"Dinu Săraru Dinu Săraru (born 30 January 1932 in Slătioara, Vâlcea) is a Romanian novelist and playwright. A member of Writers' Union of Romania, he belonged to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party prior to 1989, and headed Teatrul Mic and Teatrul Foarte Mic from 1977 to 1990. Subsequent to the fall of the communist regime, he served as chairman of the National Theatre Bucharest, being appointed in 2001 and resigning in 2004. He has claimed that his work during the communist regime was not for the purpose of glorifying dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, but rather included subtle dissident"
"Timișoara and Bucharest, and brought about the fall of Ceauşescu and the end of the Communist regime in Romania. After a weeklong state of unrest in Timişoara, a mass rally summoned in Bucharest in support of Ceauşescu on 21 December 1989 turned hostile. The Ceauşescu couple, fleeing Bucharest by helicopter, ended up in the custody of the army. After being tried and convicted by a kangaroo court for genocide and other crimes, they were executed on 25 December 1989. The events of this revolution remain to this day a matter of debate, with many conflicting theories as to the motivations"
"– Norway – Philippines – Portugal – Soviet Union: all Soviet decorations were revoked in 1990 – Sweden – United Kingdom Honorary degrees from the University of Bucharest (1973), Lebanese University (1974), University of Buenos Aires (1974), Autonomous University of Yucatan (1975), University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (1975), University of the Philippines (1975), University of Liberia (1988) and North Korea (1988). Nicolae Ceaușescu Nicolae Ceaușescu (; ; 26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian Communist politician. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and hence the second and last Communist"
"over the course of roughly a week led the Romanian strongman to flee the capital city on 22 December with his wife, Deputy Prime Minister Elena Ceaușescu. Evading capture by hastily departing via helicopter effectively portrayed the couple as both fugitives and also acutely guilty of accused crimes. Captured in Târgoviște, they were tried by a drumhead military tribunal on charges of genocide, damage to the national economy and abuse of power to execute military actions against the Romanian people. They were convicted on all charges, sentenced to death, and immediately executed on Christmas Day 1989, becoming the last people"
"was killed in the mountains of Banat in 1962. The Romanian resistance was one of the longest lasting armed movement in the former Soviet bloc. The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a week-long series of increasingly violent riots and fighting in late December 1989 that overthrew the government of Ceauşescu. After a show trial, Ceauşescu and his wife Elena were executed. Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country to overthrow its government violently or to execute its leaders. The Moldovan anti-communist social movement emerged on 7 April 2009 in major cities of Moldova after the Party of Communists of the"
"and political repression that led to the fall of his totalitarian government in December 1989. A large number of people were executed or died in custody during communist Romania's existence, most during the Stalinist era of the 1950s. While judicial executions between 1945 and 1964 numbered 137, deaths in custody are estimated in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Many more were imprisoned for political, economical or other reasons and suffered abuse, torture and/or death. Geographically, Romania bordered the Black Sea to the east; the Soviet Union (via the Ukrainian and Moldavian SSRs) to the north and east; Hungary and"
"Romanian Revolution The Romanian Revolution () was a period of violent civil unrest in the Socialist Republic of Romania in December 1989 and part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries. The Romanian Revolution started in the city of Timișoara and soon spread throughout the country, ultimately culminating in the show trial and execution of longtime Communist Party General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, and the end of 42 years of Communist rule in Romania. It was also the last removal of a Marxist-Leninist government in a Warsaw Pact country during the events of 1989,"
"Berliners flooded checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, crossing into West Berlin. In the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the day after the mass crossings across the Berlin Wall, leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, following protests of an estimated half-million Czechoslovaks, the government permitted travel to the west and abolished provisions guaranteeing the ruling Communist party its leading role, preceding the Velvet Revolution. In the Socialist Republic of Romania, on 22 December 1989, the Romanian military sided with protesters and turned on Communist ruler Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was executed after a brief trial three days later. In"
"allowed to be aired in the Communist state during the 1980s. The belief that the show would be seen as anti-capitalistic backfired on the regime as Romanian citizens desired and sought the luxurious lifestyle seen in the show, compared to the despotic situation in Romania at the time. Shortly after the execution of Ceaușescu and his wife on Christmas Day 1989, the pilot episode of ""Dallas"", which had been edited for a sex scene, was one of the first Western Shows aired on the newly liberated Romanian TV. The popularity of ""Dallas"" in Romania is the subject of the 2016"
"for what was to come. In mid 1989, civil and governmental unrest started arising in the Eastern Bloc as the loosening of control of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union had triggered most of the impact for the former states which started a Revolutionary wave leading to the Revolutions of 1989. In early December 1989, there was civil unrest by the anti-government protesters and on 16 December 12-day Romanian Revolution started; On the commands of Dictator President Nicolae Ceaușescu a mass genocide was led by members of the military who unanimously switched on the 22nd from supporting him to backing"
"upbraided Ceaușescu for his inflexible attitude. ""You are running a dictatorship here,"" the Soviet leader warned. In November 1989, at the XIVth and last congress of the PCR, Ceaușescu condemned the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and asked for the annulment of its consequences. In effect, this amounted to a demand for the return of Bessarabia (most of which was then a Soviet republic and since 1991 has been independent Moldova) and northern Bukovina, both of which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and again at the end of World War II. Ceaușescu's Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country"
"of the Romanian order Ceaușescu had bestowed upon her. On his 70th birthday in 1988, Ceaușescu was decorated with the Karl-Marx-Orden by then Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) chief Erich Honecker; through this he was honoured for his rejection of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. All titles and decorations were revoked by the provisional government on December 26, 1989. Several foreign decorations were revoked at the time of the collapse of Ceaușescu's rule.<br> – Argentina – Austria – Brazil – Bulgaria – Cuba – Denmark – France – Germany (East) – Germany (West) – Greece – Iran – Italy – Malaysia"
"2009 that the commemorative wooden display is securely kept at the National History Museum in Bucharest. The Romania Apollo 17 lunar sample display is believed to have been sold off with the items from Ceaușescu's estate after he and his wife were executed on Christmas Day during the Romanian Revolution of 1989 that marked the end of his regime. Joseph Gutheinz, a former NASA special agent and self-proclaimed moon rock private investigator and lunar sample display tracker, found evidence through research conducted by his University of Phoenix graduate students in 2003 that Ceaușescu's estate may have sold the Romania Apollo"
"Trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu The trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu was a short trial held on 25 December 1989 by an Exceptional Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial created at the request of the Council of the National Salvation Front, resulting in the death sentence and execution of former Romanian President and Romanian Communist Party General Secretary, Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu. Marked by irregularities that are typical of kangaroo courts and show trials, the main charge was genocide—namely, murdering ""over 60,000 people"" during the revolution in Timișoara. Other sources put the death toll between 689"
"the past 42 years. He did not realize, however, that a real revolution was starting right before his eyes. His security guard appeared, disappeared and, finally, hustled Ceaușescu off the balcony. At that very moment, many everyday Romanians saw the weakness of Ceaușescu's regime for the first time. On the day after, 22 December, Ceaușescu and his wife Elena escaped Bucharest by helicopter, but were captured a few hours later in Târgoviște, put on trial, and shot by a firing squad. Ceaușescu's final speech Ceaușescu's final speech was a speech delivered by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu on 21 December 1989."
"execution. Romania's last executions were those of Ceaușescu himself and his wife Elena, following the overthrow of the regime in the Romanian Revolution of 1989; they were subjected to a show trial and then shot by a firing squad. Elena Ceaușescu was the only woman executed in modern Romania. On 7 January 1990, shortly after the Ceauşescus were summarily shot, the leaders of the National Salvation Front abolished the death penalty by decree; some Romanians saw this as a way for former Communists to escape punishment and demanded reinstatement of the death penalty in a series of protests in January"
"reported a death toll of fewer than 1,000, and probably much lower than that. Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital with Emil Bobu and Manea Mănescu and headed, by helicopter, for Ceaușescu's Snagov residence, whence they fled again, this time for Târgoviște. Near Târgoviște they abandoned the helicopter, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's airspace. The Ceaușescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually turned over to the army. On Christmas Day, 25 December 1989, in a small room"
"television that the execution was carried out quickly due to rumors that loyalists would rescue the couple. After the execution, the bodies were covered with canvas. The Ceaușescus' corpses were flown to Bucharest and buried five days later in Ghencea Cemetery on 30 December 1989. The hasty trial and the images of the dead Ceaușescus were videotaped and the footage promptly released in numerous western countries two days after the execution. Later that day, it was also shown on Romanian television. The Ceaușescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on 7"
"Ceaușescu family Nicolae Ceaușescu, who led Romania from 1965 to 1989, had a large family, several members of which wielded influence in Communist Romania. Below are given outlines of his immediate family members' lives, with links to those who have separate articles about them. Nicolae's father was Andruță Ceaușescu (1886–1969), descendant of a family of shepherds from Polovragi, in Gorj County. Andruţă owned a modest house in Scornicești, Olt County. A supporter of Ion Mihalache and the Peasants' Party, he was for a while mayor of Scornicești. After the fall and execution of Nicolae, some people from Scornicești claimed Andruță"
"enforcing stricter state control over religious affairs in the country. Recently it was revealed that the Securitate included a special department supervising religious life that tried to solve the so-called ""problem of the denominations"", especially religious groups and individuals hostile to the new regime. After decades of officially-backed atheism, one of the first demands churches in that country put forth after December 1989 was the resumption of pre-university religious education in public schools. In January 1990, less than a month after communist leader Ceauşescu was killed by a firing squad and well before post-communist authorities had time to revamp the"
"of capital crimes instead of defending them. No offer of proof was made for the Ceaușescus' alleged crimes. They were tried based on references, solely by offense-name or hearsay, to criminal acts they had committed in the opinion of prosecutors, or as alleged in press reports. Various irregularities presented themselves, or became apparent post-trial: Before the execution, Nicolae Ceaușescu declared, ""We could have been shot without having this masquerade!"" Just after the trial, the Ceaușescus were executed at 4:00 p.m. local time at a military base outside Bucharest on 25 December 1989. The execution was carried out by a firing"
"Europe. After Nicolae Ceauşescu (the leader of Communist Romania) was executed in a revolution in 1989, Alia expedited his reforms, apparently concerned about violence and his own fate if radical changes were not made. He signed the Helsinki Agreement (which was signed by other countries in 1975) that respected some human rights. On 11 December 1990, under enormous pressure from students and workers, Alia announced that the Party of Labor had abandoned its guaranteed right to rule, that other parties could be formed, and that free elections would be held in the spring of 1991. Alia's party won the elections"
"decrease in Ceauşescu's popularity and culminated in his overthrow and execution in the bloody Romanian Revolution in December 1989. Seduced by Ceauşescu's ""Independent"" foreign policy, Western leaders were slow to turn against a regime that, by the late 1970s, had become increasingly arbitrary, capricious and harsh. Rapid economic growth fueled by foreign credits gradually gave way to wrenching austerity and severe political repression, which became increasingly draconian through the 1980s. During the 1947–1962 period, many people were arbitrarily killed or imprisoned for political, economic or unknown reasons: detainees in prisons or camps, deported persons, persons under house arrest, and administrative"
"rooftop of the CC Building, only to find himself abandoned in Târgoviște, where he and his wife Elena were finally tried by a drumhead court-martial, convicted after an hour and a half, and executed by firing squad moments after the verdict and sentence were announced on 25 December. The PCR dissolved soon afterward and has never been revived. Uniquely among former Eastern bloc countries, no party claiming to be its successor has ever won a seat in the revamped Parliament since the end of communism. For several months after the events of December 1989, it was widely argued that Ion"
"in the dictator's popularity and culminated in his overthrow and eventual execution, together with his wife, in the violent Romanian Revolution of December 1989 in which thousands were killed or injured. The charges for which they were executed were, among others, genocide by starvation. After the 1989 revolution, the National Salvation Front (NSF), led by Ion Iliescu, took partial multi-party democratic and free market measures. In April 1990, a sit-in protest contesting the results of that year's legislative elections and accusing the NSF, including Iliescu, of being made up of former Communists and members of the Securitate — rapidly grew"
"regime, and were tortured for months before being thrown in prison. They were freed on December 22 by the revolutionaries who overthrown Ceausescu. They returned to ""Romania Libera"" and transformed the newspaper in the most respected voice of the opposition to Communism. Although Ceausescu was killed in December 1989, the power in Romania continued to be held by the second liners of the Communist Party grouped around Ion Iliescu, a Russian educated Communist activist who changed the name of the Communist Party to FSN, and continued to govern Romania. ""Romania Libera"" newspaper became the most critical voice against Iliescu and"
"and won a decisive battle against the Ottoman Empire in Târgoviște. After the capital was finally moved to Bucharest during the rule of Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688-1714), Târgoviște lost its importance, decaying economically as its population decreased. Târgoviște was the site of the trial and execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena in December 1989. One village, Priseaca, is administered by the city. In 2011, there were 73,964 inhabitants. According to the 2002 census, 96.6% of the inhabitants were Romanians and 2.84% Roma people. Târgoviște is a railway node, with branches serving Titu (joining there the, Ploiești and Pietroșița. Today,"
"in November 1989. In January 1990, the first revolts started in Shkodra, where a few hundred people wanted to demolish Joseph Stalin's statue, and from there they spread to a few other cities. Eventually, the existing regime introduced some liberalization, including measures in 1990 providing for freedom to travel abroad. Efforts were begun to improve ties with the outside world. Mikhail Gorbachev had adopted new policies of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union in 1985. After Nicolae Ceauşescu, the communist leader of Romania, was executed during the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Alia knew that he might be next if"
"of public trial. The United States was the most prominent critic of the trial, stating: ""We regret the trial did not take place in an open and public fashion."" Trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu The trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu was a short trial held on 25 December 1989 by an Exceptional Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial created at the request of the Council of the National Salvation Front, resulting in the death sentence and execution of former Romanian President and Romanian Communist Party General Secretary, Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu. Marked by irregularities that are"
"and Greece. After the 1989 revolution that toppled the regime, he continued his work in the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), with his last assignment being to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. There, he assured friendly relations between the Romanian government of President Ion Iliescu and that of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. He contributed to the organisation of fuel smuggling to Serbia, infringing upon the embargo established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 713 as a result of the Yugoslav Wars. Romanian authorities carried out the smuggling in 1995 with the help of the secret services and of private companies controlled"
"His cult of personality experienced unprecedented elevation, followed by extensive nepotism and the intense deterioration of foreign relations, even with the Soviet Union. As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceaușescu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country. The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the turn of the Revolutions of 1989."
"and King Michael was forced to abdicate and leave for exile. Nicolae Ceauşescu became the head of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965 and his draconian rule of the 1980s was ended by the Romanian Revolution of 1989. The 1989 revolution brought to power the dissident communist Ion Iliescu. He remained in power as head of state until 1996, when he was defeated by CDR-supported Emil Constantinescu at the 1996 general elections, the first in post-Communist Romania that saw a peaceful transition of power. Following Constantinescu's only term as president from 1996 to 2000, Iliescu was re-elected in late 2000"
"as a visiting lecturer at Ovidius University in Constanţa, Romania. He wrote the first thorough biography on Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceaușescu, which was translated into Romanian. His work is considered a must-read on the history of communism in Romania. In 2009, the process against Ceaușescu, which lead to his execution in 1989, was staged as a play by director Milo Rau. Thomas Kunze was a counsellor during the production. It was performed in Romania, Germany and Switzerland. In 2010 a film followed. In 2001 the biography ""Head of State retired: The last years of Erich Honecker"" was published."