I presume he's talking about the collapse of the Soviet Union, which caused a huge amount of upheaval in that area.

But I'm a poor student of modern history. Just throwing out a guess for now.

Right, but I got the time interval wrong; it was only 30 years ago.

Eventually it was good for Romania but IIRC, the initial collapse was very bad for the locals.

But again, I'd say that Eastern European modern history is my weakest subject by far. I probably should avoid talking about this subject lol.