Nicolae Ceausescu

Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-1989) was a Romanian leader whose attempts to fuse nationalism and communism resulted in such a brutal dictatorship that the Romanians overthrew his regime.

Nicolae Ceausescu was born of a peasant family on Jan. 26, 1918, in Scornicesti in the Olt country. At the age of 11 he began working in the factories of Bucharest. He participated in the social movements at the beginning of 1930s and joined the revolutionary working-class movement in 1932. The following year Ceausescu became a member of the Union of Communist Youth (UCY) and of the Romanian Communist party (RCP). He was successively secretary of Prahova and Oltenia regional committees of UCY and was a representative of the democratic youth in the Antifascist National Committee (1934).

Met Influential Communists in Prison

Between 1936 and 1938 Ceausescu was imprisoned several times for his revolutionary, patriotic, and antifascist activities. It was there that he met and became close with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who led the Romanian Communists and took Ceausescu under his wing. Ceasescu took part in organizing the huge antiwar demonstration in Bucharest on May 1, 1939, in defense of Romania's independence against the Nazi danger. He then was elected member and secretary of the Central Committee of the UCY (1939-1940). Sentenced in absentia (1939), he was later arrested and imprisoned (1940-1944). During World War II he took an active part in the struggle to overthrow his country's fascist regime, to force Romanian withdrawal from the anti-Soviet war, and to free Romania from Hitler's domination.

After Romanian liberation from fascism, Gheorghiu-Dej helped Ceausescu again become secretary of the UCY Central Committee (1944-1945). Ceausescu then worked as secretary of the regional party committees of Dobrogea and later of Oltenia; in 1948 he was appointed general secretary. After serving as deputy minister of agriculture (1949-1950), Ceausescu joined the army staff and became deputy minister of the armed forces, holding the function of head of the Army High Political Department (1950-1954). Around this time, he married Elena Petrescu.

Used Power to Weaken Rivals

When Gheorgiu-Dej died suddenly in 1965, Ceausescu became first secretary of the RCP. Although many in the party felt Ceausescu was weak enough to be controlled, he used his new power to weaken his rivals. Subsequently, on Dec. 9, 1967, the Grand National Assembly elected him president of the State Council of the Socialist Republic of Romania, thus making him head of state.

Ceasescu's first years of authority were good for the country and people believed he was a bright ruler. When he boycotted the Soviet Union's 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, he won international support. However, these times belied his true nature. Armed with complete power, he began to impose his version of the ideal Communist society on the Romanians: rapid industrialization in the manner of Stalin, pursuit of Puritanism concerning individual and family life, and systemization, which included destroying churches and housing the population in concrete high-rise buildings. These actions were especially harsh in Bucharest, whose history was bulldozed to make way for Ceausescu's ideal city. In keeping with his luxurious lifestyle, Ceausescu began constructing the largest building in the world, "The People's Palace." All the while, life was crumbling for the average Romanian, many of whom had to survive without heat or electricity. In December, 1989, the Romanian people revolted, and killed both Ceausescu and his wife.

Further Reading

Galloway, George, and Bob Wylie, Downfall: The Ceausescus and the Romanian Revolution, Futura Publications, 1991 □

Ceausescu, Nicolae (b. 26 Jan. 1918, d. 25 Dec. 1989). President of Romania 1967–89 Born in Scornicesti in rural Romania, he moved to Bucharest and soon became politically active, joining the Communist Party in 1936. He became a protégé of Gheorghiu-Dej and was put in charge of building up a Communist youth organization. He worked underground until the entry of Soviet troops in 1944 and the establishment of the Communist Romanian Republic in 1948. He entered the Politburo in 1955, and in 1965 succeeded Gheorghiu-Dej as First Secretary (later Secretary-General) of the Communist Party. He was President of the State Council (1967–74) and, when his position had become unassailable, conferred upon himself the title of President in 1974.

He installed a brutal regime of terror, backed by his loyal security police, the notorious Securitate. In common with dictators such as Saddam Hussein, he elevated the members of his large family to high and strategic positions in state and society, which increased his control over the loyalty of his people. Most famously, he made his wife, Elena, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Culture. He successfully played a double game of persuading the West that he was an independent agent at a distance from the USSR, while assuring Brezhnev that his control over party and state was as great as ever. He thus became a favoured Communist leader for Western states, and even received a knighthood from the British government.

At home, however, the economic problems caused by the 1973 and 1979 oil-price shocks, which turned Eastern Europe's command economies from bad to worse, were compounded by the megalomanic building and industrial projects he envisaged after the 1977 earthquake. His obsession with increasing the birth-rate imposed strict penalties on abortions. Too many of those families who had fulfilled the target of bearing five children found that they did not have the physical or economic means to raise them, so that thousands of children were raised in underdeveloped orphanages. With the collapse of Communism elsewhere in Eastern Europe, not even his nationalism, which he had fostered to ridiculous proportions, saved his much-hated regime from collapse. With his wife, he fled the growing unrest, but was captured, and, after a brief trial, executed.

Nicolae Ceauşescu , 1918–89, Romanian statesman. The son of a peasant, he early became active in the Romanian Communist movement and was arrested as a revolutionary; he spent the late 1930s and early 40s in prison, where he became acquainted with the future first secretary of the Romanian Communist party, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej . Escaping in 1944, Ceauşescu held a variety of posts within Communist party and government ranks after the Communist takeover in 1948. He soon became a member of the party's central committee and then, in 1955, a member of the politburo. Upon Gheorghiu-Dej's death in Mar., 1965, he was chosen first secretary of the central committee of the Communist party and in Dec., 1967, he assumed the office of president of the state council, or head of state. As supreme leader, he continued his mentor's policy of nationalism and independence from the USSR within the context of Marxism-Leninism. He promoted closer relations with the People's Republic of China and with the West, as well as industrial and agricultural development. His domestic rule, however, was marked by frequently disastrous economic schemes and became increasingly repressive and corrupt. In Dec., 1989, a popular uprising, joined by the army, led to the arrest and execution of him and his wife, Elena.

Ceauşescu, Nicolae (1918–89) Romanian Communist statesman, first President of the Socialist Republic of Romania (1974–89). Noted for his independence of the USSR, for many years he fostered his own personality cult, making his wife Elena his deputy and appointing many other members of his family to high office. His regime became increasingly totalitarian, repressive, and corrupt; a popular uprising in December 1989 resulted in its downfall and in the arrest, summary trial, and execution of Ceauşescu and his wife.

Ceauşescu, Nicolae (1918–89) Romanian statesman, the country's effective ruler from 1965 to 1989. He became a member of the politburo in 1955, general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965 and head of state in 1967. He promoted Romanian nationalism, pursued an independent foreign policy, but instituted repressive domestic policies. He was deposed and executed in the December 1989 revolution.

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