But none of this means that the mass insurrections in Bucharest and other cities did not also play an essential role. The overthrow of Ceausescu was the outcome of a movement of broad social layers, especially workers and students, backed up by the going over of the army to the side of the insurrection, and the political initiative of the alternative leadership provided by the National Salvation Front (NSF).
Cosmetic changes to Securitate
There can be no doubt that the Romanian regime is far more strongly marked by elements of continuity with its predecessor than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The old state apparatus is still in place, the Securitate itself, apart from a reduction in numbers and cosmetic changes, has not disappeared, and the main support of the new leaders is the army. Furthermore no important privatization has been attempted and no steps have been taken towards th formation of joint ventures with foreign capital. Apart from the reforms in the countryside, there has been only a decree recognizing the right to private initiative and the legalization of small enterprises.
In this context, what led Romanians both 1. In his book Un mensonge gros comme le siècle, the French jouralist Michel Castex has described (and denounced) in great detail the origin and development of the media campaign during the December events in Romania. However his insistence that these events were orchestrated by Gorbachev to get rid of Ceausescu is an example of the conspiracy theory of history. 2. It has now been admitted for example that the figure for those killed was inflated a hundredfold. Unfortunately these corrections are being carried out very discreetly in order not to undermine the intended result — moral revulsion at the exceptional crimes of "communism". 3. In March 1989 an open letter attacking Ceausescu's policies was circulated signed by, among others, the old party leader Gheorge Apostel and Silviu Brucan. 4. The demonstrations of opposition that preceded December 1989 — such as the strike of the miners of the Jiu Valley in August 1977, the 1980 strike wave and the Brasov uprising in November 1987 were eminently working class actions.
After the elections
THE ROMANIAN election results - so different from those in other East European countries - have occasioned many disillusioned comments on the
"Stalinist" percentages won by the victorious
National Salvation Front. At the same time, the events surrounding the fall of Ceasescu are being looked at again, and a radically revized version is being proposed: rather than an insurrectional mass movement, the story now goes, there was a long-prepared coup d'état with Mikhail Gorbachev pulling the strings in the background!
LIVIO MAITAN to give the NSF its overwhelming electoral victory and support it with massive street mobilization s5?
The main reason is that the NSF appears as the political force that led the struggle last December. Its central leader, Ion Iliescu and others such as Peter Roman and Silviu Brucan have been recognized as people who, while belonging to the Communist Party, were also long-standing critics of Causescu, for which they had been demoted. It is the NSF that has got the credit for re-establishing basic democratic freedoms and for rapidly taking economic measures to improve, in however slight a way, the living conditions of the masses.
It has also shown that it is capable of tactical flexibility, by setting up a Council of National Salvation open to all political currents, which amounts to a sort of provisional parliament with the right to vote on government proposals for laws. The NSF put forward the idea of a coalition government after the elections. All these operations had the result, among others, of neutralizing the old ruling communist party, which has dissolved itself, with a significant part of its members going over to the NSF and also into other parties (according to some this is infiltration). The massive vote for the NSF, if only, as Silviu Brucan put it, as a necessary passing evil, is thus no mystery.
The objectives set out by the NSF — or at least by some of its leaders — are of a type that is reassuring to large layers of workers. For example, while several times calling for the introduction of a market economy, the NSF's spokesperson made it clear that there was no question of privatizing key sectors of the economy or returning lands to their former owners. The agriculture minister Nicolai Stefan has announced measures concerning the enlargement of the area that peasants can own around their houses, an increase in the land at the disposal of the cooperatives and the freedom for peasants in the private sector to choose what they grow? "Selling the country" to foreign capital
Such affirmations go down well in Romania, a country which had previously been subject to the penetration of foreign capital with all its consequences, and subsequently had to put up with the pressures and demands of the Soviet bureaucracy including at the economic level. Finally the declarations in favour of full employment will also have been favourably received by the workers.
The voters' support for the NSF was also reinforced by the inconsistencies of the three main opposition parties: the National Liberal Party, the National Peasant Party and the Social Democratic Party. These parties were unable to mount a campaign outside the main urban centres, and they also came across as remnants of a distant past, incapable of understanding or expressing the interests and aspirations of contemporary Romanian society. Their main leaders in particular were perceived as people who had lived comfortably abroad without sharing the sufferings of their people and who had made no con5. The vote in the presidential elections was 86% for Iliescu; 10.2% for Campeanu; 3.7% for Ratiu, while in the legislative elections the NSF got 68%; the party of the Hungarian minority 7.4%; the National Liberal party 6%; the Greens 4.3%; the National Peasant Party 2.2% and the Social Democrats 1%. 6. Even before the coming of Antonescu's fascist govemment, the character of the Romanian regime was hardly democratic. 7. Before 1985, agricultural land in Romania was mostly in the hands of the public sector. State farms owned 13.6% of the agricultural land and cooperatives 60%. The private sector was made up of private plots (6.3%) and individual farms (15.7%). Thus the private sector was more significant in Romania than anywhere else in Eastern Europe outside Poland (Courrier des pays
### ILIESCUS/
ГЕІ ГЕ
aracalul vi'
tribution to the defeat of the dictatorship. 1°
Thus the National Liberal presidential candidate, Radu Campeanu left the coun try in 1973 (according to some rumours with the tacit agreement of the Securitate and only came back on January 5 this year. The most traditional of the three parties, the National Peasant Party — whose democratic credentials before the coming of the "People's Democracy" were not exactly impeccable — suffered from the drastic decline in the proportion of the peasantry in the country's population, from 80% pre-war to 25 to 30% now. Their candidate, Ion Ratiu, could not even put himself forward as a personality representing the preCommunist system: he went into exile in 1940 in Great Britain, where he considerably increased his wealth by his activities as a shipowner. A lot of people suggested that Ratiu got the candidacy thanks to his wealth (for example the Financial Times on May 3). His campaign was centred on the demand for the restitution of land to its
Besides the electoral fronts, the most serious opposition came from groups of intellectuals, such as the Group for Social Dialogue, and important parts of the student movement. These groups are inspired by legitimate concerns, insofar as they demand a more consistent democratization and direct their fire at the continuity de l'Est no. 342 February 1990). 8. The NSF leaders openly expressed their concem about the consequence of the measures taken in Poland and Hungary, talking of the "terrible inflation" and "very significant unemployment" (Interview with Silviu Brucan in l' Unità, January 4, 1990). 9. More than 70 parties took part in the elections, mostly wholly insubstantial. 10. Joumalists from several papers reported hostile reactions in the course of demonstrations to people who left for abroad and had not shared the life of the people during the dictatorship. A report in l'Unità on May 18 describes the difference in the final pre-electoral rallies of the NSF and the opposition. At the former were workers, adults and maleconen, on the later, young students, teachers, 5 intellectuals. June 18, 1990• #187 International Viewpoint
"We must return to the best traditions of economist and one of the leaders of the Marxist Platform In the CPSU, The questions were asked by Poul Funder
ROMANIA / USSR between the old and new state apparatuses, as well as at the opportunist transformations of the recycled supporters of the old regime. But their violent attacks on the NSF and its representatives, denounced one and all as camouflaged and unrepentant "Communists" shows a very schematthe 1920s"
ic and narrowly sectarian approach that could not have the hoped-for resonance among the population. Far worse, this approach has led them to put forward
Interview with Alexander Buzghalin demands which are hardly democratic, such as the banning of the Communist Party and the ousting of all its ex-members.
В 1929 ГОДУ ПО ВСЕМУ
They ended up looking like supporters of the most conservative opposition parties.
For the moment the regime seems to have achieved a certain solidity. Furthermore, unlike in Poland or Hungary for example, the plans of the Romanian leaders, at least in the short and medium term, correspond to an extent with the largely unchanged socio-economic structures.
Nonetheless there are areas of instability.
The economic problems are enormous.
The effect of the measures adopted, that have until now ensured some improvements in the living conditions of the mass-
ЧИТАЮТ ИЗААНИЯ КРАСНОЙ ГАЗЕТЬ es, will not last — we only have to think of their impact on the trade balance — while the costs of any plans for industrial renewal will be very high." Secondly, it is highly likely that social conflicts are going to
ALREADY It Is clear from the pre-Congress discussions for erupt at every level - there have already been many strikes in the recent months.
the up-coming 28th Congress of the CPSU, and the evidence of political clashes going on Inside the party, that this Congress will be unlike any other since the victory of
Important splits in Salvation
Stalinism. For the first time since the 1920s competing
Front leadership platforms have been formed - the most prominent being the Democratlc Platform, which was drawn up in January
Finally, the NSF, despite its success, is and published In Pravda in early March. Since that time far from being internally united, as has another platform in opposition to the viewpoint of the been shown by the splits that have already appeared in its leading group. Two of the
Central Committee, the Marxist Plattorm, has been
NSF's main leaders have left the leader-
Mosched by a group of party members, primarly trom ship. The first was Demitru Mazilu, who was responsible for declaring to a noisy demonstration in Bucharest's Victory
The declaration of this Marxist Platform was first published
Square in December that the NSF should
In the Influential Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda outlaw the Communist Party and bring on March 31 and later also in Pravda. The current around back the death penalty. The other is Silviu
Brucan, who is much more strongly in the platform took on an organized form at a nationwide favour of privatizations and the involveconference in mid-April, which also formulated a new ment of foreign capital than the others.
version of the declaration. Now in the run-up to the 28th
The balance sheet of both the NSF and
Congress of the CPSU the Platform will convene Its second the existing opposition suggests that if conference on June 16-17. Here Its supporters will, among there is to be a solution to the social and other things, discuss the outcome of the elections of political crisis that is favourable to the delegates for the Congress and the future of the Marxist workers, these latter will have to build their own independent organizations. Such