Brașov Rebellion

Brașov Rebellion
15 November street in Brasov in memory of the Brașov Rebellion
Location	Brașov
Date	15 November 1987
Target	Communist headquarters and city hall
Perpetrators	Workers from Steagul Roșu plant, Tractor Plant, Hidromecanica factory
No. of participants	20,000 workers
Defenders	Securitate forces and Romanian Army

The Rebellion of Brașov was a revolt against Nicolae Ceaușescu's economic policies in Communist Romania, which erupted on the day of the 1987 local election.

Beginning in late 1986, the seeds of the Romanian Revolution of 1989 were sown, as workers throughout this Soviet Bloc country mobilized in protest of communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu's economic policies. Labor uprisings sprouted in the major industrial centers of Cluj-Napoca (November 1986) and Nicolina, Iași (February 1987), culminating in a massive strike in Brașov, one of the largest cities in Romania. Ceaușescu's draconian economic measures sought to curb food and energy consumption and reduce worker's wages, leading to what Romanian émigré Vladimir Tismăneanu calls an "all pervasive discontent," making Romania "the Eastern Bloc country most vulnerable to revolution."

Though Romania was the last of the Eastern European communist strongholds to succumb to revolution in 1989, his sentiments capture the social and economic volatility of Romania in the late 1980s. The Brașov Revolt reflected this instability; moreover, it was one of the first large-scale public uprisings against the Ceaușescu regime.

Located in southeastern Transylvania, Brașov was Romania's most industrially developed city, with over 61% of labor participating in industry. A skilled working class emerged in the 1960s as the Communist government encouraged migrations from the more rural regions of Romania (such as Moldavia) to operate Brașov factories. Therefore, the industrial decline in Eastern Europe during the mid-1980s hit Brașov and its workers especially hard.