1989 END OF TYRANNY
On 22 December 1989, 42 years of communist rule in Romania came to a bloody end with the overthrow – and later execution – of the country’s leader, Communist Party General Secretary Nicolae Ceauşescu. His rule had been one of fear and suppression, characterised by austerity and food shortages, and by the time of the revolution – one of several to sweep across the Eastern Bloc in 1989 – his dictatorship had lost the support of the military. It is estimated that a little more than 1,000 people were killed during the protests that toppled Ceauşescu and the fighting that followed.