A social movement that had a huge impact on my life was the 1989 Revolution in Romania that led to the overthrow and execution of Romania’s brutal dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Although I have written about this in several of my posts on this blog, I could not help thinking of this revolution while reading Chapter 14 of our textbook. Newman even alludes to this revolution in his assertion that unintentional political opportunities can encourage social movements for change (Newman, p. 473). Newman points to the economic and structural reforms in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and a relaxation of constraints on freedom of expression as factors that encouraged the protest movements that led to the prodemocracy movements in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe (Newman, p. 473). According to Newman, some sociologists believe that social movements are more likely to arise when social conditions begin to improve than when they are at their worst (Newman, p. 470). Newman goes so far as to say that “only when the political structure became less repressive could these monumental changes take place” (Newman, p. 473). Newman also notes that the mass media play an important role in the success of a social movement (Newman, p. 472).
Although I’ve had a personal interest in Romania’s 1989 Revolution for several years and have done quite a bit of reading about it, I decided to do my own “Micro-Macro Connection” on what life was like for ordinary Romanian people under Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s totalitarian state and what it was like to experience the 1989 Revolution. I decided to interview the only person I personally know who actually lived in Romania under Ceausescu and experienced the revolution first hand. I was born in Romania on March 2, 1990, three months after the December 1989 Revolution, and I was adopted by my Minnesota parents, with Lucie’s assistance, when I was 8 months old. Lucie helped my parents adopt me in 1990, and she moved from Romania to Minnesota in 1991. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota today with her American husband and her two daughters. Not only did Lucie experience life in a totalitarian state, she also personally experienced the December 1989 Revolution that ended Ceausescu’s rule as well as his life.
To begin, I asked Lucie what life was like for her while Ceausescu was in power. I asked her to tell me about the good and the bad aspects of living in Romania under his rule. Lucie said that things were really pretty good for her and her family when she was a young child. But in the early 1980’s, life got a lot harder for her family and other Romanian people, as there were severe shortages of food and basic consumer goods. Electricity was limited to certain hours, and lights were turned off. People could have just one light bulb on at night. Romania had borrowed money from other countries and needed to sell most of its agricultural production to repay the loans. That meant that there was not enough food left to feed the Romanians themselves. Lucie emphasized that all of these events had happened “gradually” over a time of time, not all at once. While life was getting more and more difficult for ordinary Romanians, the state-run television was always showing how well Romania’s agriculture industry was doing. The television would often show Ceausescu visiting farms. Lucie said that every night there would be a report of the great harvest or the new farm machines or something that related to Romania’s wonderful food production and of “the peasants doing well.” But, Lucie says, “to this day I do not understand the emphasis on TV on the farm production when there was getting to be less and less food for us to buy in the stores!” Lucie explained that in Romania under Ceausescu’s Communism, the peasants didn’t own the land. In her opinion, because of their lack of ownership and interest in the profits, the peasants didn’t work very hard. “It’s just human nature,” Lucie said. There were scheduled dates to inspect the farms, and then they would air what they found on TV. So in order to make it look like the farms were doing well, the people around Ceausescu would make sure everything looked great. Lucie remembers hearing that they would actually paint the grass green to make it look like everything was growing well. They even moved cows around so it would look like whatever farm Ceausescu was visiting had hundreds of cows, even though they were probably the same cows he just saw at the last farm. The idea was to create the impression that food was plentiful and the harvest was good. But Lucie said that no one she knew was fooled because there really wasn’t much food for them to buy in the stores.
During this time there was increasing emphasis on what a great leader Ceausescu was. Lucie herself even participated in one of these demonstrations that was filmed and shown on television. The television would show crowds of people smiling and cheering “Long Live Ceausescu!” But Lucie said that no one actually screamed “Long Live Ceausescu!” at the demonstrations. Instead, that was recorded and played over speakers. Lucie said that people like her who were taking part in the demonstrations just talked about “whatever.” It was expected that you would participate in these pageants and demonstrations, but Lucie didn’t do it much.
Lucie told about experiencing severe shortages, especially when she was in college, and how she and her family coped with them. She told of talking to her mother on the telephone from Bucharest, when the call had to be short. The first thing they would talk about was basic human necessities. Her mother would tell her to go to the bus station to pick up the soap or laundry detergent or toilet paper she had finally been able to find and buy for her. Then, if there was any time left on the call, they would get around to things like “I miss you,” and “I love you.” People who had cars couldn’t drive them except of certain assigned days, and there was lots of rationing and shortages.
Lucie also talked about how her freedoms changed during Ceausescu’s rule. She said that life for her was good for the first ten years of Ceausescu’s rule (1965-1975). Policies were pretty liberal, and she doesn’t remember feeling under his control. Communism vs. capitalism was not talked about. But sometime in the mid-1970’s, she thinks, Lucie and her family quite gradually began to notice changes. Lucie didn’t really watch the news on television very much. She said that when she did, she learned that you had to learn to “read between the lines.” There started to be more emphasis on television on what is wrong with capitalism and how great Romania was under Ceausescu. According to Lucie, starting in the early 1980’s, the television program times decreased and became shorter and shorter until television programming was just two hours a day (8pm-10pm) and “it was nothing anyone would want to watch.” It was mainly programs dedicated to Ceausescu’s activities and elaborately staged pageants that celebrated his greatness. There was a huge emphasis on agriculture and farm production. At the same time, Ceausescu’s picture started appearing on every building and on the street corners. There were huge pageants staged in stadiums and large parades to celebrate Ceausescu. With television cut to just a few hours, most of the good television programs Lucie remembers being able to watch from her childhood disappeared. Bad movies from other Communist countries like North Korea took their place. At this time, according to Lucie, “nobody” took what was going on in Romania television seriously. She also said that during this time, she was aware of the Securitate, the brutal Romanian secret police Ceausescu used to maintain his power, but she did not personally know of anyone who “disappeared” because they criticized Ceausescu. She said people around her sometimes criticized him, but they were careful what they said and who they said it in front of.
According to Lucie, late in the 1980’s, people started to hear rumors about revolutions going on elsewhere in the Communist world. Rumors were going around that something was going on in China and that students there had been massacred. She said that people also heard that East Germans went to the Czech Republic, and thousands left their cars, and people crossed the border into Western Germany. But none of this was shown on Romanian television. Lucie remembers hearing about some anti-Ceausescu demonstrations in the western part of Romania in late 1989 which led to the police or army shooting into the crowd. She said someone received a videotape of these demonstrations that was smuggled into Romania. She remembers that Ceausescu himself was actually outside of Romania when the first demonstrations happened. When he returned, he went on television at a big demonstration in Bucharest to discuss communism and its benefits. This event was carried live on Romanian television. It surprised Lucie to hear people screaming “Down with Ceausescu!” over the tapes of the usual “Long Live Ceausescu!” blaring through the amplifiers. The television cameras actually captured Ceausescu’s look of confusion and fear when he heard the shouts of “Down with Ceausescu!” On the live television coverage, Lucie said you could also hear shots fired and see Ceausescu and his wife leave quickly by a helicopter from the demonstration. After Ceausescu and his wife Elena left the demonstration by helicopter, they left Bucharest and went into hiding. They were found and arrested four days later.
Lucie said she thinks it was actually rival members of the Communist party who yelled “Down with Ceausescu!” and that the revolution was actually more like a coup d’état. She thinks that while there were some genuine revolutionaries on the streets, the revolution was really staged mostly by Ceausescu’s rivals rather than being a real uprising of the people of Romania. When people heard “Down with Ceausescu!” it was sort of a “signal to the country to stand up” as Lucie saw it. When Lucie heard the gunshots on television, she was scared. She said she had felt Romania was a safe country under Communism because the police were everywhere. The gunshots and events of the revolution shocked her. Lucie said that the events that followed in the next several days were on television all the time. Actually, the people leading the revolution had managed to take over Ceausescu’s state-run television station. They broadcast coverage of the army shooting into the crowd and of other violence, but Lucie says it turned out later that at least some of the incidents may have been staged.
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| Nicolae and Eleana Ceausescu awaiting their "trial" |
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| Romanian revolutionaries capture and control the one and only state television channel. |
Lucie vividly remembers the events surrounding the revolution and Ceausescu’s execution. The execution happened after a four-day period when the Romanian public didn’t know where Ceausescus were or what was going on. Although Lucie says that everyone watched the television coverage of the demonstrations and violence during that time, no one was sure what was happening or who was in charge. Then on December 25, 1989 everyone found out what was happening. Lucie remembers that as she and her mother were preparing Christmas dinner with the television on, suddenly a well-dressed man appeared to make a formal announcement. By Lucie’s account, he said, “the trial of Ceausescu Nicolae and Ceausescu Elena for treason, crimes against the state, and blah, blah, blah has been conducted and they have been found guilty and sentenced to death. The sentence has been carried out.” Then, Lucie recalls, the television immediately cut to Romanian folk dancing. Lucie says that she and her mother were stunned, and looked at each other and said, “What did he say? Did he say the sentence has been carried out? What does that mean?” They left their apartment, as did most of their neighbors who were also watching, and everyone asked each other what they had heard and what it meant. People went into the streets to demonstrate and celebrate, even though there were still some violent incidents happening.
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| Romanian revolutionaries cut a hole in the flag to remove the Communist emblem added by Ceausescu |
Lucie said that in the days, weeks and months that followed, more and more about the Ceausescus was shown on television, including a videotape of their execution. At the execution on Christmas day, someone managed to tape the execution, smuggle the tape out of Romania and put it on French television. From there, it was shown all over the world, and soon it was even shown in Romania. Before the tape was seen on Romanian television, the “official” story was that it was necessary to carry out the sentence quickly because there was a threat of a terrorist conspiracy. But when the tape was seen, it didn’t support the terrorism story. Lucie said that this and other inconsistencies with the official story made her wonder whom to believe and what had really happened.
I was surprised to learn from Lucie that for Romanians who lived through it, the 1989 Revolution was sort of like their 9/11. It was a very important shared event that had an enormous significance in everyone’s life. Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing when they found out about Ceausescu’s execution, as Lucie’s very vivid description of that event shows. I remember being frightened on 9/11, and I think Lucie’s fears on Christmas Day 1989 were similar to that. But her fears may have been even more intense because it was not clear that the information she was getting on television that day was reliable. In the United States we have a free press, lots of points of view, and not just one station that is run by the people in charge of the government. It must have been very unsettling to go from two hours of Ceausescu propaganda on television one night to all-day-long coverage of a revolution the next day, without knowing exactly who was in charge and whether what you are seeing and hearing is even true.
I was also surprised to hear Lucie describe the rumors she and her friends and family heard about the fall of Communism in other countries before it happened in Romania. Of course this kind of news would not have been presented on Ceausescu-controlled television, but it made me think how difficult it must have been not to be able to find out what was going on in the rest of the world because all the information you can get is controlled by the state. Lucie’s view that the people behind the revolution didn’t want the country to know the details of the revolution was also surprising to me. People should have a right to know what is going on in their own country. They shouldn’t have had to smuggle in tapes in to learn what is happening to them. That would have scared me too. I am thankful I live where we have a free press. I can only imagine what it was like to hear the shocking news on smuggled tapes that your country was in some kind of revolution.
I found very interesting the role of television in the lives of Romanians under Ceausescu’s rule. Television was used not only for entertainment, but also for state-promoted propaganda. From Lucie’s descriptions of the agricultural reports and propaganda-filled pageants, I learned that Ceausescu used television, a new technology, to promote his own interests and to control his population. It was interesting that, in Lucie’s view, the people who were behind the revolution and Ceausescu’s execution also used television to help them accomplish it. Television was something the Romanians had in their lives, but because Ceausescu had used it to promote his propaganda and false information for so long, the viewers couldn’t be sure what they were seeing when it showed them the events of the revolution. Yet the way that the revolution backers used the mass media to try to validate and underscore the scope of the movement is certainly consistent with Newman’s view of the importance of mass media to the success of a social movement (Newman, p. 472). Imagine how differently this revolution might have occurred if new technologies such as the internet and social media such as Facebook and Twitter had been available to the Romanian revolutionaries, as they were to the recent revolutions in the Arab World!
I felt that Lucie really wanted me to understand that life under Ceausescu was not always bad, and that the decline happened very gradually. She emphasized this point repeatedly throughout this interview. When you lose freedoms just a little at a time, and your quality of life slips just a little each day, it is hard to notice and hard to stand up and do something about it. Lucie’s view differs a bit from Newman’s position that social movements are more likely to arise when social conditions begin to improve than when they are at their worst (Newman, p. 470. In Lucie’s view, Romania’s 1989 Revolution occurred when conditions there were about at their worst, and there had been no lessening of the repression that characterized Ceausescu’s reign. It was clear to me that Lucie had given quite a bit of thought to this point since she left Romania. Lucie said that she still wonders today how Romania got into such a bad place under Ceausescu. She said she thinks it’s every Romanian’s fault, because no one had the courage to stand up. She wonders why the people didn’t just get together and say, “No, not today” and just go out and sit on the street together instead of standing in the rationing lines, driving their cars only on their designated day and putting up with their single dim light bulbs. Lucie said, “Twenty-five million people could have stood up.” But they didn’t.
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