What it was like growing up in such a system? I guess it's a bit hard to imagine, if you have no experience of totalitarianism as a everyday presence. The state did not merely want to control your social behavior, but also your mind and soul. The state was not pleased with "Give the Caesar what belongs to the Caesar...", they aimed at creating a "new man" (an official propaganda term), one in which any form of alternative thinking would be eradicated. The Secret Police (the odious Securitate) was omnipresent, so every citizen had to be very careful what he talked, and especially with whom. Most people developed a form of "double thinking", with a facet for the official and social circumstances, and the other for themselves, their families and close friends. Does it sound any bell as of "1984"? It should.
It does sound like 1984. But what is telling to me is that none of what you describe is specifically socialist or "left-wing." The same statements could just as easily have been made about living in a right-wing totalitarian society. In fact it sounds a lot like my grandmother's descriptions of growing up in Nazi Germany.
We often read about children in North Korea being taught that Kim makes the sun rise and the flowers bloom, etc. Did that kind of indoctrination/brainwashing exist around the Ceaucescu family?
Oh, and did you ever have a Dacia? 
