and banners and formed in a long column for the march to Pia^a Palatului. On their arrival the column seems to have been screened to weed out any potentially disruptive elements. Eyewitnesses describe the mood as being subdued, and when the meeting began around midday, the apathy and passivity o f the gathering was evident in the muted response given to the warm-up speeches from the balcony. The large but loosely packed crowd stretched to the furthest confines of the square holding aloft placards and banners proclaiming the successes of communism and portraits of an improbably youthful ruling couple, whilst before them on the bal cony of the Central Committee building Ceau§escu stood with Elena at his side surrounded by many of the Party leadership. Then, following an introduction by Petrescu, Ceaugescu approached the rostrum and began to speak at 12.31. Barely had he begun passing through a few brief introductory sentences when he was in terrupted by high-pitched screams and considerable commotion within the crowd. Quickly the live transmission on radio and television was broken to be replaced by a choir singing patriotic songs, but not before the look of startled bemusement on Ceau§escu’s face had been captured by the cameras and fixed in the minds of viewers throughout the country. Many Romanians trace this moment as the turning-point at which they realised the frailty of Ceau§escu’s grasp on power and the possibility that his overthrow might be s e c u r e d . I t also seems probable that similar thoughts were passing through the minds of many of Ceau§escu’s senior Party colleagues and the commanders of the security forces, who perhaps began to think seriously about the possibility of a political succession.
The commotion caused the screens to remain blank for three minutes but the source of the disturbance has never been properly determined. Some have suggested it was the result of loud noise, possibly caused by a deliberate act such as the letting off of a firework, and Postelnicu has stated that this was the opinion of those on the balcony, but equally it may have come from an entirely accidental source, such as a collapsing lamp stand. The noise made the crowd, already tense and rife with rumours, begin to panic and push and shove in all directions and, simultaneously, or possibly shortly afterwards, some muffled protests were shouted from its m idsts, although these were only loud enough to be indistinctly picked up by the recording microphones.^*® After three minutes, enough o f a semblance of order was restored for Ceau§escu to continue his speech, but, already, ominously those from the back of the gathering had begun to drift away. He first announced a series of measures to improve living standards raising the minimum wage from 2,000 to 2,200 lei and also increasing children's allowances, pensions and social security benefits as well as pledging the introduction of a maternity allowance.
52
The overthrow of Nicolae Ceau§esr ^
These increases had been approved at the meeting of the PEC, held earher that morning, but they cannot be seen as a serious attempt to buy popular support, as the figures involved were small and the rises had all been announced earlier in the month during the 14*^ Congress of the RCP.^^^ Then, turning to the events in Timisoara Ceau§escu sought to win the support of the crowd by calling for national unity to meet the many dangers faced by Romania in a hostile world.
To Ceau§escu it was obvious that in Timi§oara the country was facing ‘ . action
orchestrated by circles who want to destroy Romania’s integrity and sovereignty,
halt socialist construction and put our people under foreign dom ination we
have to work in complete unity and with determination against all those who are trying to weaken the strength and unity of the nation and who are in the service of various espionage services and imperialist circles to divide Romania again and subjugate our people.’ In the face of these threats he exhorted his compatriots that it was . . . better to die fighting in full glory than again to be slaves in the ancient l and. . . ’.14* However, his tired words eh cited httle enthusiasm and, by the end of the speech, he was again being interrupted by indistinct chanting, and so the rally seems to have been brought to a peremptory end. Confused and alarmed the crowd streamed rapidly away so that within ten minutes the square was virtually deserted. Placards were left heaped on the pavement or strewn on the ground and, as the television crew began to pack up their cameras, squads of cleaners entered to tidy up the square. The first deployments of troops also began to appear.
The authorities seem to have taken some precautions to forestall possible unrest with, for instance, a special watch being placed on student dormitories to prevent demonstrations, and during the evening of 21 December several known
dissidents were rounded up by Securitate and moved out of B u c h a r e s t .Senior
Party officials had already been despatched to the chief urban centres and all military units throughout the country placed in a state of alert since 17 December with units of the Patriotic Guard also partly a c t i v a t e d . I n preparation for the
mass meeting in Bucharest eight platoons of Securitate troops in buses had been
placed in reserve at strategic points throughout the centre of the capital, whilst others joined a detachment of soldiers stationed in Pia^a Palatului. Another group of 300 cadets from the Military Finishing School for Officers of the Militia had also been ordered to join the mass meeting in civilian dress. However, news of the meeting had travelled far and wide within Bucharest attracting people towards the centre and, now, as these new arrivais mingled with the workers leaving the square, there were isolated incidents of u n r e s t . S c a t t e r e d groups of youths moved through larger crowds of onlookers and passing shoppers shouting slogans and urging their fellow citizens to join them in protest. A bookshop was broken