Lucian-Vasile SZABO – Department of Philosophy and Communication Sciences, West University of Timişoara, Romania.
ABSTRACT: In-depth research of the events which unfolded during the Revolution of Timişoara, and then during the first months of 1990, up until the Proclamation of Timişoara and its launch into the public sphere, made me realize the fact that the democracy deficit within the Romanian society has a few obvious and explicit causes. The judicial system’s inability to find out the truth about the tormentors and orgers of democratic values encouraged them to continue their actions. A difficult issue is that of the dead and the controversies surrounding them. Another issue regards the genesis and completion of the Proclamation of Timişoara, retracing its original itinerary at the time, during a period marked by hardships and confusion.
KEYWORDS: Proclamation of Timişoara, 1989, Revolution, Massacre, Securitate
A few landmarks
Drawing an emotional x-ray image of the revolutionary movements that unfolded around the world in 1989, Ralf Dahrendorf would note: “Yes, there were tears, bitter tears at the massacre of Tiananmen Square which brutally ended the ‘democracy movement’ of students and workers and even soldiers in China, tears for the victims of Securitate brutality in Timişoara and elsewhere in Romania six months later”[1]. However, in Timişoara there were also tears of joy, as in the end, the demonstrators, armed only with hopes and the will to overthrow the communist regime, won in front of the military troops who carried real weapons and opened fire on the crowd. Timişoara’s great fear in those days, between December 16th and 22nd 1989, was the recurrence of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in the center of the Chinese capital[2]. However, the cause for concern was not the risk of being killed (72 people were massacred before Ceauşescu’s flight), but dying without victory, without shaking the regime, just like it had happened in Beijing. But, one by one, protests were launched by the citizens of other cities close to Timişoara: Lugoj, Deta, Arad. Then protests broke out in Cluj and Sibiu. But it was only when the citizens of Bucharest started their movement, on December 21st 1989, directly expressing their disapproval of Ceauşescu, going into direct battle with the communist regime, that Timişoara (already free since December 20th 1989), now certain of victory, started looking for its dead[3].
The Revolution of 1989 meant investing enormous hopes into a radical change of the Romanian society. If ever there had been an explicit consensus regarding the implementation of democratic values and of fundamental human rights in a country run down by many decades of authoritarianism and dictatorship (1938-1989), the disputes, sometimes bloody, not just heated, emerged with regard to who would make the reforms and particularly what would be their extent. Over two decades after the Revolution of 1989, Romania is a member of the European Union, and thus part, at least formally, of the select club of states with consolidated institutions, where the principles of law and morals prevail, an organization where the democratic values are observed. In reality, the democracy deficit is obvious and constantly pointed out by the European partners. Within the country’s borders, in the lives and aspirations of the Romanian citizens, the democracy deficit generates confusion and frustration. It is the great discrepancy between what should have been and is not, between the pure ideals of a revolutionary movement lost in disillusion and nostalgia over “the stability” of the former totalitarian system. It is an evolution that has something implacable to it, born from the acknowledgement that some things cannot be changed and that others change only through efforts hard to maintain. Cynthia M. Horne[4] would analyze the late debates regarding lustration in Romania and Poland and would note the failure of this project in Ceauşescu’s former homeland. Lustration was one of the basic ideas of the Proclamation of Timişoara, recorded under the document’s much-disputed Point 8. Horne would clearly express an older idea, but would support it with arguments: Romania’s new political class never intended lustration to become reality. With the exception of a few isolated less influential leaders.
Fire arms and manipulation
We establish the beginning of the Romanian revolution on December 16th 1989, in St. Mary Square of Timişoara, right after 4 pm. For several days now, members of the Reformed Church had been in the area, giving support to pastor Tökés Lászlò, who was in a dispute with the authorities of the time, thus determining certain authors to speak of the outbreak of the revolution on December 15th 1989[5]. However, the revolutionary movement only began on December 16th, at the above-mentioned moment, when three people stopped a tram, and in the crowd that gathered the first slogans were spoken, demanding and contesting the totalitarian communist regime. The period between December 16th 1989 and March 11th 1990, the day the Proclamation of Timişoara was launched, marked almost three months of profound events, some atrocious, others hopeful. Right before Ceauşescu’s flight, the people of Timişoara would start claiming their dead, but would succeed, starting with December 20th, to lay down a revolutionary program, establishing the principles of evolution towards the democratic system. The trial of those who lead and carried out the repression was a must, as an exercise of normality. It did not happen so. The evolution would be extremely difficult, and, time would prove that these three desiderata are hard to put into practice. 43 bodies of heroes would go missing forever, the consolidation of democracy would be a lengthy process, still going on in 2013, and the trial of criminals would stop after only a few were brought to justice. These are elements that would permanently fuel frustration and disbelief.
During the last days of 1989, Timişoara was a landmark. It stood for the tragic fight for freedom and for the reservoir of ideas for the future. In the second half of March, Timişoara was seen as a threat to the new Romanian leaders. Their suspicion, strongly fueled by the media, based on the direct control over radio, television and a great part of printed publications, isolated the city, in an attempt to demonize it. The target was the group that had contributed to drafting the Proclamation of Timişoara, a programmatic document which, at that time, the greater part of the population and a significant number of local institutions identified themselves with. The disparagement of Timişoara was also possible due to some bizarre approaches to the matter of the city’s death toll. The lack of precise verifiable data during the first days after Ceauşescu’s fall, lead to confusing approaches and an undeserved sanction on behalf of the world public opinion. The approach was carried out by precarious means not only by journalists from important press institutions, but also by specialists, some with a great deal of experience in the field of media manipulation.
One syndrome, several problems
Jean Baudrillard coined the expression The Timişoara syndrome, which he defined as follows: “Absolving the real event and substituting a double, a ghost event, an artificial prosthesis, like the artificial corpses of Timisoara, testifies to an acute awareness of the image function, of the blackmail function, of the speculation, of the deterrence function of information”[6]. In order to be understood in all its complexity, it is important to resort to other works by the same author, among which “Simulacra and Simulation”[7]. Baudrillard’s error is built into a succession of arguments, which the author places in order with the purpose of proving the validity of the idea sustained. He starts out from real facts, of indisputable authenticity: the presentation by the mass media (television stations, in particular) of corpses in a deplorable state, with the assertion that they were supposedly the victims of repression during the 1989 Revolution in Timişoara. Subsequently, the same mass media would come back and show that those bodies and mass graves had no connection to repression. Another piece of evidence is the high number of victims (over 4,000 or even 60,000) announced during the first days of the Revolution, later determined to have been far lower. However, it is not a simulated reality, with all these hesitations displayed by the journalists and other information media. The media scandal was amplified on December 22nd 1989, after the unearthing of the bodies (those that generated the entire ado) in the Cemetery of the Poor.
The context is much wider, calling for the consideration of at least three elements (avoided by Baudrillard, as they would have affected his demonstration): 1) in Timişoara there was repression and the number of casualties (dead and wounded) was high; 2) many heroes were buried in mass graves in the… Heroes’ Cemetery. The burial was carried out illegally, on December 27th-28th 1989, without the population knowing; 3) over 40 bodies were literally stolen by forces of order during the night between December 18th and 19th , and were taken to Bucharest, cremated in secret, and the ashes dumped in the fields, into an irrigation channel. A keen observer of the media phenomenon, as well as of Romanian realities, particularly in Timişoara, the Romanian-American writer Andrei Codrescu noted: “In truth, there were two revolutions: a real revolution that was not televised and that continues, particularly in Timişoara, and a studio revolution that fooled the entire world”[8]. He would take the mechanism of mystification apart, also mentioning one of the greatest actors of disinformation: “Watching these images in New Orleans via CNN, I was moved and enraged, along with millions of others in the world”[9].
Baudrillard would have yet another reference to the Revolution of Timişoara, entitled The Timişoara massacre[10]. It presents the thesis of a false massacre, the entire written paper focusing on “demystifying” such events. Elsewhere, the author would return to this idea using the The Timişoara massacre as an argument for what he coined as Carpentrans complex. This refers to a particularly painful event, which took place in May 1990 in the French town of Carpentras, where over 30 graves were desecrated in an old Jewish cemetery. The terrifying images that circulated showed one corpse in particular, buried there only a month before. The situation is different from the one in Timişoara five months before. The resemblance lies only in the way the images are shown. Baudrillard sees a similarity here, which, however, can hardly be supported when considering the other elements, as well. In Timişoara there were grieving families, looking for their dead (or missing relatives, as there was a chance that some were still alive). Carpentras was the case of a terrifying anti-Semitic attack through grave desecration in a quiet city with no inter-ethnic animosities. It was not a fight for civil rights and survival, a fight in which the government would use fire arms.
Baudrillard’s text in English is entitled Strike of Events. The versions differ, but both translators try to convey as precisely as possible the belief that both cases (Timişoara and Carpentras) were a media show, sensational at any price. Charles Dudas writes: “This is the Carpentras complex (after Timisoara [Romania]: the rigged televising of dead bodies), the complex of profanation”. Another translator, Chris Turner, writes, under the title The event strike: “This is the Carpentras complex (after the Timişoara complex: The faking of corpses for TV), the desecration complex”[11]. Directly referring to The Timişoara massacre and the way in which the West was fooled by images used by television, Gardner makes his own statement, convincingly underlining the fact that Baudrillard’s vision is reductionist[12].
In another source we are told (or the American public was told, as it had no means of verifying details, nor did it have much interest in doing so): “An elaborate made-for-television hoax claiming that thousands of civilians had been massacred in the town of Timişoara by Ceausescu forces helped solidify support for the revolutionaries at a crucial moment. Romanian and French television showed 40 badly mutilated bodies allegedly discovered by a Romanian dissident, who said that 4,000 such bodies had been uncovered in a mass grave outside Timişoara, the town where the uprising against Ceauşescu began”[13]. In fact, there was no hoax elaborated by anyone, it was the foreign reporters’ spontaneous gesture to take over the images and then distribute them. Then, there weren’t 40 bodies caught up in this manipulation scheme, but 19 (the ones unearthed in the Cemetery of the Poor). 40 (43, according to other sources) is the number of bodies taken from the morgue and cremated in Bucharest, at that time an intensely discussed case in Romania, a clear proof of the Timişoara massacre, but also of Ceauşescu’s Securitate’s attempt to erase the traces of repression. Let us also mention the fact that the Romanian television did not broadcast images of the older corpses unearthed in the Cemetery of the Poor on December 22nd 1989. The author does not mention, nor does Baudrillard, the ten bodies unearthed in the Heroes’ Cemetery on January 15th 1990, yet another solid evidence of the massacre that took place in Timişoara. A thorough analysis carried out by Noemi Marin will manage to unravel the mystifications by analyzing official documents issued by Ceauşescu and his regime[14]. The terrible events that took place could even be recognized in official discourses, profoundly marked by the rhetoric typical of those times.
Some researchers would claim that Operation Trandafirul (The Rose), of taking away the bodies of Timişoara’s heroes and cremating them at the Cenuşa Crematorium in Bucharest, is an important subject for discussion and worthy of presenting in the press: “An episode which had great reverberations in Romanian society during the revolution of December 1989. This was the cremation at the Cenuşa Crematorium in Bucharest of 43 bodies belonging to people who had been killed in Timişoara on the 17 December 1989 during the riots against the communist regime”[15]. The topic did not enjoy the same notoriety as the action of unearthing the bodies, on December 22nd 1989, in the Cemetery of the Poor, bodies which had no connection to the Revolution, nor to the repression. The public announcement regarding the cremation of the dead of Timişoara was made on January 12th 1990, in the România liberă (T.N. Free Romania) publication. The first precise data regarding the dead taken away from the County Hospital morgue emerged only after February 5th 1990, when the Military Prosecution submitted to the Court the indictment on which the Timişoara Trial would be based on, beginning March 2nd 1990[16].
There were 40-43 bodies, as subsequent information would show. We will never know precisely how many corpses there really were and where most of them disappeared. There was a well planned operation of erasing any traces and of complicating the truth-seeking process. In any case, the judicial system will have a hard time making its way through this cobweb in order to identify the guilty and the acts of crime. Some were acquitted by the Court of first instance, others on appeal. Nevertheless, the facts are clear. At nightfall on December 18th 1989, a first death crew inventoried the morgue and the entire Timiş County Hospital. The action was not facilitated by a coroner, but by Petru Ignat, lecturer and clinic chief at the time. After the Revolution, he would be at the center of some incendiary press disclosures. In the Timişoara Trial important statements would be made by Nicolae Ghircoiaş, former chief of the Forensics Institute within the General Militia Inspectorate, the person who was literally in charge of taking the heroes’ bodies out of the morgue, loading them into the refrigerator truck and transporting them to be cremated in Bucharest. From the record of his statement taken in court we note the following: “Monday, around 6 pm, by order of General Nuţă, the defendant Ghircoiaş, together with Colonel Obăgilă, went to the County Hospital to find out the number of wounded and dead in the hospital. For this, Colonel Deheleanu made a prior phone call to Prof. Dr. Ignat, so he may facilitate obtaining the wanted information. At the hospital, Prof. Dr. Ignat called doctor Novac into his office, asking her to provide the Militia officers with the necessary data”[17]. Rodica Novac was no other than the chairwoman of the Timiş County Sanitary Department, therefore Petru Ignat’s official superior!
Quick draft
The Proclamation of Timişoara emerged at the beginning of 1990, having been drawn up within the group that was formed, in the second half of January 1990, in order to edit the Timişoara newspaper. This was a counter-publication to the regime’s former official press (dominated by Nicolae Ceauşescu and the Romanian Communist Party). The former communist newspapers continued their publication promoting small hesitant reforms, more likely paying attention to the signals given by the new freshly reformed leadership of Romania. The first issue of the Timişoara publication, which took, with obvious symbolism, the name of the city, appeared on January 23rd 1990. For two issues it replaced the former communist party’s newspaper Drapelul roşu (Red Flag), a significant name for the regime. In January 1990, the daily paper bore the name Renaşterea bănăţeană (The Banat Rebirth). After this two-day adventure, when the editorial office of Renaşterea bănăţeană was literally taken over by progressive journalists, they were evicted. The two publications continued their parallel adventure, Timişoara promoting the democratic values in a direct and radical manner[18].
The idea of drafting the Proclamation of Timişoara belonged to George Şerban. He made it public on February 22nd 1990, at the civil society meeting which took place in Timişoara. On February 27th, George Şerban brought details in an article published in the Timişoara paper, entitled plainly: Proposition. It referred to drafting a proclamation to the country. It “would serve the purpose of bringing to the Romanian public opinion’s knowledge the original ideals of the Revolution of Timişoara, its authentically European aspirations”[19]. The author of the article proposed that “the text of the proclamation be drafted by a group of participants in the Revolution of Timişoara”. It was a highly generous gesture. In fact, George Şerban would be most involved in drafting the Proclamation of Timişoara. He would take into consideration the ideas shared by several people involved, as well as the suggestions regarding the editing. Among the most active people in outlining the Proclamation of Timişoara were: Vasile Popovici, Daniel Vighi, Ion Monoran, Florian Mihalcea, Harald Zimmerman, Viorel Marineasa, Ioan Crăciun and Dorel Mihiţ. The document would be presented to the public on March 11th 1990, from the historic balcony of the Romanian Opera House in Timişoara’s Victory Square, in front of thousand of participants, some having travelled very long distances, including people from Bucharest.
The Proclamation of Timişoara was put together in less than three weeks and to this day it is a fundamental document for stimulating Romania’s comeback to a democratic, multiparty system and promoting civil rights[20]. It gave rise to heated debates both before the official public presentation, as well as subsequently, either being enthusiastically supported or vehemently refuted. The context would be analyzed by Richard Andrew Hall[21], who would identify some of the motives for Timişoara’s frustration with the slow evolution towards democracy. There would be a display of outstanding courage on December 20th, when the city won its freedom, and a subsequent inability to promote changes, made too slowly or not at all, aspects also noted by Jan Aart Scholte[22]. Thus, in mid-March of 1990, when Romania was shaken by a wave of inter-ethnic violence in Transylvania (at Târgu Mureş and its surroundings), Timişoara was in a state of excitement, confusion and hope. In the Timişoara Trial (begun March 2nd 1990) 24 people would be put on trial out of those who, in December 1989, took part in the repressions. However, it was clear that many of the guilty were missing, especially those in the Army, responsible for numerous crimes in various parts of the city. Official information emerged regarding the fate of those killed, transported and cremated at the Cenuşa Crematorium in Bucharest, but the act of justice unfolded slowly, with numerous obstacles and interruptions. The Proclamation of Timişoara was proving to be much too radical a program for those times of clearing the Romanian society of communism, although its targets were elementary for any democracy. And thus, the democracy deficit would be maintained.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baudrillard, Jean, “Simulacra and Simulation”, Semiotext(e), New York, 1981.
Baudrillard, Jean, “The Timisoara syndrome: The Télécratie and the Revolution”, Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, New York, 1993, pp. 61-71.
Baudrillard, Jean, “The Timişoara Massacre”, in The Illusion of the End, translated by Chris Turner, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 54-61.
Baudrilard, Jean, Selected Writings, Standford University Press, Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, Palo Alto, 2001.
Codrescu, Andrei, The Hole in the Flag. A Romanian Exile’s Story of Return and Revolution, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1991.
Dahrendorf, Ralf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Transactions Publishers – The State University, New Jersey, 2005.
Gardner, Anthony, “Revolutionary Mise-en-Scènes : Democracy and the Television Screen”, emaj, 5, 2005, pp. 1-15. www.melbourneartjournal.unimelb.edu.au/E- MAJ.
Hall, Richard Andrew, “Theories of Collective Action and Revolution: Evidence from the Romanian Transition of December 1989”, Europe-Asia Studies, 52:6, 2000, pp. 1069-1093.
Hoagland, Jim, “Off to a Rough Start”, The Washington Post, 26 April 1990.
Horne, Cynthia M., “Late lustration programmes in Romania and Poland: supporting or undermining democratic transitions?”, Democratization, 16:2, 2009, pp. 344-376.
Kilgour, David, “Proclamation of Timişoara and Building an Open Society in Post-totalitarian Romania”, Annals of the “Constantin Brâncuşi” University of Târgu Jiu, Juridical Sciences Series, No. 1/2008, pp. 21-32.
Marin, Noemi, “History ante portas!: Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Speech in Response to Timişoara Events and the Beginning of the 1989 Romanian Revolution”, Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 11-12:1, 2008, pp. 237-261.
Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina, “Doubtful revolutions and counter-revolutions deconstructed”, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online, 8:1, 2006, pp. 109-112.
Orban, Traian şi Rado, Gino (ed.), Procesul de la Timişoara (The Timişoara Trial), volumul IX, Asociaţia Memorialul Revoluţiei 16-22 decembrie 1989, Timişoara, 2010.
Rotar, Marius, “The mask of the red death: The evil politics of cremation in Romania in December 1989”, Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying, 15:1, 2010, pp. 1-17.
Scholte, Jan Aart, “Globalization, governance and democracy in post-communist Romania”, Democratization, 5:4, 1998, pp. 52-77.
Szabo, Lucian-Vasile, Jurnalişti, eroi, terorişti (Journalists, Heroes, Terorists), Editura Partoş, Timişoara, 2009.
Szabo, Lucian-Vasile, “Heroism and Abjection in White Robes The Mysteries of Revolution behind the Hospitals of Timişoara, Still Hard to Unriddle”, Memorial 1989, Scientific and Information Bulletin, 2013.
Szabo, Lucian-Vasile, “The Truth in White Robe Is Sometimes Stained… No Clarifications Yet for What Really Happened in the Hospitals of Timişoara”, Memorial 1989, Scientific and Information Bulletin, 2013.
Szabo, Lucian-Vasile, “Chinafrica: New and Social Media Challanges for Democratization”, in Iulian Boldea (ed.), Communcation, Context, Interdisciplinarity, ”Petru Maior” University Press 2014.
Şerban,
George, “Propunere” (“Proposition”), Timişoara, I, nr. 15, 27 Februar 1990.
[1] Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Transactions Publishers – The State University, New Jersey, 2005, pp. 6-7.
[2] Lucian-Vasile Szabo, “Chinafrica: New and Social Media Challanges for Democratization”, in Iulian Boldea (ed.), Communcation, ontext, Interdisciplinarity, ”Petru Maior” University Press 2014.
[3] Lucian-Vasile Szabo, “The Truth in White Robe Is Sometimes Stained… No Clarifications Yet for What Really Happened in the Hospitals of Timişoara”, Memorial 1989, Scientific and Information Bulletin, 2013.
[4] Cynthia M. Horne, “Late lustration programmes in Romania and Poland: supporting or undermining democratic transitions?”, Democratization, 16:2, 2009, pp. 344-376.
[5] Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Doubtful revolutions and counter-revolutions deconstructed”, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online, 8:1, 2006, pp. 109-112. Marius Rotar, “The mask of the red death: The evil politics of cremation in Romania in December 1989”, Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying, 15:1, 2010, pp. 1-17.
[6] Jean, Baudrillard, “The Timisoara syndrome: The Télécratie and the Revolution”, Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, New York, 1993, p. 65.
[7] Semiotext(e), New York, 1981.
[8] Andrei, Codrescu, The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile’s Story of Return and Revolution, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1991, p. 203.
[9] Idem, p. 204.
[10] Jean Baudrillard, “The Timişoara Massacre”, in The Illusion of the End, translated by Chris Turner, Polity Press, Cambridge,1994, pp. 54-61.
[11] Idem, p. 24. Jean Baudrilard, Selected Writings, Standford University Press, Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, Palo Alto, 2001, pp. 261-262.
[12] Anthony Gardner, “Revolutionary Mise-en-Scènes : Democracy and the Television Screen”, emaj, 5, 2010, pp. 1-15. www.melbourneartjournal.unimelb.edu.au/E- MAJ.
[13] Jim Hoagland, “Off to a Rough Start”, The Washington Post, 26 april 1990.
[14] Noemi Marin, “History ante portas!: Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Speech in Response to Timişoara Events and the Beginning of the 1989 Romanian Revolution”, Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 11-12:1, 2008, pp. 237-261.
[15] Marius Rotar, op. cit.
[16] Lucian-Vasile Szabo, “Heroism and Abjection in White Robes The Mysteries of Revolution behind the Hospitals of Timişoara, Still Hard to Unriddle”, Memorial 1989, Scientific and Information Bulletin, 2013.
[17] Traian Orban şi Gino Rado, Procesul de la Timişoara (The Timişoara Trial), volumul IX, Asociaţia Memorialul Revoluţiei 16-22 decembrie 1989, Timişoara, 2010, p. 35.
[18] Lucian-Vasile Szabo, Jurnalişti, eroi, terorişti (Journalists, Heroes, Terorists), Editura Partoş, Timişoara, 2009.
[19] George Şerban, “Propunere” (“Proposition”), Timişoara, I, nr. 15, 27 februar 1990.
[20] David Kilgour, “Proclamation of Timişoara and Building an Open Society in Post-totalitarian Romania”, Annals of the “Constantin Brâncuşi” University of Târgu Jiu, Juridical Sciences Series, No. 1/2008, pp. 21-32.
[21] Richard Andrew Hall, “Theories of Collective Action and Revolution: Evidence from the Romanian Transition of December 1989”, Europe-Asia Studies, 52:6, 2000, pp. 1069-1093
[22] Jan Aart Scholte, “Globalization, governance and democracy in post-communist Romania”, Democratization, 5:4, 1998, pp. 52-77.