The speech Ceacescu gave in Bucharest after what happened in Timisoara led directly to his downfall. It started with unarmed people storming the capitol building. There’s video of this on YouTube. The army switched sides to be against Ceacescu and that led to armed fighting against the Securitate.
But great job at ignoring all the broader points and ignoring the fact that you originally claimed that unarmed rioters can’t possibly overthrow the government and now write that Romania was the only violent overthrow of a communist government. This means that some communist government were overthrown by unarmed people. So you must now agree with me that unarmed people can overthrow a government.
The U.S. spends the most money in absolute dollars on the military. It is not the most militarized nation in the world. That would go to a nation that spends the highest percent of GDP on the military or one that has the highest percent of its population in the military. The U.S. is not first in any of these categories.
You would benefit from taking a course on statistics and economics.
>In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government.
Wikipedia says[0] it was "the only violent overthrow of a communist government". Violent does not sound unarmed to me, since punches and kicks only take you so far.
"As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timi?oara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceau?escu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country.[3] The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the course of the Revolutions of 1989"
>It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C.
It is a thing. It's also a thing that an average Republican in Texas and an average Republican in NY or DC are not quite the same. Even if we put forward the very unlikely premise that they are super MAGA Republican, peer pressure is a thing. Simply going by the numbers, chances are a significant chunk of their friends and family are Democrats, and it's not like an average person can easily hide they were on a jury. Also, consider how many juries there would be for that many defendants, will no one be convicted?
Romania was totalitarian. Ceausescu was a bloodthirsty dictator. Bucharest was wormed through with underground tunnels that the Securitate would use to move around. He'd murder political opponents by summoning them to a waiting room with a radiation source, giving them cancer and then letting them leave. He was overthrown only after he massacred a ton of students, mowing them down with machine gun fire during a protest.
Point. Its late for me and I got slightly jumbled up. You're absolutely right that Romania was the most violent of the revolutions and that I shouldn't have included them in the lacking violence part. I've edited the original post to mention this.
Even still, it could have been much worse; the revolution could have failed. And it lead to a stable government that successfully transitioned between parties afterwards. And the Romanian economy is doing fairly well. I'd call that a pretty remarkable success, given how spectacular the failures in Eastern Europe are on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Their former allies then former a post-Communist clique that looted the country for most of the 90s and stole several elections.
I haven't really read much about this, Romanian elections being fraudulent. Don't suppose you could recommend a few good news articles or other data (books or papers, perhaps) on the subject (Romania after 1989, not just elections specifically)? The Wikipedia article doesn't have any citation for it either.
Romania was the only country where the leader (dictator) didn't step down when he was asked to by Moscow.
The leader was also obsessed that Romania would be invaded by Russia, like Czech was in 1968, so he had specialized guerilla army units to fight back. This can explain why the army was fighting itself, and why it took so long for the shooting to stop.
I wouldn't take the outright killings of the Ceausescus as a sign of the Romanian people being so unusually more violent than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The decision to kill Ceausescu and his wife was taken by a strata of government officials under him, because they wanted to seize power for themselves. In this sense, the Romanian revolution of 1989 was a coup d'etat and we are just lucky that the outcome was eventually a representative democracy and not another dictatorship.
While the Ceausescus were hated, it is definitely not a given that popular discontent would have led to their deaths had it not been for that cabal that hastily arranged the trial and executions.
I live in Romania, and although I was only 8 years old in '89, I remember pretty vividly what happened.
Such a huge mob can be prevented in 2 main ways - $ and Fear
Fear, Doubt and Censorship is what defined the Stalinist regime before Dec '89 in Romania.
The North Korean approach: Have such a huge military that
the rest of the country can not overrun it ever.
The military is formed out of ordinary people that can switch sides at any time. Also wars are won in the hearts first: you can make the military switch sides if you give the impression that this isn't a war they can win.
In Romania I still think it was a coup d'état, as the army switched sides quite early; but the mob was there, it was furious ... and it emerged out of nowhere. And it was interesting because romanians really aren't violent people.
Governments should learn to not piss off citizens: people can take a lot of pain before acting, but there's always a tipping point and from there onward it turns into a civil war between millions of people and a couple of thousand with guns (but that's a short-lived tactical advantage).
Thanks for your comment. That wikipedia article led me to watch Ceausescu's last speech and learn more about that time. It's such an interesting video because you understand the transition that he's lost control of the country (I don't want to say moment because it's probably much more complicated).
Sure, and this is a great thing. However, as my reply quoted, it was in response to "lacked any sort of violence." 1000+ dead and many more injured is a poor definition of "any sort of violence."
And I admitted that I was wrong, right away. You're beating a dead horse to death if this is your main reason behind your statements.
Not lacking any violence at all doesn't mean that Romania had an incredibly violent revolution. Its not that black and white.
1,000 people dying is incredibly sad, yes. But, the death toll could have been much, much worse. The military could have sided with the government, not the people. There could have been an ethnic division within the country. The Soviet Union could have reversed the Sinatra Doctrine and stepped in.
The comparison with USA does not help at all because the socio-political situation in Romania is so wildly different, in all aspects.
I agree with you that the government doesn't have to necessarily resign but the fact that they were democratically elected doesn't give them the right to do anything they want. The people have the full right to voice their disagreement with the actions of the government, and I happen to agree with the demands and sentiment of the overall protests.
Unfortunately the Romanian people have been lagging (on average) when it comes to civic involvement, education, mutual trust, mutual respect etc., which lead to the election of the current populist government. There are signs that this is changing, slowly, and that makes me hopeful.
Concurrent to the Hungarian uprising of 1956, there was some unrest in Romania as well, and the Soviet military presence there was strengthened in response. Romania began to oppose the Soviet hegemony in the 1960s—Ceau?escu spoke out against 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Romania built friendly relations with the anti-Soviet bloc. So it's not entirely a given that the Soviet Union would not have considered military intervention in Romania at some point like they did in Hungary or Czechoslovakia. You can't excuse the Romanians for wondering how their government could afford to get away with their open defiance of Soviet hegemony.
Edit: hilarious, I'm getting downvoted for pointing out that the toppling of communism in Romania was very violent. Never expected HN to be a red block stronghold. Kind of hilarious.
"Extremely violent?" Even the Romanian revolution was practically bloodless compared to what could have been. Recall that there is a large Hungarian minority in Romania, with strong claims to territory, and there were great fears that the Yugoslavian debacle might repeat itself there.
The fact that Romania made it out of the hellish Ceausescu regime with comparatively little violence, and is now a full-on EU member, is one of the great success stories of that time.
You can bemoan the people that died and the slowness of the eventual transition towards more open government, but you must keep a sense of perspective. Even a dysfunctional country like Romania has been able to claw itself to levels of prosperity no one dreamed about in 1989.
Which country? You're constructing a narrative that is impossible to challenge because you're being deliberately vague. If you want an honest discussion, you must be more forthcoming.
Edit: From dontlaugh's comment history, it's Romania.
The Wikipedia article is pretty light on details and in some cases even inaccurate. Even though only in Romania the regime change was violent, it doesn't mean that in other countries protesters were not initially arrested and/or beaten by the police/regime forces. I know this from first hand experience because I've lived in those times. In the GDR protesters were arrested and beaten. Even in Czechoslovakia a protest was crushed by the police. In Poland is was mostly nonviolent because they started to weaken the regime since 1980 mainly through strikes and worker's protests. The breakup of Yugoslavia led to the Balkan wars. In Romania people were shot dead in the street, something the wikipedia article fails to mention. You can read a more accurate description of the Romanian 1989 revolution here:
The NSF (PDSR/PSDR after that, currently PSD) mentioned in the introduction is the continuator of the Romanian Communist Party. They're the ones who siezed power and split into or infiltrated most if not all mainstream political parties. They're also the ones currenly in power. The current protests are also against them.
But great job at ignoring all the broader points and ignoring the fact that you originally claimed that unarmed rioters can’t possibly overthrow the government and now write that Romania was the only violent overthrow of a communist government. This means that some communist government were overthrown by unarmed people. So you must now agree with me that unarmed people can overthrow a government.
The U.S. spends the most money in absolute dollars on the military. It is not the most militarized nation in the world. That would go to a nation that spends the highest percent of GDP on the military or one that has the highest percent of its population in the military. The U.S. is not first in any of these categories.
You would benefit from taking a course on statistics and economics.
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