Romanian workers spearhead revolution against Stalinism
1990Jeff Mackler 1990-01Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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Propelled by mighty mobilizations of the working class, the political revolution in Romania and the rest of Eastern Europe is unfolding with lightning speed. Nothing is left untouched—no constitution, institution, law, decree, political party, head of state, or individual.
The December events in Romania were ignited by the austerity measures and brutal dictatorship of the hated regime of Stalinist Communist Party head Nicolae Ceausescu and by the longstanding national oppression of ethnic Hungarians, focused in the western city of Timisoara of present-day Romania.
A profoundly revolutionary dynamic, barely within the control of the eclectic and temporary 37-member council of the hastily formed National Salvation Front, is at work.
Self-proclaimed "dissidents," with the support of what appears to be the privileged army officer corps, have put together a ragtag interim government sorely lacking in authority. The government includes the least discredited—or perhaps the least known— among Ceausescu's Communist Party members, along with student leaders, intellectuals, and a priest whose threatened deportation played an important role in the original Timisoara demonstrations.
Promising free elections in April 1990, newly appointed National Salvation Front Vice President Dumitru Mazilu, like his Armed Romanian citizens take aim at pro-Ceausescu sniper.
only slightly more secure counterparts in Eastern Europe, announced, "We have a plan for a new government, with new people." But as in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Bulgaria, governments and leaders who are proclaimed today, disappear tomorrow.
A case i point was the self-appointment of the terminally sclerouc Corneliu Manescu as head of the new Romanian state. A day later, he was replaced as president by Ion Iliescu-whose credentials include a reported casual Moscow college-days acquaintance with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Worker/student militias
A vital feature of the Romanian political revolution has been the arming of a portion of the working class and youth. The direct involvement of workers and students in the battles with Causescu's Securitate (security police) was not accidental.
Incensed by the mid-December massacre of hundreds of protesters in Timisoara, the courageous Romanian masses moved to defend themselves as well as they could. The continuous mass proletarian mobilizations in Timisoara and later in Bucharest eventually led to a paralysis in the ranks of the Romanian army and then to its open defection to the side of the people.
In Bucharest, Ceausescu himself, just returned from Iran where he had participated in commemorative ceremonies for the deceased Ayatollah Khomenei, was totally unprepared for the events which were to transpire.
While addressing a public rally of what he presumed were his supporters, Causescu (continued on page 10, in “A Government at War with Its Own People”)