Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Dennis Deletant: ‘Revisiting the 1989 Romanian Revolution: Some Personal Reflections’ (chapter II)

Continued from 04 December

‘I have recounted this incident in an effort to give some sense of the atmosphere reigning in Bucharest in the immediate aftermath of Ceauşescu’s overthrow. Paranoia, mistrust, uncertainty about the future, a glut of firearms in circulation, some in the hands of young men fired by machismo, who had little idea of how to use a rifle or an automatic weapon. Indeed, many of the conscripts whom I witnessed exchanging fire with snipers, returned fire over the heads of civilians, placing the latter in a direct line of fire from the adversary. Such basic failures in training resulted in many friendly-fire casualties in Bucharest. The danger posed by snipers was vividly brought home to me. On the evening of 7 January 1990, I was making my way along a lugubrious street in the centre of the city to visit a family friend when, stepping into the light of a street lamp, I heard a sudden crack and then ping from a low wall fronting a house which I was passing. On the pavement just in front of me lay the head of a bullet. As I bent down to examine it, a militiaman, rifle in hand, came running out of the shadows and shouted to me to get out of the light. I left the bullet, moved to the shadow of a car and crouched down beside it. After a few minutes the militiaman, who had taken cover behind another vehicle, crept forward, picked up the bullet, and handed it to me. It was still warm.[1] ‘There’, he said, ‘you were a foot away from death. There is a sniper in the block of flats opposite and we are trying to take him out.’ He asked me what I was doing on the street at that particular hour and I explained that I had come to visit a friend. He asked the name of the friend and the number of his house and from my accent realized that I was not Romanian. When I told him that I was British, he made the sign of the cross and exclaimed, ‘God was watching over you tonight.’ Fortunately, I was only a few steps away from my destination. He accompanied me to the gate and then retreated into the gloom. I shouted my thanks to him.

The ubiquity of snipers in Bucharest spawned a host of rumours about their aims and allegiance. Indeed, rumour factories were the only institutions which, alongside the Securitate, had worked overtime during Ceauşescu’s rule. On the streets and in the  the press the snipers were generally dubbed ‘terrorists’. Some Romanians regarded them as securişti, members of the Securitate, while informed commentators described them more specifically as rogue elements of USLA (Unitate Specială de Luptă Antiteroristă), the anti-terrorist unit of the Securitate, who, until Ceauşescu’s execution on Christmas Day, fought to restore the dictator to power, but who, after his death, gradually faded into the shadows. A team of three or four men who broke into the residence of the British Ambassador opposite the Romanian TV studios on Strada Emil Pangratti and installed a machine-gun on the roof fitted the description of all the above categories. They sprayed the studios for more than an hour before tank-fire reduced the residence to a burned-out shell.[2] The gunmen were never caught.

This incident can be catalogued alongside the sudden explosion of gunfire which erupted in the main square facing the Central Committee building on the evening of 22 December, just as the crowd was being addressed by a series of speakers expressing their condemnation of the Ceauşescu regime. Who carried out the attack, which left the building pockmarked with bullet-holes and set the adjacent university library on fire, has never been established. It left several people dead and and some argue that it was a ‘diversion’, staged in order to give credibility to the existence of ‘counter-revolutionary’ forces who were attempting to restore the dictator to power, and therefore to give legitimation to the creation of the ‘National Salvation Front’, proclaimed barely hours earlier by Ion Iliescu. This view sat comfortably with the argument that a popular revolt, begun in Timişoara, was highjacked by second-echelon Communists led by Iliescu and turned into a ‘revolution’. Others went further and claimed that the events in Timişoara were the first step in a conspiracy, led by anti-Ceauşescu Communists fronted by Iliescu, to overthrow Ceauşescu but to maintain Communists, if not the Party, in power. Many Romanians felt that they had been duped, and that the sacrifice made in December 1989 had been to no avail. Their view may be summed up in the verdict that while the Communist Party was declared dead in January 1990, no one ever produced a death certificate. They pointed to the presence of Lieutenant-General Victor Stǎnculescu, First Deputy Minister of Defence under Ceauşescu, in the National Salvation Front Provisional Government. Stǎnculescu, who had played, it was proved later, a prominent role in the repression by the army of demonstrations in Timişoara on 17 and 18 December, was appointed Minister of the National Economy on 28 December 1989 and held the position until 16 February 1990, when he became Minister of Defence.[3] My presence in Bucharest with the BBC affords me another reminiscence of the aftermath of the revolution, one involving Stǎnculescu.

On 6 January, I was with the actor Ion Caramitru, who, together with the poet Mircea Dinescu had been amongst the first figures to appear on Romanian TV after Ceauşescu’s flight from Bucharest with an emotional appeal to support the revolution. Caramitru was an old friend and on learning of my presence in Bucharest with the BBC invited me to the seat of the NSF Provisional Government in Palatul Victoria in the centre of Bucharest where he had been given an office. He offered me a position as head of cultural affairs for the county of Bacǎu, saying that he wanted to replace all Ceauşescu yes-men in the field of culture. When I asked what was special about Bacǎu he replied that it had just come to his lips but that I could chose any county I wanted. I thanked him profusely for the honour but declined on the grounds that local Romanians would find it difficult to accept a non-Romanian in the position of cultural affairs director of their county. Whilst we were talking the phone rang and Caramitru picked it up. At the other end of the line was General Stǎnculescu who asked me to pay him a visit and gave me his location. He did not have transport available for me and asked Caramitru to provide a vehicle from the government pool at Palatul Victoria. I agreed to go and jumped into a jeep that was waiting for me at the entrance. The driver then requested me to give him directions to Stǎnculescu’s office. He explained that he had been drafted in from the provinces together with other drivers since the new Government did not trust the Communist Party drivers who had been laid off and that he was unfamiliar with the geography of Bucharest. Fortunately, I knew how to get to the General’s office.

Upon my arrival I was escorted by two armed guards in civilian clothes up to the fourth floor of a building on Calea Victoriei and ushered into Stǎnculescu’s room. He, too, was in mufti. He explained that he wanted to get an urgent message to the British Government but since the ambassador had withdrawn to Sofia, did not know whom to contact in Bucharest. He had been told that I was in the capital with the BBC and asked me to pass his message on. It was a request for medicines, food, and assistance with restoring the country’s energy (electrical) generating capacity. I told John Simpson about the message. He transmitted it by satellite link to London. I informed him that I knew that at least two British diplomats had remained on duty at the embassy and said that it would appropriate to try to contact them. He agreed and I walked to the embassy. I showed my passport to some Romanian soldiers at the entrance and was allowed in. In the courtyard I found the military attache, Lt-Col Bill Chesshyre, to whom I related General Stǎnculescu’s message. Colonel Chesshyre thanked me for taking the trouble to contact him and a couple of months later I was thanked personally for my gesture by David Mellor, Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.’

[1] I still have it.

[2] The ambassador was not at home at the time, but his wife and three daughters were. On the intrusion of the gunmen they took shelter in the basement and spent a couple of terrifying hours there before the shooting ceased. They survived unharmed physically, but were so traumatized that the ambassador withdrew with them to Sofia.

[3] Stănculescu was replaced on 28 June 1990. He had been tasked by Iliescu, Brucan and Gelu Voican-Voiculescu, the senior National Salvation Front triumvirate, with the organization of the Ceauşescus’ trial. Stănculescu and Lieutenant-General Mihai Chiţac, head of the chemical troops and commander of the Bucharest garrison, were charged in January 1998 with ‘incitement to commit murder’ for their part in events in Timişoara. They were each sentenced by the Romanian Supreme Court on 15 July 1999 to 15 years jail for the murder of 72 people and the wounding of 253 others during the uprising in Timişoara on 17 and 18 December 1989. Both generals lodged an appeal against their conviction. Their sentences were upheld by the Supreme Court on 25 February 2000 but further appeals delayed their application. Eventually, on 15 October 2008, the Supreme Court upheld once again the sentence and both generals are currently in prison, although often released for medical treatment.

By Dennis Deletant

Historian, University College London 

Read Dennis Deletant’s full account

Disclaimer: This account does not represent the view of the Her Majesty’s British Government, but is a personal recollection of the December 1989 events in Romania.