\nThe
\nday we’ll never forget is how we can translate the book written
\nby two Romanian historians, Marius Oprea and Stej\u0103rel Olaru, about
\nthe anticommunist uprising of the workers in the central city of
\nBra\u015fov on
\nNovember 15th
\n1987. Although severely repressed, it did
\nshake
\nNicolae Ceau\u015fescu’s communist dictatorship and historians
\nsay it was a prelude to the December revolution of 1989, which swept
\naway the almost 50-year-old regime imposed by the Soviet occupation
\narmy at the end of WWII.
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Romania marks the 35th anniversary of the anticommunist uprising of the workers in Bra\u015fov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":93759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[40718],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-93758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-brasov-uprising"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nAt
\nthe
\ntime, the last Soviet leader, the reformist president Mikhail
\nGorbachev <\/em>was
\nbreaking away with the police state inherited from Lenin and Stalin
\nand was trying to humanise the system through glasnost<\/i>,
\ntransparency, and perestroika<\/i>,
\nrestructuring. In Poland, a satellite country of the USSR, like
\nRomania, the Solidarity workers’ union was staging protests and
\nmarathon strikes, bringing to a standstill a regime that still
\npretended to govern on behalf of and in the best interest of the
\nworkers.
\n<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nNo
\nwonder that the explosion of anger of the workers in Bra\u015fov
\noccurred
\non one of the biggest industrial sites in the socialist republic,
\nagainst the sinister backdrop of the late 1980s, when the
\nprecariousness of living was doubled by police surveillance and the
\ncult of personality surrounding Nicolae Ceau\u015fescu.
\n<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nThe
\npresident of the 15th
\nNovember 1987 Bra\u015fov Association Marius Boieriu recalls:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nWe
\ndemanded bread, which was rationed and which we could only get after
\nqueuing for long hours after we finished our shifts. We demanded
\nheating for our cold apartments, where the children of my older
\ncolleagues were shaking with cold. I was 20 years old at the time. We
\ndemanded freedom. To have all these, we chanted ‘Down with
\nCeau\u015fescu!’ Hoping the people of Bra\u015fov would join us, we sang
\nthe song ‘Wake up Romanians’ on our march towards the party’s
\ncounty headquarters. And two years later, the Romanians did wake up.
\nIt’s hard to put into words what we went through.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nThe
\nworkers who made their way into the local seat of government threw
\nCeau\u015fescu’s portraits and the red flags of the communist party out
\nof the windows. Later, some 300 protesters were arrested and
\ninterrogated under torture by the Securitate, the state’s political
\npolice. The regime chose to treat the protests as isolated cases
\nof hooliganism
\nand the penalties did not exceed three-year suspended sentences, a
\nrelatively lenient penalty in the communist criminal code. It may
\nhave also helped that a few days after the uprising, the students of
\nBra\u015fov
\ninstalled a banner on campus on which was written: The detained
\nworkers must not die, an indication that the discontent was shared
\nby the majority of Romanians. Two years later, a revolution put an
\nend to a regime which the Romanian post-communist state itself would
\nofficially condemn as criminal and illegitimate. (CM)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"