linguistic:translation
Romania

Czechoslovak President Gustáv Husák 's resignation on 10 December 1989 amounted to the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, leaving Ceaușescu's Romania as the only remaining hard-line communist regime in the Warsaw Pact.

After having suppressed the Brașov rebellion in 1987, Nicolae Ceaușescu was re-elected for another five years as leader of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) in November 1989, signalling that he intended to ride out the anti-communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Europe. As Ceaușescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, his Securitate ordered the arrest and exile of a local Hungarian Calvinist minister, László Tőkés, on 16 December, for sermons offending the regime. Tőkés was seized, but only after serious rioting erupted. Timișoara was the first city to react on 16 December and civil unrest continued for five days.

Returning from Iran, Ceaușescu ordered a mass rally in his support outside Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest on 21 December. To his shock, the crowd booed and jeered him as he spoke. Years of repressed dissatisfaction boiled to the surface throughout the Romanian populace and even among elements in Ceaușescu's own government, and the demonstrations spread throughout the country.

At first, the security forces obeyed Ceaușescu's orders to shoot protesters. On the morning of 22 December, the Romanian military suddenly changed sides. This came after it was announced that defense minister Vasile Milea had committed suicide after being unmasked as a traitor. It was suggested that he only tried to incapacitate himself in order to be relieved from office, but the bullet hit an artery and he died soon afterwards. Believing Milea had actually been murdered, the rank-and-file soldiers went over virtually en masse to the revolution. Army tanks began moving towards the Central Committee building, with crowds swarming alongside them. The rioters forced open the doors of the Central Committee building in an attempt to capture Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, coming within a few meters of the couple. They managed to escape via a helicopter waiting for them on the roof of the building.

Although elation followed the flight of the Ceaușescus, uncertainty surrounded their fate. On Christmas Day, Romanian television showed the Ceaușescus facing a hasty trial, and then being executed by firing squad. An interim National Salvation Front Council led by Ion Iliescu took over and announced elections for April 1990, the first free elections held in Romania since 1937. These were postponed until 20 May 1990. The Romanian Revolution was the bloodiest of the revolutions of 1989: over 1,000 people died, one hundred of which were children, the youngest only one month old.

Unlike its kindred parties in the Warsaw Pact, the PCR simply melted away. No present-day Romanian party claiming to be its successor has ever been elected to the legislature since the change of system. However, former PCR members have played significant roles in post-1989 Romanian politics. Every Romanian President until the election of Klaus Iohannis in 2014 was a former Communist Party member.

The years following the disposal of Ceaușescu were not free of conflict, and a series of " Mineriads " organized by dissatisfied Jiu Valley miners occurred. The June 1990 Mineriad turned deadly after university students, the " Golaniads ", held a months long protest against the participation of ex-PCR and Securitate members in the 1990 Romanian general election. President Ion Iliescu branded the protesters "hooligans" and called the miners to "defend Romanian democracy". Viorel Ene, president of the Association of Victims of the Mineriads, asserted that:

There are documents, testimonies of doctors, of people from Domnești and Străulești cemeteries. Although we have said all along that the real number of dead is over 100, no one contradicted so far and there was no official position against.

Over 10,000 miners were transported to Bucharest and in the ensuing clashes, seven protesters died and hundreds more were injured, although media estimates on the casualty figures were much higher. The opposition newspaper România Liberă alleged that over 128 unidentified bodies were buried in a common grave in Străulești II cemetery, near Bucharest. A few weeks after the mineriad, several medical students conducted research in Străulești II cemetery, discovering two trenches with about 78 unmarked graves, which they claimed to contain victims of the events.