For four decades, natural authority was banished to the underground or to the very edge of cultural activity, banished from the entire country or at least surrounded by official and therefore formidable silence, and the false elite were forced upon society. All of this could not be prevented from influencing the majority of society — the decline of morality and even the distrust of intellectuals, which persisted not only during communism, but long after the Communists had ceased to rule.