The last days of Ceausescu Regime

Tour details

Departure location (other hotels on request): Hotel Radisson Blu
Calea Victoriei 63 – 81 Sector 1, 10065, Bucharest, Romania
Departure time: 8:00 am

As you know, Nicolae Ceausescu had been the president of Romania (1967-1989) and the leader of the communist party in Romania. During his regime for a brief period he ruled the country in a moderate way, but shortly his regime became brutal and repressive towards the country, making his rule the most rigidly Stalinist way in the Eastern Europe. He maintained controls over media and speech. The secret police, Securitate, had been one of the frightening and harsh forces he used to control the country. In the early 80’s he decided to pay off the Romanian foreign debt by exporting most of the country’s agricultural and industrial production. It led to extreme shortages of food, fuel, energy, medicine and other basic life necessities.

On this trip, we take on Ceausescu’s last days and his regime. We visit Revolution Square, where Ceausescu with his wife Elena held his last speech on the 21st December 1989, about the achievements of the socialist revolution and also blamed the Timisoara rebels for being fascist agitators who wanted to destroy socialism. In just a few minutes of his speech, people from the square started chanting Timisoara. Failing to control the crowds he left the balcony of Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. On the 22nd of December he came out on the balcony for the second time to convince people to calm down but the crowd started to throw stones and other things at him. The power of the crowd managed to break through the doors and rushed to the balcony, not knowing that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were stuck in an elevator, a few meters away. They managed to get to the roof of the building and run off by helicopter, first to their residence at Snagov and to then to Targovite.

The helicopter was forced to land because it didn’t have a clearance for the flight from the Romanian army, Ceausescu was left on the field and picked up by the police. The army ordered to policemen to bring them in. Finally, the Dictator and his wife were taken to the Targoviste military base, where they were convicted for genocide, spent 2 nights at the army base and were executed on Christmas Day 25th December 1989.

We leave the Revolution Square and drive towards Tragoviste to visit the army base where Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu spent the last days of their lives, maybe meet one of the people who were there on their tribunal, visit the rooms where they were detained in and see the wall were the executioners fired the guns.

This is the tour of the last days of Ceausescu regime. We go back to Bucharest.