One Bloody Regime Change and Three Political Paradoxes. The Romanian Revolution of 1989 and Its Legacy

This study focuses on three political paradoxes which characterize the bloody 1989 regime change in Romania and the thirty-year period which elapsed, that is, 1989-2019. These three political paradoxes read as follows: Paradox #1: The bloody anti-communist revolution of 1989 brought to power the second- and third-rank members of the communist power elite and a number of technocrats who had been close to the power structures of the defunct Romanian Communist Party (RCP); Paradox #2: The number of registered victims after the collapse of the communist regime on 22 December 1989 surpasses the number of registered victims during the period 16-22 December 1989 by a ratio of about 7 to 1; and Paradox #3: Although Romania went through one of the longest and most painful transitions to democracy in East-Central Europe (ECE), the country has not experienced so far an authoritarian backsliding after the year 2010 on the Central European model (especially the cases of Hungary and Poland). The present study addresses these paradoxes and explains why the violent collapse of the communist regime in Romania has led to the birth of a political culture of contestation, which prompted several waves of bottom=up mobilization in favor of democratic consolidation and, so far, hampered the rise of authoritarianism in this country.