The picnic, a “giant, open-air party” convened on Aug. 19, 1989, and attended by hundreds, surprised all by forcing open the barbed-wire border between Austria and Hungary.

Romania's 1989 revolution began in Timisoara in mid-December when protests over the authorities' treatment of an ethnic Hungarian pastor grew into widespread anti-government unrest.

As a three-term president, he guided the country toward democracy, but he was called an authoritarian at heart and accused of ...