Historically, Central and Eastern Europe has never been a place of overflowing luck. We suffered decades of conflict in the ‘short 20th century’, too, with ethnic and religious bloodshed, and tyrannical ideologies of every hue. This corner of the globe used to be a place where successive generations were continually burdened with serious traumas.
But people can change their own destiny, even in Central Europe. So did the citizens of Romania 35 years ago on 16 December 16, when they raised their heads in Temesvár (Timișoara) against one of the cruellest regimes of the 20th century, Nicolae Ceausescu’s North Korea-style governance. Most Socialist regimes around Romania started to acknowledge the utter failure of their own systems by the 1980s and started to slowly wriggle back to sensible political and economic systems under foreign and interior pressure. Romania, under the delusional rule of the self-described ‘Genius of the Carpathians’, was going backwards in the meantime. The first move in that process was the Romanian regime paying back all of its international debts in full, destroying its own economy.
Wiping out debts: it is a sensible national goal after all, isn’t it? No: the point was for the Romanian Communists to have their hands free while they set out to destroy the Hungarian, Saxon, and Serbian minorities in Transylvania via the forcible dislocation of thousands from villages to cities, literally by destroying entire small settlements. Ceausescu imagined a Romania with a face toward the ‘Third World’, with freedom from both superpowers, free to be fully Stalinist, and ethnically homogenous.
It was not to be. As the Soviet world system, the original breeding ground of Romanian communism, crumbled around the ‘Hermit Kingdom of Europe’, Ceausescu’s rule crumbled as well. It was the hated minorities that started it all. The protest against the attempted forcible eviction of László Tőkés, an iconic Hungarian Reformed minister, in Temesvár began on the evening of 15 December. The silent march with candles grew into a major demonstration, and after a bloody crackdown by the forces of order, it developed into a national wave of insurrection. The dictator swiftly returned from one of his trips, this time, an arms deal negotiation in Iran, but there was no use. When he stood on the balcony of the presidential palace on 21 December, he was hissed away by the crowd. He was finished. While the killing went on, the army started to veer away. Ceausescu was executed by his former obedient followers on 26 December.
‘Unnatural ideologies are not for East-Central Europe’
The Romanian Revolution teaches several lessons. First, an age-old truth: Freedom isn’t free. There is a lot of talk about how it was the cooperation of superpowers that made Central European democratization possible. But Romania is the main example that it would not have been enough that Gorbachev caved in to Reagan and Bush Sr. If the Romanian people had remained silent, there would have been no pressure of a critical magnitude to remove the dictator. True, international pressure mounted on Ceausescu. American trade restrictions were applied by 1987, and the intra-bloc Soviet reforming pressure mounted, too. But it was up to the citizens of Romania to act, and they acted decisively. Unnatural ideologies are not for East-Central Europe. Romanian citizens turned against the dictatorship in a fight that bridged ethnic divides, creating unprecedented unity against tyranny.
Second, the Revolution opened a road towards the healing of the wounds of the peace treaties that carved up our region after World War 1 and turned nations against each other. Healing in the sense that after the peace accords (or rather, ‘diktats’, as Hungarians like to say) of 1920 finally borders can indeed lose their role as dividers between political and economic systems and are no longer crossable only for a limited time. This December, we are already counting down the days to when Romania fully enters the Schengen Area, including its land borders as well, opening up dozens of minor border crossings, a step of huge significance for Romanians and Hungarians alike. 35 years after the Romanian revolution the two countries have finally crossed over to a sort of Common European Home.
Third, the Romanian events of 1989 teach us that change is not instant. Revolution and change come about slowly, and often unnoticeably. Although the people of Romania made the decisive step to depose Ceausescu, by early 1990 Romania did not turn overnight into a country ready to embrace its neighbours. The National Salvation Front that then took over was more of a military junta than a new democratic regime. Crackdown on minorities, like the pogrom in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș) in March 1990, and on anti-government protesters were the norm throughout 1990 and 1991. Even the West did not trust the new Romanian regime instantly. Albeit Western powers – despite claims to the contrary – are historically not that picky in terms of the democratic credentials of their allies, they did keep aid away from the new Romania until January 1991 because of their concerns with the system. Still, the country managed to overcome many of its early problems after the fall of the Communist regime and eventually advanced into NATO and the European Union, which made closer societal and political ties with our homeland, Hungary, possible as well.
35 years ago it was a gloomy and uncertain Christmas. Fighting still raged in many Romanian cities. But a step forward was made, and a huge one, on the road towards much merrier Christmases in our region.
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