Bucharest Student Movement of 1956 - The 5 November 1956 Protest Is Organised

The 5 November 1956 Protest Is Organised

The first organisational action was prepared by a clandestine group which created links between all the faculties with a view to organise a protest.

On 28 October 1956 a radio station calling itself "Romania of the future. The voice of resistance" began broadcasting on different wavelengths. It is not known where this secret station was broadcasting from; according to one assumption it was located in Yugoslavia. The station, considered a nationalist one, presented the students' demands, including:

• "the return of the stolen provinces, Bessarabia and Bukovina"
• "the expulsion from Romania of Stalinists, who compromised communism and brought fear and hunger to the country."

On 29 October 1956 the Suez Crisis reached dramatic proportions with Israel's invasion of Egypt; this disoriented those students who wanted action. For some more perceptive students, this was a clear signal that the West did not intend to intervene and that the Hungarian revolutionaries, as well as those in Romania, should not count on external assistance. Those more prudent among them considered that without such assistance, their chances of success were minimal. Others expressed contrary views, pointing out that Soviet troops had not intervened and that the Hungarian Revolution was a success, since the communist regime there had practically been overthrown.

As a result of an attempt to organise a student revolt in Timişoara, over 3,000 students had been arrested on 30–31 October. The Bucharest student leaders did not have precise information about what had happened in Timişoara, but through various indirect channels they had learned that the situation was very serious.

Support for a student protest had begun to diminish. Aware that if a protest were to take place, it could no longer be delayed, on 2 November 1956 the action committee, led by Alexandru Ivasiuc and Mihai Victor Serdaru, decided to organise a public student gathering. Since the day of 3 November was too soon to ensure sufficient mobilisation, the gathering was scheduled for 5 November in University Square. The organising committee decided that violence had to be avoided during the protest, and so did any response to provocations. Students from the Faculties of Letters and Law wrote a series of manifestoes in which they presented their demands and urged the rest of the population to side with them. What they asked for was that firm opposition be shown toward the Communist Party's abuses, that a precedent be created for the exercising of democratic rights, including the right to assemble, and that the authorities begin negotiations. The manifestoes also contained slogans such as "No more Russian and Marxism courses", "We demand science, not politics, in universities" or "Follow the example of the Hungarian, Czech and Polish students". The distribution of these manifestoes was stopped when the first arrests took place.

On 4 November, the Soviet Army unexpectedly occupied Budapest and other vital centres of Hungary. Although the brutal intervention in Hungary was proof that the student protests in Romania had few chances of success, the organisers believed that the movement had to continue and that the protest had to take place. At the same time, some students were arrested in Bucharest, including a few of the initiators of the protest.

On the night of 4/5 November, troops from the Ministry of the Interior occupied University Square. Traffic was completely stopped, and the entire area normally used by vehicles in front of the university was filled with lorries in which soldiers, armed with automatic weapons, were sitting on benches, ready to intervene. The protest had become absolutely impossible to carry out. Additional armed troops were massed inside the university building and in other nearby buildings. All those who had intended to protest saw what was happening as soon as they entered the square and kept moving. Yet, they were unaware that at the entrances to the square there were party members from the various faculties who were taking down the names of all who walked in that area.