“On Behalf of the People...”: Fake News, Manipulation and Persuasion at the End of the Ceauşescu Spouses
“On Behalf of the People...”: Fake News, Manipulation and Persuasion at the End of the Ceauşescu Spouses

Summary/Abstract: On 25 December 1989, the spouses Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were executed following the last Stalinist trial in the history of communism, “On behalf of the people” and under allegations just as unfounded as those of the prosecutions patented in the 1930s by the prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky. The “people” on whose behalf they were liquidated were experiencing disturbing events, later interpreted as the successful experiments of the “terrorists business” and as “the revolution, live on television.” As for the Ceaușescu spouses, they had spent their last three days, under guard and in secret, in the barracks of the garrison in Târgoviște, in utter confusion. Although their detention came with the agreement and amid a continuous exchange of information with the new decision-making group, given the confusion created by the fight against the “terrorists” who defended Ceauşescu, the victims were significantly more numerous than during the repression of the demonstrators against their dictatorship. The behaviors and statements of the Ceauşescu spouses during the trial broadcast on television and the realities that have emerged over the years still fuel the collective trauma of an unprecedented cognitive dissonance in Romanian history.

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