Iron Curtain nations fell like dominoes to peaceful demonstrations for more than a month until the protests reached Romania on December 17th, 1989. The nine days that followed saw 1,115 killed in fighting that raged across the country. But 10 years later, few will be celebrating in a country still mired in poverty.
On Christmas Day 1989, the site of the bloated face of Romania's executed dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, broadcast on TV, brought Romanians on to the streets in celebration. Now dozens flock each day to his grave in Bucharest's Ghencea cemetery, which is covered with candles and posies of dried flowers.
"They think they should not have done to him what they did. I hear them saying this," says Alexandra (73), a pensioner who has made it her business to tend the grave.
"Life then was better than it is now. Then we had everything, now we don't have anything," she says. "With the money we had then we could manage, but with the money we have now we cannot. Things have got worse since then."
The visitors come from the millions of Romanians who feel themselves losers. The flip side of freedom has turned out to be the absence of a state-operated safety net, and with inflation eating away at wages and pensions, anxiety is now widespread.
Alexandra lives alone in a two-room apartment with a state pension of 500,000 lei, or about £24 per month.
The irony is compounded by the grave itself. During his reign, Ceausescu waged war on the church, demolishing more than 20 to make room for Europe's biggest building, the Palace of the Revolution, in Bucharest. Yet an orthodox stone cross is his headstone. On the top is a red star, and below, a picture of Jesus. Fifty metres away is the grave of his wife. Elena. A wooden cross has been broken.
"Some people come and burn the flowers and pull out the candles," says Alexandra. "They broke the cross on Elena's grave. I don't know why they do it."
Irony has also taken a swipe at Alexandru Lengyel (42), a locksmith in the giant Lengyel mine in Transylvania. Last year his teenaged daughter won a poetry competition and was invited to a prize-giving ceremony in Boston, something that would have been impossible in communist times. Now she is free to travel, but to find the money the family had to give up its savings and cancel the family holiday.
"Our pay is less than it was before. Life was tough then but it is tough now."
Romania's miners became infamous after they rampaged through Bucharest six months after the revolution, brought in by the former communist government. Last year, angry at the centre-right government's plan for pit closures, they marched again, but were stopped outside the city in bloody battles with riot police.
"The restructuring that has come now in the mining sector comes as a revenge for what happened then and later on," says Alexandru. For him, democracy has meant the same tough working conditions, 12-hour shifts underground, six days a week, plus a pay cut. He earns £110 a month and, with inflation rising, his wife now works in the mine canteen, bringing home an extra £40.
The ending of state subsidies has brought chaos to mining. "Conditions are bad now. There are no spare parts, so production is stopped many times. We don't get our salaries regularly. I am retiring in two years, so help me God."
THE West had assumed capitalism would pick up where communism left off, but in Romania, as elsewhere in the Balkans, corruption has short-circuited the process.
One of those who tried bringing in the ways of the West is Dr Theodor Olteanu, a dentist who fled from the communist regime and returned in 1992 to open La Premiera, Bucharest's most opulent restaurant. The business is thriving, but Dr Olteanu says the same is not true of Romania and he plans to move to Washington.
"We don't have the money to heat the city's apartments. The government can't even afford that and it is a national scandal," he says.
His restaurant is lined with sepia photographs showing Bucharest's golden age between the wars, when French architects flocked to the city and the great boulevards were created. He had hoped a new golden age would flow, but now believes that corruption is too endemic to allow progress.
"The government can get away with this because they know that Romanians will put up with these things. But they should be in the streets," he says. "The most difficult problem is that in Romania we don't have an alternative. Putting [former President Ion] Iliescu back in is no alternative. His people created these problems. The people wait and wait and wait for progress, and nothing is moving. That is the biggest problem."
For him the pivotal moment was 1996, when elections finally removed the former communist government of Mr Iliescu, replacing it with the centre-right Mr Emil Constantinescu. But his presidency has proved a disaster. Inflation continues, the IMF is furious with a string of missed spending targets, and Mr Iliescu is now ahead in polls for next year's elections.
He says corruption is the problem. "With Romanian journalists, you give them a free meal and they'll write nice things about you. This year we had a recommendation from Fodor's travel guide, and I didn't even know they had been here."
More hopeful is Rodica Guja (25), a law graduate who is PA to the boss of Coca-Cola in the Balkans. Ten years ago she joined classmates protesting about unnecessary exams in the aftermath of the revolution.
"It was an amazing feeling, an amazing time. Everything seemed to be possible," she said. "We marched on the education ministry, and it worked. They cut the exam, but only after two years, so we still had to take it."
Ms Guja is one of a growing number of young people working for foreign and private businesses. She earns £740 a month, a high salary for Romanians. "This job is an opportunity I would never have had under the old system. We have made progress, freedom to talk, freedom to move, these are things not to be taken for granted.
"But the revolution brought bad things, too, too many poor people, too many problems. Before the revolution, we read books and went to the theatre because there was nothing else to do. Now everyone just watches TV."
For her, the West still offers a beacon of hope. "Companies like Coke show the way forward for businesses. We've got the CocaCola university which gives business training to ordinary Romanians. The more companies come here, the more expertise can be passed on. That is our best hope to get like the West, to bring in a new mentality."
This article and the previous articles in this series can be accessed on The Irish Times Website (www.ireland.com)