Dissent in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu describes the voicing of disagreements with the government policies of Communist Romania during the totalitarian rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu after the July Theses in 1971. Because of Ceaușescu's extensive secret police (the Securitate) and harsh punishments, open dissent was rare. Notable acts of dissent include Paul Goma's 1977 letters to Ceaușescu, the founding of SLOMR (an independent workers' union) in 1979 and a number of work conflicts, such as the Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977 and the Braşov Rebellion of 1987.

This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2019)

Dissent from within the Romanian Communist Party came for the first time from Constantin Pîrvulescu, a veteran party member who, in 1979, during the 12th Party Congress, accused Ceaușescu of putting personal interests in front of those of the party. Pîrvulescu was excluded from the party, but, in 1989, together with other five party veterans signed the Letter of the Six, an open letter which was a left-wing critique of Ceaușescu.

The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 began as an act of dissent, as people began supporting Hungarian pastor László Tőkés, who was about to be evicted for dissent.

Starting with the mid-1960s, a counterculture developed in Romania among the Romanian youth and students. While this culture shared the aesthetics of the Western Counterculture of the 1960s (for instance hippie fashion or rock and roll) and its anti-authoritarianism, from an ideological point of view, it wasn't integrated in the worldwide countercultural movement.^[1] The counterculture used nationalist rhetoric and unlike its Western or Yugoslav counterpart, where it embraced the "New Left" and opposed the Vietnam War, in Romania, it was skeptical of socialism, even if liberal socialism.^[2] Although they were aware of the movements in the west, they never shared their goals or had any interest in declaring solidarity with them.^[3]

A dissident community flourished as Romania became more liberal and allowed more freedom of expression. Nonconformist literature, film, theatre, music, philosophy boomed as young intellectuals challenged the abuses of the early era of Socialist Romania and demanded more freedom of thought and expression, as well as a better standard of living.^[3] The counterculture did support some goals with the government, such as reform and the independence from the Soviet Union.^[4]

The end of the culture of protest within the counterculture came in December 1968 when a group of a few hundred student protesters were beaten by the police and their leaders were arrested.^[1] Ceaușescu warned against any art and political positions that were against the regime in 1969, while the following year, he explicitly banned such countercultural activities and in 1971, with the July Theses, a "mini-Cultural Revolution" began that demanded strict conformity.^[5]

The Romanian Communist Party took over the film, theatre and literary communities and demanded them to adhere to socialist realism. While this did not end the counterculture, it greatly diminished its scale. Critics of the regime were routinely harassed by the police, expelled from the party or fired their workplace and they often fled abroad.^[6] Some artists and intellectuals, such as Cornel Chiriac, fled to Western Europe, while others, such as Adrian Păunescu (who was attacked in 1972 for his subversive activities and complaints about censorship) joined the regime's propaganda machine.^[6]

Paul Goma, a Bessarabian-born writer, provided the earliest challenge to the Ceaușescu regime in the spring of 1977.^[7] Goma had challenged the previous communist governments of Romania: in 1956, he read at university a chapter of a novel describing a student movements similar to the one of Hungarian Revolution of 1956.^[8] In 1968, the manuscript for his novel, Obstinato, was denied publication and so was his next novel, Gherla, both of which were published in French and German translations.^[8]

Becoming frustrated with the ban of his writings and inspired by the Czechoslovak Charter 77, Goma wrote a letter of support to Pavel Kohout. Finding few friends willing to sign it, he invited Nicolae Ceaușescu to sign it.^[8] In a letter addressed to Ceaușescu, he told him that he can't find people to sign the letter because they are afraid of the Securitate and that the only two Romanians not afraid of the Securitate are him and Ceaușescu.^[9]

Despite the intimidations of the Securitate, Goma's letter got over 200 signatures (including the support of psychiatrist Ion Vianu and literary critic Ion Negoiţescu), but it was denounced by Ceaușescu, who attacked "the traitors of the country".^[10] As he wrote an even harsher letter to Ceaușescu, Goma was excluded from the Writers' Union, arrested and attacked in a variety of magazines such as Săptămâna, Luceafărul and Contemporanul.^[11] After an international appeal, he was released and in November 1977 he went into exile in France.^[12]

Goma continued to criticize the Ceaușescu regime from Paris and in 1982, the Romanian authorities ordered a Romanian secret agent, Matei Pavel Haiducu, to kill Goma, together with another dissident, Virgil Tănase by injecting a poison which would cause cardiac arrest. Nevertheless, Haiducu refused the order by defecting to the French authorities.^[12]

The earliest case of dissent from within the Party occurred during the 12th Party Congress, when Constantin Pîrvulescu, an old-time party member, took the floor and argued against the re-election of Ceaușescu, arguing that he puts the personal glorification in front of the interest of the Party and the country. As a result, he was stripped of his delegate to the congress and placed under house arrest.^[24]

Following the Braşov Rebellion, on November 26, 1987, former deputy director of Scînteia Silviu Brucan handed a declaration to some foreign journalists, in which he warned Ceaușescu that "a period of crisis has opened up in relations between the Romanian Communist Party and the working class" and he warned that this may lead to an isolation from both the West and the East.^[25] Brucan was reprimanded by the Party and put under house arrest,^[26] but he was released following a visit of the American United States Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead to Bucharest.^[27]

Dumitru Mazilu, a Romanian official was commissioned by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1985 to write a report on human rights in Romania. He was due to present it in Geneva in June 1987, but he was prevented by the Romanian state. The official explanation was that he had a heart attack, but Mazilu eventually sent in 1988 a letter to the Chairman of the UN subcommission in which he talked about repressive measures taken against him after he refused to give up working on this project, including surveillance and intimidation.^[28]

On March 10, 1989, six senior members (Silviu Brucan, Gheorghe Apostol, Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Grigore Răceanu, Corneliu Mănescu and Constantin Pîrvulescu) of the Romanian Communist Party signed a letter (the Letter of the Six) made public to BBC.^[29] Since they sent the letter directly abroad rather than discussing it in the Party, it shows that the Party was completely under the rule of Ceaușescu and that no party mechanism allowed discussion of party policy.^[30]

Unlike Doina Cornea, they did not argue for a democratic pluralism, but only a pluralism within the party. They argued that the "very idea of socialism" was being threatened by Ceaușescu's policies.^[30] The letter discussed the Systematization, the lack of observance of human rights and that in practice, the constitution was suspended and that there was no legal system in force.^[30]