Romanian Revolution and Execution of Ceausescu
Romania was the only country in the eastern bloc where the change of regime in 1989 was violent, and about 1,100 people died. Nicolae Ceaușescu had ruled for twenty-four years and had built the most personal dictatorship in Europe: a secret police, the Securitate, with informers in every institution; a policy of banning contraception and abortion that produced unwanted children in state orphanages; the demolition of a quarter of Bucharest for a palace of 1,100 rooms; and, from 1982, the export of the country's food to pay off the foreign debt, which left Romanians queuing for bread and heating their flats to a legal maximum. The rising began in Timișoara on 16 December over the eviction of a Hungarian pastor, and the security forces fired on the crowds. Ceaușescu, returning from Iran, called a rally in Bucharest on 21 December to denounce the hooligans, and the rally turned on him on live television — the moment when he stops speaking and the crowd noise changes is the most watched few seconds in Romanian history. He fled by helicopter the next day and was arrested within hours. He was tried by a military tribunal on Christmas Day in a proceeding lasting two hours, and was shot with his wife against a barracks wall. The National Salvation Front that took over was largely composed of second-rank communist officials, led by Ion Iliescu, who won the elections of 1990 and used miners to break up protests against him. Much of what happened in December 1989 has never been established. Two things are still disputed and probably always will be. Who was shooting during the days after Ceaușescu fled, when most of the deaths occurred, and how much of the transfer of power was a coup inside the party that used a genuine rising as cover.
- Year: 1989 CE
- Category: Political
