Ion Iliescu - 1989 Revolution

1989 Revolution

The 1989 Romanian Revolution began as a popular revolt in Timișoara. After Ceaușescu was overthrown on 22 December (he was executed on Christmas Day), the political vacuum was filed by an organization named National Salvation Front (FSN: Frontul Salvării Naționale), formed spontaneously by second-rank communist party members opposed to the policies of Ceaușescu and non-affiliated participants in the revolt. Iliescu was quickly acknowledged as the leader of the organization and therefore of the provisional authority. He'd first learned of the revolution when he noticed the Securitate was no longer tailing him.

Iliescu proposed multi-party elections and an "original democracy". This is widely held to have meant the adoption of Perestroika-style reforms rather than the complete removal of existing institutions; it can be linked to the warm reception the new regime was given by Mikhail Gorbachev and the rest of the Soviet leadership, and the fact that the first post-revolutionary international agreement signed by Romania was with that country.

Iliescu did not renounce the communist ideology and the program he initially presented during the revolution included restructuring the agriculture and the reorganization of trade, but not a switch to capitalism. These views were held by other members of the FSN, such as Silviu Brucan, who claimed in early 1990 that the revolution was against Ceaușescu, not against communism. Iliescu later evoked the possibility of trying a "Swedish model" of socialism.

Rumours abounded for years that Illiescu and other second-rank Communists had been planning to overthrow Ceaușescu, but the events of December 1989 overtook them. For instance, Nicolae Militaru, the new regime's first defense minister, said that Illiescu and others had planned to take Ceaușescu prisoner in February 1990 while he was out of the capital. However, Illiescu denies this, saying that the nature of the Ceaușescu regime made it all but impossible to make the serious plans necessary to launch a pre-planned coup.