Theories of Collective Action and Revolution: Evidence from the Romanian Transition of

December 1989
Author(s): Richard Andrew Hall
Source: Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 6 (Sep., 2000), pp. 1069-1093
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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 EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, Vol. 52, No. 6, 2000, 1069-1093 ^Y.

*, FraoC"

Theories of Collective Action and

Revolution: Evidence from the Romanian
Transition of December 1989

RICHARD ANDREW HALL

SEVERAL OF THE EAST EUROPEAN COMMUNIST REGIMES which collapsed in the a

of 1989 were toppled by street protests.' The role played by sudden mass mob
in the collapse of these regimes has quite naturally attracted the attention of th
study collective action.2 As 'revolutions', the East European events were uncha
istic in their lack of violence-both on the part of regime opponents and on
of regime forces.3 As has frequently been remarked, among the Soviet bloc co
only in Romania was the collapse of the communist regime violent, and that v
was on the part of the regime, not the demonstrators. The Romanian
interesting and significant because it presents the single case among Sov
countries where street protest played a major role in precipitating the collaps
communist regime and where the regime used substantial violence to preven
downfall. It thus stands at the crossroads of both theories of collective action and
theories of revolution.

Previous attempts to join theory to the Romanian transition have focused primarily
on classifying the event and on drawing structural linkages between preconditions and
outcomes.4 This scholarship has not, however, adequately captured the critical
interaction of structure and contingency, and thus the dynamism, of the Romanian
events. Structural explanations play a critical role in our ability to understand a
complex event such as the Romanian transition, but by themselves they are in-
sufficient, for they tend to take outcomes for granted and thus fail to address the
uncertainty of events recounted to us by those who participated directly in them.
Structural analysis is better at explaining the fact of the Ceau?escu regime's collapse
than why the regime collapsed when it did and, in particular, how it did-the
questions which motivate this study. The when and how of the transition matter
because they have real consequences in the lives of those who experience such events:
in Romania more than 1100 people lost their lives as a result of the timing and
manner in which the Ceau?escu regime collapsed.
This article attempts to explore in greater detail the dynamic interaction between
societal protest and regime response in the Romanian revolution. By focusing on the
dynamics of the collapse of the Romanian regime, we incorporate a broader body of
the literature on collective action and revolution and delve deeper into the assump-
tions, hypotheses and logic which underlie these theories. In the discussion which

ISSN 0966-8136 print/ISSN 1465-3427 online/00/061069-25 ? 2000 University of Glasgow

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1070 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

follows, I will show that the empirical evidence from the Romanian case yields str
support for the following hypotheses found in the literature on revolution
collective action: (1) regimes shape their oppositions by determining opportunities
dissent and by structuring the ideological/political space of dissent; (2) pre-exist
commonalities of interest and identity and pre-existing organisation critically aff
the capacity of groups to respond to changes in the political opportunity structure
state action or inaction in response to societal protest plays a catalytic role in th
revolutionary process; (4) the withdrawal of support for the regime by the arme
forces is critical to the success or failure of a revolution; (5) behaviour during th
revolutionary struggle is to some extent determined by expectations concering t
participation or non-participation of others (this applies to anti-regime protesters,
it is equally applicable to regime members themselves). The empirical eviden
presented here yields support for the hypotheses of a variety of theorists on revolu
and collective action, but not for any one particular theory.
A few clarifications are in order here. First, because I am primarily concerned w
explaining the when and how of the Romanian revolution, for analytical purpose
treat the 'transition', or period of the collapse, as a discrete event. This is not-no
does it intend to be-a longitudinal study of crisis, regime response and evolv
delegitimisation over the history of the Romanian communist regime.
Second, there are many more hypotheses in the literatures on collective action a
revolution than the ones discussed here: I have selected these particular hypothes
because they are among the most important and because the support yielded for th
in the Romanian case is strong.5 Clearly, by stating that the Romanian case yield
support for these hypotheses, I seek to make no claims to the wider, general valid
of these hypotheses: a single case cannot provide a definitive test of any given
hypothesis, but it can yield additional support for that hypothesis. I seek here merely
to expand the empirical data base for the selected hypotheses.
Third, virtually none of the Romanian language material used in the preparation of
this article has been previously cited in the West. It has been selected not to contradict
extant understanding of these events in the West but to amplify our understanding of
the dynamics of these events-especially of the motivations of those who participated
most directly in the events. With regard to the final stage of the revolution (the
so-called 'terrorist phase'), however, the Romanian source material brings new
knowledge to our understanding of the December 1989 events.
My approach in the discussion which follows attempts to be simultaneously
thematic and chronological. The article thus divides the December events into five
stages: a description of the character of the regime of Nicolae Ceau?escu on the eve
of the events; the outbreak of anti-regime protest; the growth and spread of
anti-regime protest; the collapse of the Ceau?escu regime; and the seizure and
consolidation of power in the wake of the collapse of the old regime. Each stage has
something to say which is relevant to the literature on revolution and collective
action.

Regimes shape their oppositions

The idea that regimes structure their oppositions, and thus often unintentionally create
and shape the elite which will replace them, is not a new insight. Hobbes, de

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1071

Tocqueville, Marx, Mosca and Pareto all spoke to this issue in some way.6 In rega
to the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, quite a few schol
have argued that the character of the communist regime shaped the path and chara
of regime collapse.7 Thus it was no surprise, these scholars argue, that peace
'pacted' transitions evolved in precisely the two countries, Poland and Hung
where the comparatively less repressive character of the late communist regime
allowed greater opportunities for opposition. There, organised opposition, thoug
officially illegal and consistently harassed and manipulated by the authorities, at
existed. This, in essence, gave reformers within party-state structures 'someone
negotiate with' as they themselves attempted to introduce change.
Regimes shape their oppositions by structuring access to the state and positions
authority and by determining what opportunities-if any-will exist for those wh
disagree with regime policy to voice their dissent. Regimes are thus capabl
coopting, defusing, fragmenting or atomising opposition or potential opposition
Regimes also structure their oppositions by determining the political/ideological s
of the opposition. Regime policy often determines which issues oppositions cons
most salient (and thus most in need of being changed). Regimes thus not o
strongly shape the menu of options regime opponents have for expressing t
dissent, but they also strongly shape the bases of the ideological legitimation of t
oppositions.
The fact that communist Romania never made the transition from totalitarianism to
post-totalitarianism-a transition which occurred to some extent even in Czechoslo-
vakia, East Germany and Bulgaria-the sultanist character of leadership in the
Ceausescu regime, and the antagonistic relationship of the Ceausescu regime with the
Soviet Union, had important implications for the existence, organisation and ideologi-
cal content of regime opposition.8 These regime characteristics ensured that oppo-
sition to Ceausescu within the party-state apparatus would be clandestine,
conspiratorial and ideologically stunted, focusing primarily on replacing Ceausescu
and only secondarily on the need to reform the system (something which perpetuated
illusions about the alleged 'reformability' and 'salvageability' of the system long after
such illusions had lost credibility among party-state elites elsewhere in Eastern
Europe).9 These characteristics also ensured that internal regime dissidence would
find little resonance in, and have little impact upon, society, because they had so
greatly alienated the party-state elite from society. And they ensured that societal
opposition, to the extent that it could exist at all, would be weak, disorganised and
without leadership. Moreover, because of the Ceausescu regime's longstanding
cooptation of genuinely popular nationalist and anti-Soviet sentiment, potential
opposition could not rely on these sources of legitimation to the extent that opposition
groups could elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Totalitarianism, sultanism and anti-Sovietism combined to homogenise and atomise
both the party-state and society, internally, and to intensify the estrangement of the
party-state from society. Dissent within party-state structures was construed, by
definition, not only as a betrayal of the Conducator and as 'anti-socialist' but, because
of Romania's tempestuous relationship with the Soviet Union (i.e. the modem
'Greater Russia'), as anti-national and thus potentially treasonous (particularly after
Gorbachev came to power and began to speak openly of the need for the political and

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1072 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

economic reform of the communist system). The Securitate (the regime's se

police) effectively portrayed dissenters within the party-state (primarily it wo
appear by spreading rumours to the effect) as wittingly or unwittingly serving
interests of the Soviet Union, a tactic which isolated such dissenters not only wit
party-state structures but also from a profoundly anti-Russian population. Such
strategy was also occasionally used, it appears, to isolate intellectuals calling
reform from the rest of the intelligentsia.'0 Ironically, at least in the case of disse
within the party-state, the position of weakness regime policies placed them in m
them even more dependent upon Soviet support (and more, not less, likely
collaborate with the Soviet Union, the only outside force which truly exercised
meaningful influence within Romania) if they were to have any possibilit
effecting change within Romania-a fact which from the beginning sharply dama
the credibility and popular legitimacy of the party-state officials who seized powe
December 1989."1
The regime's control of society and Ceau?escu's personal control of the party-st
were sufficiently totalistic that dissent either in society or in the party-state se
quixotic at best, suicidal at worst: that is, dissent was seen as a solitary gest
unlikely to generate demonstrations of solidarity or new expressions of dissent.'2
success of the Ceau?escu regime in eliminating almost all autonomous societ
organised activity has perhaps been captured best by Linz and Stepan in th
comparison of Romania and its neighbouring communist ally, Bulgaria. Linz and
Stepan cite a statistic which draws the comparatively dire situation in Romania into
relief: according to Radio Free Europe, in June 1989 in Bulgaria (a country where the
regime was at most only in the early phase of post-totalitarianism) there were 13
independent organisations, all of whose leaders' names were known, while in
Romania there were only two independent organisations with bases inside the
country, neither of whose leaders' names was publicly known.13
These regime characteristics greatly reduced the impact of actions which many
theorists have traditionally considered of primary importance in igniting revolutions:
the public manifestation of divisions among the ruling elite and the defection of
intellectuals who have previously supported the regime.14 Thus, as Radio Free
Europe's senior Romanian analyst, Michael Shafir, accurately predicted at the time,
the so-called Letter of the Six, which became public knowledge in the spring of
1989-the most noteworthy instance of inner regime dissidence prior to the collapse
of the regime-was unlikely to have a wider impact upon the population since the
signatories, all at one time high-ranking members of the communist regime, placed
blame for Romania's sorry condition primarily upon the Ceau?escu couple and their
sycophants, called for minimal reform of the system, and seemed unable to acknowl-
edge their own responsibility for the systemic dimensions of Romania's crisis.15
The regime's totalitarian policies not only atomised but deepened longstanding
cleavages in Romanian society-especially that between intellectuals and profession-
als and the rest of society. Thus the courageous expressions of dissent in the late
1980s by intellectuals and professionals such as the Cluj University French lecturer
Doina Cornea, the poet Mircea Dinescu, or even the Romania Libera journalists Petre
Mihai Bacanu, Mihai Creanga and Anton Uncu, had little broader impact on the rest
of society.16

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1073

Taken together, it was therefore no surprise that a peaceful, negotiated transit

did not evolve in the Romanian context, and that neither the public manifestatio
divisions within the ruling elite nor the defection of intellectuals from the regime w
sufficient to instigate change. The characteristics of the Ceausescu regime all b
ensured that, were anti-regime protest to break out, it would be largely spontan
the catalyst would be individuals and groups at the fringes of society, and regi
change would be violent and chaotic.

The creative force of spontaneity and the role of prior organisation in the out
of anti-regime protest: Timisoara, 15-17 December 1989

How do we explain the sudden eruption of anti-regime protest in Romania

mid-December 1989, especially considering how anomalous such an event was in
history of communist Romania?17 Sidney Tarrow suggests that mass mobilisation
political change (including regime change) are a function of changes in the 'pol
opportunity structure'.18 In totalitarian systems changes in the 'political opportu
structure' are critical because they allow citizens to free themselves from
'preference falsification' and 'dissimulation' characteristic of everyday life in ord
express their view that the regime is illegitimate.19 At first glance, the outbreak
anti-regime protest in Timisoara appears to have occurred with almost no substan
prior modification of the domestic political opportunity structure. As has already
discussed, neither instances of dissent from society nor from within the party-
had sparked further, broader action: instead, these became episodic and dis
events.

In the autumn of 1989 'opportunities' to oust Ceausescu from power did exist for
party-state elites, but they were either unwilling or unable (or both) to do so. In spit
of the fact that the East German and Czechoslovak regimes had recently collapsed
because of their failure to act early and decisively, and with the precedent of recent
events in neighbouring Bulgaria (where just a little over two weeks earlier party-stat
elites had ousted long-time party leader Todor Zhivkov in a bloodless 'palace coup'),
members of the Romanian party-state elite did not express dissent, let alone act to
remove Ceausescu, at the XIV Party Congress in late November 1989. Indeed, on the
contrary, they unanimously re-elected Ceausescu to the post of General Secretary,
even though this long-anticipated, pre-scheduled event offered them the perfect
opportunity to act.
Even the 'international opportunity structure', which Tarrow admits played a much
larger role in sparking mass mobilisation in Eastern Europe than it has traditionally
played in the West, seems an insufficient explanation to account for the outbreak of
anti-regime protest.20 Changes in the 'international opportunity structure' were funda
mental in precipitating changes in the domestic political opportunity structures of
these countries, and frequently mass mobilisation occurred without substantia
modification of the domestic political opportunity structure first. The Soviet decisio
to abstain from military intervention to save the communist party's monopoly on
power in Eastern Europe-at first tacit, then confirmed in practice by the events in
Poland in August 1989-had far fewer, and substantially less threatening, implica-
tions for Romania since, unlike all other Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe (sav

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1074 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

Bulgaria), Romania did not have Soviet troops stationed on its soil, and sinc
Romanian party (unlike even its Bulgarian counterpart) was not dependent upo
Soviet 'military veto' for its hold on power (as we have seen, if anything, it ca
argued that its hold on power was based in its limitation of Soviet influence).
Such an approach, however, defines what constitutes the 'international level'
narrowly. Romania was substantially affected by the so-called 'demonstration'
tagion', 'diffusion') effect of events elsewhere in Eastern Europe.21 What happ
elsewhere in Eastern Europe had implications for domestic Romanian polit
spite of Romania's anomalous relationship with the Soviet Union-because of
strong degree of real and perceived ideological, institutional and historical simila
among East European communist regimes. Thus, in spite of the absence of dom
reasons to justify being hopeful about the prospects for change in Romania, new
the fantastic events elsewhere in the bloc inevitably raised hopes and expectati
within society and among members of the party-state of change in Romania. Thi
perhaps particularly the case when it came to the events in East Germany
Czechoslovakia, similarly hardline regimes, and especially neighbouring Bulgari
In spite of the complete news blackout of these events by the official Rom
media, news of them filtered into Romania by way of foreign radio broadcasts
Moreover, the flood of matter-of-fact reports in the Romanian press on (previo
unscheduled) party meetings and leadership changes in 'fraternal' communist par
elsewhere in Eastern Europe indicated that something quite unusual was going on in
the rest of the region.24 Significantly, Timisoara, which would be the site of the
outbreak of anti-regime protest, was located some 50 miles from both the Yugoslav
and Hungarian borders and thus was in the target range of both radio and television
broadcasts from these two neighbouring and (at the time) more open countries.25
The very success which totalitarian regimes achieve in their efforts to control
society may paradoxically leave them vulnerable to spontaneous outbursts of anti-
regime collective action. Having closed off the use of official institutions as a
platform for dissent and atomised society by creating a climate of fear and penetrating
it with collaborators and informers working for the state, they make spontaneous
action essentially the only possible avenue for dissent. The myth of 'total control'
serves the regime because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: when citizens believe
this myth, they are less likely to engage in 'quixotic' attempts at dissent. But,
paradoxically, this myth simultaneously undermines the regime's ability to exert
effective control, and especially its ability to respond to anti-regime collective action
when it does occur, because it inevitably creates a climate of over-confidence and
complacency among regime officials. In a sense, the success of the myth of 'total
control' is so powerful that the authorities are structurally vulnerable to being 'taken
by surprise' in a way which less totalitarian regimes are not.
Totalitarian regimes are also vulnerable to spontaneous action because of their
overtly ideological emphasis-which deeply politicises even routine, non-political
societal behaviour-and their extreme centralisation of power within the state and in
the capital. These two factors combine to ensure that issues and incidents which in
another regime type might have no political implications, and which could more
easily and effectively be dealt with at a lower and more proximate level of
administration, instead almost immediately become politicised and are escalated to

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1075

'the centre' for resolution. Indeed, the very character of totalitarianism underm
the possibility of achieving the totalitarian goal of total control.
As theorists of the so-called Natural History school of revolution (e.g. C
Brinton, Lyford Edwards and George Pettee) have suggested, the actual event w
precipitates the collapse of an unpopular regime is frequently insignificant in itse
The hyper-centralisation of state structures in communist regimes and the dee
ingrained Marxist view that all public and private life is inherently politicised
political ensured that this would be the case in Eastern Europe. Hence, in the autu
of 1989 the event which sparked regime collapse in East Germany was the refusa
the Hungarian government to repatriate East German tourists who were refusing
return to East Germany. In Czechoslovakia it was a march marking the 5
anniversary of the martyrdom of the first Czech student murdered by the Nazis
in Bulgaria it was a protest by an environmental group timed to coincide with
presence of a CSCE delegation in the capital. In Romania the event was the attem
eviction of a Hungarian pastor from his parish in the southwestern city of Timis
close to both the Hungarian and Yugoslav borders.
Revisionist historiography since December 1989 has rejected the initial underst
ing that this event spontaneously evolved into an anti-regime protest.27 For exam
in an article which had a great impact inside Romania, the French investig
journalists Radu Portocala and Olivier Weber maintained that the Securitate (or
least a faction of it) purposely spread the rumour of the pastor's impending evic
for weeks before it took place 'in order to prepare public opinion'.28 The journ
maintain that this was highly unusual in Romania since 'it was always known w
somebody had been arrested but never that somebody would be arrested'. Accor
to Portocala and Weber, in the context of the ongoing collapse of communist reg
in Eastern Europe, elements of the Ceau?escu regime decided to preemptively o
Ceausescu in order to prevent the more thorough-going loss of power which m
accompany a genuine revolution. In their estimation, then, the alleged Securita
rumour was part of a plan laying the groundwork for a premeditated coup d'et
The impending eviction of the clergyman in question, Pastor Laszlo Tokes of
Hungarian Reformed Calvinist Church in Timi?oara, was in reality no se
however. Pastor Tokes himself writes that not only did he know of the regime's
intention to evict him but he knew the date of his scheduled eviction.29 He knew these
details because the regime had apprised him of his impending eviction. Nothing
particularly unusual or conspiratorial deserves to be read into this. Tokes had long had
run-ins with the regime over his persistent criticism of collaboration and corruption
among his superiors in the Reformed Calvinist Church and of the regime's treatment
of the Hungarian minority. As Tokes himself admits, once his particular case gained
Western attention in the late 1980s the regime tended to favour a more bureaucratic
approach to silencing him.30 Supremely confident in their ability to control society,
the authorities had seen no need-even in the rarefied context of December 1989-to
cloak its strategy against Tokes.
Thus, for example, rather than expel Tokes from the ministry completely (as had
been done for a period several years earlier), the Reformed Calvinist hierarchy
suspended Tok6s from his Timi?oara parish and ordered him to relocate to the remote
village of Mineu. Tokes first found out about the church hierarchy's decision in

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1076 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

March 1989, he was informed of the deadline of 15 December 1989 when his fir
appeal was rejected in August, and he was assured on 28 November in the rejecti
of his second appeal that his eviction would definitely be enforced on 15 Decem
if he did not vacate the parish residence before then. As a result, it was possible f
Pastor Tokes to alert his congregation on Sunday 10 December 1989 of th
impending 'illegal act' and to appeal to them to attend as 'peaceful witnesses', sin
the authorities would probably use force and he did not intend to go willingly.3
In spite of the fact that the regime had considered Tokes a serious threat for so
time and in spite of the news from elsewhere in Eastern Europe where seeming
insignificant events had toppled similar seemingly invulnerable communist regim
Ceausescu regime officials appear to have underestimated the commitment of To
parishioners to preventing his eviction and the capacity for the eviction to spar
broader anti-regime protest. This was possible for the very same reason that the
German and Czechoslovak regimes were taken by surprise: absolute, unchallenge
power leads to complacency and a misplaced sense of invulnerability. In spite of
increased vigilance of the Romanian regime in the wake of the East German and
Czechoslovak events, Ceau?escu regime officials appear still to have believed that 'it
can't happen here'. Moreover, regime officials appear to have accepted their own
propaganda that Tokes' grievances had no resonance in the broader culture, that his
demands were isolated and sectarian.
The fact that Tokes' case embodied both religious and ethnic dimensions, that the
church structure bestows upon the minister an institutionally-ordained leadership
position, and that Tokes himself was by all accounts quite charismatic, contributed to
the potential for collective action among Tokes' followers. Durkheimian assumptions
predict that collective action should be driven by an anomic population of individuals
with little previous contact among them and with little in common other than their
shared sense of anomie.32 For those following in the Durkheimian tradition (including
Ted Robert Gurr and others who stress the 'psychological' sources of protest),
grievance and the shared character of that grievance are what drive collective action:
prior organisation does not play an important role. The genesis of anti-regime protest
in Timi?oara appears to counter these Durkheimian assumptions: the prior group
coherence provided by religious institutions was of critical importance.
It is precisely in environments where group coherence and organisation are low that
what little opportunity for group coherence and organisation exists becomes most
important. Partly because the elimination of religious institutions would have perhaps
met with more resistance than even collectivisation, because communist elites came
to see them as a safety valve for societal discontent, and perhaps because of a lack
of commitment on the part of elites (who, in spite of themselves, were to some extent
still bounded by the national culture in which they had been raised), religious
institutions were some of the few forums of societal organisation which survived the
totalitarian assault on society. Almost inevitably, religious institutions became poten-
tial havens of anti-regime dissidence in otherwise 'flattened' societies. Thus, particu-
larly in pre-Solidarity Poland, the Catholic Church played an important role in
curtailing the encroachment of the state on society and thus in creating an environ-
ment in which civil society organisations could develop. Indeed, as some analysts
have observed, the Church's coordination of the Pope's 1979 visit provided a

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1077

laboratory in societal self-organisation which served as a springboard for the birt

Solidarity a year later.33 The protection of societal organisation by the church was
important in East Germany, where the Lutheran and Evangelical churches shelt
the so-called peace groups which served as a primer for the later evolution of N
Forum.

In the Romanian case, the Reformed Calvinist Church, along with the Catholic
Church and Adventist Church, were sites of overlapping communal and associational
memberships: not only were they minority religions in the face of the Romanian
Orthodox Church, but they were overwhelmingly and almost exclusively ethnic
Hungarian in their membership.34 These minority religious institutions were fre-
quently identified by Hungarians (and, no doubt, by the authorities) as vehicles for the
defence of Hungarian culture and collective rights. T6kes' congregation in Timisoara
was thus characterised by the conditions which Anthony Oberschall suggests contrib-
ute to a capacity for collective action: strong communal and associational ties among
a group of people who are to some extent segregated from, and at odds with, the rest
of the broader society.35 Thus, when a threat to their interests developed-the
regime's intention to evict Pastor T6kes-their capacity to mobilise was enhanced by
their pre-existing bases of common identity and organisation.
The combination of strong group coherence and societal marginality also played a
role in expanding protest beyond the initial core of Hungarian supporters from Tokes'
congregation. A senior member of T6kes' congregation had informed members of the
Romanian Baptist and Pentecostal communities (two fringe religions which had faced
considerable regime harassment) earlier in the week of Tokes' impending eviction.36
Members of these two churches helped swell the crowd (numbering in the low
hundreds) protesting against Tokes' eviction to over a thousand people by the evening
of 15 December 1989.
The expansion of the protest to the majority Romanian community and its evolution
into an openly anti-regime demonstration on Saturday 16 December 1989 was also
clearly facilitated by the comparatively cosmopolitan climate of Timisoara. With its
close proximity to both the Hungarian and Yugoslav (Serb) borders, this city (which
incidentally was the first in Europe to have outdoor electric lighting) is characterised
by comparatively good relations (for this region) among majority Romanians and
minority Hungarians, Germans and Serbs.37 Finally, prior group coherence also
played a large role in swelling the ranks of the protesters on Saturday 16 December
as large numbers of high school and university students (especially from the
dormitories of the Timi?oara Polytechnical Institute) poured into the streets. On
Sunday 17 December these nuclei of protesters joined together and were joined by
other, unaffiliated townspeople to form the largest mass anti-regime demonstration of
the Ceau?escu era.

Regime actions/inactions undermine regime control and propel collapse: the regime's
informational or 'public relations' response, 18-22 December 1989

Structural theories of revolution are frequently criticised for their failure to acknowl-
edge the tremendous contingency of the events which constituted the revolution at the

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1078 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

time they transpired. Such theories neglect the fact that the outcomes of the
decisions and actions which made the revolution possible were unknown to those
took them at the time. Thus, structural theories ignore how the actions and inac
of the regime in response to collective action determine whether an anti-re
protest fizzles out, is contained and defused, or spreads and sparks the overthrow
the regime.
Although we typically conceive of how state action/inaction in response to
anti-regime protest shapes the evolution of events in terms of the state's use of
coercion, we can also think of it in terms of the state's informational or 'public
relations' response. A peculiarly modern (post-Enlightenment) concern for public
opinion compels even the most dictatorial regimes to attempt to explain why
anti-regime protest has occurred, why it is illegitimate, and why the regime has the
right to suppress it. But such an effort requires the construction of an understanding
for public consumption: it is this sort of 'propaganda offensive' which has the
potential to boomerang on a regime. In a closed political system-where information
is tightly controlled-the regime's effort to put out its own version of the truth often
succeeds in giving the public information it otherwise would not have had, and in
alienating them by insulting their intelligence.38 The power of mass media and of the
state in the 20th century have frequently been portrayed as overwhelming, yet these
institutions can prove remarkably fragile in crisis situations and their very power can
lead to fantastic mistakes.
Under routine circumstances, the absurdity which frequently characterises totali-
tarian rule is stoically accepted by its subjects. But once change is in the air-that is,
once regime change seems possible-the absurdity of the totalitarian regime is drawn
into relief. For example, when on the morning of Sunday 17 December 1989
demonstrators in Timisoara returned to the county party headquarters building, the
site of fierce clashes with the authorities on the previous night, they found the
building with its windows repaired, the previous night's graffiti scrubbed away, the
flowers and grass replanted, and trees broken the previous night tied together with
wire!39 The regime's philosophy seemed to be: where there are no traces of the past
(even of the previous night), there can be no memory of the events which left those
traces. Similarly, when on Monday 18 December regime officials announced that
Romania would regrettably not be able to accept any more tourists for the winter
season, they felt it necessary to justify their decision: it was necessary because of a
'shortage of hotel rooms' and because 'weather conditions' were 'not suitable for
tourism', they explained.40
Although regime forces opened fire on peaceful demonstrators on the afternoon of
Sunday 17 December-resulting in almost one hundred dead and hundreds of
wounded-and continued to hunt down demonstrators well into Monday morning,
the official media (including the local Timi?oara newspaper) made no mention of the
turbulent events which had rocked the city over the previous two days. But the
Ceau?escus were simply unwilling and unable to leave well enough alone. On their
orders, but apparently in particular on the orders of Elena Ceau?escu, party officials
were dispatched to various factories in the city from the morning of Monday 18
December to clarify for workers what had not happened in the town the night before.
As the former party secretary of Timi? county laments, not only did these meetings

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1079

not have the desired effect but they 'essentially enabled them [the worker
organise':

Monday, they discussed and organised at the lathes, at the mills, and at the workpl
Tuesday they came out into the courtyards of the factories, and by Wednesday they
come into the centre of town. That was the evolution of the events in Timisoara. That's
it was.41

In other words, a regime effort designed to head off further collective action
succeeded in fuelling it.
The comments of one employee at the Electrobanat (ELBA) factory illustrate how
the dynamics of this process unfolded. Ironically, she observes, prior to the arrival of
the party official at her factory, many workers indeed did not fully realise the scope
of the violence on the previous night.42 According to this factory worker, the
presentation of the party official was so absurd that it provoked a reaction entirely
opposite to what the regime wished. The party official had argued that

... hooligans, fascists and corrupt and retrograde elements had devastated Timisoara. We
also learned about Laszl6 T6oks, a religious fanatic who incited vagabonds to attack, steal
and set things on fire. They also attracted children into these actions. All were drunk,
including the children and the women; they had got drunk with the liquor which had been
stolen from the supermarkets which had been broken into. They attacked the county [party]
building, but not to be worried: all of them had been captured. All of them.43

This was the reason, they were told, why a 'state of emergency' was now in effect
(unofficially declared at this point) and all gatherings of more than three people had
been banned. The workers were warned about 'rumour-mongering'. Upon returning
to their workplaces, the employee claims that workers were left with a lingering
question: 'Where had so many "fascists", "hooligans" and "drunks" of all ages in
Timisoara come from so suddenly?'44 Ad hoc strike committees began to form at this
and others of Timisoara's most important plants later that day.
Had anti-regime protest not spread beyond Timisoara-as happened from Wednes-
day 20 December-it is possible that the regime could have isolated the city, waited
out the protesters, and then brutally reimposed control, much as it had done in
crushing a workers' demonstration in the central town of Brasov two years earlier.
But, ironically, Ceausescu's own arrogant and impulsive behaviour made such a
strategic approach impossible. Unlike the almost complete media blackout which
characterised the Brasov events (until well after the regime had cracked down and
re-established control), this time, perhaps realising the much more serious threat to his
regime posed by the Timisoara unrest given the recent collapse of communist regimes
elsewhere in the region, Ceausescu took to the airwaves.
Just hours after returning from his two-day visit to Iran, Ceausescu went on
television on the evening of Wednesday 20 December to denounce the 'terrorist
actions' in Timisoara 'organised and unleashed in close connection with reactionary,
imperialist, irredentist, chauvinist circles and foreign espionage services in various
foreign countries'.45 Ceausescu's characterisation of the Timisoara unrest appears to
give support to arguments about the tendency of leaders (particularly tyrannical
leaders) to use a 'rally round the flag' defence in times of severe crisis. Given the

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1080 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

aforementioned isolationist/xenophobic character of the Ceau?escu regime, such

nationalist appeal to the population to defend the regime in the name of the home
was in keeping with longstanding regime policy. Not only were the Timisoara eve
the work of foreign agents, they were anti-national in character. Just as in the ca
the party official's address to the employees of the ELBA factory, many of those
the television audience learned for the first time that something serious had occ
in Timi}oara in the preceding days, and that the regime was frightened b
specifically thanks to Ceau?escu's hysterical tirade.
A second, even more misguided decision was taken the following day w
Ceau?escu decided to convoke a pro-regime rally in the centre of Buchares
denounce foreign interference in Romania's internal affairs (i.e. the Timi?
events). Though speculation has been rampant since December 1989 that Ceau?es
had been goaded by cabinet members to make such a catastrophic mistake, it appe
that the idea for this rally was all Ceau?escu's. The influence of precedent
memory appear to have weighed heavily here: as Ceau?escu's comments to
members of the Political Executive Committee (the CPEx, the Romanian equival
of the Politburo) throughout the week of 16-22 December suggest, and many for
regime members have claimed, Ceau?escu believed that he and Romania w
confronted with a situation very similar to, if not identical with, August 1968. At
time Ceau?escu took advantage of the opportunity offered by celebrations comm
orating the overthrow of Marshal Ion Antonescu's regime on 23 August 1944 (it h
become the official national day under communist rule) to denounce the invasion
Czechoslovakia by Soviet and other Warsaw Pact forces-minus Romania-just two
days earlier.46 Ceau?escu had thus tapped into a genuinely popular nationalist and
anti-Soviet sentiment and he was warmly received by the population. The event
appears to have left an indelible impression upon Ceau?escu and it was the 'spirit of
'68' which he apparently attempted to rekindle in December 1989-but with strik-
ingly different results.
If Ceausescu's decision to convene this mass rally and to believe that he could play
the nationalist card as he had done 21 years earlier was misguided, his order that the
event be televised live and nationwide proved to be positively suicidal. A national
television audience was able to hear commotion while Ceau?escu spoke to the crowd
assembled beneath the Central Committee building and to witness his confusion and
frustration when stock pro-regime chants suddenly turned into cries of 'Timisoara,
Timi?oara'. Ironically, the commotion appears to have been caused by the efforts of
groups of protesters to penetrate the cordon surrounding the official rally.47 Regime
forces let off tear gas grenades ('petardes') to prevent them from entering the rally,
and demonstrators and rally participants took advantage of the confusion to shout
anti-regime slogans.
It took television almost three minutes to cut the live feed, and by that time the
damage had been done: an entire national audience had seen that the emperor had no
clothes. In many of the larger cities (particularly in Transylvania), such as Sibiu and
Cluj, the number of demonstrators and their boldness appeared to increase dramati-
cally after this event: the televised image of Ceau?escu's shock and helplessness had
suggested that the 'Timi?oara virus' had migrated to the capital, that anti-regime
protest had become a nationwide phenomenon, and that, for the first time, the

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1081

Ceausescu regime was vulnerable and change might be possible. Once again
communications appear to have played an important part in spreading the revolutio
Not even an Orwellian re-broadcast of the rally on national television that evenin
with pro-Ceausescu chants dubbed in over the catcalls and anti-regime shouts cou
repair the damage-indeed, it may once again have only enraged and emboldened t
population.48
The final instance of how the regime's information policy backfired was the
televised announcement on the morning of Friday 22 December, just hours before
the collapse of the regime, of the alleged suicide of the 'traitor' Defence Minister,
General Vasile Milea. Rightly or wrongly-since Milea's actions during his final
hours are in dispute and since Ceausescu's paranoia was often not tightly correlated
to reality-such an announcement suggested that the loyalty of the Army's high
command might be in question and it may have hastened the defection of the armed
forces from the regime and emboldened the demonstrators. Moreover, most Romani-
ans interpreted the portrayal of the cause of Milea's death as a lie-it was more likely
that he had been, in the language of Ceausescu-era Romania, 'suicided', a suspicion
which appears to have been confirmed since December 1989 by details which suggest
that Milea was shot by a member of Ceausescu's Securitate, more for the failure of
the Army's actions than for open insubordination.
All of these incidents suggest that the control over public opinion attributed even
to the most totalitarian regimes is frequently overstated. Authoritarian or totalitarian
regimes may control the mass media and the flow of information to society, and they
may be able to shape the understanding of the population, but they cannot completely
control the interpretation of such information by the population or the connotation or
meaning the population attaches to it, particularly not during times of crisis where the
regime is already widely viewed as illegitimate.

The loyalty of the regime's armed forces

The defection of the armed forces from the ruling political elite is critical to the
success or failure of anti-regime challenges. As D. E. H. Russell's work has
demonstrated, although the defection of the armed forces may not always be enough
to solidify regime change, most regimes do not collapse without such a defection
having taken place.49 This event is important because its impact is both real and
psychological, and because it affects both demonstrators and the ruling political elite.
The defection of the armed forces deprives the ruling political elite of the means for
ensuring the regime's survival and may test their resolve to hold on to power-
especially if there exists the prospect that these armed forces might now turn their
guns on their former political masters. For those opposing the regime, the defection
of the armed forces is a material, psychological and moral victory. The defection of
the armed forces from the existing political authorities means the challenge opponents
face in overcoming the regime is reduced. Prospects of success-which did not
previously exist-fuel demands, embolden demonstrators and encourage a band-
wagon effect in which those previously wary of extending their support to the
demonstrators (even when supporting the demonstrators' goals) now do so.
Throughout the week of 16-22 December 1989 the military response of the

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1082 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

Ceau?escu regime to anti-regime protest mirrored its public relations response:

demonstrated a concerted unwillingness to leave well enough alone. Ceau?es
inability to grasp the depth of his own personal, and his regime's, popular illegitim
was manifested in his decision to dispatch army units-complete with fanfare, f
and patriotic songs-to parade through Timi?oara on the morning of Sunday
December. The Militia and Securitate having forcibly removed Pastor Tokes from
parish residence in the early hours of Sunday 17 December, Ceau?escu apparently
believed that such an action would be a fitting culmination to the regime-societ
confrontation and would encourage Timi?oara's citizens to think twice before join
in protest again.
The former party secretary of Timisoara (sentenced after December 1989 for
part in ordering the repression of demonstrators) maintains that Ceau?escu ordered
military parade as a show of force to demonstrate to the people just how strong a
invincible the regime was, but that the action backfired.50 No doubt the townspe
instead viewed this action as both absurd-given the magnitude of the crisis
regime was facing, it seemed symbolic of Ceau?escu's divorce from reality
provocative.51 The townspeople responded by gathering to jeer the soldiers and
them with stones.

Ceau?escu's decision to deploy the army was probably motivated at least in part by
his perception that, because the army was both objectively a more 'popular' organis-
ation (given that its rank-and-file were conscripted) and was held in higher esteem
than other regime institutions by the population, the army's participation in the
regime's show of force would lend regime action (including repression) legitimacy.
Of course, it was precisely because the army's core membership was more genuinely
'popular' that its participation proved so destabilising. Demonstrators seemed to seize
on this immediately, thereby contradicting 'irrationalist' assumptions concerning the
behaviour of individuals when in crowds. Demonstrators attempted to appeal to the
sympathy of army soldiers by chanting 'Armata e cu noi' (the army is with us). 'We
are the people, whom are you defending?' and 'You also have wives and children'.52
Though army units (including conscripts) appear to have opened fire with other
regime forces on the evening of Sunday 17 December-killing almost one hundred
and wounding hundreds more-it appears that the refusal of the townspeople of
Timi?oara to give up the fight in the days which followed may have weakened the
commitment of these soldiers to their mission. For example, army units appear to
have begun to refrain from direct intervention in the activities of the demonstrators
beginning from the evening of Tuesday 19 December. The event which may have
triggered this change in policy was a confrontation at the aforementioned ELBA
factory where the mostly female workforce had gone on strike.
Two hundred soldiers had been dispatched to the plant in order to 'persuade' the
women to return to work. The effect was the opposite of what was intended: the
women began by chanting 'We will not work under arms!' and ended up chanting
'Down with Ceau?escu!' Several leading officials of the city and an army general
(General Guse) who rushed to the scene were temporarily cornered by the women.
The party secretary of Timi?oara frantically scribbled the demands of the women in
his notebook-'We want heat ... We want chocolate for our children ... socks,
underwear, cocoa, and cotton'-until a diversion outside the plant allowed them to

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1083

make their escape in the resulting confusion.53 For the recruits, in particular, the
been confronted not by the foreign terrorists and agents they had been led to e
by the regime propaganda which was being heavily disseminated to them at th
barracks, but by a workforce of determined women who were voicing many of
same concerns that they and their families shared. Significantly, after the incid
regime forces evacuated the area around the ELBA plant and the employees too
the streets. And that afternoon and evening gunfire in the city tapered off and
ceased completely.
By the morning of Wednesday 20 December a general strike prevailed througho
Timi?oara and only the bread factories were in operation. A demonstratio
solidarity with those who had lost family members and friends in the violence o
preceding days-and were now demanding the return of their dead-drew column
workers to the city centre. Army units allowed citizens to proceed unhindered. T
was the first clear indication of support by the army rank and file for the demon
tors' cause. Soldiers reportedly refused to carry out their orders and some even j
in the demonstration.54 The slogan 'the army is with us' resounded throughout
centre of Timi?oara. Soon after, the army began to withdraw to barracks. As sol
disappeared from the streets, reports suggest that the remaining Securitate and M
men either followed their lead or were overwhelmed by the crowds.55 By evenin
many as 100 000 people-almost a third of Timiroara's population-had report
taken to the centre of town in triumph.
At the time, observers were tempted to interpret the army's action as evidence
the military chain of command was disintegrating and mid-level officers were tak
matters into their own hands. Moreover, the withdrawal was viewed as an unequiv
cal sign of support for the demonstrators' cause. Army Major Viorel Oancea, who
22 December (prior to the flight of the Ceau~escus) was to become the first arm
officer in Timisoara to declare publicly his allegiance to the revolution, neverthe
denies the idea of a spontaneous retreat: 'Evidently, it was an order, the army was
in a position to be taking independent decisions ... Probably General Gu?e o
Coman [took this decision] ... .56 The Army's high command was undoubte
concerned about its ability to maintain its institutional coherence under these circum
stances and the only way to prevent a further breakdown in control was to take
the soldiers off the streets.57 Regardless of how it was intended, however, the
townspeople of Timisoara nevertheless interpreted the action of retiring troops to
barracks as support for their cause.
The Romanian case suggests that the armed forces' withdrawal of support from the
existing regime, rather than its transfer of that support to those contesting the regime,
may be enough to fatally wound the existing regime, even when the opposition is
fragmented and isolated. Once again, in a totalitarian regime, the non-existence or
extreme weakness of societal opposition makes regime behaviour all the more central
to outcomes. For anti-regime demonstrators, the military's declaration of a position of
neutrality in the current confrontation or its return to barracks is a change in the status
quo and is interpreted as a victory. Its impact is twofold, both practical and
psychological: it permits and emboldens anti-regime protest. Perception can be as
important as reality. That the high command of the Romanian Army appears to have
withdrawn from Timi?oara primarily in the interests of maintaining institutional

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1084 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

cohesion does not really matter in the final analysis. Romanian citizens inter
this as moral support for their struggle and as a defeat for the regime. It incre
chances that the demonstrators' cause would succeed and it increased their confidence
that they would triumph.
Clearly, in the capital, Bucharest, and elsewhere, the army did not exhibit any signs
that a general decision had been taken to defect from the regime. In Bucharest, Cluj
and other cities the army participated alongside the Militia and the Securitate in the
repression of demonstrators from the afternoon of Thursday 21 December into the
early morning hours of Friday 22 December, including opening fire on peaceful
demonstrators (leading to the death of several dozen protesters). On the morning of
Friday 22 December, however, columns of workers from the factories ringing the
outskirts of Bucharest were allowed to advance relatively unhindered towards the city
centre. Overwhelmed commanders in the field were constantly inquiring of their
superiors how they should proceed in light of the rapidly changing situation. In some
cases they apparently received the order from mid-level commanders to mass around
their equipment; in others they apparently followed their own conscience. According
to army sources, the effect of the soldiers grouping around their equipment was de
facto to break up the cordons of regime forces designed to prevent the forward
progress of the demonstrators.58
Contingency-chance-perhaps even the snap judgement of one or two mid-level
commanders, may ultimately have played an important role here in determining
whether protesters were able to storm the key square in front of the Central
Committee building and breach the building itself-thus putting the Ceau*escus on
the run-or whether the regime would be able to launch another round of bloody
repression and re-establish control. The apparently spontaneous decisions of an
infantry captain to withdraw his armoured vehicle at a key crossing point leading to
the main square in front of the Central Committee building, and of a certain Colonel
Carp to remove the armoured vehicles surrounding the building (apparently upon
hearing of the announcement that the Defence Minister had 'committed suicide') were
critical to the evolution of events.59 These snap decisions enabled demonstrators to
occupy the main square in front of the Central Committee building and to lay siege
to the building itself, something which foiled the plan of some within the army's
higher command to retake the square and which prompted the Ceau?escus to flee from
the roof of the building in an overloaded helicopter.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Ion Pomojnicu, one of the few army officers in
the Central Committee building at the time, the army's fragmentation was critical
since the Securitate inside had indeed been 'armed to the teeth' with machine guns
and piles of ammunition and 'determined to face anything'.60 The Securitate were
caught off-guard, however, by the rapid development of events precipitated by the
unanticipated actions of the army units defending the building:

Generally speaking, you know the withdrawal of the army created great surprise. The
moment the army withdrew, the other forces fragmented and those forces belonging to the
Interior Ministry fled. If this momentary disorganisation of theirs had not intervened between
11 a.m. and 12 noon when it happened, it is possible that these Interior Ministry forces
would have intervened. This moment of panic and disorientation favoured the future
evolution of events.6'

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1085

The evacuation of the Ceausescus from the CC building, in turn, left the Securit
(the sultan's praetorian guard) flat-footed:

... [The Securitate] fled as soon as their mission was finished; their mission was to def
this person, Ceau?escu. If he had remained, they would have [opened fire]. I believe that
these people the flight of Ceausescu from the CC building eliminated the object they wer
supposed to defend in the building and would have defended indefinitely had he staye
Don't forget that there were similar forces not only inside the CC building. There were
troops barricaded in the headquarters of the Fifth Directorate and in the [National] Libra
They did not come down from the top of the building until the helicopter had taken off
I am convinced that neither at the television station would anybody have penetrated insi
if it had not been known that Ceausescu had fled. The flight of Ceausescu was vital to
unfolding of the Romanian Revolution.62

In spite of a devious and byzantine attempt to reconquer power in the days and nig
which followed, the rapid disintegration of regime control on Friday 22 Decemb
was essentially devastating and impossible to overcome. The army's arbitrary an
anarchic defection was the key to the collapse of the regime.

The shadow of the future: bandwagoning and atomisation strategies in the context
the death throes of the Ceausescu regime, 22-25 December 1989

Pre-existing capacities to effect change, and commitment to a cause, never tell t

whole story: the prospect of success plays an important role in shaping behaviou
This explains the critical function performed by ideology and propaganda: t
provide hope, even in the face of the most overwhelming odds. In spite of
pervasive resentment of the Ceausescu regime prior to mid-December 1989, dire
protest was a rarity. But the very appearance of the previously unimaginab
anti-regime demonstrations-changed the calculus of the population: protest
possible, others would join, perhaps political change was then also possible. (Indee
it could be argued that the very rarity of direct action prior to mid-December
contributed to an 'intoxicated' and exaggerated 'redefinition of the possible' whe
protests did break out-much to the regime's consternation.) Most people, it wou
appear, tend to be what Charles Tilly describes as 'run-of-the-mill' (utility maxim
ers, as opposed to the categories of 'zealots', 'misers' and 'opportunists') whe
comes to what they are willing to sacrifice for their beliefs and interests.63 With
some prospect of success, they are unlikely to be willing to act.
At midday on Friday 22 December 1989 Nicolae and Elena Ceau?escu fled fr
the roof of the Central Committee building by helicopter, just minutes bef
demonstrators broke into the building and reached the roof. The Ceausescus app
ently had no intention of fleeing the country-during a frantic stopover at thei
Snagov villa they had underlings pack piles of underwear and towels-and ins
flew in the direction of a provincial town from which they apparently intended
supervise their recapture of power. The strategy for retaking power among tho
charged most directly with the task of defending the regime-the Securitate-appea
to have reflected either a conviction that such a plan should be known only to a s
group of people and should involve small units specifically trained for such a vent

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1086 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

(rather than an unwieldy and potentially problematic mix of regime forces) an

reflected the far-reaching disintegration of the regime (including within the Secur
itself) precipitated by the Ceausescus' impromptu flight from the capital.
Given both the extent of the regime's disintegration on the afternoon of
December, and perhaps the initial provisions of the plan for restoring the Ceau?e
to power, the Securitate strategy relied on a mix of real and psychological warf
Gunfire by small, well-trained and well-equipped units of men (predominantly fr
the institution's special unit for anti-terrorist warfare (USLA) and from the clo
associated Fifth Directorate) was to be accompanied by a multi-faceted campaign
disinformation and psychological warfare. Indeed, these latter components
particularly pronounced, and were in keeping with the institution's penchant f
exaggerating its own size and capacities and for exploiting popular fear and par
regarding the institution's power.64 The Securitate apparently banked on the fact
Romanian society's vulnerability to rumour-mongering and its deep fear of the re
would make it particularly manipulable in the period of disbelief and great uncerta
which would characterise a collapse of the regime. Indeed, they banked upon sim
behaviour among those forces (especially the army) which might be tempte
abandon the regime in such a situation. Thus, their strategy relied heavily on t
dissemination of disinformation, disinformation which was designed to sew conf
and panic, to keep people off the streets and the army in their barracks, to streng
the impression that the Ceausescus might yet be restored to power-all outcomes
which would facilitate and aid their recapture of power on behalf of the Ceausescus.
Teodor Brates, one of the commentators for Romanian Television who was a
central figure during the events, describes what happened at the television station after
those party-state bureaucrats who seized power65 in the wake of the Ceau?escus' flight
announced the capture of the Ceau?escus at approximately 6 p.m. on the evening of
22 December (an announcement which was shortly followed by the outbreak of
gunfire in Bucharest and other major cities throughout the country):

In this newly-created and extremely serious situation, where there had been gunfire
exchanges witnessed by millions of spectators for dozens of minutes, the content of the
messages received by telephone directly into the studio or through couriers to the eleventh
floor changed radically. Most of them spoke of fighting, attacks and terrorist actions.
Meanwhile, the places in which such news was being received multiplied considerably (in
a geometric progression). In addition to the team in studio 4 ... telephone calls were being
received in the director general's office, his deputy's office, at the editorial office of the news
division, at the office of the service officer on the first floor, in many of the studios, and even
in ... the infirmary. Consequently from dozens of sources. We were truly stunned at how
many telephone numbers in the Television building were 'known' by the population. The
central operator at Dorobanti communicated to us that the equipment could not withstand so
many phone calls for much longer. Today it is crystal clear to me that these telephone
numbers were well 'known' by those who wanted to disinform, to introduce 'viruses', to
disorient. Thus, they were used to the fullest [emphases in the original].66

Brates suggests that those at the television station (including the military command
which had been established there) concluded that

... all these numerous messages about attacks and fighting could be-pure and simple-acts

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1087

of diversion and disinformation, designed to frighten the population, to prevent them fr

acting in large, compact groups, so that those interested in the return of the dictator co
achieve their criminal goals.67

What made it so difficult to separate fact from disinformation was that real attac
were indeed taking place: at Romanian Television, for example, 62 soldiers
civilians lost their lives.

The army was subjected to a similarly bewildering campaign which mixed real and
imaginary elements. A military aviation colonel describes the characteristics of the
so-called 'radio-electronic war' the army faced as follows:

... we were confronted with a powerful adversary which operated on the basis of long-
prepared plans which were centrally directed and permanently adapted to changing condi-
tions. [They attacked] by radio-electronic means by creating signals on our radar identical
to those which represented real targets. When they reached a distance between 800 and 1500
metres from an objective on the ground they would simulate gunfire of various types of
weapons. These two things created the image of an air attack. They were combined with
ground attacks, real or false, with various types of telephone calls by identified or
unidentified callers, and with the spreading of rumours ... on our operating frequencies there
were conversations between what were presumed to be aircraft in flight and base command.
You didn't know what to make of it, and the confusion was intensified by the fact that they
were speaking not only in Romanian, but also in English, Turkish and Arabic ... You can
imagine in what a situation we had to perform our duties ...68

Army General Nicolae Militaru, the senior military official of those who seized power
on 22 December, explains both why forces loyal to the new regime were unable to
extinguish the Ceausescu resistance more quickly and effectively and why the
Ceausescu resistance ultimately failed in their attempt to reconquer power. Ques-
tioned by a reporter in 1992 about whether the television station had ever really been
in danger, Militaru responded:

No ... You see, not even those of our commanders who were responsible for the defence
of such objectives thought through and analysed well enough exactly whom they were
confronting. Because the adversary did not have an extraordinary number of men with which
to take an object such as the TV tower by assault. They [the army commanders] did,
however, have to face a very well-equipped, well-prepared and perfidious enemy. Not having
sufficient forces, they [the 'terrorists'] resorted to 'gunfire simulators' which caused
extraordinary confusion. They thus sought to do something completely different: to
infiltrate.69

The event which essentially scuttled the Securitate counter-revolutionary effort was
the decision by the leaders of the new, self-proclaimed National Salvation Front
(those party-state bureaucrats who had seized power) to execute the Ceau?escus.
Partly based on what they learned from the Securitate 'terrorists' who had been
captured, and partly based on their own suspicions, they concluded that the only way
to put an end to the loyalist action was to eliminate the object of the loyalists'
struggle. Front leaders feared that, as long as the Ceau?escus were still alive, the
'terrorists' were going to continue to fulfil their mission and there would exist the
possibility that the Ceau?escus could be rescued and restored to power.
Gelu Voican Voiculescu, one of the key Front figures, maintains that Front leaders

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1088 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

decided that 'either we kill them [the Ceau?escus] or we will perish' when, at
television station on the morning of 24 December 1989, they again only narr
escaped 'terrorist' sniper fire.70 Voiculescu claims that he prevailed upon the F
senior leader, Ion Iliescu, with the memorable words: 'Sir, do you want to end
Allende?'71 The decision to execute the Ceau?escus on Christmas Day 198
mately appears to have been the correct one, since the 'terrorist' actions sha
subsided after images of the corpses of the Ceau?escus were broadcast on tel
and died off almost completely in the following days. The sultanist dimension
Ceau?escu regime, which had led the Securitate 'terrorists' to fulfil their missi
led them to abandon it. The human cost of the Securitate's unsuccessful counter-
revolution had been high, however: of the approximately 1100 people who lost their
lives during the revolution, over 900 of them died in the gunfire, confusion and panic
of the Securitate 'terrorist' campaign.
From the standpoint of theories of revolution and collective action, the Securitate's
plan is interesting since it appears to have been premised upon the mirror-image
of Granovetter's 'threshold' hypothesis concerning the propensity of citizens to
participate in collective action.72 Granovetter suggests that any individual's propensity
to participate is contingent upon the actions of others: once a certain threshold
has been crossed, 'band-wagoning' ensues. Granovetter clearly had in mind those
participating in anti-regime collective action, but his ideas seem just as applicable
to the explanation of the behaviour of regime actors. The Securitate realised that
the actual military situation of the counter-revolutionary resistance was far less
important than its perception. Create the impression that the number of Securitate
resisters was larger than it actually was, and, gradually, many of those regime
members (especially among the army) who had abandoned Ceausescu for lack of
an alternative option might begin to play a 'double game', fearful of punishment
should the resisters somehow put Ceau?escu back in power. Thus, the Securitate's
plan recognised that, even among regime members, the ultimate motivation which
had kept them from ousting Ceau?escu or defecting from the regime had been
fear. Those Securitate members associated with the disinformation campaign reck-
oned that the perception of the revolution's chances of success would influence the
perception of self-interest on the part of other regime members and influence their
behaviour.
The Securitate plan appears to have failed because its creators never envisioned its
activation in a context in which the regime had lost as much control as it had on the
afternoon of 22 December 1989. It did not anticipate that loyalist forces would have
to confront such a wide array of united regime and societal forces, nor did it realise
how the very fear of the prospect of Ceau?escu's return would enhance the determi-
nation of those forces to defeat such a counter-revolutionary attempt. Indeed, it was
the Securitate itself which may have fallen victim to the 'numbers game'. Their effort
was inevitably undermined by their knowledge of just how much control they had lost
and of the herculean task they faced in attempting to restore the Ceau?escus to power.
In other words, the plan's creators underestimated the important role played by what
Jaroslav Krejci has identified as the 'Khaldunian contrast' (after the 14th century
Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun): how ideological conviction and esprit de corps affect
behaviour in battle.73 Ultimately, the illegitimacy of the Ceau?escu regime out-

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1089

weighed the fear of what would happen if the Ceau?escus were restored to pow
even among regime members, it would appear.

Conclusions

As the only country in Eastern Europe where the collapse of the communist regime
was precipitated by sudden mass mobilisation and was accompanied by the regime's
use of substantial violence to prevent its downfall, the Romanian Revolution of
December 1989 offers a good test of hypotheses found in the literature on collective
action and revolution. The totalitarian, sultanist and anti-Soviet features of the regime
of Nicolae Ceausescu greatly narrowed the universe of possible transition paths in
Romania. Dissent was rare both within society and within the party-state and where
it did occur it was isolated and unable to spread to a wider audience. These regime
features meant that outside influences-especially, the 'demonstration' or 'contagion'
effect-would be a critical factor in precipitating change within Romania. Moreover,
they meant that the impetus for change was likely to come from the fringes of society,
from people who had tight bonds among themselves but who as a group were
generally marginalised from the broader population.
Totalitarian regimes are particularly vulnerable to being swept away in a sudden
brushfire of anti-regime protest. The very level of their actual control and the image
of total control they portray paradoxically make them inflexible and unexpectedly
brittle when confronted with anti-regime protest. Precisely because of the level of
control exercised by totalitarian regimes, the role of state action/inaction in response
to anti-regime protest in determining the outcome of events is greater than in other
regimes. Thus, the totalitarian regime's thirst for unchallenged control, and its
obsession with preserving the utopian image of reality it has created, lead it to
respond to the outbreak of anti-regime protest with impulsive, provocative and
ultimately counter-productive informational/public relations and military measures.
As the Romanian case suggests, measures designed to shore up regime support and
to defuse anti-regime sentiment often backfire in times of crisis and hasten the
regime's collapse.
Finally, the Romanian case gives evidence that 'prospects for success' are import-
ant in determining behaviour during such episodes of collective action, not only
among members of society but also among members of the regime. This suggests that
although tyrannical regimes may portray instances of anti-regime collective action as
'irrational', they treat such events as eminently rational and anticipate that both
members of society and members of the regime (especially the regime's institutions
of coercion) will calculate the costs and benefits of their actions before engaging in
them.

Lafayette College

Spontaneous mass mobilisation played a fundamental role in toppling regimes in East Germany
and Czechoslovakia as well as Romania. It was also a relevant factor in the collapse of the Bulgarian
and Albanian regimes.
2 See, for example, Sidney Tarrow, ' "Aiming at a Moving Target": Social Science and Recent
Rebellions in Eastern Europe', Political Science & Politics, 24, 1, March 1991, pp. 12-20. By

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1090 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

'sudden mass mobilisation' I refer to the development and expansion of public, an

demonstrations over a period of days or weeks, especially where there was little or no pri
of such organised protest actions.
3 Chirot formally articulates this characterisation in Daniel Chirot, 'The East European
tions of 1989', in Jack A. Goldstone (ed.), Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and
Studies (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 178.
4 Steven D. Roper, 'The Romanian Revolution from a Theoretical Perspective', Comm
Post-Communist Studies, 27, 4, December 1994, pp. 401-410; Peter Siani-Davies,
Revolution or Coup d'etat?', Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 29, 4, December
453-465.
5 Particularly in a single case study, I am wary of searching for confirmation of hyptheses,
rather than letting the case first speak for itself. As I demonstrate below, the former approaa easily
leads to an inflation of 'confirmed hypotheses' and the overdetermination of the phenomen being
explained because such confirmation is often acontextual and mistakes the presence of a fctor for
causation.
6 For a discussion see Michael S. Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation (hiladel-
phia, Temple University Press, 1990); and James B. Rule, Theories of Civil Violence (Brkeley,
University of California Press, 1988).
7 Laszl6 Bruszt & David Stark, 'Remaking the Political Field in Hungary: From the Pcitics of
Political Confrontation to the Politics of Competition', in Ivo Banac (ed.), Eastern Evope in
Revolution (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 13-55; Patrick H. O'Neil, 'Reolution
from Within: Institutional Analysis, Transitions from Authoritarianism, and the Case of Hngary',
World Politics, 48, 4, July 1996, pp. 579-603; Juan J. Linz & Alfred Stepan, Problems of Detocratic
Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe
(Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
8 For a discussion of the influence of these three factors see Linz & Stepan, Prolems of
Democratic Transition, pp. 347-356; and Richard Andrew Hall, 'Rewriting the Revolution: ,uthori-
tarian Regime-State Relations and the Triumph of Securitate Revisionism in Post-Ceausesci Roma-
nia', PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1997, pp. 79-140. For a discussion of what the shft from
totalitarianism to post-totalitarianism entails, see Linz & Stepan, pp. 40-51; Linz & Stepan'sLnalysis
is useful because they do not treat 'communist rule' as a static regime type.
9 On the demoralising and atomising impact of sultanism within the party-state see 'ladimir
Tismaneanu, 'The Quasi-Revolution and Its Discontents: Emerging Political Pluralism i Post-
Ceausescu Romania', East European Politics and Societies, 7, 2, Spring 1993, pp. 309-34.
? See the case of the poet, Mircea Dinescu (mentioned below), in Dennis Deletant, Causescu
and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 (Armonk, NY, M. E.Sharpe,
1995), p. 280. Such rumours worked much more effectively than those alleging that a disseter was
doing the bidding of a Western intelligence agency. The Securitate realised well that antiRussian
sentiment was much stronger than anti-Western sentiment, particularly among the intelligetsia.
n See note 65 for more details on those who captured power.
12 Totalitarianism is self-replicating in this way, since the exercise of pervasive controland the
image of complete control conveyed by the state discourage dissent.
13 Linz & Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, p. 352 (citing Jiri Pehe, 'An Anotated
Survey of Independent Movements in Eastern Europe', Radio Free Europe Research, RA) Back-
ground Report/100 (Eastern Europe), 13, June 1989, pp. 1-29).
14 The first is most directly associated with the work of Tocqueville, Lenin and others, xhile the
second is identified particularly with Crane Brinton. For a discussion see Kimmel, Revoltion: A
Sociological Interpretation.
5 Michael Shafir, 'Former Senior RCP Officials Protest Ceausescu's Policies', Raio Free
Europe Research, Romania/3, 29 March 1989, pp. 8-11.
16 For a discussion, see Deletant, Ceausescu and the Securitate, pp. 235-293.
17 Workers' protests had occurred in 1977 and 1981 (among miners) and in 1987 (amon, factory
workers), but in none of these cases did these protests spark more broad-based societal partiipation.
See discussion of events in Deletant, Ceausescu and the Securitate, pp. 243-254.
18 For a discussion of the theory and its history, see Sidney Tarrow, Struggle, Polilcs, and
Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Cycles of Protest (Ithaca, NY, Cornell Uiversity
Press, 1991), pp. 32-38.
19For discussions of 'preference falsification' see Timur Kuran, 'Now out of Neer: The
Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989', World Politics, 44, 1, Octobr 1991,
pp. 7-48, and of 'dissimulation' see Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Etinction
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992), p. 80.

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1091

20 Tarrow, ' "Aiming at a Moving Target" ', p. 17.

21 For a discussion of the 'demonstration' effect see Thomas H. Greene, Comparative R
utionary Movements: Search for Theory and Justice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1990
147-149.
22 See Chirot, 'The East European Revolutions', p. 177, on the significance of the events in
Bulgaria for Romanians.
23 The fact that the Romanian regime did not attempt to jam these signals highlights the
difference between late communist totalitarianism of the variety practiced by Ceausescu and that
which had existed in the 1940s and 1950s in Eastern Europe.
24 Based on my reading of Romania Libera for the period October-December 1989.
25 In fact, at the time Belgrade Television was running taped CNN broadcasts at night.
26 For a discussion see Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation, pp. 47-53.
27 Revisionist historiography has haunted Romania since the December events, with tragically
misguided conclusions and consequences, as I discuss in Richard Andrew Hall, 'The Uses of
Absurdity: The Staged War Theory and the Romanian Revolution of December 1989', East European
Politics and Societies, 13, 3, Fall 1999, pp. 501-542.
28 Radu Portocala & Olivier Weber, 'Romania: Revelations about a plot', Le Point (Paris), 21
May 1990, pp. 42-49. The article was translated by several opposition weeklies in 1990 and has been
cited in positive terms frequently since.
29 Lszlo6 Tokes, with David Porter, With God, For the People: The Autobiography of Ldszl6
Tokes (Toronto, Hodder and Stoughton Publishers, 1990).
30 Ibid., pp. 102, 120. This hardly meant the regime renounced its recourse to intimidation and
force. Tokes and his family were subject to repeated telephone threats and rumour-mongering, his
associates were detained, beaten up and arrested on trumped-up charges (indeed, a church elder who
had organised a petition in defence of Tokes was found murdered in September), the windows of
the parochial residence were smashed, and in November Tokes and his family were attacked in the
middle of the night by knife-wielding assailants (Tokes was slashed on the forehead during the
altercation).
31 Ibid., pp. 1-4.
32 For a discussion see Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation, pp. 36-39, 73-82.
33 Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 (New York, Random House,
1990), pp. 133-134.
34 The fact that the Uniate (Eastern rite Catholic) Church of Transylvania was integrated into the
Orthodox Church during the early communist era (thus completely losing its identity) accentuated the
ethnic-religious cleavage by further separating Hungarian and Romanian Catholics.
35 See the discussion in Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York, Random
House, 1978), pp. 81-84. It is interesting to note that Oberschall's argument is mirrored to some
extent in the 'poor but free' assumptions of Eric Wolf with regard to peasant participation in
revolutions (see Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation, p. 199).
36 Tokes, With God, For the People, pp. 1-20.
37 For some arguments on how the political culture of Timisoara contributed to the outbreak of
the December events there see Victor Neumann, 'De ce tocmai Timisoara?' (Why exactly
Timisoara?), Orizont (Timisoara), 9 February 1990, p. 4.
8 Totalitarianism may even enhance the importance of the state's public relations response to the
evolution of regime-society confrontation. Because totalitarian regimes exercise high levels of
control, over such a wide array of resources, the expansion of anti-regime protest is dependent upon
regime miscalculations and blunders to an extent it is not in less totalitarian regimes.
39 Mircea Balan, 'Masacrul', Cuvfntul, 9-15 October 1990, p. 7.
40 Belgrade Domestic Service, 1400 GMT 20 December 1989, in FBIS-EEU-89-243, 20 Decem-
ber 1989.
41 Radu Balan, interview by Adrian Paunescu, 'Fanfara din Timisoara a inceput, in 17 decembrie
1989, ora 10, prohodul socialismului (2)', Totufi lubirea, 60, October 1991, p. 8a.
42 Adelina Elena, 'Martor ocular. FaIa in Fata', Orizont, 6 January 1990, p. 5.
43 Ibid.
44 It is interesting to observe just how much the party official's explanation of the Timisoara
unrest echoes the arguments of the so-called 'irrationalist' school of revolution. The 'irrationalist'
school, which was led by such turn-of-the-century theorists such as Gustave Le Bon and Scipio
Sighele, argued that 'criminals, madmen, the offspring of madmen, alcoholics, the slime of society,
deprived of all moral sense, given over to crime' were the driving force behind the 'crowd' and that
women and children, because of their 'inferior form of evolution', were particularly susceptible to
being drawn into the 'irrational' actions of the 'crowd' (Rule, Theories of Civil Violence, pp. 91-95).

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1092 RICHARD ANDREW HALL

As the party official's comments suggest, the wording of the epithets may have changed t
modem ideological categories, but the character of the argument remains much the same. U
nately, for as Rule notes there is something undeniably mystical about the 'crowd' which c
reduced to the sum of its parts, the claims of the 'irrationalists' remain the favourite fina
of tyrannical leaders attempting to explain protest against their rule.
45 Martyn Rady, Romania in Turmoil: A Contemporary History (New York, IB Tau
1992), p. 97.
46 Most analysts concur that the Romanian regime had supported Dubcek and the Czechoslovak
Communist Party less out of support for the liberalisation of the Prague Spring reform movement than
because they wanted to defend the concept of national autonomy, which they too could use in their
relations with the Soviet leaders.
47 See the report on Sofia Domestic Service, 1400 GMT 21 December 1989, in FBIS-EEU-89-
244, 21 December 1989, p. 71.
48 Rady, Romania in Turmoil, pp. 97-98.
49 See the discussion in Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, pp. 214-216.
50 Radu Balan, 'Fanfara din Timisoara', p. 8a.
51 See the comments of participants in Titus Suciu, Reportaj cu sufletul la Gura (Romania,
Editura Facla, 1990).
52 See Suciu, Reportaj cu sufietul. The rationalism of demonstrators approached tragic dimen-
sions, as Mircea Balan relates: 'very many [of the demonstrators] had bags in their hands and children
with them. It was a naive rationalisation-that if they were arrested by the forces of order they could
escape by claiming they had been out shopping or taking a walk' (Balan, 'Masacrul').
53 Elena, 'Martor Ocular'.
54 Nestor Ratesh, Romania: The Entangled Revolution (New York, Praeger, 1991), pp. 33-34.
55 Budapest Domestic Service, 2115 GMT 20 December 1989, in FBIS-EEU-89-244, 21
December 1989.
56 Major Viorel Oancea, interview by Tudorel Urian, 'Frica, din nou pe strazi', Cuvfntul, 14
February 1990, pp. 5, 11.
57 Other factors have also been suggested as having hastened the withdrawal, such as the threat
of the strike committee at the Solvent petrochemical works to blow up the plant if the army did not
withdraw immediately. See Rady, Romania in Turmoil, pp. 96-97.
58 Ion D. Goia, 'Chiar Daca fugea, Ceausescu nu scapa!, Flacdra, 6-12 February 1991, pp. 8-9,
comments of Lt Col. Ion Cotirlea and Lt Col. Alexandru Rafaelescu.
59 Discussed in Gelu Voican Voiculescu, interview by Adrian Paunescu, 'L-am ajutat pe
Ceausescu sa moara in picioare (3)', Totusi lubirea, 5-12 March 1992, p. 7a; and Deletant, Ceaulescu
and the Securitate, pp. 356-357.
60 See Goia, 'Chiar daca fugea', p. 9.
61 Pomojnicu in ibid.
62 Pomojnicu in ibid.
63 See the discussion in Tilly, From Mobilization to Collective Action, pp. 84-90.
64 The 'rumour' that one in every four or one in every three Romanian citizens was working for
the Securitate (the real number appears to have been substantially lower) is a good example of this.
In the final analysis it does not matter a great deal whether this rumour was begun by the Securitate
itself or evolved naturally in a fearful society and was exploited by the institution: the result was the
same; it was plausible given the Securitate's reputation, and it gave the impression that societal
dissent was impossible and futile, and thus discouraged dissent.
65 These party-state bureaucrats emerged calling themselves the National Salvation Front. Its
leaders apparently knew one another prior to 22 December and had conspired to overthrow
Ceausescu, but their plans were overtaken by the unanticipated outbreak of anti-regime protest in
mid-December. Initially they clearly intended only to replace Ceausescu and to introduce Gorbachev-
style political and economic reforms and they were pro-Moscow in their orientation. Their prior,
conspiratorial contacts with one another, their prior organisation and their prior planning-to say
nothing of their experience in and knowledge of the party-state apparatus-put them in a tremen-
dously advantageous position versus other groups (especially societal groups) vying to seize control
of the state in the wake of the flight of the Ceausescus. The personalist character of the Ceausescu
regime had often personalised dissent within the party-state, and thus, although the Front's senior
leader, Ion Iliescu, did not pose a well-developed ideological alternative to Ceausescu, his name had
been whispered in the party-state and in society for many years prior to the December 1989 events
as someone who had raised Ceausescu's ire and thus might be an appropriate replacement for him.
Iliescu thus had a name recognition and popular image that few other individuals in Romania could
counter, something which served him and the Front well in consolidating their power both during and

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 ROMANIA IN DECEMBER 1989 1093

after the December events. The core of the National Salvatio

dominate politics (often by less than democratic methods) for the
out of office in the elections of November 1996.
66 Teodor Brates, Explozia Unei Clipe (Bucharest, Editura Scripta, 1992), p. 110.
67 Ibid., pp. 110-111.
68 Colonel Mireca Budiaci, interview by Maior D. Amariei, 'NU! Teroristii n-au avut elicoptere',
Armata Poporului, 21 March 1990, p. 4.
69 Nicolae Militaru, interview by Coreliu Antim, 'Ordinul 2600 in Revolutia din decembrie',
Romania Libera, 17 December 1992, p. 2.
70 Gelu Voican Voiculescu, interview by Adrian Paunescu, 'L-am ajutat pe Ceausescu sa moara
in picioare (II)', Totufi lubirea, 27 February-5 March 1992, p. 7a.
71 Gelu Voican Voiculescu, interview by Adrian Paunescu, 'Gelu Voican, e adevarat ca tu 1-ai
impugcat pe Ceausescu? (3)', Totuyi lubirea, 30 January-6 February 1992, p. 5a.
Mark Granovetter, 'Threshold Models of Collective Behavior', American Journal of Soci-
ology, 83, 6, May 1978, pp. 1420-1443. For an excellent discussion of Granovetter's hypothesis see
Rule, Theories of Civil Violence, pp. 43-49.
73 Jaroslav Krejci, Great Revolutions Compared: The Outline of a Theory (New York, Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1994), p. 38.

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