The Romanian Revolution After 21 Years

Predicted by the fall of the Berlin wall and the dismantling of the totalitarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the toppling of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and Romania’s definitive break with the communist era were not easy at all.

Unfortunately, Romania was the only country in the so-called “communist bloc” where people actually died and the communist leaders were shot dead. It all started on December 16th, 1989, when a spontaneous riot broke up in response to the communist regime’s attempt to expel reformed pastor Laszlo Tokes, who is now a member of the European Parliament.

Tokes had criticized the regime in the international media, criticism dubbed by the communist authorities as instigation to ethnic dissension. At the express request of the leaders in Bucharest, the bishop removed the pastor from office, thus depriving him of the right to live in his apartment. Parishioners gathered in solidarity around the pastor’s home, seeing the authorities’ decision as a new attempt to stifle religious freedom.

On December 17th, the protest extended throughout the city and people started shouting anti-communist slogans, something that had never happened before. Faced with an unprecedented situation, authorities decided to deploy soldiers in the streets that were already crowded with undercover members of the Securitate, the feared political police of the communist regime.

The brutal intervention ended in the killing of dozens of people, whose bodies were stolen from the morgue of the county hospital and sent to Bucharest, for any evidence of repression to be removed. Still, protests carried on until December 20th, when Timisoara was declared by protesters ‘the first free city of Romania’.

Subsequently, despite the violent repression, protests covered the entire country and the capital Bucharest. It all culminated with the shooting on December 25th of the presidential couple Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, after a trial many termed as hasty. Weather it was a revolution, a popular uprising, a confiscated revolution or coup d’etat, it left behind over 11 hundred dead and 3 thousand wounded.

In memory of those days Timisoara hosts commemorative events every year. Romania officially condemned communism in 2006 and, alongside other states, former satellites of the Soviet Union, which are now members of the European Union, call for the European legislation to punish the denial of the crimes committed by the communist regimes.