December 21, 2003
The Tipping Point
It's possible to identify with unusual precision the exact moment that the bubble popped, the ship hit the iceberg, and the Ceausescu regime tipped over the edge and fell, crumbling and flaming, into the abyss.
It was on the afternoon of December 21, 1989; and it came about eight minutes into Ceausescu's speech before an enormous crowd, assembled in the center of Bucharest around what had once been the royal palace. Hecklers in the crowd suddenly began to interrupt the speech with cries of "Timisoara!" and "Down with Ceausescu!" And Ceausescu, hearing them... hesitated; he stumbled, lost the thread of his speech, looked confused.
And after that, it was all over except for the shooting.
This episode is justly famous. But there are a couple of mysteries about it.
First, it's completely unclear why Ceaucescu chose to make this very public appearance. He didn't have to, after all. He could simply have ordered the Securitate to finish the job in Timisoara. Perhaps he wanted to show the world that the workers of Romania supported him... but surely it would have been safer and more sensible to do this after the rebellion had been crushed.
Did someone encourage him to take this risky step? Nobody seems to know. And while (I say again) I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, it is an odd omission.
Second, the timing of the speech itself is interesting. Apparently, it was originally planned for the morning, in Piatsa Gheorgiu Dej. So a large number of workers -- I keep hearing the figure 100,000, though it's hard to believe -- workers carefully hand-picked for their loyalty and reliability, were taken from their workplaces in and around Bucharest and bussed to the Piatsa. There they would be given placards and banners, and told which songs to sing and so forth.
But when they got there, they were told that it had been cancelled. So they went back to work...
...where, a bit later, they were told that the speech would happen after all; but at noon, and in Piatsa Republicii.
By this time, frazzled factory and office managers were unable to be perfectly selective. So, it seems, they send whoever would get in the buses. Instead of the hand-picked crowd of Party members and loyalists, the crowd contained a much more random selection of office and factory workers. It also seems to have contained a lot of students from the nearby University -- some young Party members, but also many students just turning up on their own. This was probably crucial to what happened next.
The change in the time and location of the speech may have been purely accidental. Certainly Ceausescu was capable of this sort of semi-random decision; he seems to have become very erratic in his last few years. Still, this is another murky bit in the history, and there doesn't seem to be a clear explanation of it.
It should be remembered that, at this point, Bucharest was surrounded by Army units and flooded with plainclothes Securitate. One witness remembers walking down Bulevar Victorei and seeing a Securitate man every hundred meters or so on each side of the street for a kilometer or more, standing motionless in their overcoats and dark glasses. So, at one level, the authorities were clearly still in control.
So. The speech starts around 12:30, Ceausescu gets going, talking about threats to the integrity and security of the nation...
...and then it all just goes to hell. First there are a few hecklers; then he hesitates; then suddenly large chunks of the crowd (though not all) turn on him, and he's being shouted at more or less continuously. Jeers, boos, whistles; people are tearing up the Party banners. The group around him on the balcony (wife Elena, some inner circle and Cabinet members) are visibly confused and perturbed.
And at some point the TV camera cuts out. But not nearly quickly enough.
The TV started showing a red field and playing patriotic songs. Meanwhile, most of the cameramen were pointing their cameras at the sky (which they'd been ordered to do in case of any "disturbance"). That was sensible, but it came just a little too late.
This is the third mystery (although, I should say here, maybe these aren't really mysteries, and it's just that I haven't studied the history closely enough. If anyone knows the answers to these, please tell me.) Who was in charge at the TV studio, and why was so much of the bad footage allowed to be seen by the Romanian public? Even though the broadcast was live, in such a tense time someone should have been standing by in the TV studio. The regime put hundreds of Securitate men on the streets of Bucharest, so presumably it had some there too.
Of course, it could also have been just sloppiness: slow reaction time, failure to realize what was happening. It wouldn't be the first time.
Anyhow. It seems that Ceausescu managed to finish the speech even as police were clearing the square. (A few people were trying to fight the police, but most seem to have been trying to get away as far and as fast as possible.) Then he retreated into the interior of the building.
Meanwhile, demonstrators poured into the street that's now Bulever Magheru -- I don't know what it was called in 1989 -- the main drag between Piatsa Universitatii and Piatsa Romana. Some of these were people moving over from Ceausescu's failed speech, while some seem to have joined from the University.
At around 2:30 in the afternoon, special riot police appeared on the scene. With clubs and shields they moved on the crowd. Some heads got broken but the crowd was not dispersed; in fact, it got bigger. Homemade banners began to appear, and Romanian flags with the Communist symbols cut out of the middle.
The first tear gas seems to have been fired around 4:00, by which time it was already getting dark. It didn't work. By 5:00, police were firing warning shots at the crowd in Piatsa Romana. When this didn't work either, they fired into the crowd.
Meanwhile, a kilometer or two south, the crowd in Piatsa Universitatii had built some crude barricades. Piatsa Universitatii was of course surrounded by University buildings. (It still is.) It was also the home of the Hotel Intercontinental, which was the best hotel in Romania, or anyhow the most expensive. Business travellers to Romania stayed there. And so did foreign journalists. This meant that the next scene would be played out literally before the eyes of the world.
It didn't take long. First, the police used tear gas and fire hoses. Then, around 11 pm, they brought in a tank. There were several minutes of wild shooting, and then the Piatsa was clear... except for the bodies, and those too badly wounded to crawl away. These would all be removed by morning.
But December 21 was the longest night of the year, and much else would have happened by then. Sometime in that evening, Romania's Defense Minister, Vasile Milea, died under circumstances that remain unclear. The most likely explanation seems to be that he refused to order the Army to fire on protestors, and was summarily executed for it. The next day, official television reported that he had committed suicide.
Ceaucescu had lost his grip on the Army, and with it, the whole country. In one sense, the Revolution had already succeeded.
Unfortunately, the killing had only just begun.
Posted by douglas at December 21, 2003 11:04 PM