Romania 1989

Fascinating People Fascinating Places

Daniel Mainwaring

Documentary, Society & Culture:documentary, History, Society & Culture

5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Romanian revolution of 1989 was the result of the country’s long tradition of simultaneously resisting and embracing outside forces and influences. It’s a process that stretches back to the second century AD when the Roman Emperor Trajan conquered the area and plundered its gold. Goths, Hun, Bulgars, Magyars, and Ottomans followed. Each group was fiercely resisted before being driven out by heroic figures like Vlad The Impaler. But each invasion force left its legacy producing a nation that is more heterogeneous than its neighbors. Like the surrounding Slavic countries Romania embraced Orthodox Christianity. But unlike its Yugoslavian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian neighbors it used the Latin alphabet. Indeed, Romanian is the language most closely tied to modern Italian, while the majority of the Balkan nations speak in Slavic, Turkic, or Greek. Sound Effects: Pixabay BBC John Simpson BBC1 News English: Address from the Brandenburg Gate (Berlin Wall). Full text at Wikisource Date12 June 1987SourceUniversity of Virginia Miller Center for Public Affairs President Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. Transcript available.[1] Date26 June 1963SourceKennedy Presidential Library[2]AuthorJohn F. Kennedy

Transcript

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0:00.0	Fascinating people,
0:02.0	Fascinating Places.
0:03.8	G'd Aye and welcome to the Dan Mainwearing podcast.
0:07.6	This is where we talk to and about the famous and the infamous,
0:11.6	the celebrated and the obscure, the well-known and the undiscovered, interviews, articles
0:17.0	and discussion from around the globe.
0:18.8	President, just a year ago, you welcome me to Bucharest as the first American
0:28.0	president ever to visit the main. Today, I'm very honored to welcome you to Washington DC as the first president of
0:36.0	Romanian ever to visit the United States of America.
0:39.0	On the 21st of December 1989, Romanian president Romanian President Nikolai Chowchezku, the moderate friend of the West who'd been knighted in Denmark and the United
0:49.7	Kingdom, who'd condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and snub the Warsaw Pact, stepped out
0:57.1	onto a balcony overlooking Palace Square in Bucharest.
1:01.8	In the weeks prior, communist regimes across Eastern Europe had fallen like
1:06.4	dominoes in a popular wave of revolution, cheered on by governments in the West. Despite his supposed credentials as a moderate, Bucharest
1:17.1	was seemingly impervious to change. Thousands of raucous supporters greeted him as they held his portrait to loft and waved communist flags in the air.
1:27.0	But Chauchezky had not come to praise the revolution.
1:32.0	He had come to bury it.
1:34.0	A sudden commotion at the back of the crowd caught his attention.
1:47.0	When she got in the chest up,
1:50.0	panicked citizens, spooked by gunfire or firecrackers began rushing forward.
1:58.8	As they did so, the unnerved Chaucheska lost his train of thoughts.
2:04.0	The mood in the square quickly turned and portraits of the president were trampled underfoot
	...

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