recourse to the method (13. 030)

Though upon reflection both family members and insurgents conclude it would have been better had the ruling couple been executed by revolutionary forces when they attempted to flee Bucharest three days earlier rather than suffer the additional indignity of a drumhead court-martial and show trial, those that called to order the extraordinary military tribunal on this day in 1989 at Târgoviște to try Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu deemed the proceedings necessary to legitimise the coup and rule out the possibility a resurgence by their sympathisers. Not at liberty to pick their own legal defence, the appointed lawyers eventually siding with the prosecution before judgment and sentencing that took only about and hour with the verdict a foregone conclusion, the deposed general secretary of the Communist party of Romania and his wife maintained their innocence and that the Romanian Revolution was a Soviet plot against them and called the trial unconstitutional. The Ceaușescus were charged with genocide with over sixty-thousand victims (unclear due to the summary nature and without prior formal investigation or discovery, if the crime was levied for his twenty-four year reign or for suppressing the recent uprising), using the military to subvert the power of the state and people, destruction of public property, self-enrichment and undermining the national economy and attempting to escape justice by trying to flee the country—with over a billion dollars held in foreign bank accounts. Arguing that only the National Assembly could remove him from power, the dictatorship came to an end when the couple were brought before a firing squad, Ceaușescu reportedly humming a few bars from the Internationale as he was gunned down. Whilst not conducted in a public forum, the entire trial and execution was filmed, though camera crews weren’t quick enough to capture the shooting—footage and images were circulated in the press two days later.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the murder of Kitty Genovese (with synchronopticæ), a walk to the tripoint of three German states plus the president-elect’s overtures for the Panama Canal

three years ago: the first Nativity scene

four years ago: a white Christmas, the launch of the JWST, Gorbachev resigns (1991) plus the shorthand of Charles Dickens

five years ago: a Christmas greeting, The Stone Tape Theory plus artist Desireless 

six years ago: a celestial season’s greetings, Unword of the Year, AI carols plus more yule-log

seven years ago: more seasonal salutations, even more yule-log plus Martian rovers

juuniküüditamine (11. 629)

Commemorated on this day by the Baltic countries as a memorial to mass deportations of tens of thousands of individuals in 1941 from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and the western territories of modern-day Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Belarus, the eviction orders were executed covertly by the USSR Interior People’s Commissariat with the aim of removing “socially foreign elements” and resettling them in the interior of the Soviet Union. Occupied and annexed a year earlier following the Molotov-Ribbetrop Pact which defined Nazi Germany’s and Soviet Red Army’s spheres of influence, targeted nationalities were displaced under pro-Soviet puppet-governments and the colonisation proceeded. The relocation occurring just before the Nazi incursion into Soviet territory, deportees were characterised as counter-revolutionaries but not collaborators and their removal, rather than strengthening their newly expanded front buffered with ethic Russian in-migration, was seen to remove dissidents and create cheap labour in interior gulags. A programme of limited repatriation was begun under Khrushchev as part of De-Stanlinisation reforms but an estimated sixty percent or more had perished during exile and none deemed nationalists or non-white were allowed to return with those who were facing discrimination by the newly aligned majority.

mcmlxxxix (10. 420)

By dint of the limited permutations of the Gregorian, civil calendar, we discover that we can helpfully recycle (see previously) our calendars from 2017 or 1989 for the upcoming 2023. Not to be dismissive of the events bookended six years ago, the political turning points of the latter with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Perestroika, the Velvet Revolution, the uprisings in Romania and China, as well as the gradual dismantling of the apartheid government in South Africa, the return of democratic norms to Brazil and Poland and the first internet service providers seem to bode as auspicious points of correspondence. Having lived through it, may we may live in exciting times.