The Romanian Revolution of December 1989
"Siani-Davies has reconstructed the rush of events during these three revolutionary weeks literally hour by hour. The effect is to draw the reader in as if he or she were there, while at the same time soaring above and viewing the overall flow and structure of a revolution. In short, Siani-Davies has done more than provide an exceedingly fine-grained account of the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime; he has given students of revolution an example with all the inner mechanics exposed."—Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005"Among the Communist governments in eastern Europe that collapsed, nowhere was the overthrow as violent and blood as in the Romanian revolution of 1989, which cost more than 1,000 lives. Peter Siani-Davies, utilizing a wide variety of Romanian sources, has written a detailed history of the revolution that brought the overthrow of the Communist government in Romania and the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena on Christmas Day, 1989."—Keith Eubank, The Virginia Quarterly Review"Here is a remarkable portal to a crossroad in contemporary politics for Romanian aficionados and Cold War history buffs. Peter Siani-Davies touches western and southern urban locales in focusing on the immediate background and aftermath of Nicolae Ceausescu's overthrow. He critically assesses evidence gleaned from Romanian newspapers and offers probabilities and possibilities for matters still awaiting the disclosure of primary records."—Frederick Kellogg, Slavic Review, Summer 2006"Splendidly researched and compellingly argued, this book is an original and persuasive contribution to our understanding of the collapse of Ceausescu's dictatorship, the December 1989 revolutionary upheaval, and the difficult birth of democracy in Romania. It is mandatory reading for all those interested in a luminously sophisticated approach to the myths and realities of the Romanian Revolution."—Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland, author of Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism"Finally, a near-definitive account of how Ceausescu fell! This fascinating book shows that this was indeed a classic revolution. It was violent, mass based, and it deeply transformed Romania. Peter Siani-Davies has made a valuable addition to the analytic literature on mass political movements. Impeccably documented and reasoned, his book will provide comparative students of revolution enormous amounts of material. We rarely get such detailed accounts of how various leaders, factions, and ordinary people are swept up in chaotic circumstances they often do not quite understand. In Romania, the outcome was deliverance from a stultifying tyranny, but this study makes it clear that chance and human errors play a role in determining outcomes, though underlying structural and historical factors ultimately count even more."—Daniel Chirot, Senior Fellow, United States Institute of Peace