General admits long-term coup planning

Reports of "popular uprising" in Romania debunked

By Sam Marcy (Jan. 11, 1990)

January 3--General Nicolae Militaru, a retired army general who once served as commander of the Bucharest garrison and has now become Romania's new defense minister, was caught on videotape admitting that he and his military associates began planning the coup in Romania six months before the so-called "popular uprising" in December.

This was revealed in the New York Times today, which described how, despite official denials, a "home video, taken just as power was changing hands," showed General Militaru "saying that the ruling Council of National Salvation had been in existence for six months."

The videotape was played on television in Romania, the Times says, on Jan. 1 to what must have been an astounded public. Although this extraordinary embarrassment for the U.S. and the imperialist media in general was denied by the new Prime Minister, Petre Roman, the Times goes on to say that the general "did make the comment during a debate on what to call the new provisional government."

Army runs Council of National Salvation

The Times also reveals that General Militaru is one of four officers (described as generals in a Times article two days ago) in the Council of National Salvation. The makeup of the secret council is hazy. Reported at one time to have had 27 members, then 39, today it is said to have been expanded to 150. However, admits the Times, "key decisions are made by an 11-member bureau," which according to one member now meets every other day. When the so-called expanded council meets, or if it ever did meet, is not explained.

No doubt is left as to who calls the shots. Calling the overthrow of the Ceausescu government a "revolution," the Times says that the army's decision to "support" it "was critical to its success. In the new government the army plays the most important role, with four officers, including General Militaru, holding ministerial posts."

If the army plays the most prominent role, holding four unnamed ministerial posts, then it is the army that is running the Council of National Salvation.

The Times of London had already reported (Dec. 29) that "The real power clearly lies with the Army, but the soldiers are keeping in the background and so far have refrained from talking to journalists."

Another article in the same issue reported, "The Romanian Army, in the view of many citizens of the new order, is now the key factor in their country's future."

Who is General Militaru?

General Militaru's name did not appear in any of the leading capitalist papers available in the United States during the two-week period of so-called popular revolution. The first mention of it was in a New York Times Op Ed piece (Dec. 28) written by Mary Ellen Fischer, author of the book "Nicolae Ceausescu," which has just been released by Lynne Rienner Publishers (Boulder and London).

Referring to the so-called Council of National Salvation, Fischer says that "if the transitional government cannot restore order sufficiently to hold the promised election in April, then a strong military ruler, such as the new defense minister, Nicolae Militaru, might seem an attractive alternative to anarchy."

How would Mary Ellen Fischer know that Nicolae Militaru is a strong new defense minister, when neither he nor his accession to this post had been mentioned in the capitalist press here? Furthermore, in her book on the Ceausescu era, which names many personalities and includes a section on the Romanian military, his name is not to be found anywhere.

Obviously, this information is piped into her from the CIA and its scholarly "think-tanks" which produce books purporting to be exhaustive studies of the situation in the socialist countries.

Also coming apart at this time are the fabricated stories about an alleged bloody massacre in the city of Timisoara carried out by "Ceausescu loyalists" against unarmed demonstrators. It is now being admitted by news sources that nothing of the kind happened. However, these horror stories served the purposes of domestic reaction and of imperialism. The complicity in this deceit by the Bush administration should be made clear to the U.S. public.

Signal from White House

As early as Dec. 19 the White House took the opportunity to denounce the alleged massacre by "condemning Romania's crackdown on political demonstrators as `brutal' " (New York Times, Dec. 20) without presenting any semblance of facts.

The White House statement continued, "The repressive measures undertaken by the Rumanian Government are totally unjustified and stand in stark contrast to the positive changes taking place elsewhere in Eastern Europe." Washington, it said, was "pursuing a coordinated response" through the so-called Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. It called directly on the USSR and France to coordinate their efforts at a so-called Helsinki-type conference.

This pronouncement from the White House was carried in the press and media of Hungary, Yugoslavia and other East European countries which border on Romania, and could only be regarded as a signal to all counterrevolutionary elements in Romania that they had the support of the U.S.

The fact of the matter is that the developments in Timisoara were a calculated provocation intended to create the fiction of a so-called popular uprising, when in reality a military coup was already in preparation.

Timisoara and the role of Hungary

Timisoara is in western Romania, near the Hungarian border. In western Romania there are 1,700,000 Hungarians; the Hungarian bourgeois elements have been used as a base to instigate a counterrevolutionary development in Romania. In the months before the so-called massacre of Timisoara, there was a concerted effort by the Hungarian authorities to stimulate mass demonstrations in Budapest on a continuing basis in order to instigate provocative incidents against the Romanian authorities.

Laszlo Tokes, a Hungarian cleric in Timisoara who had long been engaged in counterrevolutionary propaganda against the Romanian authorities, using alleged grievances of the Hungarian minority to stimulate protests, was deliberately projected by the Hungarian government as a hero in the struggle for "national liberation."

Tokes' activity would have been strictly of local interest, and by no stretch of the imagination could have had any national importance for Romania, except that the Hungarian government under bourgeois leadership turned him into a national hero in the same way that Hitler utilized ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere as his puppets.

This priest is a miniature edition of Cardinal Mindzenty in Hungary--an outspoken clerical fascist and bitter enemy of socialism. The idea that he was an early leader of a Romanian "revolution" is ludicrous.

The whole thing was puffed up and manipulated by the Romanian military plotters. Whatever occurred in Timisoara, how many were really killed and who they were, has to be examined independently, especially now that the military character of the new government has been exposed.

How many of the casualties are the result of a reign of terror against progressives, antifascists and communists? The extent of it cannot be known yet, but it speaks volumes that the entire Politburo is now in prison, as are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others.

As night follows day, the reactionary coup d'etat was followed by a reign of terror--the White Terror, as it is called in revolutionary working class history. This is the terror of the bourgeoisie directed against communists, including summary executions, mass arrests, secret trials and/or imprisonment without any trials at all.

What is the situation today? The names of the arrested have not been revealed, nor those who were killed or wounded. The "judges" who tried the Ceausescus hid behind masks. Reporters who usually inquire at hospitals or prisons have not done so, nor have they sought out relatives and friends of the leading communist personnel who have been wounded, killed or held without trial.

The Jilava massacre

In the book Nicolae Ceausescu, Mary Ellen Fischer wrote earlier this year that "The potential political instability raises the likelihood of a military solution, for which there is ample precedent. In 1940, for example, the army commander, Marshal Ion Antonescu, stepped in to restore order. ... "

There is a parallel between 1940 and the present situation. But Fischer leaves out what is of exceptional importance about that period. The omission clearly shows the class bias of the author and her partiality to the Antonescu fascist dictatorship, which was allied with Nazi Germany.

In 1940 there occurred one of the most terrifying acts of assassination, rivaling the horrors of the Nazi regime. On the evenings of Nov. 26 and 27, untold numbers of political prisoners--progressives, antifascists and communists--were murdered by the fascist Iron Guard in the prison of Jilava.

This was a real massacre. The fascists invaded the prison and assassinated leading people in the anti-fascist struggle. How different was the assassination of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu? Who knows how many others were killed in the same way?

Democratic? Not even in name

On the videotape referred to in today's New York Times, filmed four hours after the Ceausescus were forced to flee Bucharest, "someone proposed calling the new Government the Democratic Front." But the use of the word "democratic" was too much for Militaru, who countered with the name Council of National Salvation, "since it `has been functioning for six months.' " The term democratic doesn't fit in with the general's fascist, militarist ideology.

In our article last week (WW, Jan. 4, 1990), we dwelt on the historical roots of the Romanian military. The army does not come from a popular militia or people's army, such as in the USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, even Yugoslavia. What happened was that toward the end of World War II, as Soviet troops were marching into Romania, the army brass, who had been allied with Nazi Germany and even fought at Stalingrad, switched sides and signed an armistice with the Allies. As a result, a large section of the old military corps were incorporated into the new Romanian army.

In 1983, writes Mary Ellen Fischer, there were rumors of a coup d'etat against the Ceausescu government. Earlier, some army brass had walked out of a plenary session of the Communist Party, apparently because they didn't like the fact that Ceausescu wanted to involve the army in civil construction projects. Ceausescu was attempting to slowly convert it into an army of socialist defense and construction, but the army brass themselves were pushing for highly sophisticated technology--which might be related to defense but not to the building of a people's militia.

Ceausescu then formed the Patriotic Guards, really an attempt to set up a civilian, workers' militia. This was meant as an auxiliary to supplement the army and also as a check against the army brass, which was scornful of socialist construction and didn't want its troops involved in civilian projects.

In the classic style of a military coup, the generals finally moved against the socialist regime while Ceausescu was out of the country, on a state visit to Iran. The events in Romania led to a media barrage behind which the U.S. then moved its troops into Panama. Never has there been such a massive, double-punch campaign of media deception rivaling the work of the Nazi propaganda machine.

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