Of all the revolutions which swept through Eastern Europe between 1988 and 1992, the Romanian revolution of December, 1990 stands out for the violence which occurred, the animosity of the people towards the overthrown rulers, and the uncertainty concerning the actual extent of change which took place. The events which took place in Romania between December 22, 1989 and January 1, 1990 were coupled with a level of violence which was unmatched by any of the other East Bloc revolts or by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the Winter of 1991/92. Not only did the active participants in the rebellion forcibly capture Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, after an attempted violent crackdown on the demonstrations, but the leaders of the rebellion also executed both after a questionable trial. Finally, unlike any of the other revolutions, the question has been raised as to whether the communists were actually overthrown in Romania or did certain elements in the party simply overthrow Ceausescu, following the examples of other communist regimes throughout the Twentieth Century.
Alone among the communist leaders in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu tried to forcibly defeat the popular rebellion which eventually overthrew him. The Securitate, or secret police, and the army were ordered to fire upon the demonstrators which had gathered in the town of Timisoara on December 16, protesting the eviction of Laslo Tokes, a popular Calvinist minister and vocal critic of Ceausescu. News of the fighting spread throughout Romania, largely by broadcasts from East Germany and Hungary, where the communist regimes had fallen only a month earlier (Behr, 1991, p. 246; Cullen, 1991, pp. 80-1). The Securitate promptly complied; the army, however, was reluctant to fire on the demonstrators on the orders of an unpopular regime. As a result, the commanding officers in Bucharest ordered the local commanders to deploy their troops in order to protect army lives...