Bernardo Valli on the Romanian Revolution of 1989

In the left-liberal daily La Repubblica Bernardo Valli takes up the subject of the fall of the Romanian dictatorship in December 1989: "The Romanian Revolution … was the final chapter and the only bloodbath of 1989, the year which turned a new page in Europe's history. … Bucharest was far behind in comparison with the satellites of the collapsing Soviet empire. In Warsaw, in Budapest, in Prague and even in nearby Sofia the bloodless transition had already been completed, and in Berlin the Wall had fallen on November 9. … The [politicians] in the West had long since turned their backs on [Romanian dictator Nicolae] Ceauşescu, after having courted him for many years in support of his nationalistic refusal to obey Moscow. And even in the Soviet Union … there was growing impatience with the Romanian regime's stubborn and to some extent disdainful refusal to accept the decisive change of the Kremlin that was based on Perestroika (economic revision) and Glasnost (political transparency). Ceauşescu seemed like the last bastion of a communism that could never be reformed."

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