionallywithheldfrom the pay outs
to depositors, beginning in the summerof 1993.
30 Adevdrul, December 18, 1993, p. 4; Evenimentulzilei, October 14, 1993, p. 2. Again,
equivalents for these amounts are problematic.Romdnialiberd for July 22, 1993, p. 16, states
that 100,000 lei is the mean salary for three months.
FAITH, HOPE, AND CARITAS IN ROMANIA 63I
created special bus trips and the Romanianrailway lengthenedits trains.31In

the second half of September,whole new trains were scheduled to transport
the additionalpassengersinto Transylvania,specifically fromIa?iin Moldavia
and Craiovain Oltenia. The formerwas namedthe "Caritastrain";the latter,
"the train of hope."
Why was there such mass enthusiasm?Among the reasons were an infla-
tion rateof 300 percentin 1993, a 40 percentdropin real income as compared
to 1989, negative interestrates, and problematicaccess to credit and loans,
especially for small producers.32Most people I spoke with said that Caritas
was the only investmentthey could make to keep up with inflation:Savings
deposits at 50 percent interest lost ratherthan gained value, thus wiping out
people's lifetime savings.33Large gaps between the official and black-market
rates for hardcurrency,along with the fact thathardcurrencydeposits totaled
as much as 30 percent of all bank deposits,34show clearly that Romanians
were fleeing from domestic assets. Moreover,people who wanted to borrow
money to buy a tractor,say, discovered that the AgriculturalBank's much-
touted 15 percentcreditswere somehow unavailableand thatthey would have
to pay 60, 75, or over 100 percent interest for their purchases.35These
circumstances,breedingpanic and desperation,have historicallydriven spec-
ulative schemes in manypartsof the world, includingthe United Statesduring
the 1930s; Romaniawas no exception.36
By the summerof 1993, then, Caritaswas a mass phenomenon.A televi-
sion programthat springhad shown picturesof people walking out with their
armsand bags full of 5,000-lei bills, and duringan interviewon thatprogram
Stoica seemed a sober, compassionate,God-fearingman who wantedto help
Romaniansin need. His charitableintentwas evident not only in the name he
31 For
instance, I saw signs in Deva, capital of Hunedoaracounty, saying "Touristagency
Coratransorganizes excursions to Cluj (for Caritas)leaving every Tuesdayand Fridayat 16:00,
price 3,850 lei roundtrip."Deva is about three hours' drive from Cluj.
32 The newspaperExpres, September13-19, 1994, p. 8, reportedthatthe bankingsystem was
giving very little credit to the private sector, reservingits funds chiefly for state firms and joint
ventures.
33 The bank intereston savings accountseventually(winter 1994) rose to 100 percentor more
(though not before many people's savings had vanished), successfully attractingfunds from the
pyramids.
34 The 30 percent figure is from June 1993, courtesy of the IMF.
35 Precisely this difficulty with bank interestrates was what drove two friends of mine to sell
some farm animals and put the proceeds in Caritas, turning their investment over twice and
buying a tractor, since exorbitant interest had foreclosed their making the purchase through
normal banking channels.
36 Since the early 1980s there has been yet anotherspate of pyramidschemes in the United
States; there has also been a proliferationof multi-level marketingprograms,whose relationto

pyramid schemes is sometimes very close. See, for example, stories in American Heritage,
November 1994, pp. 18-20; Atlantic, October 1987, pp. 84-90; BaltimoreSun, December 10,
1994, pp. lB, 4B; Business Week,September3, 1990, pp. 40-42; Forbes, November 11, 1991,
pp. 139-148, and March 15, 1995, pp. 46-48; Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1991, p. D3; New
YorkTimes, March28, 1993, Section 13NJ,p. 1; WashingtonPost, October 12, 1991, p. C 1, and
April 11, 1991, p. Bll.
chose, which cleverly invoked an internationalCatholiccharity,37but also in

the urns placed at the exit from the pay-outlines, labeled "forthe poor,""for
the homeless," "for street repair,"and so forth. According to rumor, Stoica
took almost no profits from Caritas.38His aim was supposedly to help the
poor, and he had sworn to kill himself if it fell. Reportssometimescompared
him favorably with the millionaire Hungarianemigre and philanthropist,
George Soros, whose supportfor culture and democratizationin the Soviet
bloc is legendary.The Messenger periodicallylisted the amountsCaritashad
given to various charitablecauses; the total for September 1993 alone was
112.5 million lei.39
These positive images doubtless led people to entrusttheir savings to Stoi-
ca. Some sold houses and apartments,moving in with relativesso they could
deposit the proceeds with Caritas,get enough to buy their houses back, and
also set themselves up in business.40Organizationssoughtto fund their activ-
ities by puttingmoney into Caritas.These reportedlyincludedassociationsof
apartmenthouse residents needing money to repair their buildings, high
school classes wantingto fund their end of the year festivities and class gift,
the Cluj mayor'soffice, the Society for Help to Children,the Cluj University
Chorus, consumers' cooperatives trying to cover their debts, village agri-
culturalassociationswantingto buy tractorsor otherfarmequipment,church
parishes, and the heating fund of the Miners' Union.41Employersin Buch-
arest paid their company chauffeursto drive to Cluj to deposit the money of
employees and even that of their entire firms. Trains and highways were
packed. People came from Hungary,Germany,Ukraine, and beyond to de-
posit money throughtheirfriendsor else sent moneyto friendsandrelativesto
encourageparticipation.
Caritas now became a nation-widecultural symbol and entered common
parlance, an indicationof its significance. The expression, "I'm not selling
with Caritasmoney,"became somethingto say if you thoughtyou were giving
someone a good price. The scheme was immortalizedin the rhymedcouplets
of traditionalRomanianfolk verse (for instance, "From Sibiu to Fagaras/
There'sno son of Romania/Whoisn't in Caritas")and in otherpoetic forms as
37 Indeed, the RomanCatholicdiocese of Oradeaprotestedthe name, threateningto bring suit

againstStoica for damageto the good name of theirorganization.See Romanialiberd, August 9,
1993, p. 16.
38 This seems unlikely, since he was able to open a large supermarketwith the proceeds.
39 This equalledabout$112,500 at the time-a far largersum in the Romaniancontext thanit
is in the Americanone.
40 See, for example, Evenimentulzilei, December 18, 1993, p. 4; Adevdrul, February14,
1994, p. 1.
41
My sourcesfor these are the reportsof friendswho claimedto have certainknowledgeof the
organizationsthey were naming; Professor AlexandruStanescu, a researcherdoing a project
about Caritas;the head of one consumercooperative;the presidentof the Aurel Vlaicu village
association;Adevdrul,November 19, 1993, p. 1; Rominia liberd, March 19, 1994, p. 1.
well ("A man has appeared/Whohas saved us all/Make Stoica Emperor").42

A national newspaperpublished the first song composed for Stoica: "Train,
what are you carrying,/So much bad and so much good./You stop andpick up
in every station/Thepain of the whole country./[Refrain]To Caritas,to Car-
itas,/We still have hope left,/Our pain and our hope/That can change our
life."43In addition, Caritascroppedup in homilies in all sorts of contexts. I
overheardan inspectorfrom the county capital admonisha villager who was
trying to claim more land than he deserved: "Only Caritascan make eight
hectaresout of one!" In court, I hearda judge reprimandthe partieswith the
words, "For an apartmentand seven million lei that you could get from
Caritas,it's a shame to destroy your precious sibling relations!"44And in the
springof 1994, when no work had yet been startedon laying the gas main for
which my co-villagers and I had paid large sums of money, severalsaid to me,
"I hope this gas thing isn't going to turn out like Caritas:You pay a lot of
dough into it and get nothing back."
Ominous signs began to appear in autumn 1993. Several western news-
paperspublishedstories aboutCaritas,assertingthat its fall was only a matter
of time.45 Certain Romanian newspapersprinted an increasing number of
critical and derisive stories about it.46 In a late-Septemberpress conference,
Romanian president Ion Iliescu predicted the imminent demise of Caritas,
noting that, as anyone with an elementaryeducationought to know, nothing
that gives an eightfold returnin three months can last. There was talk that
parliamentwould pass a law to ban all these so-called mutualaid games.47On
October7, following two days in which Stoica had failed for the first time to
make scheduled pay outs, government-controlledtelevision indicated that
Caritaswas in political trouble:It aired a lengthy interview in which Stoica
was criticized and given almost no chance to speak. Operationsresumedafter
42 In Romanian:"Din Sibiu in Fagaras,Nu-i pui de romanas,Sa nu joace Caritas";"A aparut
un om, Pe toti ne-a salvat, Lasali pe Domnul Stoica Imparat."I have the first from ethnographer
Claude Kamoouh and the other from Romdnialiberd, October20, 1993, p. 16.
43 In Romanian:"Trenulece duci cu
tine, Atita rau si-atitabine, Opresti si iei din gara-ngara,
Durereadin intreagalara. La Caritas,La Caritas,Speranlanoastrane-a ramas,Durereanoastr-a?i
speranla,Ce poate sa ne schimbe viala." See "TiganulViorel Marunlelua compus primulcintec
dedicat patronului'Caritas'-ului,"Evenimentulzilei, November 4, 1993, p. 10.
44 The verb used by nearly everyone to describe the money they received from Caritaswas a
ci?tiga, which translatesas both "to win" and "to earn."It is appropriatelyused for the wage one
receives at work, prizes awarded,the proceedsof games of chance, a victory in a competition,the
sympathy of one's fellows. Thus, its root meaning is "to obtain, acquire, or get," without
implying whetherthe thing gotten is earned or not. The verb most often used for participating,
however, was a juca, "to play," as in a game: "am jucat la Caritas" meaning "I played [at]
Caritas."One might also say "I deposited"(am depus) or "I put"(am bdgat) money in Caritas.
45 See note 21.
46
Among the most critical were Romdnialiberd, Evenimentulzilei, and Cotidianul.
47 In
fact, the RomanianSupremeCourthad alreadyissued a decision banningsuch "games,"
on September 15, 1992 (Decision Number 150). This may partlyexplain why Stoica regularly
insisted that Caritaswas not a "mutual-aidgame" [jocde intrajutorare]but a "financialcircuit"
[circuitfinanciar].
a two-day hiatus, explained at the time as a computererror, but slackened

shortlythereafter,supposedlyto facilitatepay outs in smallertowns. We now
began to hear that people going to collect their money received only half of
what they expected.
Stoica sought to maintainthe appearanceof healthy activity by opening a
huge supermarketin September.The severallocal luminarieswho attendedits
christeningincluded the prefect of Cluj county and Cluj's mayor, Gheorghe
Funar,who was head of the influentialPartyfor RomanianNationalUnity.48
Thereafter,Stoica dottedthe landscapewith new Caritasbranchesin more and
more cities, ostensibly to ease travel constraintsfor old and new depositors
and to reducethe pandemoniumin Cluj. Despite this, Caritasseemed stuckon
making pay outs for people who had depositedon July 5; these stretchedout
interminablyinto November and December, as the lists of names in the
Messenger dwindled from sixteen to twenty pages down to one-fourthof a
page, with many of the names duplicated.In yet anothertelevision interview
in early February1994, Stoica insistedthatCaritaswas not dead but was reor-
ganizing itself and lengthening the pay-out period. Soon thereafter,he an-
nounceda temporarycessationof Caritasactivity,blamingthis on the authori-
ties, especially those in Bucharest,who had refusedhim permissionto open a
new branch.(Not only did the ban arousea largedemonstrationprotestinghis
exclusion anddemandingthe new branch,butStoicahimselflauncheda hunger
strike and filed suit against city hall.) The problems with pay outs were
furtherexplainedby rumorsthatthe Clujheadquartershad been robbed;news-
papersand the television news carriedpicturesof the supposedculprits, who
had reportedlystolen 95 million lei. By March 1994, even though city and
countygovernmentsacrossRomaniawere banningall pyramidschemes, many
people with whom I spoke still refusedto believe it was ending. They would
respond to my gloomy predictions that all was not well by objecting that
"Stoicapromisedit would last threeyears, andit's been only one anda half!"49
Nonetheless, the public had obviously lost faith in Caritas,and withoutnew
deposits pay outs became impossible. Accompanied as always by rumors
flying aroundit like buzzardsover stumblingprey,Caritaswas on its last legs.
After monthsof assertingthat Caritaswas merely reorganizingon a healthier
basis, Stoica officially announced its demise on May 19, 1994. His staff
began to work on a formulato returnsome of the money, if only for the first-
time depositors who had not yet received anything.50Lawsuits and hunger
strikes by groups of angry and disappointeddepositorsfollowed. In August
48
Mesagerul transilvan, September24, 1993, p. 1.
49 Sources for some of the points in this paragraph:Adevdrul, November 12, 1993, p. 1;
Adevdrul,November2, 1993, p. 1;Evenimentulzilei, November6, 1993, p. 1; Evenimentulzilei,
March4, 1994, p. 1; Evenimentulzilei, March5, 1994, p. 8; Adevdrul,March 11, 1994, p. 1;
Adevdrul,March4, 1994, p. 1.
50 Romdnia liberd, May 20, 1994, p. 1; Adevdrul, June 6, 1994, p. 1. This unfortunately
would not include the authorof this essay, since my money was deposited under the name of
someone who had alreadyturnedsums over twice.
1994, Stoica was arrested and charged with fraud, false representation,
and fraudulentbankruptcy.51 To his credit, however, his delaying tactics and
steadfast refusal to admit defeat had prevented the tremendous crash and
accompanying social upheaval and ethnic violence that many had feared.
Caritasended not with a bang but a whimper.
CARITAS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

A phenomenonof extraordinarymagnitude,Caritastouchedat least one-fifth
of all Romanianhouseholds52and involved sums that on paper approached
Romania's entire Gross Domestic Product. This means that it had many
diverse social and cultural consequences. A list of only a fraction would
include the following effects: It temporarilydepressed the market for un-
skilled labor in Cluj, if not elsewhere53;by mobilizing and bringing into
circulationsavings that had been kept in socks and undermattressesat home,
it soaked up the monetaryoverhang54and facilitatedcapital formationin the
absence of stable credit institutionsand low interestrates.55It also effected a
massive redistributionof wealth,56compelledpeople to begin thinkingin new
ways about money, and focused anxieties about the larger processes of Ro-
mania's transformationfrom socialism. Leaving aside most of these, in what
follows I will treatCaritasas a window into problemsof the transition,from
which we can see somethingof the troublesthatvariousRomaniansperceived
51 According to the prosecutorin the case, these chargeswould carrya jail sentence of two to
seven years (22 [September31-August 6, 1994], p. 3). As of this writing, Stoica was in jail (see
note 147 below).
52 I reach this estimate-more conservativethan that
reportedin the New YorkTimes-in the
following way. Householdsare a more meaningfulunit thanindividualsfor this calculation,given
that one-thirdor more of the populationis undertwenty years old and is unlikely to be participat-
ing seriously in the game and that my experiencesuggests that althoughsome spouses deposited
individually,in many if not most cases the householddepositedas a unit. If we divide Romania's
populationby 3.2 (the figure given in Romanianstatistics for the numberof persons per house-
hold), we get 7,187,500 households. Takingwhat I consider to be the lowest plausible figure for
participation-2 million depositors-and assuming, conservatively,thatas many as half of these
deposits would be made by entire households and the other half might be duplicatedwithin a
household, we have 1.5 million participatinghouseholds, or 21 percent of all households.
53 I heard several stories about
people who could no longer find babysitters,housekeepers,
temporaryconstructionworkers, or caretakersfor the elderly, since no one was willing to spend
time doing this kind of work when they could sit at home and wait for theirCaritasmoney to roll
in. The household of some Bucharestfriends was turnedupside down because they had to bring
their aging mother-in-lawfrom Cluj, where nursingcare was no longer available, and move her
into the bedroom of their sons, who moved out to various aunts and grandparents.
54
Comparableeffects were achieved differently in other East Europeancountries. For in-
stance, in Polanddomestic savings were soaked up by monetarypolicies, which pushed inflation
so high that people had to change dollar savings into zloty just to make ends meet. See Jeffrey
Sachs, Poland's Jump to the MarketEconomy (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1993), 53.
55 At least some of this potentialwas realized:I knew of cases in which Caritasearningshad
bought trucks for transportand tractorsor other instrumentsof agriculturalproduction,funded
small businesses, or enabled payment of bank debts on businesses already established. Caritas
served as a source of windfall profits of a magnitudethat nothing else could produce.
from the many to the few and possibly another
56 This took at least two forms: a redistribution
from the non-Transylvanianparts of Romaniato Transylvania.

in the early 1990s-the challengesthey felt to theirconceptionof money, and

the processes of class formation underway in the new encounter between
socialism and capitalismto which the formerSoviet bloc is host. My discus-
sion moves from the speculationsand hypothesesof those with whom I spoke
concerning what Caritasmeans and how it works, to my own speculations
about what it was accomplishingin Romania'semergentpolitical economy. I
conclude with a hypothesis about its place in the rise of a new class of
entrepratchiksfrom the previous Partyapparatus.
Folk Explanationsof Caritas
How did ordinaryRomaniansunderstandCaritas?Whatdoes talk about it re-
veal concerningRomania'sostensibleexit fromsocialismintoa marketeconomy?
Caritaspresentedpeople with the reality,unknownto most of them for forty-
five years, thatmoneycanproliferatewithno visible effort.Whatdid they make
of this? Answersto such questionsrequirenotingbrieflythe forms of accumu-
lation with which Romanianswere alreadyfamiliarfrom the socialist period.
Prior to 1989, Romanianshad few means of obtaining sizable sums of
money, aside from illegal activities. For decades, money depositedin savings
accounts earnedonly 3 to 3.5 percentannualinterest,providing(in a system
nearly free of inflation) only modest incrementsin wealth. More promising
for a tiny handful of people were the various forms of state-sponsored
gambling-lotteries based on ticket sales or submittedentries, as well as
periodicdrawingsthatbroughtthe occasionallucky personan automobileor a
sum of cash.57A thirdmeans, especially commonin ruralareas, was to host a
huge wedding party in the village hall and to invite hundredsof guests, each
of whom gave the young couple a sum of money. Newly allied families might
clear enough (afterconsiderableexpense) for a car, an urbanapartment,or a
handsomebribe that would improve the couple's job prospects.58
Finally,therewere variouskinds of interest-freeloans thatoperatedin most
workplaces.Two forms were particularlycommon. One was a fund provided
by the firm and known as CAR (an acronymformed from the Romanianfor
mutualaid fund and, interestingly,echoed in the firstthreelettersof Caritas-
and its meaningalso resonatedwith Caritas'sscheme to provide mutualaid).
CAR funds allowed employees to borrowsignificantamountsof money from
time to time and to repay these loans, at no or very low interestrates, over a
lengthy period. A second type of fund was one createdfrom the small contri-
butionsof employees. It gave each employee the rightto use the money in the
entire fund on occasion for major purchases. Crucial to the functioning of
both forms is the fact that they were closed systems available only to the
workersof a specific firm and thatthe size of the funds involved was fixed by
57 "Loto"was a classic lottery;one selected a set of numbersand waited to see if they would
be drawn. "Loz-in-Plic"was simpler, requiringonly the purchaseof an envelope inside which
therewas (or was not) announcementof a prize. "Prono-Sport" involvedbettingon specific sports
teams for particulargames.
58 Thanks to David Kideckel for this point.
the amountscontributed.Many who laterdepositedin Caritasbelieved that it

paralleled these work-place forms and did not see the critical difference:
Unlike those forms, Caritas was not a closed circuit with fixed amounts.
Rather, it was an open system with theoretically unlimited participation.
Perhaps the Romanians' long experience with these two work-place funds
disposed them to embrace Caritasso readily and so innocently.
In each of the two work-placeforms, money accumulatedin ways thatwere
easily apparent:the state, the firms, the employees all contributed. With
Caritas, however, the mechanism was more obscure. People who sought to
explain how it worked-either on theirown or in responseto my questions-
offered a veritablepanoramaof the sourcesof confusionthatthey were facing
in their changing society. When I asked how Caritascould pay eightfold in
three months, many had no idea whatsoever;Stoica had a "secret,"they said,
and left it at that. Others, however, had a variety of explanations. A few
grasped the basic pyramidprinciple, but most reached for something more
intricate. For example, one person assured me that the money came from
short-termloans that Stoica made at 300 percentinterest, probablyfor arma-
ments being smuggled into Serbia. A numberof people argued, instead, that
Stoica was taking the deposited money, investing it locally in some form of
production,selling the productin the West, convertingthe hardcurrencyback
into Romaniancurrency,and makingenough money on all this to increasethe
funds deposited eightfold. The productmentionedmost often was furniture,
sold in Germanyfor Deutsch marks that were converted to lei at the black
marketrate.59This theory,which sees foreign tradeas raisingcapital, was by
far the most common explanationI heard.
The theory has several significant elements and unifies people's concern
about a numberof aspects of Romania'stransition.One puzzle involved the
skyrocketingexchange rate, which kept going higher and higher for reasons
that no one could fathom. I frequentlyheardpeople ask each other (or me)
why the dollar,which had exchangedfor between 12 and 20 lei for decadeson
end, should rise from 600 to 1,900 lei in the space of a few months. Given
how baffling this was, might it logically be tied with the equally baffling
Caritaspay-outrate?Second was the basic conundrumof Caritasitself: How
could money make so much more money with no visible effort?It must have
some connection with capitalist countries, where the streets are paved with
gold and everyone is rich. A third puzzle that this foreign-tradetheory ad-
59
By the spring of 1994 the government'sfiscal policies had broughtthe official and black
market rates for hard currency into alignment, but for the year prior to this, the discrepancy
between the two rates was substantial.
Few could tell me why Stoica picked furnitureratherthan something else; the only reason
offered was that it had to be something valuable with a good marketin the West. Furnituremet
these conditions, as did items such as mineral water, cement, and porcelain. During the
Ceausescu period, several industrieshad operatedspecifically for export, and furnituremanufac-
ture was one of them. Furniturealso seemed to have disappearedfrom the internalmarketor else
was selling at astronomicalcost, a fact thatmay have predisposedpeople towardthis explanation.
dressed was the relative roles of commerce and productionas sources of

earningsor value. In Communistpropaganda,commercealways took a back
seat to production;income from trade was presentedas unearnedand there-
fore stolen (hence the opprobriumcast on Roma, or Gypsies, who were very
active in trade and were widely seen as thieves).60Yet with the new market
emphasis, people are being asked to see commerce as a source of value, and
income from it as legitimate. (Note, however, that the foreign-tradetheory
has Stoica beginning with a productiveinvestment.)
The theoryaddressedall these enigmas in a single reasonableframe, attrib-
uting value to commerce only if it is mediatedby the West-that is, Roma-
nian productionis valorizedonly throughforeign trade, combinedwith unof-
ficial currencyexchange. These ideas echo the earlier rejection of socialist
goods and of state-basedeconomic policy. For decades, Romanianssaw the
productionof value as centeredoutsidetheirown society, which many consid-
er incapableof generatingvalue independentlyeven now.
A greatmany explanationsof Caritastook an additionalform familiarfrom
socialist times: suspicions of a conspiracyor plot. Possible agents of Caritas
plots included Hungarians,the Catholic Church, the InternationalMonetary
FundandWorldBank, the Romaniangovernment,the Securitate(Ceau?escu's
secret police), and other Ceausescuite groups. All these theories share a
certaintythatsomeone or some groupactively shapedCaritas,even producing
the money for it. Most of the explanationswere more elaboratethan I have
space to describe here, so I will summarizejust a few of them briefly.
The scenario of Transylvanianautonomyposited a plot to dismemberRo-
mania. It had certain unnamed groups (probably Hungarians, maybe with
others) backing Caritasto increasethe wealth of Transylvaniansover that of
Romaniansfrom the capital and the other provinces; as a consequence, the
governmentwould ban the game, causing Transylvaniansto riot and demand
independencefrom the rest of the country.This scenariohas deep roots in the
Romanians'apprehensionover the integrityof their multi-ethnicstate, and I
believe it expresses Transylvaniandispleasureat policies and parties largely
run by "those Balkan types" in Bucharest.61In contrastto the plot featuring
the destructionof Romaniawas the notion thatthe scheme was an attemptto
realize Romania'ssalvation:ThroughCaritas,unknownpatriotswere return-
ing to the Romanianpeople the money Ceau?escuhad stashed in secret bank
accounts abroad. A more cynical version of this dovetailed with the very
elaborateconspiracytheory that Caritaswas a laundromatfor either the un-
60 Herein
may lie the significance of popularrepresentationsof Stoica as part-Gypsy,as well
as the increase in newspaper reports (after Caritas had stopped making pay outs) of Gypsy
participationin it. The link between Caritasand Gypsies-including threatsagainstStoica by the
upstartEmperorIulian I, who was in revoltagainstGypsy King Cioaba and perhaps(like Funar)
using Caritasfor his own political ends-is a fascinatingangle that I cannot cover here. (See,
e.g., Adevdrul,February5-6, 1994, p. 5).
61 Cf.
Adevdrul,November 17, 1993, pp. 1-2.
spent bank accounts of the CommunistPartyor the illicit earningsof under-

ground firms operatedby Securitateand the Party,and that these funds had
been accumulatedboth before and after 1989 through activities like smug-
gling drugs or runningguns to Serbia.62A connection of some sort with the
Securitatewas widely suspectedand fairly probable,for Caritashad close ties
with the Party of Romanian National Unity (PUNR)-a party with strong
Securitatebacking, as we will see.
All these accountsinvoke one or anothershadowy groupthat might plausi-
bly have an interest in promoting (or wrecking) a scheme such as Caritas.
They all assume that Caritasis not part of an abstractcirculationof money-
making money but is undersomebody's control,just as so many complicated
events of the socialist period had been seen as the work of sinister forces,
perhaps unidentifiablebut undeniablyconcrete. The theories reflect a long-
standingparanoiaaboutthe dismembermentof Romaniaor the unseen actions
of the presumablyubiquitousSecuritate,and they projectonto Caritasshady
dealings like those reporteddaily in the press and once perpetratedby the
CommunistParty.
The Romaniangovernment, itself a target of considerabledistrustand of
speculationaboutcrookeddeals, was the focus of explanationsthatmade it an
active agent in Caritas. That the governmentcould be backing Caritas had
several possible justifications:The authoritieswanted to make all the coun-
try's money easily availablefor confiscationand monetaryreform(of the kind
that had happenedin 1952); to create an illusion of prosperityso the govern-
ing partywould be reelected;to foster inflationand therebyhold down unem-
ployment; or to feed into the economy bank notes not covered by gold re-
serves, so as to foil IMF austeritymeasuresand foster inflation, or meet IMF
and World Bank conditions for allowing the leu to float. (Caritas would
accomplish this last goal by giving people so much money that they would
willingly pay higher and higher prices to buy hardcurrency.63)Some people
noted, too, that the governmenthad received huge tax revenuesfrom Caritas,
62 This
theory may well have something to it. It is widely believed both inside and outside
Romaniathat 1989 opened a new drug-smugglingcorridorthroughEasternEurope;in addition,
smuggling of armaments,oil, and other goods throughRomaniato Serbia is extremely likely.
AnthropologistClaude Karnoouhlearnedfrom well-placed sources in Budapestand Warsawthe
routes by which illegal accumulationsand Party funds had been moved out of Hungary and
Poland, througha series of transactionswith local banks and transfersto western institutions.
Probablythe more rudimentarystate of Romania'sbankingsystem and the laterentry of western
finance capital into that country closed this option for disposing of the funds from Romania's
CommunistPartyor illegal enterprise.Instead, they would have to be launderedinternally,such
as on inside tracksof Caritas.The hypothesisgains credencefrom Stoica's failureto put an upper
limit on the size of withdrawals-a chief cause of the eventualcollapse of the pyramid'sbase. If
the point was to run huge sums throughthe first few cycles until all were "clean,"an upperlimit
would only be an impediment.
63 It is true that once
Caritas stopped paying out, the exchange rates for foreign currency
stabilized and then dropped. At the height of its operationin Cluj, foreign currencywas much
more expensive in that city than elsewhere in Romania.
enough to finance the unfinishedrebuildingof Bucharest.Partisansof these

theories arguedthat Caritaswould never have gotten so large if the govern-
ment did not somehow supportit.64 All these explanationsassume that just
like their predecessors,currentpolitical leadersareengaged in shady business
dealings and have full power to shape economic life behind the scenes. The
accounts also speculate about some of the same puzzles as the foreign-trade
theory-inflation, exchange rates, and Romania'sinterfacewith western in-
stitutions. And they assume, further,thatprosperitywithoutwork rests on an
illusion, producedby conspiracy.
These plots thickenedonce Caritasbegan to fail-owing variously (it was
said) to the RomanianNational Bank, other Romanianbanks, the govern-
ment, the WorldBank and IMF, a Jewish-Hungarianinternationalfinancial
cabal, Romaniannewspapers,and Stoica's own employees, said to be robbing
him blind. This last theory (the most benign-and probably true) posited
sums rangingfrom the 95 million lei reportedon RomanianTV to 60 billion
or more. More elaborateconspiracytheories explainedCaritas'sproblemsby
blaming an internationalcampaign against it, particularlyon the part of
Jewish-Hungarianfinancial interests. Personified in the Hungarianphilan-
thropist,Soros, these interestswere thoughtto be bent on keeping Romanians
from enrichment,from aspiringto a betterlife, and from challengingJewish-
Hungarianfinancial success. This account is redolent with the views of the
Romaniannationalistparties(which tend also to be anti-reformist)and plays
upon the well-developedanti-Semiticand anti-Hungariansentimentsof many
Romanians.The scenarioreflects the nationalists'open hostilityto the democ-
ratizingand reformistactivities that Soros has sponsoredin Romaniaand that
nationalistpoliticians have denouncedin the Romanianparliament.
Otherscenariosfor the collapse also blamethe government,claiming it was
destroying Caritas because Iliescu's party wanted to undercutthe potential
competitionfrom one or anotherpoliticalrival tied to the scheme, because the
governmentwas worriedaboutthe prospectof chaos if Caritasgot any bigger
and then fell, and because all the parliamentarianshad gotten rich and now
they could kill it. Alternatively,it was suggested, leaderswere upset that the
banking system was weakenedbecause so many people had put their money
in Caritas, or the InternationalMonetaryFund was disturbedby reportsthat
projectedCaritaspay outs bigger than the total state budget, so pressurewas
put on the governmentto kill Caritasas a condition for grantingRomania's
next standbyloan. These scenarios, again, see the collapse of Caritasas the
work of a specific agent, rather than the result of some mathematicalor
marketprinciple.
64 The supportmight also, of course, be indirect-from either the absence of legislation to

control such schemes (Russia's MMM scheme arousedmuch official reflection aboutthe lack of
legislation to protectcitizens, for example), or the clear benefits to the governmentfrom letting
the scheme persistas ways of absorbingthe "monetaryoverhang"and of providingpeople with a
means other than strikes and protestsfor coping with inflation.
In a similar vein, many blamed Caritas'stroubles on Romanian banks,

suspectedof hoardingStoica's deposits to preventhim from makingpay outs.
Stoica himself fed this explanationwith hints thathe would starthis own bank
so he would have fewer problems; he reportedlycirculated a petition ad-
dressed to Mugur Isarescu, head of the RomanianNational Bank, in which
depositors demanded that Isarescu order the other banks to give Stoica his
money. The banktheoryhighlightstwo bewilderingaspectsof bankactivity in
Romaniansociety. The first was their role in the incomprehensibledevalua-
tion of the leu and in raising interestratesto astronomicallevels, with which
even loan-starvedvillagers were familiar. Given this, it would only be in
characterfor banks to deprive needy depositorsof their Caritasearnings, as
well. Second, the theory highlights yet anotherbaffling thing about life in
Romania in the early 1990s (and other post-socialist systems also): the so-
called financial blockage. Immense sums of money were immobilized be-
cause firms were not paying their creditors, producing a chain reaction in
which no one could pay anyone else because no one was being paid. One
estimate put the amount of money thus immobilized at four trillion lei.65
Owing to the financial blockage, many employees received no salaries for
months on end but without understandingwhy-unless banks were simply
hoardingthe money. To see Stoica as the prisoner,like themselves, of banks
that would not pay people what they were owed was a way of linking a
widespreadand confusing problemwith Caritas'sdifficulties.
Most of these theories are plausible; some of them may also be accurate,
althoughit is hardto know which.66I draw only two firm conclusions from
the proliferationof theoriesaboutCaritas:First, it is effectively impossible-
both for outsiders and for most Romanians-to know what was really hap-
pening, and, second, proponentsof these explanationstendedto see economic
processes as undersomeone's control. Many people had no theory at all, but
for most of those who did, economic phenomena are subordinateto the
political sphereand directedby it, just as was trueundersocialism. The party-
state had convinced citizens of its potency and theirimpotence;its successors
still benefit from thatconviction, even if many citizens also attributeeffective
65 Andrei
Cornea, "Se convertescoare comuni?tiila capitalism?"22 (February16-22, 1994),
p. 6. This figure would constitutealmost two-thirdsof the total of state expenditures.
66
My personalinclinationsfavora money-launderingscheme as partof Caritas'spool of funds
(see also below) and internationalpressureon the governmentas contributingto its fall. Off-the-
record discussions indicate that internationallending agencies were indeed concernedabout the
fiscal and social instability,and especially the potentialfor ethnic violence, that would accom-
pany Caritas'scollapse. These agencies expressed their concerns quite clearly to the Romanian
government, without however making loans conditionalon the government'sbringingCaritasto
an end. The timing of Iliescu's comments about the scheme's fragility and of changed National
Bank fiscal policy makes it likely that this informalpressureindeed contributedto the scheme's
collapse. (Significantly, the collapse of the MMM scheme in Russia precededthe arrivalof an
IMF team to negotiate a standbyloan in that country,as well. See FBIS-SOV-94no. 172 [Sep-
tember6, 1994], p. 38.) This note shows that my Romanianassociates succeeded in teaching me
to look for conspiracies.
agency not just to political leaders but also to internationalcapital and other
forces externalto themselves.
RethinkingMoney
In addition to hosting the sorts of conspiracytheories familiarfrom before,
however, Caritaswas also paradoxicallya site for thinkingin new ways about
economic processes, money, and its place in people's lives. After four dec-
ades in which Romanianshad not had to worry about inflationor struggleto
find investmentsthatwould outpaceit, suddenlythese questionshave become
urgent for them. Likewise, it had made little sense to plan their financial
futuresexpansively or seek profitableactivities, but now it does. Caritaswas
a godsend in these respects. It permittedan undreamed-ofaccumulationand
savings;one could eitherroll over one's take for anothereightfold increaseor
withdrawit for purchasesor investmentin business-or to change it into hard
currency, whose value (unlike that of the leu) was stable and high. With
Caritas, people could plan an economic futuredifferentfrom the past. They
could buy consumergoods not otherwiseaffordable,could obtaintractorsand
plows for working newly acquiredland or trucks for transportinggoods to
make extra money, or could at least contemplatedoing these things. For not
only the elite but also average Romanians, then, Caritas promised capital
accumulation. Unlike other ways of getting ahead, it requiredno political
connections but only the nerve to risk one's money. And this both called for
and enabled thinking about money differently.Caritaswas thus part of the
culturalreorganizationnecessary to any departurefrom socialism.
As a once-socialist economy increasesthe play of marketforces, it opens
up spaces for radically new conceptions of the economy and the place of
money in people's lives. In saying this, I do not assumethatthe formerSoviet
bloc is moving inexorably from socialism to capitalism (which I doubt); I
wish merely to signal criticalsites thatwe mightexaminefor change. Market-
based systems regulatethe flow of wealth very differentlyfrom the planned
economy of socialism. The reason is not that plans unfolded as plannedbut
that they obstructedthe flow of money and goods in certain characteristic
ways, different from the obstructionscharacteristicof market systems. For
one thing, in socialism most prices were determinednot by supply and de-
mand but by politics. Adjustmentsmight come from bribery,gifts, shadow
production, and barter,but these occurredwithin constraintsthat the party
visibly set-constraints of which people were generally very aware. In my
experience, any Romanianasked to explain some aspect of the workings of
the economy could readily generatean answerbased on somethingthe Party
was up to, usually some nastyplot againstcommon folk. People presumed(as
I indicatedabove) thateconomic events had an agent:the political system and
those who ran it.
Markets in advanced economies, however, work differently.Their secret
lies in being invisible, taken for granted, abstractedfrom the actions of

concrete agents. It is precisely here that Marx's insights about commodity
fetishism have an ongoing usefulness: Marketexchange obscures the social
relationssurroundingproductionand distribution.Socialist systems, too, had
a form of fetishism-plan fetishism, which producedthe illusion of agency
and obscuredthe anarchyand chaos that actuallyexisted behindthe scenes.67
That is, socialist plans generatedthe illusion that everythingis under social
control. The illusion of marketexchange, however, is exactly the opposite. If
marketscome to achieve greatersignificance in post-socialist society, then,
we should look for transformationsin social visibility, as the famed invisible
hand begins replacingthe all-too-visible one of the Party.68Things that were
personalcome to seem impersonal;the economy becomes a separatedomain
and a force of nature, for which no one in particularis responsible. Caritas
was a criticallocus for the recodificationof money and the economy that such
a shift might entail. Stoica himself stated this as his goal, claiming that he
hoped to encouragethe formationof a middle class of Romanianbusinessmen
and investors: "Fromnow on, people will differ as a function of how they
think about money and about capital, how they get it and what they know to
do with it."69How might Caritaseffect changes of this kind?
At the simplest level, by participatingin it people began to thinkdifferently
about money. It enabled them to manipulatein their minds sums they had
never imagined, to think about what they might do with such sums-to plan
their expenditures-and to grow accustomed to thinking about larger and
larger sums in a gradualway. First, they would have amountsthat could go
toward consumer goods, then the amounts would get so large that more
ambitiouspossibilities-buying a tractoror a combine, opening a restaurant,
foundinga newspaperor publishinghouse-suggested themselves. It created
in people's imaginationsa sphere in which money circulatedand they them-
selves participatedwithoutreally understandingits principles.But the change
to a marketeconomy also involves more subtle shifts. Socialist propaganda
had taughtthat work in the productiveprocess was the only acceptablesource
67 See
my "TheorizingSocialism: A Prologueto the 'Transition,"'AmericanEthnologist, 18
(1991), 422-3.
68 Czech finance ministerVaclavKlaus
put it in almost exactly these terms in 1990: "Theaim
is to let the invisible hand of the marketact and to replace the handof the centralplanner"(cited
in LadislavHoly, "Culture,MarketIdeology and Economic Reform in Czechoslovakia,"in Roy
Dilley, ed., Contesting Markets: Analyses of Ideology, Discourse and Practice [Edinburgh:
EdinburghUniversity Press, 1992], 236).
69 Smeoreanu,Caritas, p. 7. Randomethnographicdetails suggest that he was succeeding to
some extent. One friend, asked whether Caritasmoney was like any other money, replied that
"only your attitudetowardit is different,as you continueto risk it." "Now when someone sets a
price," anothertold me, "Caritasintervenesin how they think about the values of money."Still
anotherfriend,just returnedfrom six monthsabroad,said she noticed a tremendouschange in the
people aroundher: "Becauseof Caritas,they've startedto behave as if they were independent,to
take initiativeratherthanwaiting for things to happen,to have the courageto make a plan, and to
take risks."
of money and gain; money from commerce and from speculationwas pollut-
ing, unacceptable, tainted with capitalist traces. Now, however, with the
increased trade of all kinds and major efforts to increase the circulation of
money throughthe financialsystem, these mentalhabitsarebeing challenged.
Caritaswas a prime site for challenging them.
We can see how this worked by exploring a distinction made by nearly
everyone I spoke with, between "my money"and "their(or Stoica's) money."
"My money"was the amountpeople first deposited. Most who received a pay
out withdrew that amount before turningover the rest: At this point, they
would say, they were not playing with their own money but with Stoica's
money, and it was no longer possible to lose. One woman in an overheard
conversationin a trainput it this way: "Youput in 100,000, get 800,000 back,
take 500,000 of it to buy things you need, and keep playing the game with
300,000-their money. Am I playing with my money then?No. If it gets lost,
have I lost my money? No. YOU CAN'T LOSE in this game."70
Here is how anotherwoman elaboratedthe same distinction:
I got all my money back, so if it falls I can't complain. [author:Isn't the pay-out
money also yours?] No, it's not quite the same, though I'm not sure why-I never
really thoughtabout it. When they pay it to me in cash, it's my money, but when it's
not in my hand, it's not like my money.71If the thing collapsed, I wouldn'tfeel I'd lost
my money. Even when you get it in handyou spend it differentlyfrom othermoney-
you spend it moreeasily. I had threemillion lei-an unimaginablesum!-in my hands
and I took it rightover to the next window to deposit it. [Didn't thatbotheryou?] No!
Changes in this woman's thoughtsabout money had gone unobserveduntil I

drew her attentionto them. Another couple who also made the distinction
talked about it as follows, as they advised me how to dispose of my first pay
out:
You should take out your money and play furtherwith theirs. [If I put in 100,000 and
get back 800,000, bring it home, and put it here on the table, is this my money?] No!
[Why not? I'm not talking about money I rolled over but money I've broughthome
with me.] We have no idea. [But why did you say it isn't my money?] Well ....
Because it's been in there only three months. It can't be yours. In a savings account,
you leave money for a whole year and get 50% interest. Then it's more like your
money. But eightfold in only three months ....
(In saying this, they imply, interestinglyenough, that somethingis not one's
property,an extension of oneself ["mine"],unless there is some sort of effort
or sacrifice somewhere.72)Almost no one gave me the answer I got from a
70 Aside from the fact that
many people did lose, this commentbetraysa certainnaivete about
the loss of value in an inflationaryperiod. Between the deposit of a certainsum and its retrieval
eightfold three monthslater, inflationwould have reducedthe value of the initial deposit consid-
erably.
71 This observationremindsone of the psychology behind credit-cardspending in the United
States.
72 See below, also Verdery,"The Elasticity of Land: Problems of Property Restitution in
Transylvania,"Slavic Review, 54 (winter 1994), 1071-1109.

peasant woman who told me that she had a lot of money in Caritas. [But it's
not your money, is it? You've rolled it over.] "It's still my money, isn't it? If
I'd taken it out, it would have been my money."This woman was rarein not
distinguishingher money from "theirs."
Alongside these ruminationson "my money" and "their money," other
features of talk about Caritashelp to illuminatethe scheme's effects. I have
already described some of the theories I heard when I asked how Caritas
worked-how could people possibly get eight times theirdeposit in only three
months?But many did not need to understandit at all: They had seen people
on television takingout huge piles of bills or knew of someone who had done
so, and this was all the explanationthey needed. Caritasworks, they said, for
whateverreason. They had faith in it and requiredno furtheraccount. When I
asked how they could entrust such large sums to something they did not
understand,they shrugged: The whole thing was incomprehensible.Some
appearto have seen the money as a sortof free gift.73For them, it was just the
logical result of the end of socialism and the much-toutedtransitionto a
marketeconomy, which were finally bringingwhat Romanianshad long seen
as the main features of life in the West: unlimitedriches, consumption, and
abundance.Caritasthus epitomized the West;what need was there to under-
stand it further?
Fromthis I conclude thatone of Caritas'smost importanteffects was that it
was producing an abstractsphere in which money circulates and multiplies
without clear agency. Throughit, the economy was beginning to become an
impersonal, unregulatedsocial fact, something to be taken for granted be-
cause it worked. A young sociologist expressedthis nicely, in explainingwhat
he thought were the consequences of his own participationin Caritas(on an
inside track):"I noticed that it made money seem more distant, as if it were
happeningelsewhere, to someone else. It had become an abstraction,rather
thanmy money."The effects thatthis man could articulatemay also have been
at work less consciously with others.
We might thus see Caritasas a technology, in Foucault'ssense, because it
developed new economic conceptions by fostering change in people's ideas
about the economy towarda marketsensibility.74ThroughCaritas,economic
activity was being made into something one could call the economy. It was
not the only such instrumentbut was an especially widespreadone. Although
the scheme's collapse doubtlessalteredor even abortedits contributionto that
process, the experienceit affordedits participantswas somethingnew. Partic-
ularly for those who received and made use of a pay out, the experience was
significant. Nonetheless, whatevereffects it realized were won against very
strong habits, as my previous discussion of Caritasconspiracy theories has
made amply clear. Those theories assumed that Caritas was not part of an
73 See Eniko
Magyari-Vinczeand MargitFeischmidt,"TheCaritasand the RomanianTransi-
tion," MS (1994), p. 24.
74 I owe the ideas in this and the above paragraphto Kirstie McClure.
abstractcirculationof moneymakingmoney but was being actively managed.

For this reason, we should be cautious in assuming that the scheme was
producing an environmentfor capitalism and see it, instead, as a site for
debatingthe extent to which the economy is an abstract,impersonalsphere.
Questioningthe Moral Order

The questionof "my money"versus "theirmoney"was more thanjust one of
whetheror not the economy is impersonal:It led directly into other, perhaps
even more basic questions about a changing economic morality and a new
moral order. In pursuingthese questions I am not arguingthat socialism and
capitalismhave differentmoralitiesbut, rather,thatdiscoursesaboutmorality
are crucial loci for defining the social order because they posit distinctions
between what is good and bad, right and wrong-oppositions that usually
engage otherkindsof distinctions,such as those betweennaturalandartificial,
normalandperverse,dirtyandclean, andso forth.Because such mattersareso
often associatedwith fundamentaldomainsof existence, debateover themmay
point to basic shifts in a society's organization.75For example, given the
negativevalue anddubiousmoralitythatsocialistsystemsassignedto tradeand
markets, we might expect the increased marketizationthere to entail moral
questioning, for the market in advanced economies is generally viewed as
amoral, guided by rationalinterestsand abstracteconomic ratherthan moral
principles. This makes it useful to examine people's talk about Caritas for
evidence of the moral questions they were reconsideringthroughit.
As I pursuedthe notions of "my money"and "theirmoney"further,asking
people if the money they got from Caritaswas the same as the money they put
in, it became clear that for the large majoritywhat defined "my money" was
that it was earned, whereas "their money" was unearned[nemuncit-from
munci, to work]. For most, "my money" embodies my work and is its con-
crete expression, whereas "theirmoney" has none of me in it. "If you lose
money you earned, you feel bad about it," said one woman, "butif you lose
after that-money you didn't work for-you don't feel bad." Another said
that "in any case, money you've sweated for is differentfrom this money."A
Bucharestcab driverwho had not yet received a pay out thus respondedto my
news that Caritashad stopped paying: "If we don't get anything, I'll string
him up! I'll run a stake throughhim! That's my hard-earnedmoney!"That
many readersmay agree is beside the point; more importantis the fact that
Caritas was making people ask such unaccustomedquestions and arrive at
new distinctionsunderstoodas pertainingto morality.
The distinctionbetween earnedand unearnedmoney was a moral issue, as
75 That
money and marketexchange requiremoralizingis an anthropologicaltruism far be-
yond the East Europeancontext. See, for example, Maurice Bloch and JonathanParry,eds.,
Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989); Roy
Dilley, ContestingMarkets;Emily Martin,TheMeaningof Moneyin the UnitedStates and China
(Lewis Henry MorganLectures, Universityof Rochester, 1986).
the following comments indicate. "We aren't used to living off unearned
money. It seems somehow dishonest to us." "I'm not used to having money
gotten for nothing;it seems somehow unnatural.""Something'swrong with
it, it can't be honest, someone's going to lose." "I was raisedto thinkthatyou
never get anythingexcept by hardwork, you can't get somethingfor nothing.
There must be some trickeryat the bottom of it. I won't put my money in
somethinglike that, I've workedtoo hardfor it." Some people moralizedthe
relationshipbetween Caritasand work even more explicitly. "With Caritas,
people lose interestin working.""Peoplewon't work any more, they'll just sit
aroundand live off interest.""Earningsshould come from productiveinvest-
ments, not from some crazy miraculousscheme."76"Caritasis dreadful!It
encouragesa beggar'smentality;it underminespeople's interestin work. I've
heardof people who simply quit theirjobs and went home, expecting that it
will go on forever. It's based on greed, and it createsinflation."These views
show strongmoralreservationsaboutCaritasearnings,censuredbecause they
are based on greed, do not come from production, and make people stop
working. It is striking that, in a time of unemploymentbrought about by
privatizationand concerns about Romanianproductivity,we see people fear-
ing the kind of voluntaryunemploymentand laziness broughton by Caritas.
Not everyone, however, is critical of Caritas money. A woman I know
mused with me in this way: "Some say [the money's bad because it's] dirty,
unearned,but at the hairdresserthe otherday someone was saying that not all
money comes from work. Some is from services, some is intereston savings;
so that's not a valid objection." Again, here are two agronomistswho have
bought a tractorwith Caritasmoney and are embarkedon an entrepreneurial
trajectory:
Somepeople[objectto it becauseit's]unearned money.Thisis an idealeft overfrom
before,thatearnedmoneyis moneyyou actuallyearnby producingsomething.Un-
earnedmoneywas fromspeculation,andit wascondemned,alongwithanythingthat
didn'thaveto dowithproducing. Peoplewhocomplainaboutitsbeingunearned money
arethosewho like to sit around,who haveno enterprising spiritto risk something.
This couple's success with Caritasseemed to have predisposedthem to have a
more positive assessment. They and others like them vigorously arguedwith
those who were concerned about the moralityof earnings from Caritas. In-
deed, even those who were critical were likely to have mixed feelings; they
too had money in Caritas, and perhapstheir minds would change once the
earningsstartedto roll in.77And so, as they waited for thatto happen,people
76 This
opinion was offered by the managingdirectorof the state-controlledRomaniantelevi-
sion in one of several editorials touching on Caritas (editorial for October 2, 1993). Other
opinions given here come from my field work.
77 By criticizing and participatingsimultaneously,people adoptedthe same relationto Caritas
that they had to the former regime: a relation of "complicity."This sort of complicity creates
complex dispositions and ambivalencesthat we might expect to find as attitudestoward money
evolve further.Complicity may have disposed people to relax their moral scruples about "un-
earned money,"especially if they had alreadygotten sums and spent them.
debatedthe moralityof Caritasmoney. That is, Caritasfocused their genuine

ambivalence about money's morality and became a space in which they
sought to convince themselves and others that their old ideas about money
were or were not outmodedby arguingaboutjust why Caritasmoney might
not be so immoralafter all.
Here are some examples. The first two see Caritas as a kind of moral
compensation.To a friend in Cluj, I say that a lot of people seem upset that
Caritasmoney is unearnedand comes from greed. She replies:
Well,butI've heardpeoplesaying,'Isn'ttheWeststealingfromus withall thischeap
labor?'AndI knowsomepensionerswhoobjectto thosecriticismsof Caritas.They
say,'Wepensionersworkedourwholelife, we putourmoneyin savings,andnowthe
moneyin thoseaccountsis worthabsolutelynothing.Who stole it fromus? Is that
moral?Stoicaoffersme a chanceto eat better,havea TV-is thismorallybad?Is it
morallyworsethanthe fact thatthe Communist Partyreducedus to paupers?No!'
A second womanhas been telling me how she plans to use her Caritasmoney.
Then she volunteers, "Lots of people say it's immoral to live on unearned
money, but I say, for all these years people workedunpaid,now we get a kind
of compensation,don't you think?"(Note thatin the first quotationthe wom-
an expresses her opinion through the words of someone else, and the second
solicits my agreement;neitheris really sure she likes what she is saying.)
Otherspuzzle over how much enrichmentis acceptable, natural,or other-
wise justifiable. Many people said, uncomfortably,that greed motivates
people to roll their money over. As one fellow remarkedof his stint in line:
Peopleareso greedy!Theguyrightin frontof me tookout 120millionlei, wentover
to thenextregister,anddeposited100millionof it. I askedhim,"Whyareyoudoingit
again?Isn'twhatyou alreadyhaveenough?'Andhe replied,'I can do whatI want
withit. It'smymoney."ButI saidto him,"It'snotyourmoney.It'smineandtheother
people'swho'vejust depositedit. Leavesomefor the restof us!"
This statementepitomizesthe common negativereactionto those who want to
get rich. It demonstratesnot only socialism's deeply internalizeddisapproval
of disparitiesin wealth but also a genuine puzzlement over who can really
claim the Caritasmoney as a resource:individuals(mine) or a collective entity
(ours). A similarconcernshows in the comment, "If Caritasmoney is immor-
al, it's because Stoica lets [some] people get so incredibly rich with it and
others can't get in at all." The speakeradded, however, "But we can't make
ends meet with our work, so it's good to have Caritasmoney."Thus, she finds
enrichmentacceptableafter all because everyone is so needy.
It seems, then, thatpeople are deeply divided as to whetherit is acceptable
to have money for which one has not worked. After years of hearing that
commerce, high-interestloans, interestfrom capital, and the other forms of
gain in the capitalist system were evil, Romaniansare having to revalorize
those forms as they struggle to make do in uncertainand inflationarytimes.
Many (but far from all) see Caritasin termsof greed, with clear disapproval;
yet they, too, are getting or awaiting money from it. Some describe it as
"crookery"or "unnatural"or a form of theft. The notion of theft recurs
often-what is theft, after all? Who is stealing from whom? In other words,
which forms of gain are licit, socially acceptable, and which are not? Under
socialism certain forms of theft were acceptable, but how about now? If
Caritas is a form of theft, can we justify it by our need? Does or does not
money have somethingto do with work? If money comes from non-work, is
that natural?Is greed natural?How should we feel aboutpeople who want to
get rich? How should we feel about ourselves if we want to get rich? Ro-
mania's putative marketizationbreeds such questioningin all its citizens.
There were other forms of questions aboutthe moralityof Caritas'smoney
besides the distinctionbetween earnedand unearnedmoney, though this was
the most common. Another was a distinction anthropologistshave encoun-
tered often, between dirty and clean money.78That Caritasmoney might be
dirty underlay most of the public criticisms of the scheme. Any of several
sources might soil it: arms smuggling, drug trafficking,prostitution,the Ital-
ian Mafia, roots in the Securitate-anything illegal. All these would require
"cleaning"for which Caritaswas an instrument,and all would make Caritas
morally reprehensiblefor launderingmoney of this kind. In my experience,
the concernwith dirtymoney was a preoccupationof journalists,intellectuals,
and politicians79ratherthan of averagefolks, who did not seem to care about
the wider social provenanceof Caritasfunds. As one village friendsaid, when
asked if she would take her money out if she found out it was from illegal
sources:
No. If Stoicais doingsomethingwrong,it'sbetweenhimandGod.Itdoesn'taffectus.

Besides,we'retoo poor.Weneedeverypossiblesourceof incomethesedays, never
mindwhereit comesfrom.Forso longwe hadno possibilities,we haveto tryto make
ends meet with so little, prices keep going up, people lose theirjobs .... We'rejust
too needyto worryaboutwhetherit's dirtymoney.
Questions of morality are central for her too, but they have to do with the
immoralityof want, ratherthan of illicit gain.
Debate over the moralityof Caritasinvolved even Stoica himself, together
with his supporters.He respondeddirectlyto the criticismof Caritasmoney as
unearned,replying that it was not in fact unearned:He himself had done the
work of seeing that it multipliedenough to pay people back eightfold, some-
thing that did not simply happenbut requiredinitiative and know-how.80In
other words, he himself had earned the money for other people. He and his
allies marshaled a number of other argumentsin defense of the scheme's
78 See, for example, papers in Bloch and Parry,Money; Michael Taussig, "The Genesis of
Capitalism Amongst a South American Peasantry:Devil's Labor and the Baptism of Money,"
ComparativeStudies in Society and History, 19:1 (1979), 130-155.
79 See, for example, Smeoreanu,Caritas, 51; Zamfirescuand Cera, Fenomenul, 14.
80 Smeoreanu, Caritas, 91-92.
morality-such as that, in promoting privatizationand decentralizationof

financial control, it was anticommunist(an unquestionablymoral quality, in
post-1989 Romania!),and that it was no less moralthanmany otherthings in
Romanian society and more moral than some. To the extent that Caritas is
immoral, said one of Stoica's disciples, its immoralityis that of all market
economies:
In theGospelsit saysthatto himwhohaswill morebe given,butfromhimwhohas
not it will be takenaway.If thereis a dose of immorality in Caritas,thenthis same
dose of immorality existsalso in life in generalandeven in the Gospel.81
MakingCaritasbiblical (of which morebelow) was yet anotherway of allying

it with a new post-Communist,anti-atheistmoral order.82
I will pass over these arguments,however, to concentrateon a third, which
links Caritaswith Romaniannationalistpolitical parties. The most energetic
form of this argumentcame not from Stoica but from two of his defenders,
authors of a booklet called The Caritas Phenomenon, or the Salvation of
RomaniansThroughThemselves.83Its authors-an aide of Cluj mayor Funar
and a chief acolyte of Romaniannationalismunder Ceau?escu-make two
central moral points: that Caritasis moral because it is the productof social
solidarity(ratherthanof egotistical strivingfor gain) born of years of oppres-
sion and thatthe beneficiaryof this solidarityis the Romaniannation. Caritas
is good, they proclaim, because it is the revoltof the unitedRomaniannation
againstthe dictatorshipof foreign money and foreignplans for reform. It is "a
response, a solution, a reaction, a manifestationof nationalenergy in the face
of a fantasticallywell-organizedprocess of demolishingRomaniaand bring-
ing the Romanianpeople to its knees throughpoverty and demoralization."
The authorsdecry "so-called 'reform' and 'shock therapy' that were in es-
sence nothing but a vast projectof economic, spiritual,and biological exter-
minationof an entire people."84They go on to describe in detail the interna-
tional plot involving privatizationand market competition through which
foreignerswill conquerall key positions in the economy, thus gaining control
over Romania's political life. Why, these writers ask, do so many people
proclaimCaritasa swindle, ignoringthe real (andmuchbigger) swindle: "The
veritablecollapse of Romaniaunderthe burdenof a programof 'reform'that
has proved everywherean economic catastrophefor the countriesobliged to
accept it."85 To be sure they have made their point, they declare in large
letters, "THE BATTLE FOR OR AGAINST CARITAS HAS BECOME
PARTOF THE BATTLEFOR OR AGAINSTTHE ROMANIANPEOPLE'S
RIGHTTO EXIST."86
8' Ibid., 48, 49.
82 Ibid., 40; Adevdrul,October 1, 1993, p. 4; Expres, November 9-15, 1993, p. 16.
83 Zamfirescuand Cera, FenomenulCaritas. 84 Ibid., 17. Boldface in original.
85 Ibid., 23. 86 Ibid., 24.
Capitalsin original.
FAITH, HOPE, AND CARITAS IN ROMANIA 65I
Here, then, is a thirdkind of immoralmoney: not unearnedmoney or dirty

money but foreign money. Against this kind of immoralityCaritasbecomes a
patriotic institution that will produce an indigenous middle class, bearing
good, moral money ratherthan the immoralmoney of foreigners. It is moral
because, unlike many otherthings going on in Romania(including,of course,
criticismof Stoica and Caritas),it is pro-Romanian.It is more thanthis: It is a
crusadeby Romaniansfor their own salvation, "the salvationof Romanians,
by the will and the grace of God, throughthemselves."87From the form of
this argumentit is clear, once again, thatCaritasis by no means unambiguous
in its relation to the spread of market forces or capitalism in Romanian
society. Here, Stoica's nationalistallies do not invite capitalismin but seek to
contain it, to deny it entry into their country except on very limited terms,
which they themselves will set in accord with Romanian national values.
Caritas, for them, is the seed of a home-growncapitalismthat they greatly
prefer to that of the West.
What these Romanian nationalist authors offer, then, is a new, Caritas-
based moralitythat unifies religious faith, nationalism,and specific forms of
legitimatelymakingmoney. They quote with admirationthe RomanianOrtho-
dox Vicarin the United States, who respondedto the questionof who will buy
the industriesbankruptedby governmentpolicy with the reply that
Foreignerswill. But Caritashas come not only as a divinephenomenonbringing
moneyandhappiness; it is thesalvationof theRomanianpeople.NowtrueRomanians
will havemillions,maybebillions,so as to buythiseconomyandnothaveit in foreign
hands.88
Given that they are common among nationalists, who control 15 percent or
more of parliamentaryvoting strength, such views should not be simply
brushed aside. And the failure of the quick fix that Caritas promised has
enlargedthe field upon which these sentimentsmight be cultivated.
Faith and Hope, God and the Devil
In the hands of allies like these, Caritas has ceased to be just a pyramid
scheme; it has become a kind of social movementwith millenarianovertones.
Like other such movements, Caritasofferedvisions of an earthlyparadiselike
those of cargo cults, in which an imaginarynew life of plenty would not
require people to work yet would be full of materialgoods; it posited new
rules of moralitysuited to a new cosmic order.89From the way people spoke
of Caritas,many seemed to view it as a means of imminentsalvation(just as
87 Ibid., 17. (Writtenin capital letters.)
88 Cited on the back of Zamfirescuand Cema, FenomenulCartas.
89 CompareMircea Eliade, The Two and the One (London:Harvill Press,
1965), 126-150.
David Lempertfinds a "cargocult"attitudein Russia also ("ChangingRussianPoliticalCulturein
the 1990s: Parasites,Paradigms,and Perestroika,"ComparativeStudies in Society and History,
35:3 [1993], 643).
its critics foresaw,in suitablyapocalypticlanguage, imminentdisaster).Also

like other millenarianmovements, Caritas emerged from a clash between
fundamentallydifferentnotions of time.90In the best-knownMelanesian in-
stances, the clash is between linearwesternnotionsof time and local concep-
tions of it as cyclical, while in the case of Caritas, linear time confronts the
peculiarly convulsive, messianic time characteristicof life under Romanian
socialism. I have describedelsewhere the kind of time implicit in the policies
and discourse of the RomanianCommunistParty-a time that was at once
spastic, arhythmic,and unpredictableand also flattened, motionless, teleo-
logical-immanent.91Since neither aspect conforms well with capitalism's
linear, progressive time, the encounterbetween these kinds of time will be
awkward. Heighteningtheir awkwardnessis a temporal shift within global
capitalism itself, its own velocities acceleratingin what Harvey has called
"time-spacecompression."92
Lacking the traditionalelement of dead ancestorsladen with goods trium-
phantlyreturningfor the world's end, however, the millenarianismof Caritas
was decidedly modern.93We see in this its descent throughthat "most daz-
zling of moder political eschatologies," as Eliade put it, the (millenarian)
Marxist myth of the radiantCommunistfuture.94We might view Caritas,
then, as Marxism's antithesis, a millenariansocial movement ushering in a
radiantcounter-future.This movement came to be suffused with Christian
imagery,as popularopiniongraduallytransformedCaritasinto a religious cult
and Stoica into a quasi-divinemythical hero.95
90 In a review of work on millenarianmovementsin Melanesia, Trompfcites Eliade's insight

as the one durablegeneralizationabout them: that they arise when differentunderstandingsof
time come together.See G. W. Trompf,MelanesianReligion (Cambridge,England:Cambridge
University Press, 1991), 192. See also Andrew Lattas, ed., "AlienatingMirrors:Christianity,
CargoCults, and Colonialismin Melanesia,"Oceania, no. 63 (special issue, 1992). My thanksto
Eytan Bercovitch for these references.
91 See Verdery,"'Etatization'of Time," 56-57; National Ideology underSocialism: Identity
and CulturalPolitics in Ceausescu'sRomania(Berkeleyand Los Angeles: Universityof Califor-
nia Press, 1991), 249-51; and "WhatWasSocialism and Why Did It Fall?,"Contention,3:1 (Fall
1993), 18-20.
92 David Harvey, The Conditionof Postmodernity(Oxford:Blackwell, 1989). See also Ver-
dery, "WhatWas Socialism," 18-20.

93 Owing to its nationalism,the Caritas"millenarianmovement"is very differentfrom those
of Oceania or other places where they have been found. Classic literatureon those latterforms
sees them as pre-political,paving the way for more explicitly political and even nationalmove-
ments, whereas Caritaswith its associate, the PUNR, had alreadytroddenthis path. See Peter
Lawrence, Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang
District, New Guinea (Manchester:Universityof ManchesterPress, 1964); K. 0. L. Burridge,
Mambu:A MelanesianMillennium(London:Methuen, 1960); PeterWorsley,The TrumpetShall
Sound:A Study of "Cargo"Cults in Melanesia (New York:Schocken, 1968).
94 Eliade, Two and the One, 155.
95 Some arguethatthe religious imagerywas manufacturedby Stoica and his supporters(e.g.,
Shafir, "Eldorado,"24). Although I think it possible that stooges placed in the long lines at
Caritasmay well have plantedsome of these ideas, more important(as my field work convinced
me) is that people took them up with gusto.
For his hopeful depositors, Stoica was "a saint," "the Pope," "a messiah,"
"the prophet."96The folklore surroundingCaritas was full of good Stoica
stories, such as one I heardin which an elderly man went to headquartersand
asked to see "Mr. Caritas,"offering a deposit of 2,000 lei so he could have a
decent burial. Stoica took him to the cash registerand gave him 20,000 lei on
the spot. My informantconcluded, "I don't know why but I have faith in what
he says. He just isn't capable of taking our money and running."Her cousin
chimed in, "It's said thatGod sent him to take care of us." I heardothers state
that he is a good man who has had a hardlife, that he is not in this to make
money for himself but gets satisfactionfrom seeing other people get some,
that he is very religious and gives lots to churches,that he has the moralityof
a saint.
Stoica's repeatedreferencesto his faith and his use of religious expressions
doubtless fed such beliefs. In an interviewhe observedthat "the Bible says to
help our fellow man. . . . That's how Caritaswas born."97The widespread
reverence for Stoica was reflected in publications portrayinghim as "the
savior of the people" and "a god of the Romanians,"his supportersas proph-
ets and apostles;Caritasas "themiracleof Cluj,""adivine phenomenon,"and
"the Mecca of thousands";and depositors' journeys to Cluj as "pilgrim-
ages."98 (Critics, in turn, viewed the scheme as the "swindle of Cluj," "a
demonic game," and "a perilousdisease." They dismissedthe salvationaland
moral imagery, refusing to see in Stoica a new sacred leader.99)People's
readiness to replace the quasi-religiouspersonalitycult that had surrounded
Ceausescu with worship of yet another"divine genius of the Carpathians"
hints at the attitudeof dependencythat socialism had cultivated.
Thus saturatedwith sacred symbolism, representationsof Stoica and Car-
itas became mattersoffaith, of belief-in Romanian,incredere,the word that
people used more than any other to speak of them. I heardover and over the
following rationale for putting money in Caritas:"I didn't have faith [n-am
avut incredere]in it at first, but when I saw everyone else getting money, I
decided to have faith too." As with similar movements, faith came partly as
the resultof the social effects of others'behavior,a kind of conversionaccom-
panying knowledge that others were involved in it too, and winning. Partici-
pants also proselytizedactively: One woman told me she was fed up with the
many friends and people in her work place who kept trying to get her into
Caritas, and I heard several stories about people who had become involved
96
Smeoreanu, Caritas, 31; Adevdrul, October 10, 1993, p. 4; Adevdrul, November 11,
1993, p. 1.
97 Smeoreanu, Caritas, 37.
98 See ibid., 31; Adevdrul,November6-7, 1993, 1; Evenimentulzilei, November
p. 8, 1993,
p. 3; Adevdrul,November 11, 1993, p. 1; and Magyari-Vinczeand Feischmidt,"TheCaritasand
the RomanianTransition,"36.
99 These quotationsare all from Magyari-Vinczeand Feischmidt,"TheCaritasand the Roma-
nian Transition."
because someone else depositedmoney for them as a "starter."(I myself was

proselytizedinto depositingthe money I lost.) Faithenabledpeople to accept
for monthsall mannerof excuses as to why payouts were stagnatingor stopped,
and Stoica banked on this faith when, in an October interview, he urged
people not to lose faith despite all the negative press. Faith did not apply to
Caritasalone: Advertisementsfor other pyramidschemes emphasizedit too.
This faith was fragile, however. Some thoughtthat Stoica moved Caritasto
Cluj because in Brasov, where he had started, earlierpyramidschemes had
failed, so people there "didn'thave faith," unlike those in Cluj, who lacked
such soberingexperience. 00 GheorgheFunar,the mayorof Cluj and head of
the Party of National Unity (PUNR), played a crucial role in gaining and
shoring up this faith, even lending it authorityby providing Caritaswith its
first headquartersin city hall. A numberof my associates said they had faith
that Caritas could not be a scam because it was right there in the mayor's
office. One woman, telling me abouta pyramidin anothertown, said she did
not have faith in it "because there's no well-organizedparty behind it." A
newspaperarticleclarifiedthe connection:AlthoughCaritascould expand its
deposits by opening more branches, "the transferof faith from Cluj to the
branchesis by no means simple"because "only in Cluj did the game enjoy the
full supportof local authorities."'0'Somehow a political presence, especially
thatof the populistandpro-RomanianPUNR, fortifiedRomaniansto take the
leap of faith into Caritas.
With faith came also hope. People referredto Caritasmoney as their "hope
money"[banide nddejde],withoutwhich they would have absolutelynothing.
They spoke of the "trainof hope"anddeclaredthattheironly hope was Caritas,
one of the few things to look forwardto in otherwiseanxious times. Through
Caritas, hope could at last be institutionalized.Lettersdemandingwhy they
were destroyinga miserablepeople's hope delugednewspapersthatinsistedon
predictingits fall.102 Even afterit was clearthatCaritaswas indeedcrumbling,
other pyramidschemes kept springingup and finding depositors;as a friend
explainedit, "EveryRomaniankeeps hoping. If Caritasdoesn't work, we go to
some othergame, always hoping this one will work."(As gloom over Caritas
deepened during the winter of 1994, more people put their hope in a hard-
currencyscheme based in Vienna, arguingthat at least these things ought to
work properlyin the West. This shows yet again how fragile was the faith in
100The schemes had not just failed but caused much social disturbance(see, e.g., Romainia
liberd, June 25, 1993, p. 5).
101 Marius Nilu, "Odatacu apropiereaiernii Caritasulse 'race?te,"'Adevdrul,October 22,
1993, p. 1. The cities in which Caritasdid best were those in which the local authoritieswere of
the PUNR, such as Petro?ani, while those having mayors of opposition parties (such as
Bucharest)sought to exclude it. In this vein, perhapsa more importantreason for the failure of
Caritasin Bra?ovwas that its mayorbelonged not to the nationalistpartiesthat gave Caritassuch
a boost in Cluj but to the political opposition.
102 Evenimentul
zilei, November 2-3, 1993, p. 1.
things Romanian.)Finally,a journalistdrew a parallelbetweenCaritasand the

relics of St. Dimitrie, visited in Bucharestin October 1993 by thousandsof
despairingsouls "in the hope that a miracle will happenin their daily lives."
Both there and in the lines for Caritas, he saw people from the whole of
Romania,with "thesame terrorthattheirturn[to see the relics] won't come, but
above all the same terriblefaith in the possibility of a miracle."103For most of
these faithful souls, sadly, their hope would prove misplaced.
Faith, trust, and hope were not words thatpeople had used to talk aboutlife
under socialism except, perhaps, for their most intimate family relations.
Caritaswas serving, then, to create and redistributefaith and hope, moving
them from the inner sanctum of the family out into a market economy in
which money and wealth would flow unobstructed,like trust. The moral and
religious imagery was crucial to this process of making the circulation of
money impersonal.Anyone who could not (or felt no need to) explain how it
worked could assign it to the sphere of the divine.
The discourse of sacrality invited, however, its opposite and broughtinto
play a very specific, malevolentagent: the devil. Did Caritasgive out money
from heaven or money from hell? Some people unsureof the moral ground
exploredit in these cosmic terms. In researchamonga populationof Transylva-
nianshepherds,MichaelStewartfounda lively sense of the devil's intervention
in Caritas. He reportsthat a family who had used their Caritasmoney to buy
furniturelater had it cartedaway, for the rattlingof the devil in it had caused
them too many sleepless nights.104Newspaperstold comparablestories:
The Antichristis actingthroughCaritas.Lately,peoplereturningfromClujtell of

extraordinary things.It is saidthata womanby the nameof MariaBadiufromMar-
amures,whohaddepositeda certainsumof moneyinCaritas,hada dreamin whichan
angeltoldher"Do nottouchthismoney,for it is of the Antichrist! Go andtell them
thatyou renounceit."
Anotherhappening concernsMariaPanteafromPanticeu.Sheseemsto havebought
withCaritasmoneya newhouse,newfurniture,andchandeliers for eachroom.The
firstnightall thechandeliers in all theroomsfell, shatteredintoa thousandpieces,the
furnituremovedfromits places,andthe foundations of the housecracked.?05
Among my own more urbanizedvillage informantssuch views were rare, but

even so a retiredbus drivergave me this accountof why his family had a new
tractorbut no plow. They had taken money out of Caritasto buy the plow, he
said, but before they could do so, their son-in-law wrecked the car in an
accident, requiringthem to spend all the money repairingit. "Themoney was
no good," he concluded, "it came too easily. We thoughtCaritaswas OK, but
103 loan
Cristoiu, "De la 'Caritas'la moa?teleSfintului Dimitriecel Nou," Evenimentulzilei,
October 27, 1993, p. 1.
'04 Michael Stewart, personal communication(October 1993).
105Smeoreanu, Caritas, 14-15.
look whathappened."More concisely, a womantold me, "Caritasmustbe the

work of the devil: money can't give birth!"106
Reminiscent of Taussig's Colombian peasants and other groups being
drawninto a capitalisteconomy, these stories reveal yet other ways in which
Romanianswere strugglingto moralizemoney and Caritasand to understand
money's capacity to multiply without effort.107They were deeply suspicious
of this capacity but at the same time desirous of it. The often apocalyptic
imagery they used testifies to the urgent mattersbeing addressed:What is
money? Wheredoes it come from?How should we use it? Is it acceptableto
have money we have not earned? What is the place of money in a moral
universe?In looking for divine or diabolicalintervention,people were giving
the economy agents, yet these were nonethelessmore abstractthan the Party
cadres who had controlledthe system before. And in placing theirrevaloriza-
tion of money in a divine context, they were helping to constructa new post-
Communistmoral cosmology. Surprisingly,then, we see that the process of
learningforms of economic or marketrationality-a process to which Caritas
was central-has been occurringin partthroughthe irrationalmeans of faith
and hope, God and the devil.'08 This suggests that Caritas was teaching
people not marketrationalitybut its mystification.
CARITAS AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF POWER AND WEALTH
I have been exploring the place of Caritas in new cultural conceptions of

money and morality. This far from exhausts its significance, however, for
Caritasalso providesa window onto changingsocial structuresand the behav-
ior of Romanianelites, serving as a meansof accumulatingpolitical capitalin
the nationalpolitical arenaand being implicated,I believe, in new configura-
tions of wealth and power. Concepts that label two kinds of groupings-
political parties, and what I will call "unrulycoalitions"-are necessary to
describe these processes.109
Romanian political parties are not quite the platform-bound,disciplined
organizationsthoughtto characterizewesternparliamentarydemocracies. In-
stead, they are formally institutionalizednetworksof friends, relatives, and
other associates who engage corporatelyin the electoral and legislative pro-
106 "E lucrul

dracului, cd banii nufatd!" More common, however, was the expression, "leave
your money in so it will hatch chicks" (Lasd-i sd facd pui).
107
Taussig, "Genesis of Capitalism."See also Jacques M. Chevalier, Civilization and the
Stolen Gift; Capital, Kin, and Cult in EasternPeru (Toronto:Universityof TorontoPress, 1982);
Olivia Harris,"TheEarthand the State:The Sourcesand Meaningsof Money in NorthernPotosi,
Bolivia," in Bloch and Parry,Money, 232-68; Michael Stewart, The Time of the Gypsies:
Poverty,CulturalIdentityand Resistanceto Proletarianisationin Socialist Hungary(Manuscript,
1994), ch. 9.
108 CompareJohn Davis, Exchange (Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1991), 20.
My thanksto ElizabethDunn for the idea and the reference.
109This is a modificationof Bianchi'sterm, unrulycorporations(see RobertBianchi, Unruly
Corporatism:Associational Life in Twentieth-Century Egypt [New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989]). Thanks to Ashraf Ghani for this suggestion.
cess. Although some may have a primarilyregionalbase, all have a national

scope-that is, theirreferentis not chiefly territorial.Only some of them have
a distinctive party ideology or program,10 and differentparties may share
similar ideologies. People move in and out of these partiesas they quarrelor
aspireto positions of greaterinfluence in Romanianpolitics; alliances among
the parties have not been notable for their durability.As of 1995 neitherthe
boundariesnor the identitiesof Romanianpartieshad stabilized.Not even the
names were constant from one year to the next.
With the concept of "unrulycoalitions," I am groping toward a label for
certaincollective actorsthathave emergedin severalpost-socialistcontexts-
some scholarscall them "clans";others, "mafia.""' I see unrulycoalitions as
loose clusterings of elites, neither institutionalizednor otherwise formally
recognized, who cooperateto pursue or control wealth and other resources.
Their unions are unstableand their organizationinformal;their methodsmay
include violence, influence-peddling,collusion, and othermafia-likemethods
alongside more straightforwardbusiness and electoral deals. Like scholars
who use termssuch as mafia,12 I see the skeletonof these unrulycoalitions as
the former CommunistParty apparatus.I believe them to be based on terri-
tory, althoughthe territoriesmay lie at severaloverlappinglevels of inclusive-
ness, some more far-flungthanothers. Humphrey,writingaboutRussia, calls
the territories"suzerainties."113For Romania,I suspectthattheirbasic unit is
the county, owing to a quasi-feudalizationof the RomanianCommunistParty
down to the county level duringthe later Ceau?escuyears.114Thus, although
Romania's unruly coalitions exist at all levels ranging from Bucharest to
villages, the ones that count most for my discussion are those based in coun-
ties. The counties do not wholly contain them, however, for groups of them
may cooperate across a wider sphere, and most are doubtless connected
throughpatron-clientrelationshipswith powerful figures in Bucharest.
Any major locale might have one dominantor more than one competing
unrulycoalition. Most coalitions include membersof Romania'scountyjudi-
ciary, police and Securitate,elected officials, directorsand managersof local
firms-many of them membersof the old Communistnomenclatura. Their
relations to specific parties vary across time and space.15 Although parties
10 CompareJacek Kochanowicz, "The DisappearingState: Poland's Three Years of Transi-

tion," Social Research, 60 (1993), 831.
11 See CarolineHumphrey,"'Icebergs,' Barter,and the Mafia in ProvincialRussia,"Anthro-
pology Today,7 (April 1991), 8-13; David Stark,"Privatizationin Hungary:FromPlan to Market
or from Plan to Clan?," East EuropeanPolitics and Societies, 4 (Fall 1990), 351-92; and Lev
Timofeyev, Russia's SecretRulers (New York:Knopf, 1992), 127. I rejectboth mafia (too Italian
in its connotations)and clan (inaptly implying kinship).
112 For
example, Louise Shelley, "Post-SovietOrganizedCrime,"Demokratizatsiya,2 (sum-
mer 1994), 341-58; Lev Timofeyev, Russia's Secret Rulers.
113
Humphrey,"'Icebergs,' Barter,and the Mafia."
114 Kenneth
Jowitt, personalcommunication.See my National Ideology, 129-30.
115 For instance, where a
city mayor is of the nationally governing party, this suggests a
compositionvery differentfrom thatof an areain which the mayoris of an oppositionparty.Local
may help individuals among them to create a platform for their operation,
members of a coalition can be scatteredacross several parties, especially, I
believe, those having as their political base formerapparatchiks,such as the
Socialist Labor Party, the governing Party of RomanianSocial Democracy
(PDSR), the DemocraticAgrarianParty, and the nationalistparties, PUNR
and GreaterRomania.
In short, what defines unrulycoalitionsin contrastto political partiesis that
they are less institutionalized,less visible, less legitimate, and less stable than
parties and that their territorialbase is primarilyregional or local ratherthan
national. Both sorts of groupings were implicated in Caritas. I begin by
describing the place of Caritasin the party-basedcompetitioninvolving the
partyof government,led by PresidentIon Iliescu,116and the largestnational-
ist party, led by Cluj mayor and Caritas-supporterGheorghe Funar. I then
suggest how unruly coalitions, pyramid schemes, and certain parties may
have been interconnectedin the pursuitof new wealth.
Political Capitalfor an EmergingBourgeoiscracy

In the September 1992 elections, the Party of RomanianSocial Democracy
(PDSR), led by PresidentIon Iliescu, won the presidencyand 34 percent of
the seats in Parliament;the opposition umbrellaparty,the Democratic Con-
vention, and allied Hungarianparty won 33 percent; another oppositional
party,the DemocraticParty,won 12.5 percent;the Partyof RomanianNation-
al Unity (PUNR) won 9.6 percent, and its presidential candidate, Cluj's
mayorFunar,came in thirdin the presidentialcontest;threeotherpartieswon
less than 5 percenteach.117The PDSR was able to carrymost parliamentary
votes together with these three small parties and the nationalistPUNR, but
clearly the latter was pivotal: If the PUNR defected, then the PDSR was in
trouble. Throughthe spring and summerof 1993, PUNR leader Funartook
increasing advantageof the ruling PDSR's vulnerableposition to press ag-
gressively for more power for his party, including control of certain minis-
tries. He also made no secret of his futurepresidentialambitions.
Funar'sprincipalweapon in this power strugglewas Caritas,with which he
elections will produceshifts in the composition of unrulycoalitions, as will scandals involving

networksof persons central to them.
116 Iliescu is not,technicallyspeakingthe head of his party,but he is for all practicalpurposes.
117 I use the standardRomanianinitials for these
partiesratherthantheir English equivalents.
Some parties changed their names after the elections, most notably the former Democratic
National Salvation Front (FDSN) to Party of RomanianSocial Democracy (PDSR); I use the
initials of the new names. The percentagesthat I give here are not those won by each partyin the
overall vote, but the percentages they each gained in the Parliament.Because no party was
allowed parliamentaryrepresentationunless it received 3 percent of the votes (and there was a
largenumberof parties),over 1.5 million votes were cast thatdid not elect parliamentarians.I use
the voting figures given by the Foreign BroadcastInformationService (FBIS-EEU-92-193)for
October9, 1992, p. 27.
openly allied himself soon afterhis election in February1992. He gave Stoica

space in the Cluj city hall, appearedtogetherwith him at public functions and
on television, and defended Caritasagainstthe ever-more-stridentattacks. At
the inaugurationof Stoica's new departmentstore, Funarannouncedthat he
had already set aside space (which was at a premium in Cluj) for Stoica's
projectedbank.118Funaralso hintedbroadlyto an enthusiasticpublic that his
political wisdom lay behind the Caritas-inducedprosperityof Cluj and that
with their votes he could extend that prosperityto all of Romania. (Some of
the villagers I talked with indeed expressedtheir intentionto vote for Funaras
presidentnext time around, since he was "the only politician who seemed to
be doing anything for Romanians.")Because three-fourthsof depositors in
Caritaswere PUNR members, he bragged, it was "a very rich party."119In
addition, the PUNR and Funardrew substantialfunds from Caritasin taxes
and donations.120This Caritas-basedpolitical advantagegave the PUNR an
edge with respectto not only the governmentbut also the political opposition,
which was thrownonto the defensive by the PUNR's get-rich-quickprescrip-
tion for Romania's future.121
By mid-1993, then, as Romaniansflocked in ever-greaternumbersto it,
Caritaswas functioningas a meansof accumulatingnot only economic but also
politicalcapital.Politicaladvantageto which invokingCaritasmightcontribute
includedthreatsby PUNR leadersto revealthe names(andthusend the careers)
of parliamentarianswho were proposing to ban Caritas along with other
pyramidschemes, as well as Stoica's threatto reveal the names (and thus end
the sales) of journalistswho had received money fromCaritasandthen written
againstit. An additionalweapon in Funar'sarsenalwas the alarmistprediction
thatif Caritascollapsed or-more important-if the governmentput a stop to
it, terribleviolence andsocial upheavalwouldensue. (PresidentIliescu himself
commented that, although the governmentwould like to ban the game, he
feared they would be ousted by an enraged populace if they did so.) This
possibility, as well as the scheme's persistencewith the PUNR's backing, also
worked againstthe governmentbecause it made internationallendershesitant
to give loans that the Romaniangovernmentbadly wanted.
By late September1993, Funarhad publicly ridiculedIliescu, inviting him
to put money in Caritasso he could buy a bicycle, since he was so clearly bad
at managingmoney on his own. Iliescu retortedthatanyone could foresee the
inevitable demise of Caritaswhen the curve of deposits intersectedwith the
118
Mesagerul transilvan, September24, 1993, p. 1.
119Romdnialibera, November 3, 1993, p. 3.
120 Romcnia
liberd, July 22, 1993, p. 16, and March 22, 1994, p. 16; Tom Gallagher,"The
Rise of the Partyof RomanianNationalUnity,"RFE-RLReports,3 (March 18, 1994), p. 30. The
first source gives a figure of $2,500 per month, the last as $5 million total, for the amount
the PUNR received in taxes on Caritas.
121 See Tom
Gallagher,"The Political Dimensions of the CaritasAffair in Romania"(Manu-
script, 1993), 20-21.
curve of pay outs. This shrewd move not only exposed the vulnerabilityof
both the PUNR and the governmentto Caritas'sfate; it was also instrumental
in diminishing public confidence in Caritasand thus contributeddirectly to
the game's final collapse. JoiningIliescu's criticismwere the opposition par-
ties, which saw Caritasas the PUNR's Achilles heel and attackedit in hopes
of disruptingthat party's alliance with the PDSR. Wordspread that no city
with an oppositionmayorwould accept new branchesof the scheme. The two
newspapersspecifically tied to opposition partiessteppedup their attackson
Caritas.WhereasFunarhad emphasizedthe peril to the governmentif Caritas
collapsed, the tables were now turned:Funar'senemies knew that, if Caritas
were to fall, he would be the one to lose votes.
Hoist with his own petard, Funarjoined other PUNR leaders in putting
distance between themselves and Stoica and in seeking to detach the PUNR
from his fate. Perhapsthey sought this result furtherwith the proliferationof
conspiracytheories discussed above, which soundedso much like the party's
other pronouncementsin attributingCaritas'stroublesto the government,the
Jewish-Hungarian-Soros plot, the banks, and the IMF. The PUNR also sought
to link Caritas with the Democratic Party, which was now (rumor had it)
courting Iliescu to replace the PUNR in the governmentcoalition. The two
parties struggledto throw each other into Stoica's arms;internecineconflicts
within the PUNR itself reveal the same tactic122of using Caritasas a liability
for political opponentswhen it ceased to be an asset in one's own accumulated
political capital. 23Following the scheme's collapse in May 1994, the PUNR
was receiving only 2 percentfavorablesupportin public opinion polls, indi-
cating that it had made a bad investment.'24
Caritas, Pyramids, and Accumulation
Caritas'srole in building political capital was part of an even wider process
involving a reconfiguredclass system and new accumulationsof wealth. All
across the formerSoviet bloc, segmentsof a new elite have sought to consoli-
date their advantageby using CommunistParty-basedpolitical connections
and political office to gain control of wealth and other resources. This pro-
cess, which Staniszkislabels "politicalcapitalism,"125 createswhat I will call
a "bourgeoiscracy,"whose agents, "entrepratchiks," are a naturaloutgrowth
of socialism's political economy, in which the directorshipof an enterprise
was first of all a political and bureaucraticoffice entailing access to political
resources and valuable contacts. Although after 1989 the CommunistParty
lost its institutionalmonopoly across the region, many enterprisedirectors
122
See, eg., Romcnia liberd, May 13, 1994, p. 9.
123
See, e.g., Evenimentulzilei, January2, 1994, p. 8, in which Cluj prefectZanc seeks to use
Caritasto undercutMayor Funar.
124 See 22
(June 29-July 5, 1994), p. 3. Its standingdid not improve in subsequentmonths.
125
JadwigaStaniszkis, "'Political Capitalism'in Poland,"East EuropeanPolitics and Soci-
eties, 5 (Winter 1991), 127-41.
FAITH, HOPE, AND CARITAS IN ROMANIA 66i
kept their jobs, and former Party activists joined new recruitsin parliament
(the latter quickly learned how to profit from their offices to accumulate
wealth by variousmeans). A common patternhas been for directorsand their
politician-alliesto ensurethe survivalof certainstate firms with subsidies and
then create parasiticprivate firms, into which they drainthese subsidies and
other resourcesof the state firm. Political capital is thus convertedinto eco-
nomic capital and means of futureenrichment.
All these processes areparticularlyevidentin 1990s Romania,and I believe
Caritas and other pyramid schemes-numbering perhaps hundreds,126be-
tween 1990 and 1994-were partof them. This propositionbuilds on Roma-
nian journalistic writings; proof of it must await more extensive research.
Romania's "pyramidbuilders," I suggest, were the unruly coalitions de-
scribed above, consisting of officials of the CommunistParty,one or another
fraction of the old or new secret police, members of the local police and
judiciary,newly elected political officials, and the henchmenof all of these-
people like Stoica. The precise compositionof the coalitions would vary from
one place to another.Here is a list of the people who reportedlyshowed up for
the opening of Caritas'scompetitor,Gerald, in the city of Focsani: the vice-
mayor,the county subprefect,the adjuncthead of the countypolice, represen-
tatives of the secret service and the FinancialGuard,the head of the economic
police, militarycommandersfrom the region, directorsof the county's large
firms, as well as the several directorsof the post office, state gasoline compa-
ny, Vinexport, AgriculturalBank, NationalBank, CommercialBank, and so
forth.127Lacking only prosecutorsand judges (who appearin other papers'
reports),this is a who's who of the county elite, all out to supporttheir local
pyramidscheme.
Variantsof this proposition appear in Romanian newspapers. The most
thoughtfulof them, by Brancoveanu,argues that since the governmenttook
126
Although several publicationsgave the numberof Romanianpyramidschemes as around
100, I think this figure is low. Takingonly numbersfor the six cities of Brasov (100 schemes),
Oradea(36), Pitesti (30 in six months),Constanta(25), Ploiesti (80 between 1991 and 1993), and
Braila(35), we have 306 such schemes-and they appearedin manyothercities as well. Some of
the localized schemes were branches of larger organizations, but because travel time was a
significant ingredientin people's participation(not to mentionin moving the money used for pay
outs, given the rudimentarystate of Romania'sbankingsystem), it makes sense to see even these
branches as quasi-separateinstances of their parent scheme. Sources for the above figures:
Romdnialiberd, June 25, 1993, p. 5; Adevdrul,January20, 1994, p. 1; Adevdrul,January27,
1994, p. 1; Adevdrul,March21, 1994; Adevdrul,January11, 1994, p. 3; and Romanialiberd,
July 23, 1993, p. 5. (I note that the figures are not certain, since newspapersreportedvarying
totals even for the same city.) A later reportprovidedby Reutersin mid-June 1995 on Stoica's
first trial gave the numberof schemes as 600 (thanksto Mihai Pop for this information).
127 Evenimentulzilei, October 16, 1993, p. 8.
Manyothernewspaperstold comparablestories.
In May 1994 the lines of victims registering complaints against Caritas was said to include:
"pensioners,the unemployed,peasants, workers, intellectuals,and . . . Gypsies. .... It is inter-
esting thatin the line of people waitingto registercomplaintswe do not find the formeror present
nomenclatura,Securitatemembers,and potentatesof the presentregime. It seems they pocketed
tens and tens of millions of the money of those who have been swindled"(Romanialiberd, May
16, 1994, p. 16).
action againstthe pyramidschemes so late (they had been bilking Romanians

as early as 1990), some connection between power and these schemes is
likely.128 Its locus was the point of interfacebetween the official and parallel
economies, the space thathosts the transferof the public capitalaccumulated
undersocialism into the handsof privateentrepreneurs.Althoughmost of this
public capital rested in state firms, there were also great masses of wealth
dispersed across Romania in the pockets, socks, mattresses, and savings
accountsof averagecitizens, who had had little to spendtheirmoney on in the
last years of Ceausescu's rule. Pyramid schemes, Brancoveanuproposes,
concentratedthis highly dispersedcapitaland deliveredit to the people on the
"insidetrack"thatI mentionedabove, even tossing an occasional coin or two
to more lowly folk. This inside trackincludedthe scheme's organizers,their
friends, and their political allies-the scheme's unruly coalition. These
people, having "invested"earliest in the schemes, or having been lured ex-
pressly with the promise of handsomeearly returnsto those who deposited
large sums, were sure to collect in the first roundof pay outs. 129
I would furtherspecify Brancoveanu'saccount in two respects. First, it
seems likely that the people most active in enrichingthemselves throughthe
pyramidschemes were second- or third-echelonentrepratchiks,not the most
powerful members of the economic bureaucracy.Those most powerful
individuals-government ministersand heads of the largeststate firms-had
direct access to the massive accumulationsof wealth in the state-ownedand
subsidizedenterprises,as well as to huge bribesandkickbacks,as partof their
jobs. Disdainful of the dispersed sock-and-mattresssavings of the broader
populace (does Donald Trumpstoop to retrieve a penny on the sidewalk?),
they would leave those meager amounts for their less well-placed brethren.
The latter might, of course, augmentthe circulatingfunds with launderable
cash from illicit enterprise or local Party coffers (perhaps they helped to
launder,as well, the illicit earningsof the more powerful).
Second, the fate of the Securitateafterthe 1989 revolutionsuggests that its
formermembersmight have played a significantpartin the pyramidschemes.
At the time of Ceau?escu'soverthrowthe Securitatewas riven with fissures.
The revolution left one faction (the "liberal"one, renamed the Romanian
InformationService, or SRI) in power as allies of Iliescu and the winning
apparatchiks,while at least two other factions were forced into the shade.130
128 See Romulus

Brancoveanu,"Fenomenul'Caritas'si escrocheriapolitica,"Romdnialiberd,
March8, 1994, p. 2. Also see Romanialiberd, March21, 1994, p. 1;Romdnialibera, January6,
1994, p. 10.
129 Here is how Geraldreportedlygot its start:When local officials gave it the green light, they
received assurancesthat they would be at the top of the lists of depositorsand would receive one
million lei two months after depositing 100,000 each. See Evenimentulzilei, October 15, 1993,
pp. 1-2.
130 See Katherine
Verderyand Gail Kligman, "Romaniaafter Ceau?escu:Post-Communist
Communism?,"in Eastern Europe in Revolution, Ivo Banac, ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1992), 117-47.
We cannot know what they did there, but forming nationalist parties and
building pyramids are reasonable possibilities. Both Romanian and outside
commentatorsassume a close link betweenthe Securitateandthe PUNR (with
its precursor,VatraRomaneasca)-a link openly acknowledgedby an early
Vatra/PUNR leaderl3l-and certain Romanian newspapers reported that
founders of one or anotherpyramidscheme had past or present connections
with the Securitate, PUNR, and CommunistParty apparatus.132Such links
are furtherimplied in the political connections and knowledge necessary to
having a scheme registeredand authorizedby the courts, rentingprime space,
and forming ties to other people one would have to pay off with favors or
preferentialaccess. That Stoica was fond of quotingPavel Corul, the securist
turned novelist,133 adds spice to the idea of an arrangementcombining the
PUNR and Securitatein a pyramidscheme.
Pyramidbuilders were in a certainsense very much like the public whom
they conned: Both were looking for ways to make a quick buck-the one
group by establishing pyramid schemes, the other by depositing in them.
They differed chiefly in the social vantage point from which they attempted
their killing, the take they might anticipate, and the kind of protectionthey
might enjoy if their plans failed. It was not even essential that one have
significantliquid assets to set up business (thoughone neededconnections).If
one happened not to have much capital, the depositors would provide that.
Those lucky enough to pad initial deposits with illicit funds had an extra
cushion and perhapsgreaterlongevity for their firm.
A scheme did not have to last long to bring its organizers substantial
revenues. Havingcollected fundsfor two or threemonths,placed them at high
interest, or spent them, the organizerscould declarebankruptcy.To give only
two examples:Impulstook in 682 million lei and paid out 313 million (much
of that going to politicians and influentialpeople) before it crashed, leaving
131 Tom Gallagher,"VatraRomaneascaand ResurgentNationalismin Romania,"Ethnic and
Racial Studies, 15 (October 1992), 579. Here is some furtheranecdotalevidence for the connec-
tion. First, in my one visit to Caritasheadquarters,I asked my guide whatjob he had held before
startingto work for Caritas;he replied that he had been a chauffeurand had been in counterin-
telligence, joining the RomanianInformationService afterthe revolution.When I commentedon
how well-organizedCaritaswas, he said, "No surprise!It's been plannedfor five years"-which
would put its origin beforethe revolution.The friendsto whom I reportedthis said they had heard
that the Securitatehad had pyramid-likeschemes undergroundbefore 1989. Finally, friends in
Cluj said thatthe first people in their workplacesto deposit in Caritashad long been suspectedof
being Securitateinformers.
132 See
Gallagher,"VatraRomaneasca,"and "PoliticalDimensions";Dennis Deletant, "Con-
vergence versus Divergence in Romania: The Role of the Vatra romdneascd Movement in
Transylvania"(paperpresentedat the School of Slavonic and East EuropeanStudies conference,
December 8-14, 1990); and KatherineVerdery,"Nationalismand National Sentiment in Post-
Socialist Romania,"Slavic Review, 53 (summer 1993), 179-203. For Romaniannewspaperre-
ports, see, for example, Adevdrul,March 14, 1994, p. 3; Rominia liberd, March22, 1994, p. 16;
Evenimentulzilei, October9, 1993, p. 4; Romanialiberd, May 4, 1994, p. 16. (I note that these
papersare not always credible.) For a disproportionatePUNR presenceamongCaritasdepositors,
see the lists of parliamentaryCaritasianspublished in Adevdrul,November 12, 1993, p. 1).
133 In his televised interviewof
February,8 1994, for example.
369 million unaccountedfor; Philadelphiahad around600,000 depositors,

took in 25 billion lei andpaid out 23 billion, leaving 2 billion for the scheme's
boss.134 Organizerstherefore could easily emerge with a profit of over a
billion lei from a few months of runninga pyramid, investing the deposits,
then suspendingoperations.35 Even if they returnedto depositors 70 to 80
percentof theirtake, they might remainwith a sizable profit(as one paperput
it, "rewardfor the exertion of plunderingthousands of people"136).Here,
perhaps, is the significance of the crucial detail that several pyramidorgan-
izers were reported to have used deposits to purchase large quantities of
property certificates (the basis for holding shares in privatized firms).137
Many seem also to have used deposits to launchtheir own business ventures,
treatingdepositors'moneyjust as Caritasdepositorstreatedtheir winnings-
as a kind of windfall-the difference being the higher status that enabled
pyramidbuildersto generatethe windfall ratherthan merely await it. These
activities, too, suggest small entrepratchiks,for the large ones had simpler
routes into lucrativeenterprisemanagement.
THE FIELD OF PYRAMIDS AND THE DEMISE OF CARITAS

We are unlikely to know for certainwhy Caritasfell when it did. All pyramid
schemes collapse, but their demise can also be hastened. Hasteningit in this
case were statementsby the newspapersand President Iliescu, as well as
competition from other pyramid schemes offering even more tempting re-
turns. Iliescu's criticisms doubtless stemmed from his jockeying with Funar
and perhapsalso from the informalpressureof internationallending institu-
tions (see note 66). Can we say anythingmore, howsoever tentatively,about
the competitionamong pyramidschemes?
Even as Caritas began to falter in autumn 1993, producing ever more
alarmedpublicity and predictionsof its fall, new pyramidschemes continued
to appearall over the countryalongsidethe olderones andto attractswarmsof
134
Adevdrul,January20, 1994, p. 1, and January26, 1994, pp. 1-2.
135 Romdnialiberd, July 8, 1993; p. 2, publisheda detailedcalculationas to how much money
might be expected to come into a newly establishedpyramidscheme and how fast it would grow
in six months, pay outs included. Interestrateson banksavingsdeposits fluctuatedgreatlyduring
the period underdiscussion;by autumn1993, when many of the competitorschemes were being
started,one could get 50 percentor more annually,and that figure rose duringthe winter (when
schemes were still being founded despite the evident difficulties of Caritas).Thus, for pyramid
organizersto place deposits at high interestwas indeed an option. Given how much money often
came into a newly opened scheme-Gerald, for instance, reportedlytook in 300 million lei in its
first four days (Adevdrul,October 15, 1993, p. 1)-their short-termprofit from interest alone
could be enormous.
136Adevdrul,January26, 1994, p. 2.
137 Cronica romdnd,September28, 1993, p. 3; Evenimentulzilei, March 19, 1994, p. 3, and
April 12, 1994, p. 10. During summer 1994, there was a lengthy discussion in the Romanian
press about the government'splan to count only one propertycertificate per citizen, so as to
rectify the fact that many people had sold their certificateswithoutunderstandingtheir potential
value as stocks in profitablefirms. I thinkit possible thatbeneaththis plan was a conflict among
groups of entrepratchiksover who would control the wealth embodied in the certificates.
depositors. Why should this be?138One journalist thought that the govern-
ment had decided to bringdown Caritasbut thatoverwhelmingpublic support
made the authoritiesfeel they were risking their own necks if they simply
bannedthe scheme. Instead,they resortedto the less-visible solution of order-
ing the secret service to launch competing schemes "to attractthose who
might [otherwise]prolongthe life of Cluj-Caritasby depositingmoney there,
and then . . to bring [the competing schemes] down noisily with much
damage to many depositors, thus underminingpeople's confidence and even
creatinga currentof opinion in favorof banningall such games"-as indeed
happened. The article offered proofs of the secret-service connections of
people involved in one such spectacularfailure, Procent.139
This intriguingscenario has two shortcomings.First, it ignores the many
pyramid schemes that were already operating long before Caritas gained
notoriety; and, second, it assumes a degree of central control that I find
improbable.I prefer an alternative,truerto what I see as an anarchic, frag-
mented Romanian political field. In my view, individual pyramid schemes
begun by localized second-tier elites as a means of enriching themselves
mushroomedinto a nation-widefield of pyramids,jointly constitutinga space
in which differentcoalitions competed to harvestthe sock-and-mattresspor-
tion of Romania's wealth. Togetherthey formed a pyramidempire, collec-
tively built up by entrepratchiksstruggling for advantage. Each pyramid
began in the large cities or capitals of specific counties. Gerald (which
crashed spectacularly, soon after Caritas) was based in Foc?ani (Vrancea
county); Procent and Philadelphiain Pitesti (Arge? county); Mimi in Galali
(later spreading to Hunedoaraat just the time when that county's residents
began swarmingto Cluj);El DoradoGold in Oradea;Adison, in Braila;Saba,
in Arad;Diomar, in Buzau;Alecs, in Bra?ov;Caritas,in Cluj;and so on. The
county base conforms with the feudal structureof Romanianpolitics that the
fall of the CommunistPartyhad only exacerbated.Each county's strongmen
organized a scheme, perhapsseveral schemes (see note 126), either by asso-
ciating with rival local coalitions or by collusively pooling the capital re-
sources that each county's inhabitantscould muster. The bigger, more suc-
cessful schemes might later extend their reach by planting colonies in other
cities and counties, as Stoica did, seeking to increasetheircollecting capacity
in Romania's low-tech environmentand thus poaching on the turf of other
unruly coalitions.
138 The
part of this question that I do not try to answer-why did depositors keep coming,
despite overwhelming evidence that they would lose their money-points toward the most
ethnographicallysignificant aspect of this essay: It reveals among Romaniansa frame of mind
that most readerswill find wholly unfathomable.That is what the "transitionfrom socialism" is
really about.
139 The article,
publishedin the ConstanlaTelegraf,was excerptedwithoutthe author'sname,
in Evenimentulzilei, February2, 1994, p. 3. I add that a very well-placed source told me (for
what it is worth)thatthe scheme had collapsed so quietly because the secret service had carefully
managed it in that way.
But in 1992, within this dynamic field of competitive spoliation, one

scheme, Caritas, began to outstrip the others. Perhaps it did so because,
unlike its competitors,with theirserendipitousties to political parties, Caritas
establisheda secure, and novel, alliance with a party,the PUNR. As a well-
organized regional party, the PUNR was manageablysmall but still large
enough to recruit a substantialbase of capital throughoutTransylvania;its
clientele soon spreadfar beyond the Securitateand supportersof the PUNR
who had probably set it up. The scheme's initial advantage nevertheless
proved a long-termhandicap,I believe, preciselybecause its alliance with the
PUNR gave its appeal a national scope, securing so effective a nation-wide
catchmentarea that its potentialthreatenedother pyramidschemes and even
the Romanian government. At this point, unruly coalitions sponsoring the
other schemes-alarmed at the prospectthatCaritasmight devourthe savings
of the entirecountry,thus enrichingthatunrulycoalitionmost closely tied to it
and impoverishingall the others-mobilized in defense.
I believe that the defense mobilized by these other unruly coalitions en-
tailed seducing Caritas'sclients both by enhancingthose schemes the coali-
tions were already managing and by setting up new ones with even bigger
stakes. Whetherthese high-stakesschemes could survive was less important
than thatthey reducedthe suppliesof money to Caritasin the shortterm, thus
bringing down their formidablecompetitor.Considerthe following thirteen
examples, which all appearedafter Caritaswas well established and which
garnered millions and billions of lei from many thousands of people. In
responseto Caritas'seightfold pay out in 90 days, Garantpromisedtenfold in
90 days; El Dorado Gold, tenfold in 80 days; Gerald, tenfold in 75 days;
Novo-Caritas,tenfold in 60 days; Tresorand AmericanTrading,twelvefold in
75 days; Proactiv, 12.4-fold in 60 days; Ferati, elevenfold in 50 days and
fifteenfold on the second round;ALD Pitesti, fifteenfoldin 65 days; Combat,
sixteenfold in 60 days; Philadelphia,seventeen-foldin 75 days; Mimi, five-
fold in 45 days or twenty-fivefoldin 90 days; and Procent-Caritas,an aston-
ishing twentyfoldin 60 days. From such variationsin theirbait it seems clear
thatthey were strivingmightilyto outdo not only each otherbut Caritasabove
all. 40HeadlinesaboutGeraldthatannounced"MoldaviaFights Transylvania
in 'Caritas's'War"and "El Dorado Gold from Arad Aims to Dethrone Car-
itas" enhance this impression.141
Perhapsthe scenario that I propose illuminatesthe wider proliferationof
pyramidand other investmentschemes throughoutthe formersocialist bloc.
Such schemes have arisenin each of these countries, some more than others.
140 These
figures are from advertisementsand articles in the RomaniannewspapersEveni-
mentulzilei, Romdnialibera, and Adevdrulfor November 1993 throughFebruary1994. There
were many more games, but I know the stakes for these and that they began after Caritasgained
momentum.
141 Evenimentulzilei, October 16, 1993, p. 8, and October28, 1993, p. 8.
This may reflect a constant in post-Soviet societies: The fall of Communist

Parties (which had more or less unified the political field), alongside the
weakening of the state apparatusthroughprogramsof privatizationand the
interventionof internationallending institutions, has launched a free-for-all
among lower-levelauthorities,formerand present.Each lower-levelfief hosts
power struggles among those who would rule it and would consolidate their
rule throughalliances beyond. The units in these struggleshave many names,
such as mafias, clans, suzerainties, unruly coalitions, and so forth. I have
suggested that pyramid schemes are one means that they use to scoop up
dispersed resources and concentratethem in the group.
From one country to anotherthese units enjoy varying relations with the
centralauthority,althoughan enfeebledcenteris probablya conditionof their
flourishing.In Slovakia and Bulgaria,for example, the governmentreported-
ly banned pyramidschemes as soon as they appeared,although in Bulgaria
other kinds of schemes arose later and crashed;while in Romaniaand Russia
interdictionwas hesitant and late. These differences perhaps reflect differ-
ences in the center's power or in its ties to membersof one or anotherunruly
coalition. A measureof a scheme's success, if Russia's huge MMM scheme,
which fell in July 1994, is any indication, is that the defraudedpublic per-
ceives the scheme as its ally andthe interdictingstateas its enemy. Indeed, the
arrestedMMM owner, Sergei Mavrodi, was elected to the Russian Duma
from his jail cell, his defiant supportersinsisting that MMM's crash was the
government'sfault.142An additionalvariabledeterminingthe pyramids'vigor
may have been the presenceof foreigncapitaland its internallocation or (even
more likely) the relative strength or weakness of Party structuresprior to
1989, insofar as these were the backboneof coalition activity.
CONCLUSION
It is too soon to assess the long-term consequences of the rise and fall of
Caritas; one can only recapitulatehypotheses and raise questions. I have
emphasizedhere the opportunitythatit providedfor people to reconceptualize
money, to see "the economy" as an abstractionnot governed by human
agents, and to reordertheir moral universe in accordwith the pursuitof gain
in hithertodisapprovedforms. I have indicatedthat these possibilities posed
true dilemmas for people in Romania, who then argued with others and
themselves about what kind of gain is worthy. What will the collapse of
Caritasdo to their conclusions? Did the shatteringof so many dreams con-
vince depositorsthat unearnedmoney indeed comes from the devil? Are they
now looking for internaland internationalplots, repersonalizingthe economy
142
See, for example, Financial Times, August 8, 1994, pp. 1,2. The shareholders'slogan was
reportedly," TrustMMM, don't trust the bureaucrats."The story of Mavrodi'selection comes
from National Public Radio (October31, 1994).
as they do so? Among the villagers I knew, what seemed to prevail as I left
Romaniawas a resignedfeeling of havingbeen victimized, but it was unclear
to me whetherthey saw theirloss as a divine reproof,the resultof a plot, or a
bit of bad luck. Will people be more inclined, or less so, to flock to other
chance-basedmiracles, such as the United States Departmentof State's "di-
versity lottery,"in which 3,850 lucky Romanianswere to get visas for perma-
nent settlementin America by having their names drawnout of a hat?143
Other consequences of the fall of Caritaswill be played out in people's
personaland family relationsfor a long time to come. Those who sold houses
and apartmentsso they could invest in Caritaswill live in crowdedconditions
with in-laws, their domestic relationsstrained;reportsindicatethat the num-
ber of such cases is not small.144For some, one consequencemay be an end to
thoughtsof startinga business or buying one's apartmentfrom the state. As
such planning is aborted,does that crush a person's fledgling sense of inde-
pendence and initiative?Many people lost the financial cushion they hoped
for against futurecatastrophe,as well as the cushion that their own savings,
devoured by Caritas, will no longer provide. People who took out high-
interest bank loans that they expected to repay with Caritas money had to
tighten their belts and plead with relatives to help them cover their debts; a
few had heart attacksor committedsuicide.145
Finally, I have sketched anotherpossible consequence of Caritasfor Ro-
mania's social structure:It nourishedsegmentsof the rising "bourgeoiscracy"
that feeds off the primitive accumulationrealized under socialism in both
public andprivatedomains. Caritas,as well as otherschemes like it acrossthe
formerlysocialist world, helped to producetwo opposing social groups:One
has new wealth that will enable them to make money and dominatepolitics;
the other, increasinglyimpoverishedand disenfranchised,will see riches as
immoral and risk as unrewarded.This makes pyramidschemes like Caritas
crucial instrumentsof new class formation and of producing inner third
worlds in post-Soviet societies. Will these schemes also be spursto civic and
political organization,as the despoiled create associations to pursue redress
through the courts?146Will people's experiences there confirm their influ-
143 These
questionsmust be answereddifferentlyaccordingto where people were in the cycle
of earnings. Those who received and spent substantialamounts will probably have had their
conceptions durablyaltered, while this is less likely for those who had yet to benefit.
144 Evenimentulzilei, December 18, 1993,
p. 1, reportedthatsome Cluj bankswere repossess-
ing fifty apartmentsthat had been mortgaged so their owners could participatein Caritas.
Adevdrul, February14, 1994, p. 1, reported, similarly, that every day Hunedoarabanks were
auctioningoff the houses of people who had used them as collateralto borrow for Caritas.
145 Romdnialiberd, March 18, 1994, p. 1 and June 25, 1993, p. 5; Adevdrul,March3, 1994,
p. 2.
146
By early June 1994, a numberof such associations had been formed, with names like
NationalAssociation for ProvingAbuses, Action Committeefor RecoveringMoney Deposited in
Caritas, Association for Recovery of Caritas-TypeDeposits, Association of Victims of Caritas,
and Associationof People Deceived by Mutual-AidGames. Certainlawyersofferedtheirservices
ence, or break it? Will Stoica do time and will his riches be confiscated to
repay his angry depositors, or will the resourcesthat he commands and the
propensity of the Iliescu government for corruptpractices deprive Stoica's
victims of the justice they seek?147
Summarizingan argumentthatpyramidschemes are an unconventionaland
unfortunatelydynamic element of the "transition,"Brancoveanuwrites:
The dream of making a killing, the sentimentof participatingin the great race for a
stable position in the new society, and the need for economic security have pushed
people towardthe mutual-aidgames. Scrimpingand saving to deposit tens or hundreds
of thousands of lei, they have the feeling that they are doing something, that they
haven'tbeen left out, thatthey aren'tdefeated, thatthey can withstandcompetition-a
competition, alas, of the excluded. The bosses of the mutual-aidgames have intuited
and speculated upon this inclination of the masses to risk in the name of a better
future. 148
These bosses, like the pharaohsof old, built their pyramidswith the faith,
hope, and sacrifice of the multitudesbelow them. The parallelmay end there,
however, for we see little sign that the pyramidsof Romania's ruthless en-
trepratchikswill become their tombs.
free of charge, but news reportsduringthe summerof 1994, however, suggested that they were
being politically harassedin some of theiractivities. See, for example, Virgil Lazar,"Boss Stoica
Gets HystericalWhile Damaged Claim InternationalProtection,"Romanialiberd, International
English Edition, July 30-August 5, 1994, p. 7. Similarly, in Russia following the collapse of
MMM, shareholdersorganizedrallies and a union, to defend depositors'rights nation-wide. See
FBIS-SOV-94,no. 148 (August 2, 1994), pp. 16-18; no. 157 (August 15, 1994), p. 15; no. 162
(August 22, 1994), p. 25; and no. 168 (August 30, 1994), 14.
147 During the same period as Stoica's arrest(August 1994), the PUNR clinched a deal with
the government and received the four cabinet portfolios it had long been seeking. That this
occurredeven as its standingin the polls plummetedcasts an unexpectedlight on Stoica's arrest
and his prospects. One possibility is that sacrificing Stoica and Caritaswas the price that the
PUNR paid for its goal of enteringthe government.The new alliance in turnsuggests, however,
that Stoica will not be in jail for long-in otherwords, in exchangefor managingCaritas'sdemise
to prevent social chaos and consenting to be arrested(ratherthan fleeing, as so many other
pyramidowners have done), Stoica will be quickly pardonedand allowed to keep his fortune. His
fate would thusparallelthatof the potentatesof the Ceausescuregime, who (it now seems) agreed
to be sacrificed so their successors might take over and pardonthem later. As this essay goes to
press, Stoica was sentencedto six years in prisonafterbeing convicted in the first of severaltrials
on charges that he used Caritas to defraud millions of investors. His imprisonmentdoes not
preclude the possibility that he may be pardonedor released before his term is up.
148 Brancoveanu,"Fenomenul'Caritas' si escrocheriapolitica."

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Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

Caritas."That same day, an official at the RomanianEmbassy told me that

WHAT WAS CARITAS?

informationconcerningits founder,loan Stoica, is sparse. Before 1989 he is

13 See my "The 'Etatization'of Time in Ceau?escu'sRomania,"in ThePolitics of Time, Henry

Mesagerul, December 7, 1993, p. 5.

created special bus trips and the Romanianrailway lengthenedits trains.31In

States; there has also been a proliferationof multi-level marketingprograms,whose relationto

chose, which cleverly invoked an internationalCatholiccharity,37but also in

37 Indeed, the RomanCatholicdiocese of Oradeaprotestedthe name, threateningto bring suit

well ("A man has appeared/Whohas saved us all/Make Stoica Emperor").42

a two-day hiatus, explained at the time as a computererror, but slackened

CARITAS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

from the non-Transylvanianparts of Romaniato Transylvania.

in the early 1990s-the challengesthey felt to theirconceptionof money, and

the amountscontributed.Many who laterdepositedin Caritasbelieved that it

dressed was the relative roles of commerce and productionas sources of

spent bank accounts of the CommunistPartyor the illicit earningsof under-

enough to finance the unfinishedrebuildingof Bucharest.Partisansof these

64 The supportmight also, of course, be indirect-from either the absence of legislation to

In a similar vein, many blamed Caritas'stroubles on Romanian banks,

lies in being invisible, taken for granted, abstractedfrom the actions of

Changes in this woman's thoughtsabout money had gone unobserveduntil I

Transylvania,"Slavic Review, 54 (winter 1994), 1071-1109.

abstractcirculationof moneymakingmoney but was being actively managed.

Questioningthe Moral Order

debatedthe moralityof Caritasmoney. That is, Caritasfocused their genuine

No. If Stoicais doingsomethingwrong,it'sbetweenhimandGod.Itdoesn'taffectus.

morality-such as that, in promoting privatizationand decentralizationof

MakingCaritasbiblical (of which morebelow) was yet anotherway of allying

Here, then, is a thirdkind of immoralmoney: not unearnedmoney or dirty

its critics foresaw,in suitablyapocalypticlanguage, imminentdisaster).Also

90 In a review of work on millenarianmovementsin Melanesia, Trompfcites Eliade's insight

dery, "WhatWas Socialism," 18-20.

because someone else depositedmoney for them as a "starter."(I myself was

things Romanian.)Finally,a journalistdrew a parallelbetweenCaritasand the

The Antichristis actingthroughCaritas.Lately,peoplereturningfromClujtell of

Among my own more urbanizedvillage informantssuch views were rare, but

look whathappened."More concisely, a womantold me, "Caritasmustbe the

I have been exploring the place of Caritas in new cultural conceptions of

106 "E lucrul

cess. Although some may have a primarilyregionalbase, all have a national

10 CompareJacek Kochanowicz, "The DisappearingState: Poland's Three Years of Transi-

Political Capitalfor an EmergingBourgeoiscracy

elections will produceshifts in the composition of unrulycoalitions, as will scandals involving

openly allied himself soon afterhis election in February1992. He gave Stoica

action againstthe pyramidschemes so late (they had been bilking Romanians

128 See Romulus

369 million unaccountedfor; Philadelphiahad around600,000 depositors,

THE FIELD OF PYRAMIDS AND THE DEMISE OF CARITAS

But in 1992, within this dynamic field of competitive spoliation, one

This may reflect a constant in post-Soviet societies: The fall of Communist

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