On December 25, 1989, exactly 30 years ago, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were sentenced to death and executed. Thus ended, with a summary trial and a shooting, the parable of the dictator who led Romania as president of the Republic for over 20 years.
Only a month earlier, the 71-year-old Ceaușescu had been re-elected for another 5 years at the top of the Romanian Communist Party, of which he had been secretary since 1965. However, in December the chain of events was triggered which led to the collapse of the regime (and whose interpretation history remains controversial, especially as regards the role played by the military). The revolution (which according to some would be better classified as a coup d'état) began after a series of clashes that took place in Timisoara and Bucharest, where hundreds of students took to the streets to demonstrate against the government.
On December 17, the army and police fired on the crowd, and the next day Ceaușescu left on a state visit to Iran, leaving the task of suppressing the uprising to collaborators and his wife. When he returned home three days later, the situation was still out of control, so the dictator gave a speech on television in which he spoke of "interference of foreign forces in Romanian internal affairs" and of "a foreign assault on Romania's sovereignty".
On December 21, it broke out in Bucharest a popular uprising, which within 24 hours spread to all the main cities of the country. Besieged by crowds in the capital, Ceaușescu and his wife they fled by helicopter from the gigantic Central Committee building. They managed to leave the city, but not get out of the country.
The trial of the dictator was recorded and has since been broadcast every Christmas on Romanian national television. The deliberations lasted just 55 minutes and naturally resulted in the more serious sentence. The main charge was of genocide for the Timișoara massacre (news which later proved to be unfounded), to which was added the guilt of having led the Romanian population to poverty and to have illegally accumulated wealth. That Ceausescu's regime was liberticidal and starved the people is, in any case, beyond dispute.
Before he died, Ceaușescu said that history would judge his work favorably. The now ex-dictator, in front of the platoon, also began to sing theInternational. His wife Elena's last words, however, were a cry of anger: "Everyone go to hell."
