The Patriotic Guards () were Romanian paramilitary formations formed during the Communist era, designed to provide additional defence in case of a foreign attack. History The Patriotic Guards were formed in 1968, after the 21 August Bucharest speech through which Romanian Communist Party General Secretary and State Council President Nicolae Ceaușescu condemned the suppression of the Prague Spring by Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces. Ceaușescu appealed to anti-Sovietism within the general population to ask for resistance against the perceived threat of a similar Soviet invasion against Romania itself. The nationalist themes he used had their immediate effect in rallying large portions of the public, who began organizing and arming themselves under the direction of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR). Although the threat was over by the end of the year, the Patriotic Guards remained a feature of the republic's communist structure. They became a permanent addition to the regular military, and compulsory training was introduced for young men and women. For university students, this meant that hours of the curriculum were reserved for shooting drills and other training courses; soon, they were doubled by additional requirements for work in the fields (that was also asked from high school and middle school students, as well as their teachers). No longer backed by enthusiasm as they had been in the early 1970s, the Patriotic Guards nonetheless were the basic line of defence against projected invasions. The threat posed by the latter seemed to increase as the regime plunged into isolation, especially after it lost the support of the Western Bloc in the mid-1980s. From that point on, the Patriotic Guards were to become part of the State's apparatus of repression against its own people. During the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, Ceaușescu attempted to use them against protesters, notably in Timișoara. However, the pace of events and the breadth of hostility to his regime outstripped this plan. As the Revolution progressed, many Patriotic Guard members (who like most other Romanians were fed up with Ceauşescu's failed economic policies and suffering from declining living standards) actually joined the protesters. To no small extent, the people who were meant to be armed in case of the disturbances were in fact the ones causing them. Function The Patriotic Guards was an all-inclusive public security organization, its functions included normal civil policing and fire-fighting, and a very large "People's Militia" force. During wartime it would provide