text: Dallas is alleged to have helped partially hasten the downfall of the Eastern Bloc country of Romania during the final years of the Cold War. Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu allowed airings of Dallas, one of the few Western shows allowed to be aired in the Communist state during the 1980s. The belief that the show would be seen as anti-capitalistic backfired on the regime as Romanian citizens desired and sought the luxurious lifestyle of the American elite seen in the show, compared to the despotic situation in Romania at the time. Shortly after the execution of Ceaușescu and his wife on Christmas Day 1989, the pilot episode of Dallas, which had been edited for a sex scene, was one of the first Western Shows aired on the newly liberated Romanian TV. The popularity of Dallas in Romania is the subject of the 2016 experimental documentary Hotel Dallas, directed by artist duo Ungur & Huang and starring Patrick Duffy, who plays a surreal double of the Bobby Ewing character.
  Also in northern parts of Soviet-occupied Estonia, Dallas became popular when shown on Finnish television, being watched illegally on modified Soviet television sets. In the communist Soviet Union thousands of people drove regularly to the northern tip of Estonia to pick up the series on Finnish TV. This was described in the 2009 documentary Disco and Atomic War.