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According to that while he was supposedly all kinds of brutal/repressive once he and his wife were taken prisoner they were put through a kangaroo court and summarily executed.
Now I can understand him but why his wife? She was innocent.
Elena was not exactly a silent partner to Nicolae Ceausescu, she was very active in the political decision making and appointment of officials in government. She was not college educated but had scientific degrees bestowed upon her to elevate her position as much as possible. What was of great concern at the time during the mock trial on Christmas day, was the possibility that either one of them could regain power using their ruthless Securitate state police. It was unknown at the time how many Securitate remained loyal to the Ceausescu's and they did not want even a glimmer of a chance for them to regain power.
Elana and Nicolae were very insolent at the "trial" and denied any wrongdoing for Securitate gunning down demonstrators at Timisaora a week earlier. They scoffed at the people conducting the trial and did not recognize their authority. It was clear they would not step down without a fight, and were not going to admit any blame for all that had gone wrong in Romania under their rule. I think their captors found the Ceausescu's to be just too dangerous to allow them to live.
Whether she did on a strictly legal basis, I don't know. But then, legal niceties tend to fall by the wayside in the midst of a civil war. At any rate, their execution was really a matter of practicality - permanently decapitating the entire executive power structure (and she was a part of the cult of personality of that structure) by eliminating the Ceausescus - as opposed to legality, the trappings of a trial notwithstanding.
Autocratic rulers tend to have a nasty habit of trying to cling to power, and are willing to make things difficult for whatever revolutionaries try to get in their way. They might get deposed, but then wouldn't you know it, they claw their way back into power. (See, for example, Napoleon.)
So yes, if I were a revolutionary who had just deposed a cruel and hated dictator, I would shoot him too, just to make sure he stays gone forever.
As for whether it was "deserved," I would say that it was. Ceausescu (husband and wife) were far from benign rulers; they were driving Romania into the ground. They deserved to go.
Unsettomati nailed it. There are rules to a revolution to the degree that there are rules to a riot. Did Marie Antoinette merit having her head lopped off? Did Tsar Nicholas' entire family need to be shot?
Did Imelda Marcos deserve to escape the consequences of her behavior in supporting her despot husband? Madame Nhu escaped South Vietnam with a huge chunk of the national treasure. Was that better than her being assassinated along with her corrupt relatives?
Some get away, some get caught. If you live like a princess while the population is suffering, you have not established much in the way of grounds for mercy after you get dethroned.
Unsettomati nailed it. There are rules to a revolution to the degree that there are rules to a riot. Did Marie Antoinette merit having her head lopped off? Did Tsar Nicholas' entire family need to be shot?
Did Imelda Marcos deserve to escape the consequences of her behavior in supporting her despot husband? Madame Nhu escaped South Vietnam with a huge chunk of the national treasure. Was that better than her being assassinated along with her corrupt relatives?
Some get away, some get caught. If you live like a princess while the population is suffering, you have not established much in the way of grounds for mercy after you get dethroned.
Yup. Revolution is a bloody business, and seldom turns out to meet expectations for somebody or other. The ignorant and unwitting are o more immune than the iron-fisted and the schemers when the revolution comes to demand their lives. All they have left then is their dignity or the lack of it.
The Ceausescus did not die well. They arrogantly refused their sentences, even when led out to the fenced back yard. They died running around the yard screaming while being chased by a bunch of pistol shooters who were hitting them both with wounding shots, and they suffered much more than they needed. And they died like the feral animals they were.
Only through grace alone was Mrs. Marcos saved. She had the good sense to never return after her ailing husband died in exile. Since she was powerless abroad, she presented no threat to the new government.
Napoleon was spared death for the good of France. 3 revolutions were enough, and his death would have brought on a fourth. Czar Nicholaus had to die, along with his family, for the Russian revolution to succeed, and all the remnants of Russian royalty had to be wiped out from the top down. It was a political necessity.
Just as you said, Grandstander…. What are the rules for a riot? What are the rules for a revolution? There are none, and the outcome is always uncertain.
There's also always a chance that they were killed in such haste because they knew too much. I'm not much into Romanian history, but as I recall from the news at the time, the "revolutionaries" in the top levels of the new government did not exactly come from the streets, they were high ranking officials of Romanian Communist system (correct me if I'm wrong). So the Chauchescu family could probably give the Romanians a lot of juicy stories about these new leaders had there been a prolonged proper trial.
According to that while he was supposedly all kinds of brutal/repressive once he and his wife were taken prisoner they were put through a kangaroo court and summarily executed.
Now I can understand him but why his wife? She was innocent.
What might have pushed the revolutionaries over the edge was that hundreds of unarmed civilians (and a certain number of armed revolutionaries were killed when Ceaucescu's body guards of last resort opened fire on crowds celebrating his ouster.
Not only were the civlians killed after the coup had been decided, but even more galling to the revolutionaries, the unit responsible was not comprised of ethnic Romanians, but Palestinains.
Ceacesu, so the story goes, kept of battalion of Palestinian orphans who had been schooled in Romania ( and heavily indoctrinated in socialism and more importantly, the theory and practice of Ceacescu personality cult). The child soldier battalion ala Hitler Youth was said to be his ace in the hole if the Secret Police and the military tried a coup.
Anyways, it is said that being haeavily indoctrinated and having nothing to lose- and probably fearing be lynched by the crowds because they were not only Ceacscu loyalists, but also foreigners, the Palestinian youth unit opened up with machine guns and even tank fire after the other security units had surrendered. Some of the Palestinians were killed in the fighting that followed, but others managed to escape using a network of tunnels that the paranoid Ceacescu had dug over decades.
Meanwhile, the revolutionaries' opinion of Ceascescu went from bad to worse..... ..
Yup. Revolution is a bloody business, and seldom turns out to meet expectations for somebody or other. The ignorant and unwitting are o more immune than the iron-fisted and the schemers when the revolution comes to demand their lives. All they have left then is their dignity or the lack of it.
The Ceausescus did not die well. They arrogantly refused their sentences, even when led out to the fenced back yard. They died running around the yard screaming while being chased by a bunch of pistol shooters who were hitting them both with wounding shots, and they suffered much more than they needed. And they died like the feral animals they were.
Only through grace alone was Mrs. Marcos saved. She had the good sense to never return after her ailing husband died in exile. Since she was powerless abroad, she presented no threat to the new government.
Napoleon was spared death for the good of France. 3 revolutions were enough, and his death would have brought on a fourth. Czar Nicholaus had to die, along with his family, for the Russian revolution to succeed, and all the remnants of Russian royalty had to be wiped out from the top down. It was a political necessity.
Just as you said, Grandstander…. What are the rules for a riot? What are the rules for a revolution? There are none, and the outcome is always uncertain.
Napoleon was finally accepted as royalty by European monarchs, even though he was initially seen as an usurper. Killing royalty was a taboo. There was also a considerable amount of veneration for the man even among his enemies, who saw him as Alexander the Great of XIX century. So even though his "2nd coming" caused the European royals much trouble, after Waterloo they still let him live in relative comfort and he died of natural causes (the story about him being poisoned was disproven by a forensic test not that long ago). Different era, different people.
I am not sure that killing Tsar was necessary. The Romanov family was large and there was a number of his uncles and brothers who remained alive and were legally entitled to take over the throne. However he also voluntarily and lawfully abdicated in what became known as the February Revolution, which was a legal transfer of power. If I recall correctly (too lazy to check Wiki) he abdicated in favor of his brother who refused to take the throne and put the matters in the hands of national assembly which then proclaimed Russia a Republic. So even though many leaders of the White movement were monarchist, the movement was never openly calling in favor of restoring the monarchy, and the majority of it's leaders were either trying to re-instate the Republican government, or themselves become dictators.
So killing the monarch / dictator is often not done to protect the revolution. A lot of times it's just bloodthirstiness. A lot of times he knows too much. Sometimes it's done to terrorize the opposition and to rally the supporters.
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