Romanian Revolution

In December 1989 Romania's communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in a week of street fighting and then executed. Protests started on December 16 in Timisoara, when residents rallied to stop police removing a Hungarian Reformed pastor, Laszlo Tokes, from his church. Security forces fired on the crowds, and the unrest spread. On December 21, Ceausescu addressed a rally in Bucharest and was shouted down, and the next day he and his wife Elena fled by helicopter as the army switched sides.²³

By 1989 communist governments across Eastern Europe were falling peacefully. Gorbachev's reforms had ended Soviet willingness to prop up its allies, and Poland's Solidarity had won the first partly free elections in the bloc. Romania was the exception. Ceausescu had ruled since 1965 and, to pay off foreign debt, had exported food and energy while his people faced shortages, cold homes and rationing. His secret police, the Securitate, was among the most pervasive in Europe, and abortion and contraception were banned to raise the birth rate.³

The couple were caught near Targoviste, tried by a military tribunal and shot on December 25, 1989. Most of the roughly 1,100 deaths came after Ceausescu fled, in confused fighting between army units, alleged Securitate loyalists and civilians. A hastily formed National Salvation Front, led by former communist official Ion Iliescu, took power, and many Romanians still ask how far the events were a genuine revolution and how far a takeover by insiders. The Front won elections in 1990.¹³