The rise and fall of Romanian leader: Nicolae Ceaușescu.

In Aug 1944 Ceaușescu became Secretary of the Com­m­unist Youth Union (1944–5). He met and loved Elena Petrescu, marrying her in 1946. After the Communists’ takeover in Romania in 1947, he became Minister of Agricult­ure (1948–50) and from 1950-4, Dep­uty Minister of the Armed Forces. Then the party’s De­puty Leader.

Prime Minister Gheorghiu-Dej adopted economic and foreign polic­ies that served Rom­ania’s own national interests eg vigorously pursuing a major ind­us­t­rial­isation prog­ramme. In mid-1960s Gheorghiu-Dej formed warner relations with the People’s Repub­lic of China, now more al­ien­at­ed from the Soviet Union.

When Gheorghiu-Dej died (1965), Ceaușescu became First Secretary of the Communist Party; then President in Dec 1967. He won popular support for his own na­tion­al­ist polit­ic­al course which openly chal­lenged the Soviet Union’s control. Ceau­șescu ended Roman­ia’s active particip­at­ion in the Warsaw Pact mil­itary alliance, cond­emning the in­vasions of Cz­ech­oslovakia (1968) by War­saw Pact forces and of Afgh­anistan (1979) by the Sov­iet Un­ion. But while fol­l­owing an ind­ependent policy in foreign rel­at­ions, at home he was rig­idly orthod­ox about cent­ralised ad­min­­ist­ration. His secret police, Securitate, main­tained total control over all media.

One grand­iose scheme was a plan to bulldoze thousands of Rom­an­ia’s villages and move their residents into agro-technical centres. But the scheme failed when people rioted, protecting their homes. In 1981 he be­g­an an austerity programme to liquidate his nation’s enormous nat­ion­al debt, rationing food, clothing and fuel. Malnutrition meant Rom­ania had Eur­ope’s highest infant mortality rate.

Yet the Ceaus­e­scus built the sump­t­uous Rep­ublic House, the palace now hous­ing the Romanian parl­iament. Angry resid­ents were evicted from their homes for the palace, causing an even greater pover­ty that Ceausescu had in­flicted.

Trying to pay off the large foreign debt that his government acc­umul­at­ed in the 1970s, Cea­ușescu order­ed the export of the count­ry’s agr­ic­­ult­ural and in­d­ustrial pro­duction in 1982, res­ult­ing in more shortages of food, fuel and energy.

To increase births, the brutal Ceaușescu banned contracept­ion and abortion. Doct­ors had to monitor women of child bearing age to ensure they were not controlling their fert­ility, so mat­ernal mortality rat­es rose from illegal abortions. Equal­ly tragic, Ceausescu insisted that HIV was not sexually trans­mit­ted so he banned condoms, condemning many young citizens to death.

In 1989 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev an­nounced his nation would never again interfere in nations’ affairs; in fact the Soviet Union released its satellite states. Dur­ing 1989 those nat­ions threw off Soviet rule; Pol­and, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and East Germany re­placed their communist rulers, mainly by peaceful means.

Seeing what was happen­ing elsewhere, the Romanian population stirred. The first protests in Dec in the western city of Timis­oara were by members of Romania’s Hungarian minority. At first the army went in but as soon the city was burning, martial law was declared and tanks entered the streets. By 17th Dec, demonstrations had spread across central Timis­oara, and security for­ces implemented Ceausescu's shooting orders. A large number of dem­on­st­rators were killed, while others seriously injured and arrested. It didn’t mat­ter; in­side the Romanian Commun­ist Party, it looked great for Ceau­s­escu who’d been elected for a new 5-year term.

In 20 Dec 1989 with Nicolae on a government visit to Iran, Elena Ceausescu despatched her Prime Minister to Tim­isoara to take control. He offered to free those arrested but was met with protestors demand­ing that Ceausescu resign. Work­ers, who were bus­s­ed in to replace the striking dissidents, joined them inst­ead. Ceausescu returned from Iran as western media dissem­inated news of the Timisoara revolt.

How did Ceausescu not know his rule was a nasty pers­onality cult? Convinced by his own self-delusions, he was incapable of und­erstanding that it was only upheld by his oppres­s­ive security services. He still planned to make a pub­lic speech to the people to be broadcast nation­wide, to show that Ceaus­escu retained control. God grief!! C100,000 pro­testers gathered in Bucharest Square carrying Rom­anian flags and huge pict­ur­es of the dictator. Ceau­sescu raised his hand to give his speech but was st­un­ned to note that the jeering didn’t stop! Finally even HE finally realised his legitimacy was over. Romania was the last Communist nation to fall and its last days were very violent.

With protestors closing in and the army unwilling to defend him, the couple dramatically fled Bucharest’s rooftops by helicopter, with sec­onds to spare. But the pilot was unhappy carrying the dictator to safety so he dropped into a field. The Ceausescus flag­ged down a car and told the dri­v­er find them a safe place at an agricultural inst­it­ute. There the driver locked them up and called the pol­ice to take them to Targoviste military base!

On 25 Dec 1989 a mil­itary tri­bunal of military judges met, charg­ing the couple with genocide by starvation and sub­version. The defence lawyers asked  the couple to claim mental incapacity, but both rejected that recommendation. In the end, the trial lasted only two hours!

The Ceausescus were dragged crying into a freezing military courtyard, lined up against a toilet block and shot by the 80 guards. The images were shown on television in Romania and elsewhere. What­ever one thinks of the brutally oppressive regime, or of capital punishment, it was terr­ible… as the Europ­ean Court of Human Rights argued.

Once the new government Nation­al Salvat­ion Front took power and arranged free elections, Romania was always headed for a free-market democr­acy. And note that 13 days later Romania out­lawed capital pun­ish­ment. How ironic that Nicolae Ceauses­cu and wife were the last vict­ims. 

Many thanks to The History Guide.