The Romanian Revolution the reestablishment of democracy
The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 will always be the most important event in Romania's history in the second half of the 20th century.
Steliu Lambru, 27.12.2021, 14:00
The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 will always be the most important event in Romania’s history in the second half of the 20th century. So great were the changes that it brought along and the energies that it unleashed, that nothing has ever been the same.
The communist regime was installed in Central and Eastern Europe, Romania included, in a short period of approximately 3 years. Until 1948 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania and Hungary had been under the control of communist party governments, imposed by the presence of the Soviet army in its offensive against Nazism. According to historians, WW2 was, for the Soviet regime, an unexpected chance to recover, after catastrophic economic and social policies implemented as of 1918. In the absence of WW2, the Soviet Union would have most probably undergone reforms after Stalin’s death in 1953.
Between 1945/1948 and 1989, an authoritarian regime, oblivious to any fundamental rights and liberties was in power. The communist tyranny, however, had the fascist dictatorship as predecessor, during the war. Unfortunately, for half of Europe, the end of war would not bring along the end of brutal regimes. In Romania, Ceausescu’s regime brought its 22 million citizens to their knees. Stripped of the most basic rights, the Romanians also had to bear the brunt of Ceausescu’s irrational ambition to fully pay the country’s foreign debt, which triggered a complete degradation of its people’s living standards.
The events in the second half of December 1989 are well-known. On December 1989, in Timisoara, people took to the streets in protest at the eviction of pastor Laszlo Tokes. Protests extended and the repressive forces reacted by opening fire and killing several hundred protesters. On December 21st, in Bucharest, the crowds summoned by Ceausescu to listen to his speech started shouting slogans against him. In the evening, protesters who were still on the streets built barricades and the regime’s forces reacted just like they had done in Timisoara – by opening fire. On December 22nd, a huge protest action staged by the large industrial platforms scared Ceausescu, who fled by helicopter from the top of the Communist Party’s Central Committee building. The dictator and his wife were eventually captured, tried during an emergency trial and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on December 25th, 1989, when Ceausescu and his wife were executed. Around 1,200 Romanians paid with their lives the rebirth of Romanian democracy.
Petru Creția was a philosopher, writer and translator of Platos works into Romanian. Marked by the events, on December 21st, 1989, the day before Ceausescu’s fall, he wrote a manifesto broadcast on Radio Free Europe. His manifesto describes the lowest level that humankind reached under communist. The recording with Cretia’s voice has been kept in Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre. His words describe the destiny of several generations of Romanians but are also a warning to future generations: “It is the end of century in Romania and, along with it, the inevitable end of a terrible time for this country. It bared such mystifying names, that it’s enough to turn it upside down to see the truth. The demonic species that have shaken not only the planet, but the very definition of humanity, found their death in the sufferance and blood of this end-of-the century. The great crisis of the human species, that found its expression in Hitlerism, Stalinism and Maoism, is about to end, no matter how hard their terrible heirs struggle to survive in a few places of the world, and how many the number of the Asian, African, South-American and even European imitators and epigones of these doomed regimes is. They are all alike, they say and do the same things, they are all pathetic caricatures, despicable marionettes of the nations’ fate. And now, in all the places where the fate of the planet is decided, their time has come as well. These ten-hand autocrats, these pontiffs of false religions, have become anachronic. We will remember them only in the name of the death, of the tortured and of the starved, of all those who suffered during their horrific reign.
The most terrible century in history ended in 1989. The evil will most certainly not disappear. But just like a vaccine, it will not cure but it will at least protect the world from a new ideological plague. (EE)
