Are revolutions made or do they come?

The case of Romanian Revolution of 1989

Abstract

Revolutions do not occur spontaneously. An array of conditions must be satisfied if a revolution is to be
carried out successfully. The main point of this essay is that, whilst most revolutions have revolutionary
elites behind them, not all revolutions are ‘made’. Using the example of the Romanian Revolution of 1989,
it will be argued that there are, in fact, conditions under which revolution can ‘come’ when society is
pushed to some form of ‘breaking point’, often triggered by an event which causes popular outrage which
acts as the platform for a broader anti-regime movement,