A few years ago, in 2020, I thought I had discovered the perfect idea for a novel. It came from real-world events—the raw, unpredictable material that could inspire page-turning fiction. But as I dug deeper into my research, something unsettling began to surface.
A new story idea
In 2019, Romania marked 30 years since the uprising that ended communism and toppled Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship. Romanians commonly call those events “the Revolution,” though the accuracy of the term is debatable.
Fierce media debates erupted as newly declassified government documents tried to shed light on the bloody events of December 1989. More than a thousand protesters had died during the Revolution, yet one question remained unanswered: Who had fired the shots that killed them?
I was a child during the Revolution, and my memories are hazy—fragments of events I couldn’t fully grasp at the time. As an adult with a passion for history, I was finally ready to uncover the truth about what had happened in 1989. That felt like the perfect foundation for a novel. From my research, two different narratives emerged.
Narrative A
I learned of Narrative A from Romanian magazine articles and TV shows discussing the declassified government documents. I watched interviews with witnesses to those events, and I asked my family in Romania what they remembered about December 1989. Here’s the narrative that emerged from all that (simplified):
- President Mikhail Gorbachev of USSR hated President Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, so he decided to remove him from power via a military coup.
- In August 1989, covert Soviet agents entered Romania, awaiting instructions.
- In December 1989, Gorbachev gave the order. Soviet agents began stirring popular unrest in the city of Timișoara, where authorities tried to evict a priest for opposing the regime.
- In the capital of Bucharest, Soviet agents helped spread the unrest, inciting protesters to take to the streets.
- President Ceaușescu tried to pacify the protesters by offering a small increase in government funds, which only enraged people.
- Soviet agents continued to goad the masses, which forced the president to call in the Army and the Securitate (the Department of State Security) to restore order.
- When the protesters attacked the president’s building, Army leaders (who also worked for the KGB) convinced Ceaușescu to flee the city in a helicopter. The leaders of the Securitate called off their agents, hoping for a peaceful transition of power.
- The leaders of the Army and the Securitate took over the national TV station and the levers of power.
- After abandoning their helicopter in a field and other mishaps, Ceaușescu and his wife were arrested.
- The military coup was a success, but the people of Bucharest continued to protest against communism, which wasn’t what Gorbachev intended.
- To disperse them, Soviet agents began shooting into the crowds, especially at night. The media called them “terrorists.”
- The new military leaders executed Ceaușescu and his wife after a brief trial on Christmas Day.
- After the president’s death, many protesters chose to go home, so the terrorists stood down.
- The new civil leader was Ion Iliescu, who was Gorbachev-approved.
- Romania lived under a gentle Soviet occupation until 1991, when the USSR collapsed.
This version of events was a huge shock to me. For kids like me, the years after the Revolution had been all about MTV and Beverly Hills 90210. And now I was learning that we had been under Soviet occupation all that time. Wow…
The new novel
Narrative A grabbed me because it explained a still unsolved mystery about those days: Who had killed more than a thousand people in December 1989 and wounded many others? Who were the so-called terrorists? The families of the fallen had never received justice. Now we had answers: The Soviets had done it. And that possibility was hardly far-fetched, given their long history of interference in countries such as Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, and others ever since.
Because I’m a writer, my brain lit up: I could write a novel based on these amazing revelations. It would be a sci-fi thriller in a dystopian setting. The narrative lines were there to exploit, and the stakes were high.
After weeks of research, I started outlining my new thriller. It was about an empire toying with a small neighbor. A father caught between the loyalty for his president and the love for his son. A son who wanted a better future for their country. A network of spies making sure that future never came.
In another month, I had the outline all written up: the premise, the characters with their arcs, the three-act structure with all its necessary scenes—all based on Narrative A with its gripping story.
Here, I must pause for a moment to feel embarrassed. Okay, let’s continue the story…
Narrative B
I was ready to start writing scenes when I learned of Narrative B from a book written by Andrei Ursu, Roland O. Thomasson, and Mădălin Hodor, based on the same declassified documents, but also on years of sifting through the archives of the Securitate. The translated title of the book is Shooters and Mystifiers: The Securitate’s Counterrevolution in December 1989. An excerpt in Romanian can be read here.
I bought the book, and here’s its summary (also simplified):
- In December 1989, in Timișoara, a priest was scheduled for eviction, and his parishioners gathered around his house to protect him.
- The local police tried to disperse the crowds, but people blocked the streets and asked bus and streetcar riders to join them—and many did.
- Ceaușescu’s wife gave the order for factory workers in Timișoara to be gathered and sent out to suppress the protests. But instead of fighting the protesters, the workers joined them.
- The Securitate was asked to break up the crowds, so they started shooting at people from random places.
- People died in the streets, and Radio Free Europe broadcast their anguished cries (I remember hearing them on the radio in December 1989).
- Protesters took the train to Bucharest and spread the uprising there.
- In Bucharest, Ceaușescu tried to pacify the population by organizing a rally, where he offered a small increase in government funds, which only enraged people, who started shouting and booing.
- The president ordered the Army into the streets. Many soldiers were between the ages of 18 and 21, doing their mandatory service, and they refused to engage.
- Protesters attacked the president’s building, and Ceaușescu took off in a helicopter. People seized the state-owned TV station and broke the news that the dictator had fled. In many cities, crowds gathered downtown to celebrate.
- The Army decided to support the Revolution, but the Securitate refused to surrender. They hoped to scare the population into retreating so that the president could return. Their orders were to shoot for short periods of time into civilian buildings and military targets, especially at night. The common folk called them “terrorists.”
- The presidential helicopter landed in a field, and after a few mishaps, Ceaușescu and his wife were arrested.
- The people of Bucharest continued to protest against communism, and the Securitate continued to shoot at them, now with more casualties than before.
- The new military leaders executed Ceaușescu and his wife after a brief trial on Christmas Day and misplaced their dead bodies for a while.
- The Securitate stood down, now that the president was dead.
- The new civil leader was Ion Iliescu, who thought communism could be rehabilitated in Romania.
- The head of the Securitate (who had protected Ceaușescu before the uprising and who ordered the shooting of civilians during the uprising) was arrested.
- Romania began its complex transition from communism to democracy and capitalism, which continues to this day.
Fiction versus real life
Here’s the thing. As a fiction writer, I do know that fiction is orderly, while real life is quite random. There are so many craft books out there explaining how to organize your novel from the moment the first glimmer of inspiration hits you. There are narrative acts to design (and plot points, and subplots, and twists), characters’ needs and wants to explore, chronology to keep track of, worldbuilding to develop, author’s voice to hone—to name just a few—and they all have rules that end in metrics such as genre beats and word count.
As a nonfiction writer and editor, I’m also familiar with the rules of essay writing. The nonfiction author’s job is to find patterns and add structure to the chaos of life they report on. The author needs to create narrative threads, structure the timeline, and include sources that validate the aspects chosen for emphasis. Facts that don’t support the thesis or the theme are irrelevant and are erased from the narrative, even though they’re just as true as the rest.
How to smell a lie
As a writer, the problem I had with Narrative B was that I couldn’t find a ready novel waiting to be plucked from it. It was all a jumble that could be summarized with “People who’d had enough with the misery of communism risked their lives to change their future, while the authorities tried to crush the uprising.” At every turn, random things happened that changed the course of the events. The people who eventually seized power were the best positioned when the opportunity of a lifetime arose. Everybody played their cards as well as they could at the time. Some won and some lost—mostly the Romanian people, who thought they’d have a bright future but instead were mired in economic hardship and injustice for many years to come.
Looking at the two narratives side by side, I could see that one was neatly organized, and the other was a mess. That’s when I knew I had fallen for a lie.
I should mention here that in a country of 23 million in 1989, the Securitate employed thousands of agents and half a million informants, which was like a state within a state. All those people needed a future, too, in the new Romania, and so their history needed rewriting. They were no longer the force that had kept the country in chains for decades and then tried to kill the uprising. The Soviets had conveniently done that.
I remember growing up with the glorified history of Romanian communism taught in schools, only to learn after the Revolution that it was a lie. I’m not surprised that the leaders of the former Securitate tried one more time to obfuscate their history.
Back in 2020, I accepted Narrative B—the heroism of ordinary people—over Narrative A, which painted December 1989 as the reckless maneuvering of a crumbling Soviet Union playing deadly games with Romania. And I remain deeply grateful to those who risked and sacrificed their lives so that kids like me could inherit the better future they once dreamed of.
I might never know exactly what happened in December 1989 in Romania. But if I were to write that sci-fi thriller, I’d be reusing—even marginally—the narrative the former Securitate had created in order to exonerate itself. I’d be spreading their lies.
After months of work, I set my outline aside entirely and started looking for other ideas for a novel. As you might know, I ended up writing another sci-fi thriller, but this time, it was about artificial brains and Mars terraforming, not empires toying with small neighbors.
