(GP Blog Post 2)
My hometown of Timisoara is a cosmopolitan city situated
within two hours of both the Hungarian and Yugoslavian border. A bloody and violent event which left more than
one thousand people dead, the Romanian Revolution started on December 15th
1989 as a street protest which spread to other major cities and generated a
change of political regime.
The spark event was the imminent eviction of
Hungarian pastor Laszlo Tokes from his parish.
His protesting parishioners were joined by other church members, high school
and University students and the general public, to form the largest anti regime
protest of the Ceausescu era. We didn't have cell phones, Facebook or Twitter. Word
spread and people gathered. The regime
forces opened fire killing almost one hundred people in one day. It was tense, with snipers watching every
major corner.
President
Ceausescu went on television on December 20th denouncing the
“terrorist” actions and organized a pro-regime demonstration in Bucharest the
following day. It backfired when people
started chanting “Timisoara, Timisoara!”
On the 22nd, the “suicide” of the prime Minister was
announced. Yet, we knew the wave has
changed!
As quoted
by Hall, Russell asserts that most regimes do not change without “deflection”
of the armed forces. The Army showed a lot
of force but ended up joining the 100,000 demonstrators. The President and his wife were captured and
executed on December 25th, after a summary trial that found them
guilty of genocide.
In
conclusion, Romania was the only country in Eastern Europe where the regime
collapse was made possible by the power of direct interpersonal communication
during 1989, a time well before social media.
How’s that for word of mouth?
References
Hall,
R. (2000). Theories of Collective Action and Revolution: Evidence from the
Romanian Transition of December 1989. Europe-Asia Studies, 52(6),
1069-1093. doi:10.1080/09668130050143833.
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