Angry Romanians Mark an Anniversary : Eastern Europe: Thousands bemoan the meager returns since last year’s revolution toppled a dictator.

Thousands of Romanians returned Sunday to the scene of their daring stand against tyranny a year ago, not to celebrate the revolution that ousted Eastern Europe’s most depraved dictator but to mourn its failure to ease their suffering.

Protesters raising paper torches and lighted candles converged on Opera Square in an eerie evening vigil to remember the revolution’s martyrs and to denounce the new Romanian government as little improvement over the one that was toppled last December.

The daylong event swelled at times to include as many as 10,000 people taking part in flag waving, chanting of anti-government slogans and denunciation of President Ion Iliescu.

Shouts of “Resign!” and “Down with Iliescu!” echoed through the dark, muddy streets, along with demands for a convertible currency and reforms that will put food back on store shelves and turn up the heat in dilapidated urban homes.

Police stood by quietly at crowd-control barriers but made no effort to interfere with the rally, called by opposition forces in remembrance of those who fell in the fight against repression.

Several speakers addressing the assemblage from a second-floor balcony of the Opera House called on the crowd to kneel in the icy remnants of a recent snowfall to pray for the souls of those who died to bring democracy to Romania.

Huge crowds commemorating last year’s uprising were also reported in several other Romanian cities. In Bucharest, 2,000 protesters marched through the streets Sunday accusing the government of betraying Romanians’ hopes for freedom and prosperity.

Anniversary demonstrations had been expected to continue throughout the month, marking last year’s tumult that culminated in the capture and execution on Christmas Day of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his hated wife, Elena.

But leaders of the recently fortified opposition in Parliament and the Civic Alliance movement have appealed for calm and called off many public gatherings for fear they could erupt in violence.

Sunday’s protest in this birthplace of the revolution was the venting of pent-up frustration with a repressive system that seems to have remained despite the death of its chief architect.

“Our revolution has been confiscated,” lamented Simona Martin, a 28-year-old manufacturing worker from the town of Lugos. She said she had rushed to Timisoara a year ago when word that protesters had been fired on spread throughout the country.

“All the people on this square think as I do, that none of what we fought for has happened. It’s very sad,” she said. “But we know we are a minority. We are probably no more than 20%.”

It was in Timisoara on Dec. 16, 1989, that long-simmering resentment of deprivation escalated into an anti-Communist revolt that drove out Ceausescu in less than a week.

The spark for that revolution was Bucharest’s persecution of Laszlo Tokes, a popular ethnic Hungarian pastor based in Timisoara. Violent clashes broke out between demonstrators who gathered at Tokes’ house and soldiers called in to quell the spreading unrest. Inflated reports of deaths in the tens of thousands sent shock waves of horror through the nation, fanning anger into full-fledged revolt.

More than 1,000 Romanians died in the struggle to oust Ceausescu, fighting bloody clashes with die-hard enforcers of the Securitate secret police who defended the dictator to the end.

Iliescu, once a high-ranking Communist before falling out of favor with Ceausescu in the early 1970s, came to the political fore after the revolution to create the National Salvation Front and head an interim government. Iliescu won resounding endorsement as president in national elections on May 20, and the front captured two-thirds of the seats in Parliament.

The front rode to victory on the strength of its support among the peasantry and fears among factory workers that their jobs were at risk if they voted for a more radical approach to rebuilding the country’s devastated economy.

But living conditions remained pitiful, and a sudden change in reform tactics by the government of Prime Minister Petre Roman has alienated many of those Romanians who thought they were gaining security by voting for the front.

Disenchantment with the gains of the revolution has been feeding a wave of anti-government protests and strikes that Front opponents hope will topple the Bucharest leadership in the same way that unrest forced Communists from power in neighboring Bulgaria last month.

Union representatives in Timisoara said 50,000 workers from 11 factories were striking on Saturday, and the numbers were expected to grow once business resumes today. Pilots and navigators with the national airline, Tarom, have also joined the protest action, idling much of the fleet and raising prospects of a military takeover of air transport.

The government has also been fighting against calls for a nationwide general strike to protest price rises and poor supplies of heat and electricity.

Under pressure from the broadening movement against his leadership, Iliescu agreed to negotiate today with Radu Campeanu, head of the National Liberal Party and one of the opposition figures who challenged Iliescu for the presidency in May.

Announcement of the meeting has fueled speculation that Campeanu, who heads a new coalition of opposition parties in Parliament, may gain a top government post.

By bringing in Campeanu and other opposition leaders, the front could appease some of the political factions that have so far refused to work with the government to improve living standards.

Failure to address the opposition’s concerns could ignite a second revolution.

“The refusal of the current compromised leadership to relinquish power could generate an uncontrollable explosion of discontent,” warned a statement issued by Civic Alliance, an increasingly influential union of opposition groups.

Civic Alliance ended a three-day conference in Bucharest over the weekend with an appeal for early elections and a “government we can trust” in the interim.

Marian Munteanu, a student leader who was badly beaten in June when Iliescu summoned vigilantes to put down anti-government protests, said Civic Alliance was holding off on calling for any further demonstrations for fear of violence.

“We know there are irresponsible people in this country who may want to turn it into a blood bath,” Munteanu said.

Tokes, the Hungarian pastor whose plight inflamed the revolt a year ago, appealed to fellow anti-government protesters to continue “to sweep away the old structures” while renouncing violence.

“My advice would be to be calm and to fight by political means. Don’t let yourself be provoked,” he cautioned protesters on the eve of the anniversary observances.

At an ecumenical service outside his church, Tokes called for “a second revolution--a revolution of human rights, of dignity, but without bloodshed.”