"The Romanian revolution, a knock from the army"

November 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed. A month later, December 25, Romania, the Ceausescu couple were executed after a sham trial. The images of the killing go around the world, the scenario of events is chaotic and incomprehensible, handling full swing. Guy Hoedts, Inalco researcher, historian Catherine Durandin reconstituted the film of a communist coup, revolution confiscated from unpublished testimonies in death of Ceausescu (Bourin), which just appeared. Interview.

So, this popular revolution was well and truly a coup in disguise? Ceausescu was right after all? "

Yes, Ceausescu was right when facing the insurgency that claims court judge, this December 25, 1989, speaking of traitors and coup. He understands what he felt was coming since December 17, already ...

This coup is the result of the army and, these days, generals and Militaru Stanculescu: Militaru, then retired, claims arrive by chance at television headquarters invested by players in the revolution of the coup d ' State, 22 afternoon. He had already conspired against the Ceausescu regime in the early 1980s. Stanculescu, he had, before 22 in the evening, all the confidence of Ceausescu who made him his defense minister a day earlier! It was he who gave the order to fire against the demonstrators in Timisoara ... But on the morning of 22, he advises Ceausescu to go to better reinvest Bucharest. It organizes their departure brought the helicopter on the roof of the Central Committee shall convene the tribunal. He changed roles: Minister of Defense of Ceausescu, he became one of the key players in the elimination phase of Ceausescu ...

For that, more fundamentally, is led this coup?

The players are tired by the communist regime drifts through the deployment of the personality cult that extols Ceausescu and his wife. These men - the generation of senior Party between 40 and 50 years - have contacts with Moscow in the USSR they were former colleagues from college, they are for senior military officers, trained in the Soviet academies for officers superior Warsaw Pact. They are in contact with the older generation, the founding fathers of communism in Romania, while supported by Moscow ... Elite has been informed Leninist education, they have followed the steps of restructuring decisions of Gorbachev, want to save socialism with a human face that he has dreamed. They thought about the conquest of power and do not want to miss the train of change that has already taken place in Hungary and Poland. But with Ceausescu, nothing is possible, anything is negotiable ...

In the general confusion, those players from 1989 have immediate aim to pose as heroes ...

Yes, they should promote themselves as liberators of the Ceausescu clan. They show that the Central Committee since December 22 and then on television, calling for the brotherhood of the army with the people they pound the threat posed by agents of the Securitate or terrorists prepared to continue fighting for Ceausescu. They are as worn by the movement of crowds and demonstrators to manipulate the shot well slogans chanted: "Libertate" (freedom) and "Ola, ola, Ceausescu is gone!"