Articolul “Citeva sfaturi pentru cei aflati in aceste zile la mare,” publicat in Scinteia Tineretului pe 18 decembrie 1989, inca este dezbatut dupa ani de zile…de exemplu, in cartea, Ion Costin Grigore, Cucuveaua cu pene rosii (1994, Editura Miracol):

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…Buna ziua. Imi pare rau sa spun asta dar nu cred nici cat negru sub unghie ceea ce declara dl. Sorin Preda legat de articolul referitor la “sfaturile” pentru cei aflati pe litoral “la plaja” pe 18 Decembrie 1989. Este absurd. Ar fi prea multe coincidente. Eu detin ziarul respectiv in intregime. La vremea aceea eram ofiter activ in Brasov si vreau sa va spun ca dupa aparitia articolului, imediat dupa teleconferinta tinuta de Ceausescu in 17.12.1989, evenimentele au inceput sa se desfasoare intocmai cum era “ordonat” in “sfaturile” aparute in Scinteia Tineretului din 18.12.1989. Daca doriti sa va dau si decodificarea articolului o fac bucuros.Cu stima,Mircea

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Mircea Ferestrăuariu avea 25 de ani în decembrie 1989 şi era locotenent în cadrul Şcolii Militare de Ofiţeri Activi şi Artilerie Antiaeriană şi Radiolocaţii „Leontin Sălăjan” din Braşov. Îşi aminteşte clar cum s-a răspândit în unitatea militară zvonul că „e ceva” cu articolul din „Scînteia tineretului”, că ar fi un articol codat şi cum, după câteva zile, a apărut şi o decodare pe care mai toată lumea din unitate şi-o copia de pe o fiţuică.  Mircea Ferestrăuariu are şi-acum decodarea, într-o cutie cu documente din casă. „Nu ştiu cum a intrat în şcoală decodarea, cine a adus-o, de unde, dar ea părea veridică. Iar la sfârşitul decodării scria că ea fusese făcută de un maior şi de un căpitan, maiorul Ioan Ardelean şi căpitanul Ioan Hendre. Numele nu-mi erau cunoscute, nu erau din unitatea noastră.  Oricum, eu sunt absolut convins că articolul a fost un ordin codat către forţele de represiune care nu făceau parte din structurile militare. Cine se duce la mare în decembrie să facă plajă şi baie? E de neconceput ca la vremea respectivă să apară un astfel de articol şi nimeni să nu sesizeze că e ceva aberant”.

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Photo from “Decriptarea textului din Scanteia Tineretului,” Luni, 28 decembrie 2009 11:51 by Mihaela G.

Decriptarea textului din Scanteia Tineretului

passages taken from “The Romanian Revolution for Dum-Dums (like me… and perhaps even you)” (2008) http://homepage.mac.com/khallbobo/RichardHall/pubs/romrevfordumdums042108tk.pdf

…for most recent reposting here see https://romanianrevolutionofdecember1989.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/the-romanian-revolution-for-dum-dums-part-i-by-richard-andrew-hall/

…A textual comparison of the Report’s chapter on the Revolution and Vladimir Tismaneanu’s chapter in a Dawisha and Parrott edited volume from 1997 is unambiguous: the introductory two paragraphs of the Report’s chapter are taken verbatim in translation from p. 414 of Tismaneanu’s 1997 chapter, and other verbatim paragraphs, sentences, and phrases from pp. 414-417 make up parts of the rest of the Report’s Revolution chapter without any reference to the 1997 chapter….

…It should tell you something that they continue to rely on and repeat the accounts they wrote in 1990 and 1991…as if nothing had been discovered or written since. In that way, it is almost fitting that the Report of the PCADCR reproduced Tismaneanu’s 1997 Dawisha and Parrott chapter in some places verbatim, down to failing to even change verb tenses when it states that certain questions “remain to be clarified.”…

[10] Sorin Iliesiu, “18 ani de la masacrul care a deturnat revoluţia anticomunistă,” 21 December 2007, found at http://www.romanialibera.com/articole/articol.php?step=articol&id=6709 (note: this is NOT the Romania Libera daily newspaper). One will find many well-known names in the West among those who signed this petition: Dragoş Paul Aligică, Matei Călinescu, Ruxandra Cesereanu, Anneli Ute Gabanyi, Tom Gallagher, Gabriel Liiceanu, Norman Manea, Nicolae Manolescu, Mircea Mihaies, Ion Mihai Pacepa, Horia-Roman Patapievici, Radu Portocală, Nestor Ratesh, Lavinia Stan, Stelian Tănase, Alin Teodorescu, and Vladimir Tismăneanu. Sorin Iliesiu, who is a filmmaker and Vice President of the “Civic Alliance” organization, has written that he was part of the “team” that “edited” the seven page chapter on the Romanian Revolution contained in the Report of the Presidential Commission to Analyze the Communist Dictatorship of Romania (PCACDR). He is not a scholar and most certainly not a scholar of the December 1989 events. A textual comparison of the Report’s chapter on the Revolution and Vladimir Tismaneanu’s chapter in a Dawisha and Parrott edited volume from 1997 is unambiguous: the introductory two paragraphs of the Report’s chapter are taken verbatim in translation from p. 414 of Tismaneanu’s 1997 chapter, and other verbatim paragraphs, sentences, and phrases from pp. 414-417 make up parts of the rest of the Report’s Revolution chapter without any reference to the 1997 chapter. As the author(s) of an earlier chapter in the Report cite(s) Tismaneanu’s 1997 chapter (see p. 376 fn. 55) correctly, this leaves really only two possible explanations for the failure of Iliesiu et. al. to cite that they have borrowed wholesale from Tismaneanu’s 1997 chapter: a) an absence of scholarly knowledge, or b) an attempt to mask their dependence upon and deference to Tismaneanu, the Chair of the Commission, since the citations that do appear are the exact citations from the 1997 chapter and claims are translated word-by-word, so much so that Iliesiu et. al. did not even bother to change verb tenses despite the passage of a decade. Iliesiu et. al. can attempt to avoid answering questions and attempt to change the subject, but the textual analysis is unambiguous: Tismaneanu’s unattributed 1997 chapter forms the bulk of the Report’s chapter on the Revolution. The only question that needs to be answered is: why and why are they unwilling to admit the textual identicality?

[28] I refer here to, for example, the works of Vladimir Tismaneanu, Matei Calinescu, Andrei Codrescu, Anneli Ute Gabanyi, Radu Portocala, and Nestor Ratesh. Some, like Tismaneanu in a 1993 article in EEPS, “The Quasi-Revolution and its Discontents,” were more explicit about this rather rigid dichotomous approach to the Romanian media, but it also comes through clearly in the sourcing, citations, and footnotes/endnotes of the others. (It continues to haunt the historiography of post-communist Romania, as works such as Tom Gallagher’s aforementioned Modern Romania make clear). To say the least, the issue of ballistics evidence essentially goes unanalyzed in these accounts. Moreover, although as we have seen, these authors have no problem affixing their names to petitions and the like, none of them has published any research on the December 1989 events since the early 1990s. It should tell you something that they continue to rely on and repeat the accounts they wrote in 1990 and 1991…as if nothing had been discovered or written since. In that way, it is almost fitting that the Report of the PCADCR reproduced Tismaneanu’s 1997 Dawisha and Parrott chapter in some places verbatim, down to failing to even change verb tenses when it states that certain questions “remain to be clarified.”