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Thirty years after Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas day, Tessa Dunlop looks back at the violent birth of post-Communist Romania and asks if it has shaken off the legacy of decades of ruthless totalitarianism.
The violence of the Romanian Revolution marked its difference from the other former Eastern European communist states which were swept away by largely peaceful pro-democracy movements born after the fall of the Berlin wall. In Romania, hundreds died in bloody protests as the regime鈥檚 grisly endgame was played out across the world鈥檚 media.

Now, 30 years later, we revisit the hope and trauma behind the December revolution. What has changed, and how well has Romania come to terms with its past?

(Photo: Romanian waving flag over Bucharest Square. Credit: Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images)