And So Another Paradise Falls

And now Romania.

The sixth and last of the Communist governments of the Warsaw Pact to fall since August, looks to have gone down in flames and gunfire Friday. But just how many hundreds or thousands of Romanians died during the week it took to topple the government was still uncertain long hours after citizens seized the state radio and television network to proclaim themselves free. So was the question of whether Nicolae Ceausescu, dictator for nearly 25 years, and his wife, Elena, got away in a last-minute run for their lives.

Ceausescu loyalists, most likely secret police whose lives would not be worth much under a reform government, launched a counterattack late Friday, but the revolution seemed likely to prevail. Citizens emptied the jails and swarmed free through the streets. Corneliu Manescu, 75, one-time foreign minister freed of house arrest for publicly denouncing the Romanian dictator, assembled a provisional government that he said would rule until elections could be held.

Reformers took Poland’s government from the hands of the Communists without bloodshed when they elected Tadeusz Mazowiecki prime minister Aug. 24. After that, Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany and Czechoslovakia gradually made their own changes without substantial violence. Only in Romania did the sitting government fight back, ordering troops to fire into masses of demonstrators in an act that not only failed to save the regime but undoubtedly speeded its demise.

Two scenes say much about Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in flux. In Moscow, Parliament applauded the downfall of Ceausescu and, at Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s suggestion, adopted a resolution of “decisive support” for the Romanian people. The Associated Press reported that one member of the Soviet Parliament commented after the vote: “We are the only two dictatorships left-- (Communist) Albania and the Soviet Union.” What the AP called a more conservative member responded: “They are surrounding us from all sides.”

In southern Transylvania, a soldier and a civilian each held Ceausescu’s captured son, Nicu, by an arm, in a tableau fit for an exit line for communism in all six nations. Someone in the crowd asked the son what he had to say for himself. But the civilian captor answered for him. “Nothing,” said the civilian. “The despots have spoken enough.”