3.2.iii
- revolution vs putsch=
Revolution
vs. ‘Coup d’état’ (overthrow the government)
*questions from the Patient:
- confusion over who was shooting on the 21 & 22 of
December: I could not find any hard evidence
that the people were shooting one day then the government were shooting the
next, or vice versa, but there is speculation that the people started the
revolution on the 21st then the army prepared to fight and started
shooting on the 22nd.
- army vs Securitate - theories?: A theory exists that because the Securitate was so large and
powerful, there was 1 Securitate member for every 45 Romanians. They would
listen and watch and if you showed a behaviour that went against Ceausescu and
Communism, then you could be arrested. This theory also fed the idea that
during the shootings, members of the Securitate would dress as members of the
army in order to fool the population and have reason to arrest them.
- where did the flags come from? : “The flags” being the Romanian flags with the communist crest on
them. Many rioters had the flags with them during the revolution and were
burning them or ripping them not to show disrespect to Romania but to the
Communist side of it and to show that the people wanted a change.
- who put loadhailers (what ARE loadhailers) in the
square? “Loudhailer” is a megaphone
- power on/off of the tv? *Still Searching*
- how many actually died at Timisoara? 1104 deaths and 3352 wounded
- mutilated bodies - AFTER they were killed, in order to
provoke? by whom?: According to the blog post (Link is posted below) The
journalist found mutilated bodies near grave sites.
- drugs in food and water at Timisoara (again, was
referenced in part 2 frequently) : emailed Les
- poisoned water at Bucharest?: emailed Les
- IS Ceausescu dead? why no film? theories?
conspiracy? : emailed Les
- why were the schools closed a week early?: I could not find
any history that suggested the schools closed early. It all took place just
before Christmas and Romania was predominantly Roman Catholic during this time
so I would assume they had some sort of break. Keeping this in mind, parents
would possibly keep their children home during this time of unrest and
uncertainty.
- why did they evacuate foreigners from the geriatric
hospital? STILL SEARCHING
- who were the men in the blue suits who appeared in the
streets before the 21st? *STILL SEARCHING*
- doctor at the Municipal Hospital giving medical supplies
to the police to sell on the black market? *STILL SEARCHING*
- were they handing the wounded over to the Securitate? *STILL SEARCHING*
***How do all of these questions/answers reflect the level
of paranoia that increased during the revolution? This is SO important!
I found this blog post regarding reports
from an RFE (Radio Free Europe) journalist. It is a blog so it could be biased
but it is interesting…
Here is
another article, with photos included,
from a professor at the University of Bucharest about the events that
took place on December 21st, 1989…
what was the coverage in America like at this time? American
attitudes/media coverage of the Romanian revolution *STILL SEARCHING*
3.4.iv
- Iliesu - who is he? his politics, Romanian opinion
about him, foreigner/world opinion about him - was he different than Ceausescu,
really? We need as much as we can get about attitudes about him/theories/his
politics - informs so much of the attitudes/relations in Part 3, particularly
when discussed in comparison to Ceausescu)
-He was the
President of Romania from 1990 to 1996 and 2000 to 2004.
-He joined
the Communist party in 1965 and was part of the Centrel Committee in 1965 but
was marginalized by Ceausescu in the early ‘70’s.
-He was
vital to Romania’s revolution and the people saw him as Ceausescu’s opposite
and he helped to stabilize politics in Romania.
-This
website has more info:
3.4.v
- The Front - more information: (FSN) National Salvation Front was the governing body of Romania
after the overthrow of Ceausescu and his communist government. In March of
1989, six prominent members of the communist party wrote a letter criticizing
Ceausescu’s abuse of power among other things. This ‘Letter of the Six’ was
circulated in the Western media and Radio Free Europe and an underground
operation called the National Salvation Front was first mentioned here. The FSN
was officially announced by Ion Iliescu on December 22nd 1989.
- Posters for the Peasants Party - more information: The Peasants Party was a left-winged ideology that aimed to
represent the goals and interests of the middle class working society. The
Narodniks who were a socially conscious movement in Russian during the 1860’s
and 1870’s influenced them.
- feelings towards gypsies in Romania (did Ceausescu or
Iliesu have a stance on this, publicly?: Based on this article I found, gypsies
are not looked at in a positive light in Romania nor other parts of Europe. The
words: beggars, thieves and cheaters.
“Gypsies
have always excited hatred in the press. For hundreds of years they have played
a small but lively part in the European imagination, and these days, when so
much of public discourse is deadened by euphemism, Gypsies are perhaps the last
group up for grabs. (Is the beggar named as Maria Nistor going to complain when
a reporter - the Sun again - claims that she has named her baby
"Lucifer"?) These familiar strangers are regarded monolithically;
their given name is a synonym for thieves and cheats. As beggars and as Gypsies
they are now also emblematic of all asylum seekers: beggars and presumed cheats
at the gate of the west.
But it is readers who are being "gypped".
Ceausescu’s stance:
Romani=Gypsy
“Equally
deserving of attention is the fact that while the overall population of the
children so incarcerated is of both Romani and non-Romani origin, their
respective presence in those institutions today is the result of two very
different policies. Ceauşescu had specific plans for the Romanies, which were
grimly reminiscent of the centuries of Romani slavery in his country, not fully
abolished until 1864. He also brought techniques of genetic engineering—based
specifically on the race policies of
Adolph
Hitler and Nazi Germany—into the 1980s, forty years after the Holocaust in
which the Romanies were selected alongside the Jews for complete extermination
in the Final Solution3.”
Iliescu’s stance:
“Anti-Semitism had been
largely absent in Romania during the Communist era because of a massive
emigration of approximately 400,000 Romanian Jews after World War II, which
left a much smaller Jewish population that today numbers only 30,000. This
sentiment was resurrected after 1989 by nationalist-Communist tabloids like Europa
and Politica. Attempts were made recently to rehabilitate Marshall Ion
Antonescu, glorified in Romania as an anti-Soviet hero, but responsible for
deporting tens of thousands of Gypsies and Jews to concentration camps.
Although Iliescu has made
formal statements against anti-Semitic press and actions, this was apparently
pure rhetoric, since he has not backed his statements up with real progress. In
September 1995, for example, the parliament initiated a draft law on the
restitution of property confiscated from Jews by the communist regime, but
eventually the draft law was abandoned. Moreover, before the November 1996
elections, President Iliescu and his Social Democracy Party of Romania (PDSR)
allied with the left-nationalists and campaigned for the votes of ethnic
Romanians by using racist slogans about the Hungarian menace and criticizing
the Jewish descent of some of their political opponents.
A positive advance toward
reducing ethnic tensions in Transylvania was taken with the signing of the
Romanian-Hungarian basic treaty in September 1996. Despite vociferous
opposition from nationalist circles in both countries, the treaty was deemed a
necessary and acceptable step for joining NATO and EU. Under the treaty,
Hungary agreed to abandon territorial claims in Romania, and Romania agreed to
promote local and cultural autonomy for its ethnic Hungarians, in accordance
with European standards.
Despite
some efforts to improve the status of minorities in Romania, the Iliescu
administration still was unable to promote national unity. Indeed, more often
than not, these efforts were mere rhetoric that was quickly abandoned.”
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