Down with Big Brother (51 page)

I visited Havel in his farmhouse in the rolling hills of northern Bohemia in August 1988. At that time the oppressive Husák regime was still well in control, if a little rattled by events in the Soviet Union. Prospects for a nationwide uprising seemed slim, but Havel was remarkably buoyant and optimistic. “This situation cannot go on forever,” he told me. “Something has to change here. Nobody knows when and how that change will come, but it will come. There is too great a distance between the official ideology and the state of mind of society.”
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W
HILE
H
AVEL AND
D
UBĈEK WERE SPEAKING
to the delirious crowds in Wenceslas Square, the panic-stricken Czech leaders were holding a crisis session of the party’s policy-making Central Committee. Long-festering splits within the leadership had burst out into the open. Husák’s successor as first secretary, Miloš Jakeš, was in favor of using force to break up the demonstrations. But his Politburo colleagues lacked the stomach for decisive measures.

As the protest demonstrations grew in strength, the Prague police became increasingly demoralized. Jakes prepared a last-ditch plan to shore up his crumbling authority. He would order the People’s Militia, a twenty-five-thousand-strong force answerable only to the party leadership, into Prague factories to counter the influence of students who were trying to drum up support for a general strike. He also hoped to use the militia to reestablish his control over state television, which had begun to broadcast coverage of the demonstrations. The Politburo approved the plan on the evening of Tuesday, November 21.

The results fell way short of the decisive show of force that would have been required to restore the status quo. It was too little too late. When the People’s Militia squads appeared at the factories, they were booed and jeered, in some cases even attacked. The interior minister, who was responsible for the police, refused to go along with the plan. Other Politburo members, including the Prague party boss, looked for ways of distancing themselves from the discredited Jakeš. The demoralized and leaderless militia went home.

At the Central Committee meeting on November 24, one member after another got up to denounce the leadership for the use of violence against
the demonstrators. Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, the leading reformer on the Politburo, denounced the use of “extraordinary measures,” saying it would only “further aggravate” the situation.
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Eventually even Jakeš joined in the ritualistic breast-beating and self-criticism. “We have underestimated completely the processes taking place in Poland, Hungary, and especially recently in the German Democratic Republic,” he told his colleagues. “Our restructuring has been accompanied by many wonderful words, without the necessary deeds.”
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Like other disgraced Communist leaders, Jakeš was devastated by the way in which once-trusted subordinates turned on him as soon as the going got rough. “Beforehand, they had been raising their hands to vote yes,” he told an interviewer later. “Suddenly, everything was wrong. I could do nothing right.”
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T
HE FINAL ACT
of the day’s drama took place in the Magic Lantern Theater, a hundred yards from the bottom of Wenceslas Square. The Magic Lantern served as the headquarters of the democracy movement, performing a similar function to that of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk during the heyday of Solidarity. It was here that Civic Forum leaders plotted strategy, student activists drew up manifestos, and Havel held his daily press conferences.

On the evening of November 24 Havel was joined on the Magic Lantern stage by Dubĉek. Journalists wanted to know how Dubĉek’s ideas had changed during the twenty years since he had dropped out of public life. Not at all, was the answer. “I believe in the reformability of socialism,” Dubĉek replied. “We must look truth in the eyes and depart from everything that is wrong.” As Dubĉek spoke, Havel wore a pained expression. “Socialism is a word that has lost its meaning in our country,” he told journalists. “I identify socialism with men like Mr. Jakeš.”
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As the two men were discussing their differing views of socialism, someone rushed onstage to deliver a whispered message. Television had just announced that Jakeš and the entire Politburo had resigned. The theater erupted in applause. Havel and Dubĉek jumped to their feet to embrace each other and flash the V for victory sign. A supporter emerged from the wings of the theater carrying a bottle of champagne and some glasses. Havel proposed a toast: “Long live a free Czechoslovakia.” Dubĉek downed the champagne in one long gulp.

Outside in Wenceslas Square crowds of people, amazed by the latest turn
of events, gathered in front of store windows to watch the television news. Then they began lighting firecrackers and sparklers. Taxi drivers leaned on their horns. Four soldiers in uniform ran laughing through the square, waving a red, white, and blue Czechoslovak flag. A single trumpeter led a crowd of revelers to the statue of St. Wenceslas, ringed by hundreds of flickering votive candles. The first snowflakes of winter had begun to fall.

It was spring again in Prague.

BUCHAREST
December 21, 1989

T
HE DICTATOR STOOD
on his balcony, gazing out across a sea of demonstrators bearing his portrait and red banners extolling his wise and brilliant leadership. His high-pitched voice had become one continuous shriek, denouncing “foreign imperialists” and “fascist hooligans” for disturbing the workers’ paradise. When he paused for breath, the crowd responded with rhythmic chants of “Ceauşescu-Romania” and “Hoorah, hoorah.” The dictator modestly raised his hand to silence the deafening roars of approval. Then he resumed his ranting, slicing the air with the palm of his hands as he screamed into the microphone.

Demonstrations of popular support for the
conducător
, supreme leader, of the Romanian people always followed the same ritual. Party organizers were instructed to dispatch fixed quotas of “ordinary Romanians” to the site of the rally. The demonstrators were issued banners and told what slogans to chant. The front rows of the rally were filled with members of the secret police, the Securitate, who led the chanting and provided a physical barrier between the
conducător
and his “supporters.” The volume level was routinely boosted by prerecorded applause, relayed through strategically placed banks of loudspeakers.

During his twenty-four years in power Nicolae Ceauşescu had come to
depend on the adulation of those around him. Dozens of museums had been built in his honor, to cater for his insatiable thirst for
omagiu
(homage). Romanian newspapers compared him with Napoleon and Alexander the Great. A court painter depicted him carrying an orb and scepter, ascending through the clouds with his wife, Elena, accompanied by cherubic young Communist pioneers and white doves, symbolizing his quest for peace. His favorite poet referred to him as a “lay god,” with a voice of “planetary resonance” that echoed to the corners of the earth.
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Impressed by Ceauşescu’s occasional disagreements with Moscow, Western leaders had joined in the chorus of applause. Richard Nixon hailed his “profound understanding of the world’s major problems.” The queen of England invited him to Buckingham Palace and made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, the highest award she could bestow on a foreign leader.

For twenty-four years the applause had never faltered. But on this day something went terribly wrong.

It started with a low murmuring at the back, where the ordinary people stood. As the
conducător
ranted on, the murmurs turned to boos and whistles. There were shouts of “Freedom,” “Democracy,” and, ominously, the same chant that had sealed the fate of East Germany’s Communist leaders: “
We
are the people.” Gradually the cries of protest swelled, so that they could no longer be drowned out by the Securitate cheerleaders and the tape-recorded applause of the loudspeakers.

As they watched the live broadcast from Palace Square in Bucharest, millions of Romanians could hear the growing rumble of discontent. They saw a puzzled look spread across Ceauşescu’s deeply lined face, to be replaced by annoyance and finally by outright fear. They saw him raise his right hand in an ineffectual attempt to silence the hecklers. They saw him open and close his mouth, as nothing came out. For the first time ever their leader seemed at a loss for words. His eyes darted back and forth, searching the crowd. A bodyguard rushed forward to pull the president away from the balcony. Television viewers could hear Elena’s frantic comments to her husband: “Promise them something, talk to them.” Martial music swelled up in the background. Then the television screens went blank.

In an attempt to win over the crowd, Ceauşescu promised across-the-board wage and pension hikes. They responded with boos and hisses. The illusion of his omniscient power had been shattered once and for all. Both the people in the square and millions of television viewers at home had sensed his vulnerability.

Even before the wave of anti-Communist revolution swept Eastern Europe,
Ceauşescu was a man obsessed with personal security. Fearing assassination plots, he refused to eat anything that had not been professionally tasted. When he appeared in public, he was always surrounded by the Securitate. He had a personal hygiene fetish and would douse his hands in alcohol before and after meeting foreign dignitaries. Mistrusting outsiders, he appointed his relatives to key posts in the governments. “Socialism in one family” became a Romanian joke. Elena was considered the number two person in the regime; son Nicu was heir apparent; brother-in-law Ilie Verdeţ rose to the post of prime minister; another brother-in-law, Manea Mănescu, was deputy prime minister. Other relatives held key positions in the army, the Ministry of Trade, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Few people outside the charmed circle of relatives were permitted to remain in sensitive posts for more than a few years.

Convinced of his own infallibility and irreplaceability, Ceauşescu was prepared to do almost anything to remain in power. As his political position grew more precarious, he began lobbying other Communist leaders for urgent action to save the cause of socialism in Eastern Europe. In private conversations with his aides Gorbachev referred to Ceauşescu as the “Romanian führer” and made clear that he would be happy to see him deposed. During one visit to Bucharest the Soviet leader had accused Ceauşescu of terrorizing Romanians and isolating them from the rest of Europe.
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By early December it was clear that the
conducător
was in serious trouble. The flash point came in the western Romanian city of Timişoara, where thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to defend a Lutheran priest threatened with deportation for his human rights activities. On Ceauşescu’s orders, soldiers fired into the crowds, killing dozens of people. “We’ll fight to the last,” he had told his security chiefs, only hours beforehand. “Fidel Castro is right. You do not shut your enemy up by talking to him like a priest, but by burning him.”
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The events in Timişoara provoked a wave of national revulsion against the Ceauşescu regime. As news of the killings spread by word of mouth—the state-run media were prohibited from reporting antigovernment demonstrations—casualty figures became grossly inflated. The rumors of thousands of dead jolted Romanians from their long torpor. The rally in Palace Square represented a last, desperate gamble by Ceauşescu to prove he still had public opinion behind him. The live television pictures of the crowd jeering and booing the tyrant served as a signal to ordinary Romanians to take to the streets.

That afternoon and evening there were riots on the streets of Bucharest.
Crowds massed in the center of the city, outside Communist Party buildings, chanting, “Timişoara, Timişoara.” Periodically the protesters were dispersed by water cannon and bursts of gunfire from Securitate sharpshooters. The next morning the crowds were back, tearing down portraits of Nicolae and Elena and besieging the Central Committee building in Palace Square, where the couple was holed up. The streets were full of tanks and armored cars, but their occupants showed little enthusiasm for using force against the demonstrators. In University Square, around 11:00 a.m., soldiers allowed demonstrators to scramble on board their armored vehicles. Soon a new chant went up: “The army is with us, the army is with us.”
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As the demonstrators broke into the Central Committee building, a white helicopter took off from the roof, with the Ceauşescus aboard. It flew first to Snagov, a town spa forty miles northeast of Bucharest and the site of one of many presidential residences scattered around Romania. Inside the palace Ceauşescu attempted to get in touch with Communist Party secretaries around Romania by phone and rally their support. Minutes later the helicopter flew off again. The dictator wanted to go to the oil-producing city of Pitesţi, which he had heard was quiet, but the helicopter pilot had different ideas. Claiming that the French-built craft had been spotted by radar and could be shot down at any moment, he deposited the Ceauşescus by the side of a country road.

For the next few hours the deposed first couple wandered around the Romanian countryside in a series of hijacked cars. Abandoned by their bodyguards, they were finally arrested by the army in the town of Tîrgovişte, just south of the Carpathian Mountains. Ceauşescu was unable to accept the fact that he was being held prisoner by his own army. He alternated between bouts of deep depression and rantings about “betrayal.” “How could you arrest me?” he berated his captors. “I am your commander-in-chief.”
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He complained that his fate was “decided in Malta,” a reference to a Gorbachev-Bush summit three weeks earlier. When his captors offered him regular army food, he pushed it away, describing it as “inedible crap.” At night he and Elena huddled together in the same bed, two old people hugging each other and bickering at the same time.