I am too young to tell but for many who lived through late 60s early 70s, this was a good period, despite living in a communist country; Romania opened more to West and started industrial cooperation with France, UK, Germany and had some commercial treaties with US. This was due to '68 stance of Ceausescu concerning the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The 70s are perceived as a decade when people had more freedom, the standard of living raised considerably, the market was full of good merchandise including Western products, cooperation with West was sought etc.
Toward 80s the situation changed dramatically, Ceausescu build up his cult of personality and and surrounded himself with incompetent yesmen, his wife Elena Ceausescu become more and more influent, acquiring a lot of power and involving in all kind of domains and they took the decision to isolate the country, make cuts to pay the state foreign debt and generally turn Romania into totalitarian Stalinist regime inspired from North Korea. See here more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Theses