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5 The illusions and disillusions of the Romanian Revolution: the case of the Timisoara revolutionaries The controversies surrounding the 1989 Romanian Revolution Using original data extracted from a series of interviews with the leaders of the Timisoara Revolution, newspaper articles dating back to the period immediately following the revolution and comments collected during the 2004 Timisoara symposium commemorating fifteen years since the revolution, this chapter seeks to understand why many of the leaders of the Romanian Revolution feel betrayed, abandoned
This book reassesses a defining historical, political and ideological moment in contemporary history: the 1989 revolutions in central and eastern Europe. It considers the origins, processes and outcomes of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. The book argues that communism was not simply an 'unnatural Yoke' around the necks of East Europeans, but was a powerful, and not entirely negative, historical force capable of modernizing societies, cultures and economies. It focuses on the interplay between internal and external developments as opposed to an emphasis on Cold War geopolitical power struggles and the triumphalist rhetoric of how the 'freedom-loving' USA 'defeated' the 'totalitarian' Soviet Union. The book also approaches the East European revolutions from a variety of angles, emphasizing generational conflicts, socio-economic and domestic aspects, international features, the 'Gorbachev factor', and the role of peace movements or discourses on revolution. It analyses the peace movements in both parts of Germany during the 1980s from a perspective that transcends the ideological and geopolitical divides of the Cold War. The history of the East German peace movement has mostly been written from the perspective of German unification in 1989-1990. Many historians have read the history of the civil rights movement of 1989-1990 backwards in order to show its importance, or ignored it altogether to highlight the totalitarian character of the German Democratic Republic.
9 Discourse and power: the FSN and the mythologisation of the Romanian revolution Kevin Adamson and Sergiu Florean A revolution is a rush of life through a crack in the appearance of things. It roars forward; it staggers; it ambles. It is no one’s careful plan or, if so, only in retrospect.1 The East European revolutions The FSN and the Romanian revolution Introduction: a discursive approach In the period since the Romanian revolution of December 1989, a significant body of scholarship has accumulated that seeks to identify the causes and consequences of the
, and rising post-revolutionary and postmodern ambivalence. What this study adds to Vogt’s engagement with the question of disillusionment, is both the empirical richness of yet another case-study—Romania—as well as a more focused attempt to understand not only what were the post-revolutionary utopias or illusions but also who helped define them and in what contexts. To do so, the study focuses on the Timisoara Revolutionaries—the first leaders of the Romanian Revolution—as well as the Group for Social Dialogue—the first civil society group to emerge immediately after
implications for where Romania will be heading in the future. This chapter seeks to briefly discuss how these two major events have recently played out in Romania and what insight they can provide into further examinations of the origin and the particular evolution of the Romanian transition. Working backwards along the historical timeline, these debates hope to provide an interesting benchmark against which to analyze the events surrounding the 1989 Romanian Revolution, the formation of the first civil society organization and the historical experience of the Romanian
—are not only about specific economic and structural reforms but just as much and more about the negotiation of new social illusions as old ones disappear. These illusions, and disillusions— defined as the loss of older illusions—are less abstract than they initially may seem. In the case of the Romanian transition, the illusions and disillusions were directly connected to a series of different expectations at different points of the transition: the Romanian revolution, the period immediately following the revolution, the period of consolidation of major economic and
and the shock of transition from the communist illusion to the capitalist illusion played out in real terms, Chapters 5, 6 and 7, provided three very different mechanisms of examining change. Chapters 5 and 6 chose more classic sites for examining change: the 1989 Romanian Revolution and the formation of the first civil society group in post-revolutionary Romania; while Chapter 7 adopted a more innovative approach by looking at how the 209 210 REVOLUTION, DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND DISILLUSIONMENT transition is reflected, constructed and experienced in the visual
revolutionaries. Although it was aimed at reinstating a state of calm and mobilising social cohesion in support of the regime, the live broadcast of 21 December had had the opposite effect. It constituted the first televised event of the Romanian revolutionary movement. It confirmed the magnitude of the anti-communist riots in Romania and mobilised audiences to join street protests. The 1989 Romanian revolution continued to unfold live on national television, culminating with the broadcast of the trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu and their consequent executions.27 Goddard
extent to which that was true, these critics point out not only the problematic attempts to study transitions through specific “democratic reform” processes but also the need to redirect our attention towards local reactions to change and processes of adaptation. This chapter seeks to understand how people adapted to the shock of change following the Romanian Revolution as well as how they were pushed to understand this process of change as something positive. SHOCK AND TRANSITIONS The transition from negative to positive shock Larger social transitions have
of Romanian intellectuals and dissidents who came together under the impulse to create a space for discussion that would facilitate the democratization process. Given its elite membership of intellectuals and dissidents, many of whom came back from exile from Western Europe or the US, the group gained immediate national and international attention and quickly became the compass that would help orient anyone trying to navigate the Romanian Revolution and the immediate post-revolutionary period. The group was consolidated almost instantaneously and gathered momentum