Bacterias

mosphere within the Central Committee building the statem ent made constant references to treacherous behaviour accusing Milea of orchestrating rumours and lies in ‘close co-operation with the traitors within the country and with the imperi­ alist circles^ and o f giving ‘false information in connection with th e situation in our country’.^®® The elaborate m yth, which has grown up around the death of Milea, makes it difflcult to establish the impact of his decease on the unfolding events. It is alleged that the news had a considerable influence upon the soldiers on the streets leading to a sharp decline in morale, but it is probable that this has been exaggerated, since despite claims to the contrary, there are few signs that Milea was universally loved within the lower ranks.^®^ Instead, news o f his death seems to have added to the mounting tension and was interpreted as a sign of growing panic within the regime.^®^ Operationally following the death o f Milea there are conflicting claims as to who took command of the army, with submissions to the Senatorial Commission stating that General Stanculescu assumed sole command, whilst other sources suggest a looser collective of senior offlcers took control, in­ cluding Generals Eftim escu, Voinea and Constantinescu, but, once again, with Stanculescu to the fore.^®®

After the dispersal of the demonstrations of the night before on the morn­ ing of 22 December troop dispositions were changed, so as to move the heaviest concentrations to Pia^a Palatului and the imm ediate vicinity. By 7.00 there were fourteen tanks, forty-five armoured personnel carriers and over 1,000 troops of

both the army and the Securitate in the area. However, by the tim e Ceau§escu

made his last ill-fated attem pt to address the crowd from the balcony at approxi­ mately 11.30, these tanks and the troops had all been withdrawn from in front of the Central Committee building.^®^ According to the representations made to the Senatorial Commission the order for these units to withdraw was given by General Stanculescu at 10.45 w ith the process beginning at 11.00, although the final order to return to barracks was not jointly given by Stanculescu and M ajor-General Die Constantinescu until 12.15, after the departure o f Ceau§escu. Other submissions

state that slightly earlier, at around 10.00, Colonel Dumitru Pavelescu of the Se­

curitate troops also ordered his men to withdraw, although the last of these did not leave until 13.30-14.00, long after the flight of Ceaugescu. It is stated that this order was made on his own volition although the decision was relayed to General

Vlad, the head of the Securitate, who concurred.^®® At 11.20 a further order was

passed &om Stanculescu and the army high command in the Central Committee building for four helicopters, two from the presidential flight together with two others, to fly to Bucharest. These took off from the nearby Otopeni airbase at

56

The overthrow o f Nicolae Ceau§escu

11.33 w ith the first landing on the roof of the building at 11.40 whilst the others circled overhead. The presence of so many helicopters would seem to suggest that it was planned to rescue most of the political leadership, although this was to prove im possible, once the demonstrators had secured control of the rooftop.

The decision to puh back the troops from in front of the Party headquarters was a crucial moment in the revolution. It moved the security forces out of di­ rect confrontation with the demonstrators, effectively allowing them to abrogate their responsibilities to Ceau§escu, and by perm itting the demonstrators unham­ pered access to the Central Committee building it ultim ately paved the way for the downfall of the regime. W hether the order to pull back was given indepen­ dently o f Ceau§escu or with his sanction remains one of the chief mysteries of the revolution. By 10.00 the army was already breaking ranks and military discipline fast crumbling with open fraternisation occurring between soldiers and civilians throughout much of the centre of Bucharest, as cheering and waving protesters clambered aboard tanks and gathered around ofHcial buildings.^** W ith the ef­ fective ending of the army’s fighting capabilities, did the army high com m and — some reliving again the scenes from Timi§oara — give the order to return to barracks in an effort to protect their troops and equipment and retain at least a semblance o f order and military discipline? Such a response is the standard remedy to fraternisation and is usually the prelude to a regrouping of the armed forces, perhaps involving the drafting in of reinforcements from elsewhere, hith­ erto uncontam inated by contact with civilian populations, before embarking on a further attem pt to crush the demonstrations. Such a pattern seems to have been followed in China in 1989, when following fraternisation between civilian protesters and members of the Bejing garrison the authorities appear to have called upon forces from outside the capital to crush the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, and in the final days of the Iranian Revolution, as over one million demonstrators marched through Tehran, the high command took the decision to withdraw the troops from the streets so as to forestall any possible m u t i n y . O n c e the Roma­ nian army in Bucharest engaged in widespread fraternisation and had effectively merged with the crowd, the senior officers had little option but to withdraw their forces, whether or not this was under the direct orders of Ceau§escu. It is not nec­ essary, therefore, to invoke the need for a concerted plot on the part of the high command of the Romanian army to explain the actions taken. However, this is not to rule out the possibility that one or more of the senior officers were privy to the intentions of those who had been plotting a coup or, indeed, may have been part and parcel o f these plans. Certainly, given the tide of events considerable doubts must have surfaced within the minds of all the high command about the wisdom of