On 22 December 1989, hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in Bucharest. Ceausescu is forced to flee the Central Committee by helicopter. The Securitate begins its resistance fight.
On 22 December 1989, hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in Bucharest. Ceausescu is forced to flee the Central Committee by helicopter. The Securitate begins its resistance fight.
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The news of last night’s bloodbath in University Square spread throughout the city. At 6:00, tens of thousands of workers from all around the capital begin marching in columns towards the Central Committee. Ceausescu orders the leaders of law enforcement institutions to prevent the workers from reaching Palace Square by any means necessary. At the same time, thousands of protesters were already speaking with soldiers in University Square.
At around 9:20, after a meeting with Ceausescu, Vasile Milea, the Minister of Defense goes in the office of the Chief of Staff of the Patriotic Guards, asks the officers there for a gun, and when he remains alone in the room, he commits suicide. At around 9:55 Victor Atanasie Stanculescu is verbally named Minister of Defense.
At 10:30, Ceausescu convened the last meeting of the Political Executive Committee. Some excerpts from his statements:
>It now appears that the action is well organized and put together. A little while ago General Milea shot himself (…) he left me and two minutes later I was informed that he had shot himself (…) I want to ask those present here, from the CPEx, who is determined to fight and who is not? (…) Who is not committed or has not committed himself to others, say (…) Lets immediately declare a state of emergency in the whole country (…) Of course we cannot shoot workers. We are the workers’ representatives and we cannot shoot at workers, but there are also lichens (…) The traitor Milea is to blame and there are probably others. The traitor Milea left and committed suicide. I told him to go and give the order to bring the military units and he committed suicide. He went into the command room and killed himself.
At 10:51, through a Presidential Decree, a state of emergency was introduced in the entire country. Soon, this was announced on radio and television. [Here is a video of the announcement with English subtitles]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-NaucOlk5c).
An infantry captain’s seemingly spontaneous decision to remove his APC from a key crossing point to the Central Committee building and of a colonel to remove the APCs surrounding the building (apparently when he heard the announcement that the Minister of Defense committed suicide) allowed the tens of thousands of revolutionaries to enter the square in front of the Central Committee.
At around 11:30, the generals around Ceausescu called 2 helicopters (belonging to the 5th Directorate of the Securitate) to evacuate, but only 1 manages to land. At the same time, 70.000 – 80.000 people were in front of the CC building. Ceausescu tried to address the crowd using a megaphone (3rd photo), at which point the crowd started shouting “Down with Ceausescu!” in his face. It is only in this late, but in full contact with reality, moment that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu head for the elevators that took them on the roof terrace and to the helicopter. [At 12:08, the Ceausescus take off]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrGpt_gtr-w).
It is worth noting that by __not arresting Ceausescu in the CC__, any theory regarding a supposed coup d’état of the Army (led at that point by Victor Atanasie Stanculescu) or a “favouring” of the Revolution by the Securitate (led by Iulian Vlad) proves to be an aberration.
The helicopter was piloted, as usual, by Vasile Malutan, the dictator’s favorite pilot, officer of the 5th Directorate of the Securitate. He was not told of any destination, just to head north. Along with the Ceausescus and the pilot, in the helicopter were Emil Bobu, Manea Manescu as well as Securitate officers Marian Rusu and Florian Rat (yet another proof that the Securitate served Ceausescu until the very last moment).
The helicopter’s first stop was the presidential retreat in Snagov. There, Ceausescu probably started preparing his resistance fight. He made calls in Craiova, Constanta, Targoviste, Pitesti, Cluj and other counties. He also spoke with Petru Tenie, the commander of the special helicopter flotilla of the 5th Directorate of the Securitate, and demanded 2 more helicopters. When asked by Malutan where should these 2 additional helicopters head towards, Ceausescu replied that they should follow his. _During this conversation, Emil Bobu, Manea Manescu and even Elena Ceausescu left the room they were in, leaving only Nicolae Ceausescu and the 3 Securitate officers._ Soon after, they all went back to the helicopter and took off.
Meanwhile in Bucharest, the Defense Minister was pressured by the revolutionaries to declare a no-fly zone over Romania, which was soon enforced, forcing Ceausescu’s helicopter to land. According to Nicolae Deca, the first driver Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu stopped, the dictator said “It was a coup d’état. _I will organize resistance in Targoviste._”. Constantin Paisie, the Militia soldier who brought the Ceausescus to the military base in Targoviste in that afternoon, said that “They relied primarily on the Securitate. One time Nicolae Ceausescu told me to go to that Securitate unit, a special unit at Băneasa, but from the Militia or the Army he did not expect immediate support.”.
In the evening of the 22nd, terrorist activity began all over the country, which led to 129 deaths on that day alone.
I remember his execution on TV more than I remember the fall of the wall.
I watched a yt documentary about this, to this day is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever saw.