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As many historians, political philosophers, social psychologists, victims and families of victims of the Communist regime agree the sooner the truths of the 1989 Revolution will be unearthed and exposed the faster the society will be alleviated of the trauma of the totalitarianism and be able to memorize and reconnect around a general understanding of the past.When at mid-day on 22December 1989 Nicolae Ceauşescu, aged 71, left the Party Central Committeebalcony and escaped by helicopter the fury of his own people the fate of theCommunist totalitarian regime seemed sealed. Ironically, a regime which claimedto serve the working class had entirely fallen in disfavour of the workers andwas being ousted from power by huge crowds of labourers drafted from thelargest industrial parks. A system that avowed to engineer the highest socialstandards and guarantee the most sophisticated form of social freedom was beingloathed by the very social classes they professed to represent. Freedom,freedom, freedom!, the crowds chanted in Timişoara and the demands forpolitical and social liberty have become the underpinning of the RomanianRevolution two century after the French Revolution had overthrown the&#160;AncienRégime. In ostensibly classless communist Romania a nomenclature based onfull obedience towards the regime leaders was no less deaf to the basic needsof their own citizens who were forced to spend daily hours in big lines toacquire the most vital products they were deprived of. From shortages of bread,milk, meat, oil to the lack of hot water and heat and to electricity cuts thepopulation suffered unimaginable depravations. Libertate (Freedom)! was the cryunder which actor Călin Nemeş, then 39, received a round of bullets of theRomanian military unit of Cluj-Napoca. Libertate! also united people of variousconfessions and nationalities in Timişoara beginning with 15 December 1989 andgained the locality the title of the first city free of communism on 20December. Libertate! was also what the people of Bucharest and other citiescried for starting with 21 December. More than 44 years or 16,362 days havepassed since the first Communist-led government came to power and theirusurpation of command had followed another six years of conservativedictatorship. Many Romanians had never experienced the exercise of politicalrights and large shares of them had been born or grown mature in thedemographically abundant generations during the 8,930 days of the Ceauşescuregime. The bicentenary anniversary of the French Revolution in Romania evokedanother historical irony: the overthrowing by freedom-thirsty revolutionaries ofthe only Communist leader who bore a sceptre starting with 28 March 1974. Asfar as recollections of Communist potentates and archival sources allow to beunderstood, the Ceauşescu regime was heading towards a North-Korean kind offamily dictatorship.Thirty years after the revolutionprogresses are being achieved in unveiling not only the horrors but also theeveryday life of the Communist totalitarian regime. In terms of documentaryknowledge a decade after the Revolution laws regulating the access to formerSecuritate archives have started to be promulgated beginning with&#160;Law no. 187&#160;of7 December 1999 on the access to the personal file and the disclosure of theSecuritate as a political police, which was eventually amended and turnedearlier this year into&#160;Law no. 161&#160;of26 July 2019. On this basis a large share of the surviving former Securitatearchives have been transferred on Matei Basarab St. in Bucharest at ConsiliulNaţional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securităţii [The National Council for theStudy of Securitate Archives] where a rising number of historians as well asformer victims and even collaborators of the Securitate are graduallyreconstituting traits of the Romanian society during the Communist regime.Research has proven&#160;inter alia&#160;that&#160;more oppositionto the governmental system&#160;existed in Romania than it had beenpreviously assumed that is only now gradually being revealed. Besides, theRomanian National Archives and its county branches are also offering expandedaccess to key documentary resources capable of revealing the political,economic, social and cultural processes and their impact on the citizens ofRomanian Popular and later Socialist Romania. Access to sources remains thevital factor in producing unbiased knowledge and avoiding the temptation ofsensationalism and politically-inclined conclusions. The preliminaries of theRomanian Revolution and partially the repressions of Timişoara and Bucharest of15-21 December 1989 are gradually being disclosed or confirmed by access todocumentary evidence. Although some local monographs or articles have beenproduced for crucial episodes of &#160;the Revolution in Timişoara, Bucharest,Cluj-Napoca, Braşov, Târgovişte, Iaşi, etc. more scholarship by professionalhistorians would likely enlighten events, actions and incidents which are stillbeing shadowed.The Romanian Revolution and some of themost appalling crimes of the Communist totalitarian system cannot however be entirelyreconstituted on the basis of the Securitate archives. The growing body oftestimonial literature and the use of oral history have adjusted the Communistregime’s recorded evidences and allows a foray into the human dimension ofhistory, i.e. the perception and internalization of traumas suffered while incustody of the Communist penitentiary system or during the repression of the1989 Revolution. Initially focused on male’s custodial experiences, latelyfemale perceptions and insights have been also acknowledged.Aside of the National Council for theStudy of Securitate Archives, the history institutes of the Romanian Academyand the faculties and departments of history, several institutions have beendevoted to the research and/or criminalization of the Communist regime.&#160;Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului şiMemoria Exilului Românesc&#160;[The Institute for the Investigationof Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile],&#160;Institutul National pentru Studiul Totalitarismului&#160;[TheNational Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism],&#160;Memorialul Revoluţiei 16-22 Decembrie1989 din Timişoara&#160;[The memorial of the 16-22 Revolution ofDecember 1989 in Timisoara] and&#160;InstitutulRevoluţiei Române din Decembrie 1989&#160;[The Institute of theRomanian Revolution of December 1989] have produced valuable knowledge withregard to the Communist past. The Institute for the Investigation of CommunistCrimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile established in 2005 and expanded in2009 is the vital institution assembling the double role of knowledgeoriginator and criminalization facilitator. A crucial publication expoundingthe Communist past,&#160;Arhivele Totalitarismului&#160;[TotalitarianismArchives], has been published since 1993 under the aegis of The NationalInstitute for the Study of Totalitarianism. The National Center of Documentation,Research and Public Informing on the Romanian Revolution which acts under theMemorial of the 16-22 Revolution of December 1989 in Timisoara has edited anopen-access&#160;Buletin&#160;[Bulletin] starting with 2007. TheInstitute of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989 has printed from2005&#160;Caietele Revoluţiei&#160;[The Revolution Notebooks]. Besides,a series of museums, exhibitions, memorial institutions such as&#160;Sighet Memorial,&#160;Piteşti Prison Memorial,&#160;Jilava Memorial,&#160;Râmnicu Sărat Memorial, Ceauşescu MansionMuseum in Primăverii St. and&#160;Cavalry OfficersSchool Museum of Târgovişte&#160;where the dictatorial couple wastrialed, convicted and executed bring their share in honoring the memory of thevictims and illustrating the criminal nature of the regime.Notwithstanding the officialcondemnation of the Communist regime in the Romanian Parliament on 18 December2006 following the publication of&#160;Tismăneanu FinalReport&#160;by a president who has recently been attested as aSecuritate collaborator nicknamed Petrov, the spread of knowledge with regardof the Communist past is far from being satisfactory. A history of communism inRomania is an optional subject in barely a few schools while in regular historyclasses the time allocated to this period is still insufficient and scheduledat the end of the scholarly year. Many elderly people are hunted by nostalgia,which they pass on to their grandchildren born after 1989. Many of theirmid-aged children have received little information on the history of Communismand Revolution from their teachers many of whom were themselves uncertain onhow to lecture on a period whereof little archival-based monographs existed andthe opening and researching the sources was still slow to progress. FormerSecuritate archives were burned, destroyed already in December 1989 andaccusations of further brushing up of records have been heard ever since. Theprocess of communism has proceeded slowly and it’s still being promised atevery anniversary of the 1989 Revolution. The institutes devoted to unearthingof Communist past and criminalization of wrong-doings complain of lack ofsufficient resources and political will to speed up their activities. Researchbodies, especially the Institute of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989,are accused of following a political agenda set up by its founder andpresident, the first chief of state of Romania following the Revolution, IonIliescu, who is counted among the second rank communists who took advantage ofthe popular movement and detour it to serve their own ends. Charges ofprejudices are directed also against the leadership of the Institute for theInvestigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile and infact none is spared at least of doubts with regard to their trustworthiness.Moreover, researchers complain of administrative, bureaucratic and financialdifficulties which are slowing down their research. Many meaningful sitesreminding of the Communist Gulag and the 1989 Revolution are neglected and eventhe aforementioned memorials get to grips with low budgets. Teachers are seldomtaking their school children to such gruesome places of memory even during the„Şcoala altfel”, a week of alternative education which privileges museumvisits. &#160;Additional important impairments indiscovering and spreading of truth about the Romanian Revolution are thetechnical hitches in dealing with a period that is so near to us thatchallenges a methodological apparatus which is fashioned to work with thebenefit of perspective and wide access to sources. Many of the main actors arestill alive and some of them have been active in politics. Therefore, be ittrue or not, they are believed to try to impose their own reading of history bycontrolling, manipulating or influencing facts, people, and institutions.Historians themselves are divided between their professional function of&#160;sineira et studio&#160;exegetes of past and their role of&#160;zóonpolitikon, whichmay add to the intrinsic subjective humannature the passion of political credos. When professional historians are notavailable to postulate one or another side of the truth, a large specter ofjournalists, former Securitate or army officers, retired politicians,revolutionaries are often readily available to take on the job and advance themost implausible scenarios.This elusiveness has pervaded thesociety and thus queries with regard to the persons responsible for the regime,the Securitate and the Army crimes of 17-22 December in Timişoara, Bucureşti,Cluj-Napoca, etc. are not yet fully answered (and the perpetrators, even whenthey are known, are not brought to justice). Equally important is the topic of„terrorists”, as the new power installed in December 1989 labeled the gunnersseemingly liable for many of the 743 victims following the arrest of thedictatorial couple in Târgovişte. Is the theory of terrorists accountable toCeauşescu who continued to shoot against the anti-Communist demonstratorssupported by substantial evidence? Or rather, as the prosecuting attorneymaintains, the new power holders of the second echelons of Communist Partyneeded the fire in order to position themselves in the role of firemen? Or,else, most of the shooting and the resulting victims were the results ofanguish, chaos, improvisation, lack of military professionalism and the spreadof rumors? Or, finally, was a mixture of all of these hypotheses?As many historians, political philosophers, social psychologists, victims and families of victims of the Communist regime agree the sooner the truths of the 1989 Revolution will be unearthed and exposed the faster the society will be alleviated of the trauma of the totalitarianism and be able to memorize and reconnect around a general understanding of the past. This is not, of course, to argue in favor of a unique interpretation of history which was the apanage of the totalitarian and dictatorial regimes, but to establish the basic facts and most likely conclusions grounded on documentary evidences. On one hand, this is the duty of historians, some of whom have already progressed steadily in their scholarship of the Communist regime and the overthrowing of the dictatorship of Ceauşescu couple. The adaptation of methodologies to recent history scholarships, the consistent use of sources (including audio-visual records), the sound use of oral history, the careful analysis of memorial literature and the avoidance of moral stances are needed in order to reconstruct such a complex recent past as the 1989 Revolution. On other hand, the justice is expected to gather clear evidences (making also use of historical narratives) and pronounce unbiased sentences. The produced knowledge may then be transferred to the society, especially to the youth. American social activist Frederick Douglass have rightly argued that „knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave”. Therefore, the political and social freedom the participants to the 1989 Revolution have striven for shall be also converted into freedom of knowledge, justice and education.Silviu Miloiu