New Book Clears Mystery About Romania’s Blood-soaked Revolution

It was mid-December 1989 when hundreds of thousands of people in Timisoara, Bucharest and other Romanian towns and cities defied Nicolae Ceausescu's reign of fear and took to the streets to free themselves from over four decades of Communist dictatorship. 

Around 1,200 people died and thousands of others were wounded in the events that led up to Ceausescu's execution at Christmas, which paved the way to the freedom that Romania enjoys today as part of the global democratic community. 

But this tale of collective heroism is barely acknowledged in a society accustomed to cynicism, and which tends to mistrust any expression of honesty and principle in the public space.

As the Hungarian dissident and philosopher Miklos Tamas once said, the Romanians "have convinced the whole world that the revolution, in fact, didn't even take place, that it was just a trick".

Central to the besmirching of the revolution has been the mystery surrounding the death of 800 people between December 22 and 25 in 1989. 

Although Ceausescu lost power on December 22, shootings continued in the streets of Bucharest and other cities until his death by firing squad three days later. 

Who kept opening fire? Did the "terrorists", as the revolutionary authorities of the time called them, really exist, or it was all a plot by those who had seized power to create chaos - as the prosecution maintains in the trial that started this month in Bucharest over those deaths?

Cover of the book. Photo: BIRN

A Securitate "counter-revolution"

Offering an answer to these questions is the greatest aim of a new book, Snipers and Mystifiers, published by POLIROM, which reaches Romania's bookstores this Thursday and is the most complete investigation...

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