While the coming of December once evoked warm sentiments for the upcoming celebration of the birth of Christ, it had been overshadowed by the harsh weather that was only going to get colder. “One of the season's jokes was that Dante had been wrong, and that hell was not hot at all, it was, in fact, as cold as a Romanian apartment in winter.” (1) But, even if the apartments were warm, Christmas was not celebrated, and even though ninety percent of Romanians belonged to the Christian Orthodox faith, church bells did not ring. By the 1980’s, the most celebrated day in Romania was no longer the birth of Jesus the Christ, but under compulsion, the birth of its dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu - who was aptly nicknamed, the antichrist. (2) But as 1989 was coming to a close in mid December, as we all know now, the people of Romania were unknowingly on the brink of not only openly celebrating the birth of their Christ, but the death of their antichrist. But what many don’t know, was that this Romanian Revolution all started by the humble but powerful convictions of a Hungarian pastor named Laszlo Tokes.Only Romanians forty-five years and older could remember the sweet sounds of church bells ringing! For under Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romanian Communist Party, they were no more. Romania had been in the grips of Communism for some time, but by the 1980’s it had become intolerable. Despite the country being very fertile, like most Communist countries food was scarce and people were starving. Most of the nation’s raw materials were being exported to foreign creditors to pay off debts that Nicolae had accumulated. Because of this debt, Nicolae’s aim was to strengthen the work force, causing Romania to reach a population of 100 million. To do so, he outlawed abortion and contraceptives.And in massive block apartments that housed the growing nation, hot water was only available one day of the week and the electricity only worked when the government wanted it to. Every winter, hundreds of people froze to death in their apartment or died from “asphyxiation as gas stoves were shut off, only to be then turned back on without warning, filling sleeping apartments with gas.” (3) Meanwhile, the secret police, the Securitate, had made Romania into a police state. It is believed that one in four citizens would alert the Securitate of anyone suspected of being un loyal to the Government. Actions, speech, and even opinions that did not approve Nicolae were strictly forbidden. Because of the overwhelming numbers of the police state, organizing dissent was nearly impossible, and “Even by Soviet Bloc standards, the Securitate was exceptionally brutal.” (4)But on December 16th, in the western city of Timisoara a public protest was being held in response to the government’s crackdown against the Reformed church pastor, Laszlo Tokes. He had been critical of Nicolae’s government - mainly that the people of Romania not only, could not exercise their God-given rights, but did not even know what they were. The Romanian Communist Party charged the pastor with enticing ethnic hatred and sought to have him forcibly removed. But his parishioners, (who just two years before only numbered a few dozen had now grown to nearly five thousand), protected their pastor and his pregnant wife Edith by surrounding their church with a human shield. Tokes knew of the plan for his capture so he encouraged his church a few days beforehand stating, “I have been issued a summons of eviction. I will not accept it, so I will be taken from you by force…They want to do this in secret because they have no right to do it. Please, come… and be witnesses of what will happen. Come, be peaceful, but be witnesses.” (5)And the church came in numbers. So much that their collective resistance rendered the Securitate unable to remove the pastor. And as the hours past into nightfall, more and more people from other churches joined the protest into the next day. By now, many other supportive spectators had joined the cause and began to take the message further. Within a day the demonstration for the pastor sparked a protest in the city. And within a few more days the protest in the city would in turn spark a wild fire of dissent among a brutalized nation.Pro Romanian chants and songs that had long been outlawed, broke out among the people. The crowd grew so large and cantankerous around the church that a large portion decided to take their protest to the central square of Timisoara. This was when the Securitate made their move. In the pre-dawn hours of December 17th, the secret police burst through the crowd, broke the church door, and captured Tokes and his wife. Just as fast as they came, the secret police then disappeared into the darkness from where they emerged.But as the sun began to rise the public outcry was only beginning.By early morning the central square of Timisoara was filled with protestors confronting the Securitate with candles of...
