Word: ceausescu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fire- gutted presidential palace. At one point, members of the security forces reportedly burst into a meeting of demonstrators at the Opera House and sprayed the room with submachine guns. The violence assumed its own macabre rhythms. Whenever the fighting lessened, citizens would flood into the streets to celebrate Ceausescu's downfall; when the fighting began again, they would flee for cover...
...death toll soared, with hundreds of bodies lying in the streets. There were even unconfirmed reports that Syrian and Libyan mercenaries were aiding the pro-Ceausescu forces. As the fighting intensified, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev offered to send medical aid to the anti-Ceausescu forces, and Western diplomats suggested that the growing bloodshed might even lead to direct Soviet intervention on the side of the revolutionaries...
...confusion, Ceausescu and his wife vanished. First reports said that they had helicoptered from their palace to the airport, where they boarded a plane heavily laden with loot. Then they were reported to be traveling by car. There was speculation that they had fled abroad, but if so, only three countries seemed likely to accept them: China, which also sends tanks against its own people; North Korea, where dictator Kim Il Sung maintains a cult as extravagant as Ceausescu's; and Iran, where the Rumanian despot last week placed a wreath on the Ayatullah Khomeini's grave. At week...
...East Germany. In Bucharest a group called the Front for National Salvation announced that it was assuming power. The organization is headed by Corneliu Manescu, a former Foreign Minister, who said he would act as President until free elections are held in the spring. Once a confidant of Ceausescu's, Manescu, 73, had a falling-out with the President during the 1970s, and has been banished to an apartment outside the capital since last March, when he and five other former senior officials released a letter criticizing Ceausescu for destroying the economy and trying to isolate Rumania from the rest...
...crescendo of toppling communist dominoes shook Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, 71, vowed that reform would come to Rumania "when pears grow on poplar trees." He ignored warnings from Gorbachev that he should begin easing up before it was too late to avoid violence. After 24 years of ruling by fear, Ceausescu rejected the idea of change...