And it is this crisis that marks the starting point of the Romanian Revolution in 1989. Thousands of Romanians were starving, and Eastern European countries were beginning to leave years of communist governments, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Additionally, the fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for the reunification of Germany. The Soviet Union, under the opening led by Mikhail Gorbachev, did not intervene to stop the ongoing revolutions.

"In Romania, people celebrated these changes happening in other countries and wondered: why not here?" reports Lavinia Stan, former president of the Society for Romanian Studies and professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.

The press was not free in Ceausescu's Romania, but signals from neighboring countries' broadcasters reached local television and radio stations. In cities near the borders with other countries, information came even more clearly, inflaming the hearts of the Romanian people to finally put an end to the communist government that had been oppressing their country for years.