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Abstract
This paper aims to uncover and assess the impact, the nature and the magnitude of exogenously articulated influences in the evolution of Romania’s political dynamics – during and in the aftermath of the December 1989 riots and fighting which overthrew the totalitarian regime of Ceauşescu. In this context, the document will test if the external orchestrated coup theory gets validation from the analysis of the existent data and of the relevant actors’ behavioural dynamics.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Designed as a mix of debt-induced austerity, import substitution and export-led accumulation of dollar reserves.
2. On 12 April 1989, in an address to the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, Ceauşescu announced that Romania had managed to pay off its foreign debt months before the established schedule – despite the penalties imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for advance payments (Andrei and Savu Citation2011) and had managed to pass (through a simulated vote) a symbolic law forbidding the government to contract foreign credits in the future. With the same occasion he stated that the period of debt-induced austerity was one of “great transformations” which contributed to an increase of the “civilization level and living standards of the whole people” (Ceauşescu Citation2009).
3. Bogdan Baltazar – former first diplomatic secretary and manager of the Africa division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1971 to 1981, a leading Romanian banker and the first spokesman of the Romanian government following the fall of the Communist regime.
4. Ion Coman – Secretary of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in 1989, former Minister of Defence (1976–1980) and former Chief of the Romanian Army’s General Staff (1974–1976).
5. During the meeting between the Romanian Ambassador to the USSR, Ion Bucur with the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, Ivan Aboimov on 21 December 1989, the Soviet diplomat mentions that according to the Kremlin’s information Romanian officials were contacting members of the Warsaw Pact diplomatic missions and trying to accredit the idea that USSR was planning a military intervention in Romania (Soviet source: Diplomaticheskii vestnik, No. 21/22, November 1994, 74–79 cited in Cold War International History Project, Citation1998, 189; Romanian source: Informational Note from the Romanian Embassy in Moscow to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Arhivele Ministerului Afacerilor Externe [Archives of the Foreign Affairs Ministry], Telegrams, Folder: Moscow, Vol. 10, 1989, 299–302).
6. One version, consisting in 8 pages is the reproduction from memory made by the stenographer in January 1990 and is kept at the Romanian National Archives, while the other – presumably the “original one” – was “lost”, for a long time, and eventually found in the archives of the military courts. Both versions were however contested as being mystifications of reality, especially by some participants. Both versions can be found in facsmilie at http://www.ziaristionline.ro/2015/04/08/stenogramele-false-si-presupus-originale-de-la-sedinta-cpex-al-cc-al-pcr-din-17-decembrie-1989-plus-teleconferinta-lui-ceausescu-fotodoc-si-audiovideo/ [accessed April 20, 2015].
7. The idea is indirectly reiterated in a telegram from the Assistant Deputy Minister within the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Aurel Duma to the chiefs of the Romanian diplomatic missions on 19 December 1989 (Arhiva Ministerului Afacerilor Externe Citation1989, 387–388).
8. Some accounts tend to question whether Gorbachev’s decision was genuine or not, especially by pointing out the use of force against the anti-Soviet manifestations in Georgia and Uzbekistan (1989) and Azerbaijan and Tajikistan (1990). Later, on 13 January 1991 an apparently Soviet-authorized attempt to overthrow the government and reduce the self-proclaimed independent Lithuania to its former status within USSR took place, leaving 14 dead and more than 700 wounded.
9. An interesting aspect in this sense is that according to the records of the conversation between the Soviet Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Ivan Aboimov and the US Ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock, on 25 December 1989 the latter delivered an official message, through which Washington whitelisted a Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military intervention in Romania, in order to help with securing regime change and avoiding a counter-revolution (Diplomaticheskii vestnik, No. 21/22, November 1994, 74–79 cited in Cold War International History Project Citation1998, 190–191).
10. In the update about the Romanian crisis provided by Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze to Mikhail Gorbachev on 20 December 1989, Shevarnadze mentions that he was forced to rely mostly on Western media in order to produce analytical reports on the Romanian revolts and that the attempts to obtain an official version from Romanian officials produced no results. In this context, the document suggests that the Kremlin should approach the issue with caution and refrain from any statement or from stepping in, before gathering “complete and objective information” (Shevardnadze Citation1994, 74–79).
11. The resolution stated that the main objective of the Communist Party of Lithuania was the establishment of an independent democratic Lithuanian state.
12. According to published Soviet documents, Moscow was aware by early and mid-1989 that “eruptions of discontent” were possible in the country, yet lacking the potential to become “widespread”, that Ceausescu’s departure “could be accompanied by quite painful developments” (Memorandum from the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU to Alexander Yakovlev regarding Soviet relations with European socialist countries during the transitional period for Eastern European countries, Woodrow Wilson Institute, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112485 ), that a social explosion could not be discounted and, even more, that Romania might experience a decisive shift towards the West (Memorandum to Alexander Yakovlev from the Bogomolov Commission – Changes in Eastern Europe and their impact on the USSR, Roy Rosenzweig Centre for History and New Media, http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/archive/files/changes-in-east-europe_d86e18e8f4.pdf ).
13. The fact that the eruption of the Timisoara riots and violence was triggered by an incident within the Hungarian community, and Romania’s tense relations with Hungary vis-à-vis Bucharest’s treatment of the Hungarian minority, offered some indirect support for these allegations.
14. In his analytical rendition of the events, Watts (Citation2015) – a proponent of the Soviet tourists narrative – tries to accredit the thesis that the testimonies and statements given by the Securitate officers in front of the Romanian courts cannot be treated as reliable evidence – because of their relatively high susceptibility to distortion over time and especially when such testimonies were given under alleged duress (all the cited testimonies had been made in the quality of witness in the trial of others). However, Watts does seem to base his own thesis on the testimonies and statements of other Securitate officers (condemned for the December 1989 bloodshed) whose statements were articulated along Soviet bloc intervention allegations.
15. For instance Bukovski (Citation1990), Castex (Citation1990) or Portocala and Weber (Citation1990).
16. Like for instance “active measures” type of actions described in Mitrokhin and Andrew Citation2000.
17. Most probably, if Soviet intelligence “was able to assist the conspirators, it was undoubtedly in a way that was least compromising” for the Kremlin possibly by serving as an informational hub and communicational interface for and between some of its Romanian interlocutors (Lévesque Citation1997, 203). Although in Romania’s case, “Soviet leaders, from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, wanted to get rid of Ceauşescu”, states Brown, by 1989, “the best way to assure his fall was not to risk being seen as hastening it” (Citation2001, 77).