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The fall of the Ceausescus
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Romania's revolution was the most dramatic of the popular revolts that convulsed Eastern Europe in 1989. On the morning of December 21, 1989, a staged demonstration - organized to show support for the
Ceausescu
regime following days of rioting against it in Timisoara - backfired. Eight minutes into Ceausescu's speech from the balcony of the Central Committee building, part of the eighty-thousand-strong crowd began chanting "Ti-mi-soa-ra, Ti-mi-soa-ra"; the leader's shock and fear were televised across Romania before transmissions ceased. From that moment it was clear that the end of the Ceausescu regime was inevitable. Though the square was cleared by nightfall, larger crowds poured back next day, emboldened by news that the army was siding with the people in Timisoara and Bucharest. Strangely, the Ceausescus remained inside the Central Committee building until midday, when they scrambled aboard a helicopter on the roof, beginning a flight that would end with their
execution
in a barracks in TA?rgoviste, on Christmas Day.
The revolution was tainted by having been stage-managed by the
National Salvation Front
that took power in the name of the people. The National Salvation Front consisted of veteran Communists, one of whom later let slip to a journalist that plans to oust the Ceausescus had been laid months before. Among the oddities of the "official" version of the events were Iliescu's speech on the Piata Revolutiei at a time when "terrorist" snipers were causing mayhem in the square, and the battle for the Interior Ministry, during which both sides supposedly ceased firing after a mysterious phone call. Given the hundreds of genuine "martyrs of the revolution", the idea that it had been simply a ploy by Party bureaucrats to oust the Ceausescus was shocking and potentially damaging to the new regime - so the secret police were ordered to mount an investigation, which duly concluded that while manipulation had occurred, the Russians, Americans and Hungarians were to blame. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Romania,
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