romania

Question 1

Romanian foreign policy in the late 1950s

Answer 1

• Romania was the first Communist country to recognize West Germany (1967)
• Romania did not participate in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
• Romania took part in the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics

Question 2

Nicolae Ceausescu

Answer 2

• Romanian leader
• executed on christmas, televised
• big cult of personality (“Genius of the Carpathians”)
• a lot of nepotism
• destoyed about 1/5 of Bucharest to build his palace

Question 3

Ceausescu’s nepotism

Answer 3

• Elena Ceausescu’s birthday was celebrated as a national holiday
• Over a dozen members of the Ceaușescu family held high official positions and abused them for corrupt purposes
  -Elena Ceaușescu= Deputy Prime Minister
  – She was awarded a PhD in chemistry, without ever having a BS

Question 4

systematization

Answer 4

-began as a program of rural resettlement
-The aim was to double the number of cities by 1990
-At least half of Romania’s 13,000 villages were destroyed
-The rebuilding of Bucharest in the 1980s
Ceausescu’s Palace (took a ton of people and 6 years to build the palace)
the palace
• What was demolished to build the Palace?
• Most of Bucharest’s historic districts,19 Orthodox Christian churches, 6 synagogues, 3 Protestant churches, 30,000 homes in two neighbourhoods alone
(In total, one-fifth of central Bucharest was razed for the project )

Question 5

Romanization

Answer 5

Ceausescu attempted to assimilate minorities
– by merging schools belonging to minorities with Romanian ones
– by forcibly relocating minorities to predominantly Romanian areas
– Romanians were relocated to areas that were once dominated by minorities

Question 6

Ceausescu’s birth policy

Answer 6

“The fetus is the property of the entire society”

• tons of infant mortality
• contraception banned, abortions illegal, celibacy tax, menstrual checks
• “Heroine Mother” award, which was given to a woman who bore ten or more children

Question 7

Letter of the Six

Answer 7

March 1989

Question 8

The 1989 Romanian revolution

Answer 8

On 16 December, a protest broke out in Timişoara (Temesvár) in response to an
attempt by the government to evict a Hungarian Reformed pastor László Tőkés
• General anti-government demonstrations
• Police and Securitate fired on demonstrators
• State of emergency in Timişoara
• By 20 December the Army decided not to shoot the protestors
The demonstration spread to Bucharest and all major cities
• On 18-20 December 1989, Ceaușescu departed for a state visit to Iran.
• 20 December: televised speech of Ceausescu
• 21 December: a mass meeting was staged; a revolt started
• The army and the Securitate did not shoot the demonstrators
• 22 December: the revolution spread to all major cities
• Ceaușescu declared state of emergency for the whole country, martial law was
introduced
• After a last attempt to make a speech, Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital by
helicopter