Romanian Revolution of 1989
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The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a week-long series of riots and protests in late December of 1989 that overthrew the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu. The increasingly violent riots culminated in a cursory trial and the execution of Ceauşescu and his wife Elena. While the Romanian Revolution was unfolding, other Eastern European nations were peacefully transitioning to democracy; Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country to violently overthrow its Communist regime.
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Before the revolution
See main article Communist Romania
As in neighboring countries, by 1989 the bulk of the Romanian populace were dissatisfied with the Communist regime. However, unlike other East European countries, Romania had never undergone even limited de-Stalinization. Ceauşescu's economic and development policies (including grandiose construction projects and an austerity program designed to enable Romania to pay back its entire national debt) were generally blamed for the country's painful shortages and widespread, increasing poverty; parallel with increasing poverty, the secret police (Securitate) was becoming so ubiquitous as to make Romania essentially a police state.
Unlike the other Warsaw Pact leaders, Ceauşescu had not been particularly pro-Soviet but had pursued an independent foreign policy. While Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of reform, Ceauşescu imitated the political hard-line, megalomania, and personality cults of East Asian communist leaders like North Korea's Kim Il Sung. Even after the Berlin Wall fell and Ceauşescu's southern comrade, Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov, was replaced in November 1989, Ceauşescu ignored the threat to his position as the last old-style communist leader in Eastern Europe.
Timişoara
On December 16 a protest broke out in Timişoara in response to an attempt by the government to evict a dissident Hungarian Reformed pastor, László Tőkés. The priest had recently made critical comments toward the regime in the international media and the government alleged that he was inciting to ethnic hatred. At the behest of the government, his bishop had removed him from his post, thereby depriving him of the right to use the apartment he was entitled to as a pastor. For some time, his parishioners were gathering around his home to protect him from harassment and eviction. Many passers-by, including religious Romanian students, unaware of the details and having been told by the pastor's supporters that this was yet another attempt of the communist regime to restrict religious freedom, spontaneously joined in. As it became clear that the crowd would not disperse, the mayor, Petre Moţ made remarks suggesting that he had overturned the decision to evict Tőkés. Meanwhile, the crowd had grown impatient— and since Petre Moţ declined to confirm his statement against the planned eviction in writing, the crowd started to chant anticommunist slogans. Consequently, police and Securitate forces showed up at the scene. By 7:30 pm, the protest had spread out, and the original cause became largely irrelevant. Some of the protesters attempted to burn down the building that housed the District Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR). The Securitate responded with tear gas and water jets, while the police were beating up rioters and had already arrested many of them. Around 9:00 p.m. the rioters withdrew. They regrouped eventually around the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral and started a protest march around the city, but again they were confronted by the security forces.
Riots and protests resumed the following day, December 17. The rioters broke into the District Committee building and threw Party documents, propaganda brochures, Ceauşescu's writings, and other symbols of communist power out the windows. Again, the protesters attempted to set the building on fire, but this time they were stopped by military units. The significance of the army presence in the streets was an ominous one: this meant that they had received their orders from the highest level of the command chain, presumably from Ceauşescu himself. Although the army failed to establish order, it succeeded in turning Timişoara into a living hell: gunfire, casualties, fights and burning cars, Transport Auto Blindat (TAB) armored personnel carriers, tanks and stores. After 8:00 p.m., from Piaţa Libertăţii (Liberty Square) to the Opera there was wild shooting, including the area of Decebal bridge, Calea Lipovei (Lipovei Avenue) and Calea Girocului (Girocului Avenue). Tanks, trucks and TABs were blocking the access ways into the city while helicopters were hovering overhead. After midnight the protests calmed down. Ion Coman, Ilie Matei and Ştefan Guşă inspected the city, which looked like the aftermath of a war: everywhere destruction, ash and blood.
The morning of December 18, the downtown was being guarded by soldiers and Securitate-agents in plain clothes. Mayor Moţ ordered a Party gathering to take place at the University, with the purpose of condemning the "vandalism" of the previous days. He also declared martial law, prohibiting people from going about in groups larger than two people. Defying the curfew, a group of 30 young men headed for the Orthodox Cathedral, where they stopped and waved a Romanian flag from which they had removed the Romanian Communist coat of arms. Expecting that they would be fired upon, they started to sing "Deşteaptă-te, române!" (Wake up, Romanians), an earlier national anthem that had been banned since 1947. They were, indeed, fired upon and some died, some were seriously injured, while the lucky ones were able to escape.
On December 19, Radu Bălan and Ştefan Guşă visited the workers in the city's factories, but failed to have them resume work. On December 20, massive columns of workers were entering the city. 100,000 protesters occupied Piaţa Operei (Opera Square - today Piaţa Victoriei; Victory Square), and started to chant anti-government protests: "Noi suntem poporul!" ("We are the people!"), "Armata e cu noi!" ("The army is on our side!"), "Nu vă fie frică, Ceauşescu pică!" ("Have no fear, Ceauşescu will fall"). Meanwhile, Emil Bobu and Constantin Dăscălescu were sent by Elena Ceauşescu (Nicolae Ceauşescu being at that time in Iran), to meet with a delegation of the protesters; however, they refused to comply with the protestors' demands and the situation remained essentially unchanged; the next day trains loaded with workers originating from factories in Oltenia arrived in Timişoara. The regime was attempting to use them in the repression of the mass protests, but they finally ended up in joining the protests. One worker explained: "Yesterday, our factory boss and a Party official rounded us up in the yard, handed us wood clubs and told us that Hungarians and 'hooligans' were devastating Timişoara and that it is our duty to go there and help crush the riots. But now I realize that this is not true."
Bucharest
The events in Timişoara were widely reported by the popular Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and by students returning home for Christmas holidays.
There are several conflicting views on the events in Bucharest that led to the fall of Ceauşescu in 1989. One view is that a portion of the Romanian Communist Party CPEx (Political Executive Council) tried and failed to bring about a scenario similar to that in the rest of the Eastern bloc Communist countries, where the Communist leadership would resign en masse, allowing a new government to emerge peacefully. Another view is that a group of military officers successfully staged a conspiracy against Ceauşescu. Several officers have claimed that they had been part of a conspiracy directed against Ceauşescu, but evidence beyond their own claims is scant, at best. The latter view is buttressed by a series of interviews given 2003–2004 by former Securitate Lieutenant Colonel Dumitru Burlan, Ceauşescu's long-time bodyguard. The two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
In November 1989, Ceauşescu had visited Mikhail Gorbachev, who asked him to resign. Ceauşescu refused. The question of a possible resignation arose again on 17 December 1989, when Ceauşescu assembled the CPEx (Political Executive Council) to decide upon the necessary measures to crush the Timişoara uprising. Although meeting minutes were taken, and were presented at the trial of several CPEx members, the surviving stenograma (minutes) at the time of the trial were frustratingly incomplete: pages were missing, including the discussion of a possible resignation.
According to the testimony of CPEx members Paul Niculescu-Mizil and Ion Dincă during their trial, at this meeting, just like in Bulgaria and East Germany, two of the members of CPEx disagreed with the use of force to suppress the uprising. In response, Ceauşescu offered his resignation, and asked the members of CPEx to elect another leader. However, other members of CPEx, including Gheorghe Oprea and Constantin Dăscălescu asked Ceauşescu not to resign, but to sack those two who opposed his decisions instead. Later that day, Ceauşescu left Romania to visit Iran, leaving the task of resolving the uprising of Timişoara to his wife and other acolytes.
On 20 December 1989 Ceauşescu returned to Romania only to find out that the situation had worsened. At 19:00 on 20 December, he gave a televised speech from a TV studio located inside the Central Committee Building, in which he labeled the people protesting in Timişoara as enemies of the Socialist Revolution. [1] [2]
According to one of the recent insider memoirs, following the Timişoara uprising, a group of conspiring Securitate generals took advantage of this opportunity to launch a coup in Bucharest. The coup, allegedly in preparation since 1982, was originally planned for the New Year's Eve, but it had to be redesigned on-the-move, so as to take advantage of the favourable developments. The lead-conspirator, general Victor Stănculescu, was part of Ceauşescu's inner circle and he is said to have convinced the dictator to hold the mass rally in front of the Central Committee building, in a plaza that had already been prepared with remote-controlled automatic guns. During Ceauşescu's address, the remote-controlled automatic guns were set to fire randomly over the crowd while agitators would use bullhorns to instigate the crowd with anti-Ceauşescu slogans.
On the morning of December 21, Ceauşescu addressed a mass assembly of a hundred thousand people to condemn the uprising of Timişoara. Speaking from the balcony of the Central Committee building in the usual "wooden language", Ceauşescu delivered a litany of the achievements of the "socialist revolution" and Romanian "multi-laterally developed socialist society". The people, however, remained apathetic, and only the front rows supported Ceauşescu with cheers and applause. His lack of understanding of the events and his incapacity to handle the situation were further demonstrated as he offered, as an act of desperation, to raise the salaries for workers by the ridiculous amount of 100 Lei (about 4 US dollars at the time) per month and kept praising the achievements of the Socialist Revolution, still unable to realize that a revolution was unfolding right in front of his eyes.
As he was addressing the crowd from the balcony of the Central Committee building, sudden movement coming from the outskirts of the mass assembly and the sound of what various sources have reported as fireworks, bombs, or guns broke the orderly manifestation into chaos. Scared at first, the crowds tried to disperse. Bullhorns were used to spread the news that the Securitate was firing on them and that a "revolution" was unfolding, and finally the people were persuaded to join in. The rally turned into a protest demonstration and in the end a revolution emerged.
Ceauşescu, his wife, as well as other officials and CPEx members panicked, and finally Ceauşescu went into hiding inside the building. The live transmission of the meeting was interrupted, but the people who were watching had seen enough to realise that something unusual was going on.
The reaction of Ceauşescu couple is memorable, as they were staging futile attempts to regain control over the convulsing crowd using phone conversation formulas such as "Alo, Alo" ("Hello, Hello") or Ceauşescu's wife "advising" him how to contain the situation: "Vorbeşte-le, vorbeşte-le" ("Talk to them, talk to them") and to the crowd "Stati liniştiti la locurile voastre" ("Sit quiet in your places"); finally Ceauşescu allowed himself to be directed inside the Central Committee building by his underlings.
The jeers and whistles erupted into riot; the people fled the immediate location, but took to the streets, placing the capital, like Timişoara, in turmoil. People were chanting anti-communist and anti-Ceauşescu slogans: "Jos dictatorul!" ("Down with the dictator"), "Moarte criminalului!" ("Death to the criminal"), "Noi suntem poporul, jos cu dictatorul!" ("We are the People, down with the dictator", "Ceauşescu cine eşti/Criminal din Scorniceşti" ("Ceauşescu, who are you?/A criminal from Scorniceşti"). Eventually, protesters flooded the downtown, from Piaţa Kogălniceanu to Piaţa Unirii to Piaţa Rosetti to Piaţa Romană. On the statue of Mihai Viteazul on Boulevard Mihail Kogalniceanu near the University, a young man was waving a tricolour with the Communist coat of arms torn out of its center.
As the hours passed, many more people took to the streets. Soon the protestors — unarmed and unorganized — were confronted by soldiers, tanks, TABs, USLA troops (Unitate Specială pentru Lupta Antiteroristă, anti-terrorist special squads), and armed plain-clothes Securitate officers. The crowd was being shot at from various buildings, side streets and tanks. There were many deaths, by shooting, clubbing, stabbing, squashing by armored vehicles (one TAB drove into the crowd around the Intercontinental Hotel, crushing people — a French journalist, Jean Louis Calderon, was killed; a street near University Square was later named after him). Firefighters hit the demonstrators with powerful water jets and the police beat and arrested people. Protestors managed to build a defensible barricade in front of Dunărea ("Danube") restaurant, which stood until after midnight, but was finally torn apart by government forces. Intense, continuous shooting continued until after 3:00 a.m., by which time the survivors had fled the streets.
Records of the fighting that day include footage shot from helicopters — sent to raid the area and to record evidence for eventual reprisals — as well as by tourists in the high tower of the centrally located Intercontinental Hotel, next to the National Theater and across the street from the University.
Ceauşescu falls
It is likely that in the small hours of December 22, Ceauşescu must have thought that his desperate attempts to crush the protests had succeeded. However, before 7:00 a.m., his wife Elena received the bad news that large columns of workers from many industrial platforms (large communist-era factories or groups of factories concentrated into industrial zones) were heading towards downtown Bucharest. The police barricades that were meant to block access to Piaţa Universităţii (University Square) and Piaţa Palatului (Palace Square, now Piaţa Revoluţiei — Revolution Square) proved useless. By 9:30 a.m., University Square was jammed with people. Security forces (army, police and others) reentered the scene, but only to defect on the protesters' side; their motivation to do so remains a mystery to this day. It remains a matter of dispute whether army and other leaders turned against Ceauşescu out of sincere revulsion at his policies (as many later claimed) or simply out of sheer opportunism.
By 10 A.M., as the radio broadcast was announcing the introduction of martial law and of a ban on groups larger than 5 persons, hundreds of thousands of people were gathering for the first time from their own initiative in central Bucharest (the previous day's crowd had come together at Ceauşescu's orders). Ceauşescu attempted to address the crowd from the balcony of the Central Committee of the Communist Party building, but his attempt was met with a wave of disapproval and anger. Helicopters were spreading manifestos, which as a matter of fact didn't reach the crowd, due to unfavourable wind — instructing people not to fall victim to the latest "diversion attempts", but to go home instead and enjoy the Christmas feast. The rioters forced open the doors of the Central Committee building in an attempt to get Ceauşescu in their grip, but the dictator managed to reach the helicopter waiting for him on the roof of the building; why he chose to flee by helicopter, instead of using the intricate tunnel system beneath the Central Committee building, also remains a mystery.
On the morning of December 22, sometime between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., Vasile Milea, Ceauşescu's minister of defense, died under very suspect circumstances. A communique by Ceauşescu stated that Milea had been found to be a traitor and that he had committed suicide after his treason was revealed. The most widespread opinion is that Milea was assassinated in response to his refusal to follow Ceauşescu's orders. Alternative theories, however, include the possibility that Ceauşescu's communique announcing Milea's death was a forgery, and that conspiring generals might have killed Milea either in retaliation for his remaining loyal to Ceauşescu or simply in order to get rid of a potential rival. As of 2004, no assassin had been identified. [3]
With Ceauşescu out of town and Milea dead, Victor Stănculescu emerged as the head of the army. After 11 a.m., Stănculescu ordered the troops to withdraw, and then reported that the crowd had invaded the Palace Square. Troops fraternized with the demonstrators with the consent of and support from their commanding officers; again, it remains a matter of controversy whether this gesture was sincere, or rather an opportunistic move on the part of the officers.
Ceauşescu and his wife Elena fled the capital city by helicopter, accompanied by two loyal collaborators, Emil Bobu and Tudor Postelnicu. They headed for Ceauşescu's Snagov residence, and from there further to Târgovişte. Near Târgovişte they abandoned the helicopter, which was ordered to land by the army. By that time, the army had closed the entire Romanian airspace. Hitchhiking by car, the Ceauşescus were eventually captured by the armed forces at a road block and transported to a nearby army barracks. On December 25, Christmas Day, the two were sentenced to death by a military kangaroo court on a range of charges including genocide, and were executed by firing squad in Târgovişte. Footage of the trial and execution was promptly released in France and other western countries; an edited version (lacking footage of the actual execution) was released on television the same day for the Romanian public.
The last gasp of the old regime and the consolidation of the new
After Ceauşescu left, the crowds in Palace Square entered a celebratory mood, perhaps even more intense than in the other former Eastern Bloc countries because of the recent violence. People cried, shouted, and gave each other gifts. The occupation of the Central Committee building continued. People threw Ceauşescu's writings, official portraits, and propaganda books out the windows, intending to burn them. They also promptly ripped off the giant letters from the roof making up the word "comunist" ("communist") in the slogan: "Trăiască Partidul Comunist Român!" ("Long live the Communist Party of Romania!"). A young woman appeared on the rooftop and waved a flag with the coat of arms torn or cut out.
At that time, fierce fights were underway at Bucharest Otopeni International Airport between troops sent one against another under claims that they were going to confront terrorists. According to a book by Ceauşescu's bodyguard, Securitate Lieutenant Colonel Dumitru Burlan, the generals who were part of the conspiracy led by general Victor Stănculescu were trying to create fictional terrorists scenarios in order to induce fear, and to push the army on the side of the plotters.
However, the seizure of power by the new political structure National Salvation Front (FSN), which "emanated" from the second echelon of the Communist Party with help of the plotting generals, was not yet complete. Forces considered to be loyal to the old regime (spontaneously nicknamed "terrorists") opened fire on the crowd and attacked vital points of socio-political life: the television, radio, and telephone buildings, as well as Casa Scânteii (the center of the nation's print media, which serves a similar role today under the name Casa Presei Libere, "House of the Free Press") and the post office in the district of Drumul Taberei; Piaţa Palatului (site of the Central Committee building, but also of the central university library, the national art museum, and the Ateneu Român, Bucharest's leading concert hall); the university and the adjoining Piaţa Universităţii (one of the city's main intersections); Otopeni and Băneasa airports; hospitals, and the Ministry of Defence.
During the night of December 22–December 23, Bucharest residents remained on the streets, especially in the attacked zones, fighting (and ultimately winning, even at the cost of many lives) a battle with an elusive and dangerous enemy. With military now on both sides, true battles ensued, with real casualties. At 9:00 p.m. on December 23, tanks and a few paramilitary units arrived to protect the Palace of the Republic.
The identity of the "terrorists" remains a mystery to this day. No person has ever been officially charged with committing acts of "terrorism", and this fact has raised many suspicions concerning the relationship between the "terrorists" and the new government.
Meanwhile, messages of support were flooding in from all over the world: the U.S. (president George H. W. Bush), the USSR (president Mihail Gorbachev), Hungary (the Hungarian Socialist Party), the new East German government (at that time the two Germanys were not yet formally reunited), Bulgaria (Petar Mladenov, general-secretary of the Communist Party of Bulgaria), Czechoslovakia (Ladislav Adamec, leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and Václav Havel, the dissident writer, revolution leader and future president of the Republic), China (the Minister of Foreign Affairs), France (president François Mitterrand), West Germany (foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher), NATO (secretary-general Manfred Wörner), the United Kingdom (prime-minister Margaret Thatcher), Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Japan (the Communist Party of Japan), and the Moldavian SSR.
Aftermath
In the following days moral support was followed by material support. Large quantities of food, medicine, clothing, medical equipment, etc. were sent to Romania. Around the world, the press dedicated entire pages and sometimes even complete issues to the Romanian revolution and its leaders.
On December 24, Bucharest was a city at war. Tanks, TABs and trucks continued to go on patrol around the city and surround trouble spots in order to protect them. At intersections near strategic objectives, roadblocks were built; automatic gunfire continued in and around Piaţa Universităţii, the Gara de Nord (the city's main railroad station), and Piaţa Palatului. "Terrorist activities" continued until December 27, when they abruptly stopped.
Former member of the Communist Party leadership and Ceausescu ally, prior to falling into the dictator's disgrace in the early 80s, Ion Iliescu, became the leader of the short-lived post-revolution National Salvation Front party. The National Salvation Front, comprised mainly of former members of the second echelon of the Communist Party, immediately assumed control over the state institutions, including the main media outlets, such as the national radio and television. They used their control of the media in order to launch virulent propaganda-style attacks against their political opponents, especially against the traditional democratic parties, which were about to re-emerge after more than 50 years of underground activity. In 1990, mainly due to the National Salvation Front's skillful use of the media and of the partly preserved Communist Party infrastructure to silence the democratic opposition, Ion Iliescu managed to became Romania's first democratically elected president.
The Revolution brought Romania vast sympathy from the outside world. Initially, much of that sympathy inevitably went to the National Salvation Front government. Much of that sympathy was squandered during the Mineriad of June 1990 when miners and police, responding to Iliescu's appeals, invaded Bucharest and brutalized students and intellectuals who were protesting against the hijacking of the Romanian revolution by former members of the communist leadership under the auspices of the National Salvation Front, in an attempt to suppress any genuine political opposition.
Romania After 1989
See Main Article: History of Romania since 1989
Ion Iliescu remained the central figure in Romanian politics for more than a decade, being re-elected for the third time in 2000. The survival of Ceauşescu's former ally demonstrated the ambiguity of the Romanian revolution, at once the most violent in 1989 and yet the one that changed the least.
References
- Ştefănescu, Domniţa Cinci ani din Istoria României ("Five years in the history of Romania"), 1995. Maşina de Scris, Bucharest.
- The series of 3 articles in the Romanian newspaper Adevărul, 2003, [4] (see archives) entitled "Eu am fost sosia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu" ("I was Ceauşescu's double"). These are about Col. Dumitru Burlan, who also wrote a book Dupa 14 ani - Sosia lui Ceauşescu se destăinuie ("After 14 Years - The Double of Ceauşescu confesses"). Editura Ergorom, July 31, 2003. (All in Romanian.)
- Viorel Patrichi, "Eu am fost sosia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu" ("I was Ceauşescu's double"), Lumea Magazin Nr 12, 2001 (in Romanian)
- Marian Oprea, "Au trecut 15 ani -- Conspiratia Securitatii" ("After 15 years -- the conspiracy of Securitate"), Lumea Magazin Nr 10, 2004: (in Romanian; link leads to table of contents, verifying that the article exists, but the article itself is not online).
- Victor Stanculescu, "Nu va fie mila, au 2 miliarde de lei in cont" "Show no mercy, they have two billion lei [33 million U.S. dollars] in their bank account") in Jurnalul Naţional) Nov 22, 2004 (in Romanian)
- —, "Sinucidere – un termen acoperitor pentru crima" ("Suicide – a term to cover up a crime") in Jurnalul Naţional (retrieved from web site December 30, 2004; no date indicated for original publication); on the death of Vasile Milea. (in Romanian)
- Nicolae Ceauşescu's speech, condemning the protests of Timişoara, broadcast on December 20, 1989: [5] (in Romanian)
- Mark Almond, Uprising: Political Upheavals that have Shaped the World, 2002. Mitchell Beazley, London.
