Defiant City: Ceausescu ‘Penal Colony’ Rebuilds : Romania: After a strike in 1987, the wrath of the dictator was felt by all the citizens of Brasov.

For the last two years, the city of Brasov has had a certain fame as the one place in this oppressed country where people spoke out, however briefly and unsuccessfully, against the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu.

In November, 1987, as another hard Transylvanian winter descended on the Carpathian Mountains, workers at the Red Flag Truck Factory here went on strike. About 5,000 marched from the factory gates to the center of the city to make their demands: bread, heat and light. These, it seemed, were simple enough demands in the ideal workers’ state Ceausescu said he was building.

But in the interest of the “march to socialist progress,” Ceausescu’s security forces videotaped the protest and as many of its participants as they could. A token gesture toward reconciliation was made by the factory management.

And then the hammer came down.

Those identified as the strike’s leaders were rounded up. Some were tried for “hooliganism” and sentenced to prison for as long as two years. Others were forcibly removed to distant cities and other jobs. Some were forced to go back to work at reduced pay.

That was only part of it, for all 350,000 of Brasov’s people, not just the truck factory workers, were made to pay. Instead of more bread, heat and light, there was less--for the whole city.

“Brasov was punished,” said Victor Carausu, 28, a member of the local National Salvation Front Committee that took over here on Dec. 22, the day that Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, fled the capital of Bucharest.

On Thursday, Carausu offered a description of life in Brasov under Ceausescu that seemed more applicable to a penal colony than a city set in a mountain valley known for its ski resorts.

“You finish your work,” Carausu told a reporter, “you have to find food. Even potatoes are rationed--five kilograms (12 pounds) per person per month. Eggs were rationed, five per person per month. Three times a year, you could have one kilo of meat per person. Once a month you could have one kilo of mixed meat--poor ham and salami not fit for a dog. One kilo of sugar, one half-liter (just over a pint) of cooking oil. When these ran out, you had to go to the black market, and even then these things were not always available.”

Carausu, an engineer who works in the truck factory’s design department, is one of 51 members of the local National Salvation Front Committee, which is operating out of the former headquarters of the Communist Party.

The building is guarded by the army. Armored personnel carriers are parked in the driveway, their .50-caliber machine guns loaded and ready. Sandbags shield the front door. Soldiers control all access to the building.

Buildings on the surrounding square bear the scars of a battle that mirrored the fighting in Bucharest, among them a department store, the City Council offices and a hotel. These were the vantage points of snipers from the Ceausescu security force, the Securitate. From the night of Dec. 22 until Dec. 26, when news of the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu reached the public, the fighting was intense.

Now Brasov is calm. Supplies of food, medicines and clothing have poured in from all over Europe. The National Salvation Front Committee has been expanded from a dozen or so members to 51. The local military commander, Gen. Ion Flora, is regarded, along with the soldiers under his command, as a hero.

Flora was called on, virtually by acclamation, to head the local Salvation Front Committee, and he and his soldiers, Carausu said, have behaved impeccably.

The soldiers monitor access to the building where the committee meets and carefully check the identity of anyone entering the hotel or venturing up the street to where the local newspaper is printed. The soldiers are polite but firm.

Carausu said the people’s trust in the military is complete. There is no fear that the army has in any way hijacked the revolution.

“From the beginning, we trusted the army,” he said.

The army withdrew from its defense of the Communist Party headquarters when the news was broadcast, on Dec. 22, of Ceausescu’s helicopter flight from Bucharest, and “we called on Gen. Flora to come to protect us,” Carausu said, adding: “He came. The army was on our side from the beginning.”

He said the Salvation Front Committee has resisted an impulse to carry out a vendetta against the Communists. The local party leader, he said, is at home, “watched by the people.” None of the former party leaders, he said, have attempted to flee.

The voluminous files of the Securitate, he said, have been sealed and are under strict guard. Eventually, he said, they will be examined. The process could take weeks or months. In the meantime, the new local government has more pressing business, and retribution is not a high priority.

The workers who led the tractor factory strike have been released from prison, by decree of the Salvation Front.

In the last two days, Carausu said, workers who had been forced to take jobs in other cities have been given permission to return to Brasov and resume their old jobs.

According to Carausu, all the credit for the revolution that toppled one of the world’s most notorious dictators belongs to the Romanian people.

“We knew that the security system was very strong and very efficient,” he said. “We expected that the party leaders might do something against (Ceausescu), but nobody did.

“We hoped that the army might do something, but they did not.

“We hoped that Gorbachev (President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union) might do something, but he did not.So we had to do it by ourselves. . . .”