How the Securitate Won the War for the History of December 1989: A Detailed, Sourced Analysis of the SPM Rechizitoriu in the Dosarul Revolutiei of 5 April 2019 (I)

(a serialized version of the original draft for my contribution in Tragatori si Mistificatori: Contrarevolutia Securitatii in decembrie 1989 (Polirom, 2019), Andrei Ursu, Roland O. Thomasson, and Madalin Hodor)

How the Securitate Won the War for the History of December 1989:

A Detailed, Sourced Analysis of the SPM Rechizitoriu in the Dosarul Revolutiei of 5 April 2019

–The Securitate lost the battle to save the communist regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989…but they won the war for how December 1989 is remembered.

Nothing is better or more bitter proof of this claim than the subject of this chapter: the 501-page Indictment in the Revolution File of 5 April 2019 drawn up by military prosecutors.[1] The Indictment charges long time communist party apparatchik and former President of Romania Ion Iliescu (1990-1996; 2000-2004) and others, including former Deputy Prime Minister Gelu Voican Voiculescu (1990-1991), with “crimes against humanity” for, according to the Indictment, the “862 deaths and 2,150 injuries” (p. 456) that occurred after Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu fled Bucharest by helicopter at midday on 22 December 1989. These officials and high-ranking military officers are accused of creating a “terrorist diversion” against non-existent Ceausescu loyalists during the period 22-31 December 1989 in order to legitimize their seizure of power and cover up the military’s role in the bloodshed that preceded Ceausescu’s ouster on 22 December 1989, the period of 16-22 December 1989. Nestor Ratesh once referred to this narrative as the “operetta war” theory[2]; it could also be termed “regime change” by “false flag” or “diversionary war”[3] theory, for it claims not as that theory does that powerholders go to war to divert attention from other issues, but that the first act of those who seized power, the act that brought them to power, was the creation of a diversionary war, in this case a false one.

The claim that the details and arguments of the former Securitate permeate and even inspire the Indictment in the Revolution File may strike some readers as outlandish. Afterall, haven’t the announcements of the Military Prosecutorial Section (SPM) been well received by domestic and international media since the file was reopened in late 2016? Has the work of the SPM in the Revolution File not been praised by Romania’s liberal, anti-communist, pro-West intelligentsia at home and abroad? Has it not been welcomed by the head of the most visible association of revolutionaries, the 21 December Association? Indeed, all of these are true, the work of the SPM has been praised and defended by Gabriel Liiceanu and Horia Roman-Patapievici, and no less than the Chair of the Presidential Commission to Analyze the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, whose Final Report was the basis for President Traian Basescu’s condemnation of the communist regime and the Securitate as “illegitimate and criminal” on 18 December 2006, considers that Ion Iliescu and the others are finally receiving real justice.[4]

Broad, Overarching Conclusions

Before we begin to break down the Rechizitoriu in detail, a few broader, overarching observations and interpretations are in order. Some of these themes will be further developed in the detailed breakdown which follows; others will not.

In broad terms, who does the Rechizitoriu say are the guilty and the victims of the post 22 December 1989 mayhem and violence:

Guilty:

MApN senior officers (including GRU/KGB recruited agents)
PCR senior officials (including KGB/GRU recruited agents)
Media (TVR, former PCR-State press)
C.A.A.T. (Comandamentul Apărării Antiaeriene a Teritoriului, for the diversiune radio-electronica)
DIA (strongly suggested—they had the simulators; they had the lupta de rezistenta training,;their people were accused of pointing the finger at the Securitate (ex. Teodor Stepan, Resita)

Victims:

the entire Romanian population and international opinion
military rank and file (they didn’t know about the diversion)
suspected Arabs and other foreigners (arrested based on disinformation and preducial suspicion)
the Securitate (and to a lesser extent the Militie)
Stefan Gusa (with the exception of his listing for his role in the Timisoara repression, he is upheld as a hero having opposed Iliescu et al. and the Russians; this is in stark contrast to the treatment of Militaru)

a) The SECURITATE–the secret police of the communist regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu–is mentioned only in passing, in the context of having, along with all other armed state and party institutions, (allegedly) put themselves (in their totality) at the disposition of the CFSN and its leadership (in particular, Ion Iliescu) as of 4 pm on 22 December 1989. NICOLAE CEAUSESCU AND ELENA CEAUSESCU are mentioned only in the context of witless victims, as the target of the dastardly diversion, as victims of a simulated criminal trial, sentencing, and execution.

b) The alleged diversion is attributed to the “Supreme Military Council” subordinated to the CFSN. Only two military officials of the Supreme Military Council are mentioned, both Army Generals, Victor Atanasie Stanculescu (active duty) and Nicolae Militaru (in the reserves at the time). (Whereas Army Generals Stanculescu and Militaru are alleged to have participated in the alleged diversion, there is no mention of Major Mihai CHITAC, but especially there is no mention of Army General Stefan GUSA.) Ion Iliescu, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, Iosif Rus, and Emil Dumitrescu–the latter two air force and navy respectively–are said to have participated directly in carrying out the diversion and disinformation! NO SECURITATE OFFICIALS ARE MENTIONED IN CONNECTION WITH THE ALLEGED DIVERSION!

c) SECURITATE Generals Iulian VLAD, Gianu BUCURESCU, Aristotel STAMATOIU, and Gheorge VASILE, all four of whom were arrested at the time in late December 1989 for their alleged role in the bloodshed, are NOT mentioned, suggesting that they had no role in the alleged diversion and were therefore unjustly arrested. (Moreover, since it is maintained that the terrorists were an invention, a fiction created by the so-called diversion, that means by definition there were no Securitate terrorists, that no Securitate were intentionally responsible for direct bloodshed after 22 December 1989.)

Extended sections dealing with the “terrorists” and arrested foreigners are taken verbatim from „Sinteza aspectelor rezultate din anchetele efectuate de parchetele militare în perioada 1990 – 1994, în cauzele privind evenimentele din decembrie 1989” (See, for example, pp. 184-210; p. 438 ff. pp. 447-450.) released under prosecutors Samoila Joarza and Mihai Popa Ulupiu Cherecheanu et al. in December 1994, when Romania was de facto ruled by PDSR-PUNR-PSM-PRM-PDAR, a coalition which would formalized the following spring.

The number of citations from former Securitate sources is large: including Aurel Rogojan, Vasile Lupu, etc. and from pillars of the Ceausescu regime, such as Constantin Olteanu. Even the “Soviet tourists”—a favorite theme of the former Securitate—appear in the testimonies of Vasile Lupu and Ion Mateescu (razboiul radio-electronic, p. 347)

Many testimonies were only recently taken, in the past few years (2017, 2018). Testimonies from immediately after the events, or even in the initial years after the events, when those events would have been fresher in the minds of those testifying, are rare. This increases the scope for so-called “recovered memories,” of witnesses forgetting, misremembering, confusing details, dates, and actors, of reinterpreting events through the political prism and personal and ideological feuds of the intervening years (decades!), of unintentionally mixing what they have heard or read elsewhere—especially from written histories and films—into their own accounts.

Our 2018 NRDO study is dealt with superficially, quickly, and unseriously (pp. 300-304). The author of the Revista Securitatea article (1989) on lupta de rezistenta is interviewed, but says it was just theory, and the Molan case is dismissed because he had an army weapon and did not act like a professional. This was at best a perfunctory, last minute effort to address evidence that they would had ignored and would prefer to ignore.

Whether it is investigating lupta de rezistenta, or simulators, or razboiul radio-electronic, the Rechizitoriu concludes the source was internal but then look through anyone but the Securitate, focusing mainly on DIA, CAAT, etc, as the culprits. Two classic examples are allowing the author of the article in revista Securitatea to dispel the idea that his article had any basis in real plans (they accept this at face value), and citing Ioan Rusan UM 0110 (pp. 130-131) as the source to say that those who were on the Rombac to Sibiu on the evening of the 20^th were Buzau 404 DIA!

This is NOT the Timisoara variant that underpinned much of previous military prosecutor Dan Voinea’s argument, and that, not surprisingly, is vigorously maintained and promoted by many Timisoara revolutionary participants. That variant suggests that the Army leadership who participated in the Timisoara repression—in particular, Gusa, Stanculescu, and Chitac—was the engine of the alleged post- 22 December diversion of invented terrorists because they needed to cover up their bloody role in Timisoara and buy themselves amnesty from the new political leadership. In this scenario, Ion Iliescu and the Front leadership were secondary, being brought into the Army diversion and acceding to it, rather than organizing and driving the diversion—the military prosecutors’ current argument. The argument in the Rechizitoriu essentially turns the Timisoara variant on its head, suggesting that those military officers involved in the Timisoara repression glommed onto and were integrated into the pre-existing filosoviet conspiracy around Ion Iliescu and the core of the future CFSN. The Rechizitoriu’s argument is very much a “Bucharest” and partisan, post 22 December political argument; it is thus little wonder that it is eagerly and uncritically consumed by Romania’s Bucharest-dominated anti-communist/anti-Iliescu intelligentsia, among others.

Whose argument does the Rechizitoriu’s most closely resemble? To some extent, this is reheated leftovers from 1996 and the majority opinion of the Sandulescu-Gabrielescu PNTCD version of the Senatorial Commission investigating December 1989 (whose Report, it not surpisingly quotes extensively from). It includes strong currents of anti-communist, anti-Soviet/anti-Russia (Soviet/Russia discussion is heavy throughout, not just for Romania but allegedly for the collapse of communism in the whole region in 1989; see the introduction, and approximately pp. 392-437, with its focus on filosovietism), a sort of ideological, non-patriotarda/xenophobic nationalism.
Just as in 1996, it overlaps ca din minune with the writings of the former Securitate—less Pavel Corut than another former IV Directorate CI officer, Valentin Raiha. The suggestion that DIA, but definitely NOT the Securitate bear a role for the post-22 violence and mayhem has a long history, from the likes of Gheorghe Ratiu, Nicolae Plesita, and many others. In fact, the strong anti-Soviet/anti-Russian component of the Rechizitoriu and the arguments and evidence presented most strongly resembles the more “national security” focused (to the extent we can say that at all, since they were clearly also politically and ideologically focused) elements of the former Securitate: Directorate IV Military Counter Intelligence and DSS UM 0110, the unit charged with countering espionage from fellow “fraternal” socialist countries, such as the Soviet Union and Hungary.

[1] The full, “non-anonimizat” version of the Rechizitoriu was posted online on 19 July 2019 ( https://www.b1.ro/stiri/eveniment/exclusiv-b1-ro-prezinta-integral-rechizitoriul-revolutiei-romane-episodul-1-dovada-implicarii-rusiei-in-evenimentele-din-decembrie-1989-filosovietismul-lui-iliescu-si-acolitilor-sai-286156.html) and can be accessed here: I – paginile 1-125 ; II – paginile 126-250 ; III- paginile 251-375 ; IV- paginile 376-501.

[2] Nestor Ratesh, Romania: The Entangled Revolution, (New York: Praeger, 1991), pp. 61-62.

[3] For an overview, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversionary_foreign_policy.

[4] https://www.marginaliaetc.ro/gabriel-liiceanu-petre-roman-si-teodor-brates-ii-invata-pe-studenti-etica-la-universitatea-din-bucuresti/; https://adevarul.ro/cultura/carti/interviu-horia-roman-patapievici-scriitor-daca-alegerile-vor-confirmaformula-guvernare-psd-alde-ideea-romania-duce-culcare-1_5ce7d5fd445219c57efeb3a9/index.html; https://adevarul.ro/news/eveniment/teodor-maries-asociatia-21-decembrie-1989-despre-inculparile-dosarul-revolutiei-sunt-criminali-murit-900-oameni-mii-fost-raniti-1_5c1cbf6cdf52022f75bb6ab3/index.html; https://putereaacincea.ro/post-comunismul-paria-al-lui-ion-iliescu/ ; Vladimir Tismaneanu, “1989 and After: Morality and Truth in Post Communist Societies,” Current History, March 2019, pp. 114-116 athttp://www.currenthistory.com/Tismaneanu-CH2019.pdf.