Long Teaching Module: The Romanian Revolution of 1989

Some analysts of the 1989 “events” question whether these constituted a proper revolution since many people who rose to power after Ceauşescu’s fall were not new faces but had been high-ranking communists. The handful of dissident revolutionaries, such as the poets Mircea Dinescu and Ana Blandiana, Reformed pastor Lászlo Tőkés, and professor Doina Cornea, quickly grew suspicious of the National Salvation Front (NSF), resigned their positions in it, and accused the Front of betraying the popular revolution. Some analysts and critics of the NSF claim that the NSF staged a civil war, in which people were shot at and died, in the days after December 22 in order to justify the summary execution of the first couple on December 25, and to permit the new political leaders to appear as true saviors of the nation after a heroic armed struggle. Others have claimed that the KGB, or the CIA, or both were involved in the change of regime in 1989.

Debates have also revolved around responsibility for the violence in December 1989, and around the identity of the “terrorists” who shot at civilians in Bucharest and elsewhere. Andrew Hall, a CIA analyst, has argued that the Special Unit for Anti-terrorist Warfare (USLA) of the Securitate (Romania’s security police) used dum-dum bullets, which explode inside the target and can shatter organs, skulls, and bones, causing great damage. This type of ammunition was outlawed by the Geneva Convention. He also believes that the USLA troops were the terrorists rumored in late December 1989 to be defending the Ceauşescu regime and sniping at unarmed civilians.

Political scientists and other writers have pondered the reasons for and the timing of the upheaval. During the last decade of communist rule, the Romanian population experienced rising levels of poverty as the regime rushed to repay its foreign debts so as to become impermeable to pressures in the area of human rights from its trading partners, as well as to mask the failures of the regime’s economic policies behind the achievement of financial independence. Drastic food and energy shortages were coupled with grandiose construction schemes, pervasive surveillance, and an extravagant cult of personality focused on Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena. Both politically and economically Romanians were worse off than most other Soviet bloc countries.

The Ceauşescu dictatorship also evinced hostility to Mikhail Gorbachev’s democratizing policies of glasnost and perestroika, although it also tried to bring the USSR to the side of stemming the tide of reform. Since Soviet troops had withdrawn from Romania in 1958, Gorbachev had less leverage here than in other bloc countries where Soviet military bases still existed. Gorbachev warned entrenched communist leaders throughout Europe that Soviet troops would not support them against popular insurgencies.

Gorbachev’s liberal policies had emboldened democratic movements in the USSR and bloc countries, and he had persuaded some communist leaders to negotiate with their oppositions. In Romania, however, open opposition to the regime was almost non-existent. Previous instances of resistance had been crushed easily, leading Ceauşescu to presume the regime’s invincibility, despite the wave of anti-communist revolutions rolling through the Soviet bloc. The Romanian dictatorship was thus bent on using violence to attempt to hold on to power at any price: the army, police and Securitate forces brutally shot at unarmed demonstrators. However, the represssion met with unexpected resistance. The violent struggle in turn shaped the new government that emerged in its wake.

The Romanian revolution began in Timişoara, located in western Timiş County and in the former Habsburg province of Banat, close to the Yugoslav and Hungarian borders. Although postwar Romania is ethnically quite homogeneous, most of its minorities live in Banat and Transylvania. Since the 1970s, the regime had built a modicum of popularity by manipulating ethnic nationalism. Jews, Germans and Hungarians were allowed to emigrate as the government strove for national homogeneity. On the eve of the 1989 revolution Hungarians were the second largest group in Timişoara after Romanians, followed by Germans and Serbs. The city’s residents could follow the freer Yugoslav and Hungarian broadcast media and they were more easily swept up in the mounting wave of revolutions. As countries all over Eastern Europe confronted uprisings in 1989, the power of information and example cannot be discounted in the story of the Romanian revolution.

One of Romania’s few dissidents, Lászlo Tőkés, a pastor in the Hungarian Reformed (Calvinist) Church, used his Timişoara pulpit to condemn the regime’s “systematization” campaign designed to level thousands of villages, put the land into cultivation, and move villagers into new agro-industrial complexes. For his outspokenness Tőkés was to be evicted from his church in December 1989, but Hungarian parishioners surrounded the church to prevent his removal. Soon joined by ethnic Romanians (of traditionally Orthodox faith), the picketers grew in number and broadened their focus to the hated dictatorial regime. The extended vigil, which began on December 15, engendered a sense of popular power and solidarity, unprecedented in communist Romania. Hungarians and Romanians together sang the 19th century nationalist anthem “Awaken, thee Romanian!” meaning, in this context, citizens of Romania. Given the xenophobia of communist officials, they had failed to imagine the possibility of inter-ethnic solidarity. The song was heard often during the following weeks.

Soon all of Timişoara was on strike, while protesters tried to outwit tanks and armored vehicles. A frequent slogan during these street scenes was “Without Violence!” Between December 16 and 19 over sixty people were killed in Timişoara, and more than 700 were arrested, but the insurgents stood their ground. Some corpses were lugubriously transported to Bucharest to suppress evidence of the crime. This in turn fed rumors of wildly exaggerated numbers of dead. Another chant, “Azi în Timişoara, mîine-n toată ţara!” (Today in Timişoara, tomorrow in the whole country)” was prophetic.

Ceauşescu portrayed the disturbance in Western Romania as the work of foreign agents, but he also attempted to minimize the crisis by flying to Iran on a state visit. On his return, in televised speeches on December 20 and 21, he called for national unity in defending Romania’s sovereignty against foreign foes. By then, however, the popular anti-government mobilization had spread beyond Timişoara. In Bucharest, the authorities organized a noontime rally on December 21. Thousands of people were bussed to the Communist Party Central Committee (CPCC) plaza to show their support and thus legitimize the harsh repression in Timişoara. The event was choreographed by the Securitate and the capital’s communist organizations. On descending into the square, presumably docile demonstrators received banners and portraits with familiar propaganda slogans and the Ceauşescus’ portraits.

The rally was broadcast on national television, but when Ceauşescu addressed the crowd from the CPCC balcony, unscripted moments followed. An unprecedented commotion, heckling, and hissing began. Radio and TV feeds were cut as cameras panned to the sky, but not before images of the distressed Ceauşescu and his wife trying to shush down the crowd were captured on camera. The dictator appeared shaken, unable to comprehend that the masses he expected to behave the part of adoring citizens had their own minds. Although order was temporarily restored and Ceauşescu announced raises and subsidies for workers, mothers, and pensioners, the partly televised incident had made Romanians realize the fragility of the dictatorship. The very same day spontaneous demonstrations broke out in other parts of Bucharest. Among their slogans were: “Freedom,” “Timişoara,” and “We Want Free Elections.”

Twenty-four hours later, unable to reestablish control, the Ceauşescus fled by helicopter from the rooftop of the Communist Party headquarters. Their flight was surprisingly disorganized and ineffective considering the total control the regime had exercised until days before. The couple was caught the same day riding in a car they had commandeered.

Celebratory demonstrations continued in the whole country with young people in particular expressing both joy and fury. The musical rhymed slogan that typified many late December street demonstrations was “Olé, olé, Ceauşescu nu mai e!” (Olé, olé, Ceauşescu is no more). In various locations people cut out the communist coat of arms at the center of the country’s red, yellow, blue flags stripped from government buildings and army vehicles. Soon the army went over to the revolution and the Securitate submitted to army command, although deadly shooting continued for several days. The identity of the “terrorists” that fired at civilians and various buildings has remained a mystery.

If armed repression precluded a peaceful transition to post-communism, violence also replaced due process for the Ceauşescu couple; they met with a perfunctory trial and summary execution on December 25. A deliberate, legal, and public judicial procedure might have helped Romanians come to terms with the record of criminal policies and injustices of the late communist government. It also could have marked the turning over of a new juridical leaf. Such a trial would have implicated many more people beyond the Ceauşescus, including high ranking communists, army officers, and members of the Securitate. Protecting those who shared responsibility for the disastrous communist rule and for the violent repression of 1989 may have been one reason for the severely abbreviated justice the Ceauşescus received after they were captured. But another reason for quick, revolutionary justice was deemed by some observers as necessary in order to damp down the violent struggle still being waged by “terrorists.”

After Romania’s traumatic exit from communism, many unresolved issues remained. People wondered what had happened to the dreaded Securitate, as they continued to see neighbors and colleagues known as its agents prosper under the post-communist order. The NSF leadership that took power featured mostly former communists. Ion Iliescu himself had been part of Ceauşescu’s inner circle before falling out of favor in the 1970s and more definitively in 1984. Although the Front was only supposed to be a transitional governing body, it ran and won—in quite a landslide—in the first free elections of May 1990. The NSF promised some continuity and less uncertainty than the myriad parties—some historic, some brand new—that had sprung up in the new year.

The first electoral campaign and especially the election's outcome elicited renewed anger and street protests both in Timişoara and in the capital. The Timişoara Proclamation in March and the University Square protests in Bucharest in April-June were important landmarks of opposition to what many saw as neo-communist NSF rule. Street demonstrators and the authors of the Proclamation expressed their wrath at having the revolution for which many had sacrificed their lives “hijacked.” They shouted “Down with Iliescu” but also “Who shot at us after the 22nd [of December]?” The extended sit-in and hunger strike in University Square was finally dispersed in June with the brutal assistance of miners brought to Bucharest from the Jiu Valley.

With accession into the European Union in 2007 and—until the recent global downturn—a growing economy, Romania’s integration into a pluralist and prosperous Europe seemed assured. Questions about the 1989 Revolution have remained unanswered but they have receded into the past as Romanians try to look to the future.

Irina Livezeanu
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Overview

In this activity, students examine graffiti text taken from various public surfaces in Romania from December 1989-January 1990. Throughout the 1980s, graffiti publicly expressed the concerns of demonstrators in Bucharest, Romania, and these selected graffiti texts represent those closely associated to the revolution of 1989.
First, students read the text of graffiti found in the primary source, "Graffiti from the Romanian Streets, December 1989-January 1990," Making the History of 1989, Item #697. They answer the following questions:

What do you notice about the graffiti text?

What questions do you want to ask about the graffiti text?

After discussing these questions, students learn more about the historical context of the Revolution of 1989 in Romania and draw conclusions about the themes that occurred most frequently in graffiti, giving insights to the public grievances in Romania that led to the removal of the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.

Source Analysis

Distribute individual copies of "Graffiti from the Romanian Streets, December 1989-January 1990," Making the History of 1989, Item #697.

Ask students to work in pairs and read the graffiti text, writing down things that they notice and questions they have.

Group Discussion

Write three columns onto the whiteboard: Notice, Questions, and Historical Background.

Use the following questions to guide discussion, filling in the first two columns (Notice and Questions):

What did you notice about the graffiti text?

What feelings do they evoke?

What do you already know about Romania in 1989?

What does this graffiti text say about Nicolae Ceausescu? About the feeling of public sentiment in Bucharest, Romania in late 1989? About views on government?

What can this graffiti text tell us and what can they not tell us about this time period in Romania?

What questions do you want to ask about the graffiti, the context, or the historical time period?

Historical Background

Divide students into 5 groups.

Distribute individual copies of "Birth and Death in Romania, October 1986," Making the History of 1989, Item #694, to each student (alternatively, just one for each group). This article explains the dismal reality of everyday life in Ceausescu’s Romania as it was recorded in the last years of the regime by Pavel Câmpeanu, who managed to smuggle out this article, which was later published in The New York Review of Books.

Assign each group to read just one (of five) sections in the article "Birth and Death in Romania, October 1986," Making the History of 1989, Item #694 (Each group will be assigned a different section of the 5-part article).

Ask student groups to read the article section they have been assigned, seeking the historical background their section provides. Have students write down the historical information they notice from the section they are assigned to read.

Group Discussion

What did students learn about the history of Romania from the article they read? (Fill in the third column on the whiteboard, Historical Background.)

Possible Answers:

Rising levels of poverty/poor economy: Workers spend days waiting for raw materials their factory cannot obtain. The average wage was less than one-fifth the Common Market wage. Before Ceausescu, in 1958, Romania refused to subordinate its economy to the Soviet bloc’s COMECON which curtailed its economic vitality. Regime decided to avoid any specialization in the economy to avoid unfavorable specialization. Also chose to destroy agriculture to avoid the country’s being turned into an agricultural locality (this was reversed in 1982). To supplement meager rations, farmers stoke corn, wheat, and potatoes out of fields; had their children steal the same to avoid legal action.

Food and energy shortages: Chernobyl accident meant people did not want to eat organic foods/crops; canned foods were out of stock. The hoarding of food was common enough that laws were passed forbidding the hoarding of oil, sugar, wheat or corn flour, rice, and coffee. Coffee was no longer available for purchase by private citizens. Meat, buttermilk, and bread were rationed. 5-year prison sentences for those buying excessive amounts of food. To supplement meager rations, farmers stoke corn, wheat, and potatoes out of fields; had their children steal the same. When darkness falls, the cities are plunged into shadow and in the daytime (in some cities) buses run only between 6-8am and 3-5pm. Electric energy and water services interrupted daily, often exceeding four hours. Bucharest residents avoid elevators to avoid being caught between floors. Strongest light bulbs sold were 40 watts and it was illegal to have more than one lamp per room. Heat cut off in the winter of 1984-5 in homes, theaters, and hospitals. “Right to keep warm” became an obsession for most Romanians.

Pervasive surveillance/draconian measures: Virtually every business had a permanent member of the Secret Police assigned. Nearly all measures for birth control were banned to increase the birthrate. At their workplace, many women had to submit to monthly examination to see if they were pregnant or not. Elderly retirement delayed; difficult for them to receive emergency medical care; physicians instructed to cut down on prescription drugs in general to the aged.

Cult of personality focused on Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena: Romania reproduced an exaggerated version of the Soviet social model under Stalin—most Stalinist in its political and social structures. Ceausescu ordered the demolition of a third of Bucharest in order to build a new presidential palace with a boulevard that cut across the entire city of over two million inhabitants.

Violence used to hold onto power at any price: Penal and economic sanctions for those who did not follow the law on compulsory participation in agricultural labor for the entire rural population (regardless of profession, they had to participate after January 1982 decree). Farmers brought to trial who had stolen corn, wheat, and potatoes since their meager rations provided little. Women thrown into prison because they had abortions.

Conclusion

Share with students the fate of the Ceausescu regime in December, 1989 (note that the following summary is taken from the Module's Introductory Essay; feel free to refer to it for more details).

The Romanian revolution began in Timişoara, located in western part of the country, close to the Yugoslav and Hungarian borders. Although postwar Romania is ethnically quite homogeneous, most of its minorities live in the area where the Romanian revolution began. In 1989, Hungarians were the second largest group in Timişoara after Romanians, followed by Germans and Serbs. The city’s residents could follow the freer Yugoslav and Hungarian broadcast media and they were more easily swept up in the mounting wave of revolutions across all of Eastern Europe. As countries all over Eastern Europe confronted uprisings in 1989, the power of information and example cannot be discounted in the story of the Romanian revolution.

Background to the extended vigil in Timisoara. One of Romania’s few dissidents, Lászlo Tőkés, a pastor in the Hungarian Reformed (Calvinist) Church, used his Timişoara pulpit to condemn the regime’s “systematization” campaign designed to level thousands of villages, put the land into cultivation, and move villagers into new agro-industrial complexes. For his outspokenness Tőkés was to be evicted from his church in December 1989, but Hungarian parishioners surrounded the church to prevent his removal. Soon joined by ethnic Romanians (of traditionally Orthodox faith), the picketers grew in number and broadened their focus to the hated dictatorial regime. The extended vigil, which began on December 15, engendered a sense of popular power and solidarity, unprecedented in communist Romania. Hungarians and Romanians together sang the 19th century nationalist anthem “Awaken, thee Romanian!” meaning, in this context, citizens of Romania. Given the xenophobia of communist officials, they had failed to imagine the possibility of inter-ethnic solidarity. The song was heard often during the following weeks.

Soon all of Timişoara was on strike, while protesters tried to outwit tanks and armored vehicles. A frequent slogan during these street scenes was “Without Violence!” Between December 16 and 19 over sixty people were killed in Timişoara, and more than 700 were arrested, but the insurgents stood their ground. Some corpses were transported to Bucharest to suppress evidence of the crime. This in turn fed rumors of wildly exaggerated numbers of dead. Another chant, “Azi în Timişoara, mîine-n toată ţara!” (Today in Timişoara, tomorrow in the whole country)” was prophetic.

Ceauşescu portrayed the disturbance in Western Romania as the work of foreign agents, but he also attempted to minimize the crisis by flying to Iran on a state visit. On his return, in televised speeches on December 20 and 21, he called for national unity in defending Romania’s sovereignty against foreign foes. By then, however, the popular anti-government mobilization had spread beyond Timişoara. In Bucharest, the authorities organized a noontime rally on December 21. Thousands of people were bussed to the Communist Party Central Committee (CPCC) plaza to show their support and thus legitimize the harsh repression in Timişoara. The event was choreographed by the Securitate (secret police) and the capital’s communist organizations. On descending into the square, presumably docile demonstrators received banners and portraits with familiar propaganda slogans and the Ceauşescus’ portraits.
The rally was broadcast on national television, but when Ceauşescu addressed the crowd from the CPCC balcony, unscripted moments followed. An unprecedented commotion, heckling, and hissing began. Radio and TV feeds were cut as cameras panned to the sky, but not before images of the distressed Ceauşescu and his wife trying to shush down the crowd were captured on camera. The dictator appeared shaken, unable to comprehend that the masses he expected to behave the part of adoring citizens had their own minds. Although order was temporarily restored and Ceauşescu announced raises and subsidies for workers, mothers, and pensioners, the partly televised incident had made Romanians realize the fragility of the dictatorship. The very same day spontaneous demonstrations broke out in other parts of Bucharest. Among their slogans were: “Freedom,” “Timişoara,” and “We Want Free Elections.”

It is as if, in that moment, everyday Romanians saw the possibility, saw the reality of the weakness of Ceausescu’s regime. Those moments of Ceausescu’s weakness and the power of popular pressure explain why, a mere 48 hours later, Ceausescu was attempting to flee Romania, all power lost. The Ceausescu’s were tried a few days later and executed as enemies of the new Romanian state.

Culminating Activity

Ask students to write 10 graffiti slogans of their own, drawing on their knowledge about the historical conditions in Romania and the revolution that quickly took hold in December 1989.

Using the primary sources included in this module, respond to one of the following prompts:

1. Unlike other communist countries experiencing the changes of 1989, Romania saw an explosion of violence as it moved toward a more democratic government. Using the sources in this Module analyze what factors might explain why Romania’s experience was so different?
2. Dramatic political and social changes always have causes within the society at large. What elements of Romanian society around 1989 best explain the collapse of the Ceausescu regime, which took only one week to collapse in December, 1989?

Irina Livezeanu is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Her main areas of research include Modern Intellectual and Cultural European History, Nationalism, and Gender. Her book Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930, published by Cornell University Press, was awarded Heldt Prize (1995) by the Association of Women in Slavic Studies. She recently edited for the Association for Women in Slavic Studies Women & Gender in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Volume I Southeastern and East Central Europe (with June Pachuta Farris), M.E. Sharpe, 2007. This teaching module was originally developed for the Making the History of 1989 project.