The Romanian Revolution – 35
Steliu Lambru, 06.01.2025, 14:04
We often talk about big resets when a type of leader wins the elections in a country with a major global influence, as was Donald Trump’s victory in November 2024 in the US. But big resets are those that occur when significant changes take place in large and important geopolitical areas, as was the year 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. At that time, the communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania ceded power or were violently removed by popular anger. The Romanian case is that of the change of a regime through violent means, the most violent of all the changes since 1989.
Long commented on since 1989, although less visible than in other years, the Romanian Revolution continues to be, at 35 years on, the main reference point for everything that connects Romanians to their daily lives. Its legacy is indisputably positive and the changes that have occurred since then have brought a significant increase in the living standards, a consistent presence in the most important military and civil alliances that are NATO, the European Union and the Schengen area. All of this was possible thanks to the sacrifice of protesters in December 1989 and the constant effort made by the several tens of millions of Romanians over the past 35 years.
Historians analyze the past and from them we learn what has happened to humanity up to the present. Historian Virgiliu Țârău, professor with Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, talked about the change 35 years ago and the difficult path, the so-called “transition”: “Although we still have a little time, about a decade, until we equal and exceed, in terms of time frame, the East European communism, let us note that the transition from this regime to the democratic one was both short and long. The time of change was short, intense, revolutionary, the time of transformation and, especially, of metabolizing the transformation was a long, diverse and complex one. It had distinct trajectories in the transition at regional and national levels. As such, if the change was apparently rapid, the transition was a long process, one in which the transplantation of a new system on the social, political, economic, cultural and mentality roots of communism, proved laborious and sometimes contradictory. “
The Romanian revolution can only be understood in the spirit of the European time that produced it. It is nothing more than a particular case of the big reset that led to today’s reality. Virgiliu Țârău: “The cumulative events of 1989 took the world in a new direction. It has been said that it was a Eurocentric, democratic, liberal and integrative one, one in which Eastern Europe transformed itself, peacefully or not, giving up the political order and the communist regimes. It was one that led to the unification of Germany and then Europe, in an ambitious project: from Portugal to the Baltic states. The windows that opened then, created the premises of another globalization, but also of a world that seemed to have overcome the realities of the Cold War.”
In the analysis made in 1989 by the British historian Timothy Garton Ash, the ways in which communist power in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe was removed were peaceful, through elections, or through revolutionary violence. Virgiliu Țârău spoke about the one specific to Romania, the revolution: “This was associated with the events that took place in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania in the last months of 1989. This difference underlined by Timothy Garton Ash was made taking into account especially the contestation of communist power in the street, the pressure from bottom to top, which germinated and led to the removal of communist elites from power. The opacity and project stagnation of the elders Honecker, Husak and Ceaușescu, the blindness and violence of their reactions, the lack of dialogue within the communist power circles, but also of dialogue with the opposition structures, were other ingredients of this second type of change in Garton Ash’s opinion. Protest, contestation and political removal were associated with the fall of the Wall, the velvet or bloody takeover of power that accompanied the change in 1989.”
Regardless of the manner in which they emerged from the stage of history, peaceful or violent, communist regimes were rotten. Virgiliu Țârău: “Beyond external influences, strategic games, historical evidence shows us that communist systems succumbed from within, that those guilty of this implosion were the communist leaders themselves, incapable of managing an increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional system. In essence, no longer viable and legitimate, communism was abandoned precisely by those who managed its destiny, members of the system and technocrats alike. In conclusion, by transforming the Iron Continent into a nylon one, subversion from within became increasingly consistent. The lack of resources to solve the debt problem put them in a position to negotiate and, finally, to hand over power, when the street protests could no longer be managed.”
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 is part of the big reset of Central and Eastern Europe. It produced positive effects in all aspects of the life of societies that 35 years ago were desperately struggling with economic misery and closed horizons.
