Maduro is earning merits to end up like another dictator called Nicolás in 1989

Many young people today have not seen the fall of a dictatorship, an experience that those of us who witnessed the end of communism in Europe had.

The Venezuelan dictatorship and its allies, further proof that the Cold War continues
Revolt against dictatorship in Venezuela: several statues of Hugo Chávez torn down

In 1989, when communism began to collapse in Europe, I was very young, but I remember well how it started. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, we began to see on television an exodus of Hungarians to Austria and West Germany. It seemed incredible to us. We believed that communism would never fall and it was happening before our eyes. Even before that, Gorbachev had initiated the policies of "glasnost" and "perestroika" in the USSR.

Communism had caused deep economic ruin in Eastern Europe, just as it is now in Cuba and Venezuela. And people had had enough. Some dictators were smart enough not to resist the fall (indeed, in much of Soviet Europe, former communists became social democrats overnight, with colossal cynicism). Other dictators were not so smart.

One of the hard-line dictators was Romanian Nicolae Ceaucescu, one of the most radical, cruel and fanatical communists in Eastern Europe. His refusal to undertake any reforms to allow for a transition to freedom eventually unleashed a revolution in Romania, which Ceaucescu violently suppressed, killing more than 1,100 people and injuring several thousand. This repression only further enraged the Romanian people.

Eventually, the situation degenerated into something very much like a civil war in Romania, with part of the army joining the democratic opposition and the dictator attempting to stifle the revolution with the support of his loyal soldiers and agents of his fearsome secret police, the Securitate. On 23 December 1989, the presidential palace in Bucharest was stormed and Ceaucescu and his wife fled in a helicopter. They were eventually captured in the Securitate town of Târgovişte. After a summary trial, Ceaucescu and his wife were mercilessly executed, being riddled with bullets on 25 December 1989.

The cases of Venezuela and Romania are very similar. Both countries were ruined by far-left dictators who became obscenely rich while keeping the people in misery. The two Nicolases (Maduro and Ceaucescu) believed they could maintain power through violence, even in the face of a revolution in which millions of fed-up and desperate people felt they had nothing left to lose. Maduro is earning himself the right to end up like his namesake Ceaucescu. If he were even remotely intelligent, he would leave Venezuela today for one of those dictatorships that still support him. If he did, he could be thankful that he was simply alive. As the days go by, that possibility will become less and less and more people will be furious and wish to see Maduro end up like Ceaucescu did on Christmas Day 1989.
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Photo: Gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela.