Romanian Revolution of 1989 - Background

Background

In 1981, Ceauşescu began an austerity program designed to enable Romania to liquidate its entire national debt ($10 billion). In order to achieve this, many basic goods, including gas, heat and food were rationed, which drastically reduced the standard of living in Romania and increased malnutrition and the infant mortality grew to be the highest in Europe.

The secret police (Securitate) had become so ubiquitous as to make Romania essentially a police state. Free speech was limited and opinions that did not favor the Communist Party were forbidden. The large numbers of Securitate informers made organized dissent nearly impossible. The regime deliberately played on this sense that everyone was being watched in order to make it easier to bend the people to the Party's will. Even by Soviet bloc standards, the Securitate was exceptionally brutal.

Ceauşescu created a cult of personality, with weekly shows in stadiums or on streets in different cities dedicated to him, his wife and the Communist Party. There were megalomaniac projects, such as the construction of the grandiose House of the Republic (today the Palace of the Parliament), the biggest palace in the world, the adjacent Centrul Civic, and a never-completed museum dedicated to communism and Ceauşescu, today the Casa Radio. These and similar projects drained the country's finances and aggravated the already embattled economic situation. Thousands of Bucharest residents were evicted from their homes, which were subsequently demolished to make room for the huge structures.

Unlike the other Warsaw Pact leaders, Ceauşescu had not been slavishly pro-Soviet, but rather had pursued an "independent" foreign policy; Romanian forces did not join their Warsaw Pact allies in putting an end to the Prague Spring – an invasion Ceauşescu openly denounced – while Romanian athletes competed at the Soviet-boycotted 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (receiving a standing ovation at the opening ceremonies and proceeding to win 53 medals, trailing only the United States and West Germany in the overall count). Conversely, while Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of reform, Ceauşescu maintained a hard political line and cult of personality.

The austerity program started in 1980 and the widespread poverty it introduced made the Communist regime very unpopular. The austerity met little resistance among the Romanians and there were only a few strikes and labour disputes, of which notable were the Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977 and the Braşov Rebellion of November 1987 at the truck manufacturer Steagul Roşu. In March 1989, several leading activists of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) protested in a letter that criticized the economic policies of Nicolae Ceauşescu, but shortly thereafter Ceauşescu achieved a significant political victory: Romania paid off its external debt of about US$11 billion several months before the time that even the Romanian dictator expected. However, in the months following the announcement the austerity and the shortage of goods remained the same as before.

Ceauşescu was formally reelected secretary general of the Romanian Communist Party—the only political party of the Romanian Socialist Republic—on 24 November at the party's XIV Congress. On 11 November 1989, before the party congress, on Bucharest's Brezoianu Street and Kogălniceanu Boulevard, students from Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest demonstrated with placards “We want Reforms against Ceauşescu government."

The students – including Paraschivescu Mihnea, Vulpe Gratian, and the economist Dan Caprariu- Schlachter from Cluj – were detained and investigated by the Securitate at the Rahova Penitentiary, on suspicion of propaganda against the socialist society. They were released on 22 December 1989 at 14.00.

There were other letters and other attempts to draw attention to the economic, cultural, and spiritual oppression of Romanians, but they served only to intensify the activity of the communist police and Securitate.

Another factor in the revolution is the Decreţei policy, a draconian policy banning contraception and abortion. This policy, beginning in 1967, resulted in a baby boom, but also resulted in high rates of poverty and child mortality. Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in the Freakonomics argue that the unwanted children that result from bans on abortion and contraception are much less well-adjusted and much more prone to both crime and rebellion against authority. By 1989, these children had all reached adulthood, and this cohort was the one that overthrew Ceauşescu. Levitt and Dubner argue that this is why Romania had a violent revolution leading to the death of the country's dictator that most other eastern European countries avoided.