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Loading... The Romanian Revolution of December 1989by Peter Siani-Davies
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  thcson | Jan 26, 2024 |   Were the events of 1989 a coup or a revolution? Due to the events in Timisoara sparked by the ham-handed effort to silence the Hungarian cleric Laszlo Tokes, Siani-Davies has no qualms about using the term revolution, though the emergence of the National Salvation Front was very convenient, with the suggestion being that the participants in the NSF had been involved in a previous plot that failed to come off. Then there is the whole question of the how much internal security troops resisted the overthrow of the old regime and whether they were the much-spoken of “terrorists.” The author’s frank suspicion is that while a few police and military types might have resisted, most of the casualties after the flight of Ceausescu were friendly fire. Finally, why 1989 and not sooner? Again, that is mostly a question of contingency, though that Ceausescu had passed his sell-buy date as a useful player on the international scene meant that no one would lift a finger in his support. Failing to carry through a series of mass promotions in the Romanian military also probably didn’t help Ceausescu’s institutional support; never mind the small detail that the man was probably too ill and weak to control events any further. It is a little late in the day to have a truth commission. (  ) Shrike58 | Jul 7, 2010 | no reviews | add a review
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was the most spectacularly violent and remains today the most controversial of all the East European upheavals of that year. Despite (or perhaps because of) the media attention the revolution received, it remains shrouded in mystery. How did the seemingly impregnable Ceausescu regime come to be toppled so swiftly and how did Ion Iliescu and the National Salvation Front come to power? Was it by coup d'état? Who were the mysterious "terrorists" who wreaked such havoc on the streets of Bucharest and the other major cities of Romania? Were they members of the notorious securitate? What was the role of the Soviet Union? Blending narrative with analysis, Peter Siani-Davies seeks to answer these and other questions while placing the events and their immediate aftermath within a wider context. Based on fieldwork conducted in Romania and drawing heavily on Romanian sources, including television and radio transcripts, official documents, newspaper reports, and interviews, this book is the most thorough study of the Romanian Revolution that has appeared in English or any other major European language. Recognizing that a definitive history of these events may be impossible, Siani-Davies focuses on the ways in which participants interpreted the events according to particular scripts and myths of revolution rooted in the Romanian historical experience. In the process the author sheds light on the ways in which history and the conflicting retellings of the 1989 events are put to political use in the transitional societies of Eastern Europe. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)949.8032History and Geography Europe Other parts RomaniaLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.75)
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Wikipedia in English (7)
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The author's account of the events that occurred immediately after the revolution is less interesting. He lists dozens of names and lots of groups that claimed to represent the interests of the people, but it's difficult to make heads or tails of what they actually did. I think he should have extended his narrative further to the future, where the political picture presumable became less muddled than it was in early 1990. The summary in the final chapter is alright, but here, too, a longer perspective would have been more interesting. After all, it takes some time before the big consequences of a revolution become manifest.