The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil

by Michael Malice

That same day, the East German government reopened its border with Czechoslovakia in an attempt to demonstrate that things had changed from the Honecker era. Prague, on the other hand, had followed Hungary’s lead and simply opened their own border to West Germany in order to get all the refugees off their hands. Within three days over fifty thousand East Germans drove their way to the West via Czechoslovakia. It was like a dam had been breached and now a second hole had burst open. Three days later Krenz’s prediction to Gorbachev came true. Over 700,000 Berliners took to the streets once again under the slogan of “We are the people.” Some political figures tried to coopt the energy but the masses were not having it. Even dialogue with the Communist government following the Polish model would no longer satisfy the people. Propaganda chief Gunter Schabowski took to the platform in a show of support for the crowds, but was booed off the stage. The audience did not appreciate that they were booing the man who would soon be their liberator.

One hour later both men held a press conference at the Magic Lantern. As they disagreed with one another about the future—Dubcek still regarded communism as salvageable in his sense of “socialism with a human face”—the news broke across the entire country: the Communist Party leaders were all resigning. Garton Ash had joked to Havel, “In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!”[dlxxxv] Ten days was a ridiculously optimistic estimate—and, it turned out, an overly conservative one. Instead of ten days it had taken seven.

Ceausescu held a rally in Bucharest on December 21, 1989. His goons packed the audience with the most reliable Romanians they could find. The televised speech would reassure the country that Ceausescu remained in control and was as popular as ever. Boos from the crowd began just a few minutes after he began to speak. Then came the chants of “Timisoara!” and “We are the People!”. The moment where Ceausescu realized the crowd had turned against him, the second he paused and looked confused at the impossible becoming real, was broadcast live throughout Romania. Then the screen went blank.

Already a group called the National Salvation Front was trying to establish itself as government of Romania. General Victor Stanculescu arrived in Tirgoviste to bring the case of the Ceausescus to a close. It was decided to put the couple on trial, then and there. When he was fifteen, young Nicolae told his brother-in-law that he was going to be “Romania’s Stalin.”[dxcvii] Now he and Elena were going to be the defendants in a trial so absurd that even Stalin would have blushed. A classroom in a nearby school was hastily set up to serve as the court. The defense attorney was given ten minutes to confer with his clients. The best he could come up with was to plead insanity, which Elena especially found to be unconscionable. “I do not recognize this court,” Ceausescu insisted, not unreasonably. “I refuse to answer those who have fomented this coup d’etat. I am not the accused. I am the president of the republic, I am your commander in chief. We have been working for the people since the age of fourteen.”[dxcviii] The prosecutors charged the couple with genocide, organizing armed action against the people and the state, the destruction of public assets and buildings, sabotage of the national economy, and attempting to flee the country with funds of more than US$1billion deposited in foreign banks.[dxcix] At one point the prosecutor even stopped to ask Elena if she was “mentally defective.”[dc] “Let’s get this over with,” barked Ceausescu.

The foes of liberty are many and they are powerful—but they are not particularly impressive. They will do everything within their ability to convince others that their might is eternal, that battle against them is pointless and doomed to fail. This is just another one of their many lies. It is said that they will never give up. Yet does wanting power over others mean that they will necessarily get it, and get it easily? Does the fact that they supposedly will never give up somehow imply that their opponents should—or does it imply the opposite? Evil people surrender all the time. At a certain point the costs—in every sense of the term—simply become too high. They are not all-knowing—far from it. They are often not even particularly bright. They are not all-powerful. They are men and women, far closer to snakes than they are to gods. They can, will, and have been defeated many, many times. It is possible that those of us who fight for the dignity of mankind will lose our fight. It is not possible that we must lose our fight. That is the white pill.