17th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
‘I made my first visit on business to Romania during December 1981. It was then when I first met my future wife. Over the following year I made any excuse to visit Romania just to see her again. In fact, I made over twenty four flights from London to Bucharest. Eventually I found out that […]
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16th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
By December 1989 the situation in Romania for the population was bad. Years of erratic dictatorial rule, ever increasing privation and austerity had produced an atmosphere ripe for change. But because of the very powerful communist tyranny and repression not even the most expert and experienced diplomatic and foreign media observers foresaw the sudden overthrow […]
Read more on Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Michael Atkinson: ‘Bucharest during the 1989 Revolution’ | Reply (1)
15th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Continued from 12 December Friday, December 22nd, Alecu Russo Diplomatic quarters 08.00 am Eleanor had not yet turned up. I was finishing breakfast and wondering in the quietness of morning whether it was all over. Had the police/soldiers and all the apparatus of the Police State finished the job last night, and cleared all the […]
Read more on Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/ Bernard Marshall: ‘Two days of the Romanian Christmas Revolution in December 1989’ (Chapter II) | Reply (1)
12th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
‘December 21st – 10.30 am on Palace Square, Bucharest “Please move back “, said the tall Securitate official. Three diplomats moved back a few steps onto the now empty square. “I asked you to move – please move back “, he ordered again – in surprisingly refined and clear English. He was wearing a long […]
Read more on Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/ Bernard Marshall: ‘Two days of the Romanian Christmas Revolution in December 1989’ (Chapter I) | Reply
11th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
The calm before December 1989 is as memorable to me as experiencing the revolution itself. Roll back a year to November 1988 and my arrival in a city blanketed by ice, snow and grey slush. More horse and carts on the airport road than cars and an introduction to faded and frozen communist grandeur through […]
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10th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
September 17th 1989 Teresa and I arrived in Bucharest to take up our appointment in the Defence Section. November The 14th party congress of the Romanian Communist Party was held during a bitterly cold period. Some cynically said that if that weather had continued through December there would not have been a revolution. 15th to […]
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9th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
‘Although I spent four months in Romania covering the revolution from early January 1990 through until world attention faded, my reasons for being there – I was officially Middle East Correspondent of the Times based in Cairo – bore more resemblance to Evelyn Waugh’s hilarious satire, Scoop, than any hard-nosed, tale of derring-do. For personal […]
Read more on Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Christopher Walker: ‘Scoop with real bullets’ | Reply
8th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
‘Romania’s “televised revolution” was the most exciting event of 1989, that momentous year when country after country fell out of the crushing embrace of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall provided the main drama of that year and the revolutions in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the other central European countries were smooth […]
Read more on Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Rupert Wolfe Murray: ‘ROMANIA: Memories of a Revolution’ | Reply
5th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
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 […]
Read more on Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Dennis Deletant: ‘Revisiting the 1989 Romanian Revolution: Some Personal Reflections’ (chapter II) | Reply (1)
4th December 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
‘The Romanian revolution was for me, my own personal revolution. It brought me – to use Andy Warhol’s expression – my ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ for it catapulted me and Romanian studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, into the public eye. On 16 December 1989, I […]
Read more on Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/Dennis Deletant: ‘Revisiting the 1989 Romanian Revolution: Some Personal Reflections’ (chapter I) | Reply
