Dumitru Popescu and the Romanian Revolution of 1989

By the late 1980s, Ceaușescu had transformed Romania into a police state. The uprising from december 1989 that led to Ceaușescu’s downfall began with some incidents in Timisoara on 16 of December. The demonstrations spread to Bucharest, and further to others cities of Romania. We aimed to treat in this paper the Romanian Revolution of 1989, a mixture of spontaneous general uprising and conspiracy against Ceaușescu organized by reform communists and disaffected elements of the Securitate and army. The perspective from which we have chosen to look at the event (and also to the road to the shock of december 1989) is through Dumitru Popescu’s memoirs. Dumitru Popescu, ex- vice president of the State Committee for Culture and Art and President of the Council of Socialist Culture and Education, was one of the creators of the Ceausescu’s ideology. He graduate the Party School of Social Sciences „A.A. Jdanov“ in 1957- an ideological training institute where besides the unconditional commitment to the party some cultural training was required as well.