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On 21 December 1989, 80,000 people gathered in the Palace Square in Bucharest to listen to Nicolae Ceaușescu’s end-of-year speech. Securitate agents in plainclothes and rows of police militia were on hand to ensure order, with the assembled masses given strict instructions on where to stand and when to applaud. As he had in each of the 34 years he'd ruled, the fearsome dictator proceeded to extoll the virtues of life under his Communist regime using vague, pompous terms.
Eight minutes into...