Trial and execution:
On 24 December Ion Iliescu, head
of the newly formed Council of the National Salvation Front, signed a decree
establishing the Extraordinary Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial to
try the Ceaușescus for genocide and other crimes. The trial was held on 25
December, lasted for about two hours and delivered death sentences to the
couple. Although nominally the Ceaușescus had a right of appeal, their
execution followed immediately, just outside the improvised courtroom, being
carried out by three paratroopers with their service rifles. Footage of the trial and of the executed
Ceaușescus was promptly released in Romania and to the rest of the world. The
actual moment of execution was not filmed since the cameraman was too slow, and
he managed to get into the courtyard just as the shooting ended. In footage of the trial, Nicolae Ceaușescu is
seen answering the ad hoc tribunal judging him and referring to some of its
members—among them Army Gen. Victor Atanasie Stănculescu and future Romanian
Secret Service head Virgil Măgureanu—as "traitors". In this same
video Ceaușescu dismisses the "tribunal" as illegitimate and demands
his constitutional rights to answer to charges in front of a legitimate
tribunal.
New government
After Ceaușescu left, the crowds
in Palace Square entered a celebratory mood, perhaps even more intense than in
the other former Eastern Bloc countries because of the recent violence. People
cried, shouted and gave each other gifts mainly because it was also close to
Christmas Day, which was a long suppressed holiday in Romania. The occupation
of the Central Committee building continued.
People threw Ceaușescu's writings, official portraits and propaganda
books out the windows, intending to burn them. They also promptly ripped off
the giant letters from the roof making up the word "comunist"
("communist") in the slogan: "Trăiască Partidul Comunist
Român!" ("Long live the Communist Party of Romania!"). A young
woman appeared on the rooftop and waved a flag with the coat of arms torn
out. At that time fierce fights were
underway at Bucharest Otopeni International Airport between troops sent against
each other under claims that they were going to confront terrorists. Early in
the morning troops sent to reinforce the airport were fired upon. These troops
were from the UM 0865 Campina military base, and were summoned there by Gen.
Ion Rus, the commander of the Romanian Air Force. The confrontation resulted in the deaths of
40 soldiers as well as eight civilians.
The military trucks were allowed entrance into the airport's perimeter,
passing several checkpoints. However, after passing the last checkpoint, being
on their way to the airport, they were fired upon from different
directions. A civilian bus was also
fired upon during the firefight. After the firefight the surviving soldiers
were taken prisoner by the troops guarding the airport, who seemed to think
that they were loyal to Ceausescu's regime.
However, the seizure of power by the new political structure National
Salvation Front (FSN), which "emanated" from the second tier of the
Communist Party leadership with help of the plotting generals, was not yet
complete. Forces considered to be loyal to the old regime (spontaneously
nicknamed "terrorists") opened fire on the crowd and attacked vital
points of socio-political life: the television, radio and telephone buildings,
as well as Casa Scânteii (the centre of the nation's print media, which serves
a similar role today under the name Casa Presei Libere, "House of the Free
Press") and the post office in the district of Drumul Taberei; Palace
Square (site of the Central Committee building, but also of the Central
University Library, the national art museum in the former Royal Palace, and the
Ateneul Român (Romanian Athaeneum), Bucharest's leading concert hall); the
university and the adjoining University Square (one of the city's main
intersections); Otopeni and Băneasa airports; hospitals and the Ministry of
Defence.
During the night of 22–23
December Bucharest residents remained on the streets, especially in the
attacked zones, fighting (and ultimately winning, even at the cost of many
lives) a battle with an elusive and dangerous enemy. With the military confused
by contradictory orders, true battles ensued with many real casualties. At 21:00
on 23 December, tanks and a few paramilitary units arrived to protect the
Palace of the Republic. Meanwhile,
messages of support were flooding in from all over the world: France (President
François Mitterrand); the Soviet Union (General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev);
Hungary (the Hungarian Socialist Party); the new East German government (at
that time the two German states were not yet formally reunited); Bulgaria
(Petar Mladenov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Bulgaria);
Czechoslovakia (Ladislav Adamec, leader of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia, and Václav Havel, the dissident writer, revolution leader and
future president of the Republic); China (the Minister of Foreign Affairs); the
United States (President George H.W. Bush); Canada (Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney); West Germany (Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher); NATO
(Secretary General Manfred Wörner); the United Kingdom (Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher); Spain; Austria; the Netherlands; Italy; Portugal; Japan (the
Japanese Communist Party); SFR Yugoslavia government and Moldavia.
In the following days, moral
support was followed by material support. Large quantities of food, medicine,
clothing, medical equipment, and other humanitarian aid were sent to Romania.
Around the world, the press dedicated entire pages and sometimes even complete
issues to the Romanian revolution and its leaders. On 24 December Bucharest was a city at war.
Tanks, APCs and trucks continued to patrol the city and surround trouble spots
in order to protect them. At intersections near strategic objectives,
roadblocks were built; automatic gunfire continued in and around University
Square, the Gara de Nord (the city's main railroad station) and Palace Square.
Yet amid the chaos, some people were seen clutching makeshift Christmas trees.
"Terrorist activities" continued until 27 December, when they
abruptly stopped. Nobody ever found out who conducted them, or who ordered
their termination.
Casualties
The total number of deaths in the
Romanian Revolution was 1,104, of which 162 were in the protests that led to
the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu (16–22 December 1989) and 942 in the
fighting that occurred after the seizure of power by the new political structure
National Salvation Front (FSN). The number of wounded was 3,352, of which 1,107
occurred while Ceaușescu was still in power and 2,245 after the FSN took power.
Official figures place the death toll of the revolution at 689 people, many of
whom were civilians.
Burning of the Central University
Library
The Central University Library
was burned down in uncertain circumstances and over 500,000 books, along with
about 3,700 manuscripts, were destroyed.
Aftermath
(Memorial of Rebirth in Bucharest - For those killed during the Romanian Revolution of 1989)
Political changes
The Revolution brought Romania
vast attention from the outside world. Initially, much of the world's sympathy
went to the National Salvation Front government under Ion Iliescu, a former
member of the Communist Party leadership and a Ceaușescu ally prior to falling
into the dictator's disfavour in the early 1980s. The National Salvation Front,
composed mainly of former members of the second echelon of the Communist Party,
immediately assumed control over the state institutions, including the main
media outlets such as the national radio and television networks. They used
their control of the media in order to launch attacks against their political
opponents, newly created political parties that claimed to be successors to
those existing before 1948. Much of that
sympathy was squandered during the Mineriad. Massive protests erupted in
downtown Bucharest as political rallies organised by the opposition parties
during the presidential elections, with a small part of the protesters deciding
to stand ground even after Iliescu was re-elected with an overwhelming majority
of 85%. Attempts by police to evacuate the remaining protesters resulted in
attacks on state institutions, prompting Iliescu to appeal to the country's
workers for help. Infiltrated and instigated by former Securitate agents, in
the following days a large mass of workers, mainly miners, entered Bucharest
and attacked and fought with anti-government protesters and gathered
bystanders. On the eve of the first free
post-communist elections day (20 May 1990), Silviu Brucan—who was part of the
National Salvation Front (FSN)--argued that the 1989 Revolution was not
anti-communist, being only against Ceauşescu. He stated that Ion Iliescu made a
"monumental" mistake in "conceding to the crowd" and
banning the Romanian Communist Party. While other former ruling Communist
parties in the Soviet bloc reconfigured themselves into social democratic or
democratic socialist parties, the PCR melted away in the wake of the
revolution, never to return. However, a number of former PCR politicians remain
prominent on Romania's political scene. Iliescu, for example, remained the
central figure in Romanian politics for more than a decade, losing the
presidency in 1996 before regaining it in 2000; he retired for good in 2004.
Economic reforms
The National Salvation Front
chose between the two economic models that political elites claimed were
available to post-Communist Eastern European countries: shock therapy or
gradual reforms. The NSF chose the latter, slower reforms, because it would
have not been possible to convince the people who were already
"exhausted" after Ceaușescu's austerity to undergo further
sacrifices. Nevertheless, the neoliberal reforms were implemented, although not
all at once: by the end of 1990, the prices were liberalised and a free
currency exchange rate, devaluing the leu by 60%. The land of the state-owned
collective farms was distributed to private owners and a list of 708 large
state-owned enterprises to be privatised was devised. In 1991 Romania signed an
agreement with the IMF and began the privatisation of state-owned enterprises,
with the first privatisation law being passed in 1991. In 1992, the Stolojan
government began an austerity plan, limiting wages and further liberalising
prices. The economic situation deteriorated and inflation as well as
unemployment increased substantially. The austerity measures, which by 1995
included a decrease in social spending, led to an increase in poverty The
neoliberal reforms were accelerated after the Democratic Convention won the
1996 elections, the government using its prerogatives to pass a package of
laws, removing subsidies, passing reforms on unemployment benefits and greatly
increasing the number of privatised companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/romanian-revolution-pictures-1989/
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