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Romania

Dunlop, Tessa, Rosia Montana and Romania’s Decade Long “Gold War”, BBC News, 2012

See also: Earthworks ‘No Dirty Gold: Rosia Montana’: http://nodirtygold.earthworksaction.org; Solly, Richard ‘Festival of Resistance to Romanian Gold Mine’, London Mining Network, 18 Aug . 2014: http://londonminingnetwork.org
Sources for 15 year long local resistance in Romania to open-pit gold mine (which would use cyanide), proposed by Toronto-based Gabriel Resources, and for the evolution of government policy and legal challenges. The mine became a focus of national resistance in September 2013. The local opponents propose that the site should become a UNESCO heritage area (the open cast mine would destroy the original Roman gold mine) and a centre for farming.

Falk, Barbara, Rethinking the Revolutionary Recipe: 1989 and the Idea of Non-Violent Revolution', Visegrad Insight, 2020

Falk assesses the nature of the 1989 revolutions, which she delineates as the collapse of communist regimes across Eastern Europe in a context of commitment to nonviolence by key players (with the exception of Romania) and of restraint by both Gorbachev in the USSR and western leaders. Year 1989 appeared to usher in a new concept of peaceful revolution, which could be applied to challenge other repressive regimes. But, Falk argues, these attempts, as in the '2009 Green Revolution' in Iran and the 'Arab Spring' in 2011 in Egypt and elsewhere, have resulted in defeat.  The author also notes other factors, which militate against successful nonviolent revolution. These include the greater ruthlessness (compared with the East European Communist regimes of the 1980s) of many of today's dictatorships, the declining respect for the US and for liberal democracy as an ideal, a rise in barbaric violence (represented by ISIS) and the complex role of today's communication technologies, which can mobilize protest but promote lack of leadership capable of formulating negotiable demands. The article references a number of other interesting recent perspectives on revolution today.   

Lucian, Vesalon ; Remus, Cretan, ”We are not the Wild West...”: Anti-Fracking Protests in Romania, Environmental Politics, Vol. 24, no. 2, 2015

Prins, Gwyn, Spring in Winter: The 1989 Revolutions, ed. Prins, Gwyn, (Preface by Vaclav Havel), Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1990, pp. 251

Includes reflections by leading participants in revolutions from Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, a journalist’s view of ‘Why Romania could not avoid bloodshed’, and an essay by J.K. Galbraith on dangers of the triumph of a simplistic economic ideology, and a comparative chronology of 1988-1990.

Rady, Martyn, Romania in Turmoil: A Contemporary History, London, I.B. Taurus, 1992, pp. 216

Analyses Ceausescu’s regime and outlines emerging resistance and mass worker demonstrations in Brasov November 1987, the Timisoara and Bucharest uprisings and subsequent confused politics and violence. Includes a survey of sources.

Randle, Michael, People Power: The Building of a New European Home, Stroud, Hawthorne Press, 1991, pp. 224

Chapter 1 discusses the context of the revolutions, ch. 2 the build up of protest (including in Bulgaria) and the role of international pressures. Part II comprises interviews with key participants in 1989, both about the revolutions and future possibilities. Includes interviews on Romania and Slovenia.

Ridriguez, Samuel, Global Resistance to Fracking: Communities Rise Up to Fight Climate Crisis and Democratic Deficit, Madrid, Libros en Accion, 2015, pp. 153

This book, edited by the international coordinator of Ecologistas en Accion, covers 15 varied struggles against fracking around the world, and is intended to be a source of inspiration for continued resistance. Many are first person accounts, by those involved. Chapters cover personal opposition fracking in the courts or at the municipal level, resistance by local farmers to corporations backed by the government, as in Poland and Romania and the campaign for 'frack free' municipalities in the Basque territory of Spain. There are also accounts of resistance from Argentina, Algeria, South Africa, Australia, the UK (against drilling in Sussex) and Northern Ireland, and on the role of ATTA C in France. Includes a timeline and 'some snapshots' of the resistance, as well as some conclusions drawn by the editor.  

Simpson, John, Dispatches from the Barricades: An Eye-Witness Account of the Revolution that Shook the World, London, Hutchinson, 1990, pp. 320

By BBC reporter; includes a chapter on Romania.

Srebotjnak, Hana, #MeToo in the East? Women's rights in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe, OpenDemocracy, 2019

The article discusses the high levels of harassment endured by women in South-East and Eastern Europe, revealed in a 2019 OSCE survey, and the difficulty of speaking out. It gives the example Marija Lukic, who accused the former president of a  municipality in Serbia and was insulted by 50 of his supporters when she went to court. The author also comments very briefly on short but ultimately unsuccessful social media MeToo campaigns in Poland and Romania and suggests that in Hungary the response has been confined to 'liberal and cultural circles'. She records that the Council of Europe's 2011 Istanbul Convention on preventing violence against women was ratified by Serbia in November 2017 and Croatia in 2018, but has not been ratified by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Moldova, Ukraine or Russia.   

Tickle, Andrew ; Welsh, Ian, Environment and Society in Eastern Europe, ed. Tickle, Andrew, Welsh, Ian, London, Longman, 1998, pp. 192

Examines contribution of environmental activism to ‘an immanent civil society’. Chapters on Hungary, Poland, Romania and Russia.