Nicolae Ceaușescu

Borivoje Borovi wishes for a Romanian scenario: "Ceaușescu also had 100,000 to 200,000 supporters that day."
He stated for N1 that if the protests last for days, the authorities will feel fear "in their bones".
"And it's not just a change of government, for the first time ruling political structure will surely go to prison," Borovi told N1.

The painting 'Blue Poles' by US artist Jackson Pollock undergoes conservation work at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, 30 June 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/LUKAS COCH AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT

The former president of Romania, Ion Iliescu, faces trial once again in the case of the 1989 Romanian Revolution, which overthrew the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu after military prosecutors re-sent the case file to the court.

Closer to home, 40 kilometres west of Budapest, Orban fulfilled a personal dream to build a stadium in Felcsut, the small village of 1,700 people where he grew up. Together with his close ally and mayor of Felcsut, Lorinc Meszaros, the two managed to have a stadium with a capacity of 3,800 built in 2014 for the Puskas Academy team at a cost of 10 million euros.

Even the premise that the revolution was contemporary Romania's proudest hour, once an article of faith, is now fiercely disputed. Trials against the perpetrators of the violence that followed Ceauşescu's fall on 22 December - which accounted for the lion's share of victims - have been shut down again and again, despite tireless efforts by victims' associations to bring them to justice.

Romanian writer and anti-Communist dissident Paul Goma has died in Paris aged 84 after being diagnosed with coronavirus, his biographer Mariana Sipos told the Romanian news portal G4Media on Wednesday.

"After receiving a message from France, I announce with sorrow and great pain the departure from among us of the great writer and dissident Paul Goma," the statement read.

The December 1989 uprising against Ceausescu saw hundreds of thousands of Romanians of all ethnic origins risk their lives to bring down a repressive regime.

But events took an ugly turn between March 19 and 21, 1990, as mobs of Romanians and Hungarians in the Transylvanian town of Targu Mures fought each other to the death.

Thirty years ago, on 11 March 1990, in the Piata Operei (Operei Square) of western Timisoara a manifestation took place staged by the "Timisoara", "Europa" societies and the "16 Decembrie" Confederation, wherein a document dubbed "Proclamation of Timisoara" was adopted, according to "History of Romania in data" (Enciclopedica Publishing House, 2003).

Two months had then passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Central and Eastern Europe had started to enjoy the long-awaited freedoms they were denied for half a century by their Soviet masters.

But as that part of the continent was festively breaking free from its shackles, Romania remained untouched by the winds of change under the monolithic rule of a recalcitrant megalomaniac.

Romania was the only country facing wide spread violence during the 1989 revolutions; officially, 1,104 people died and 3,300 were injured. Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, believed to be the most brutal and repressive in Eastern Europe, was without doubt one of the main reasons for such a tragic end - as the work ''The 1989 Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe.