(Romanian pronunciation: [nikoˈla.e t͡ʃe̯a.uˈʃesku]; 26 January 1918[1] – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from 1967 to 1989.
A member of the Romanian Communist youth movement, Ceaușescu rose up through the ranks of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's Socialist government and, upon the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in March 1965, he succeeded to the leadership of Romania’s Communist Party as General Secretary.
Ceaușescu's regime became increasingly brutal and repressive. By some accounts, his rule was the most rigidly Stalinist in the Soviet bloc.[2] His secret police, the Securitate, maintained strict controls over speech and the media, and internal dissent was not tolerated. In 1982, with the goal of paying off Romania's large foreign debt, Ceaușescu ordered the export of much of the country’s agricultural and industrial production. The resulting extreme shortages of food, fuel, energy, medicines, and other basic necessities drastically lowered living standards and intensified unrest. Ceaușescu's regime was also marked by an extensive and ubiquitous cult of personality, nationalism, a continuing deterioration in foreign relations even with the Soviet Union, andnepotism.
Ceaușescu’s regime collapsed after he ordered his security forces to fire on antigovernment demonstrators in the city of Timișoara on 17 December 1989. The demonstrations spread to Bucharest and became known as the Romanian Revolution, which was the only violent overthrow of a Communist government during the revolutions of 1989. Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, fled the capital in a helicopter but were captured by the armed forces. On 25 December the couple were hastily tried and convicted by a special military tribunal on charges of genocide and sabotage of the Romanian economy in a two-hour court session. Ceaușescu and his wife were then shot by a firing squad.[3]
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[show]Early life and career[edit]
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Ceaușescu was born in the village of Scornicești, Olt County, on 26 January 1918 being one of the ten children of a poor peasant family (see Ceaușescu family). His father, Andruță Ceaușescu owned 3 hectares of agricultural land, a few sheep and he also supplemented his large family's income through tailoring.[4] Nicolae studied at the village school and, at the age of 11, until he ran away from his abusive, alcoholic father to Bucharest, initially living with his sister, Niculina Rusescu, and then becoming an apprentice shoemaker.[4]
He worked in the workshop of Alexandru Săndulescu, a shoemaker who was an active member in the then-illegal Communist Party.[4] Ceaușescu was soon involved in the Communist Party activities (becoming a member in early 1932), but, as a teenager, he was given only small tasks.[4] He was first arrested in 1933, at the age of 15 for street fighting during a strike and again, in 1934, first for collecting signatures on a petition protesting the trial of railway workers and twice more for other similar activities.[5] By the mid-1930s, he had been in missions in Bucharest, Craiova, Câmpulung and Râmnicu Vâlcea, being arrested several times.[6]
The profile file from the secret police, Siguranța Statului, named him "a dangerous Communist agitator" and "distributor of Communist and antifascist propaganda materials".[6] For these charges he was convicted on 6 June 1936 by the Brașov Tribunal to 2 years in prison, an additional 6 months forcontempt of court and one year of forced residence in Scornicești.[6] He spent most of his sentence in Doftana Prison.[6] While out of jail in 1940, he metElena Petrescu, whom he married in 1946 and who would play an increasing role in his political life over the years.[5]
Soon after being freed, he was arrested again and sentenced for "conspiracy against social order", spending the time during the war in prisons andinternment camps: Jilava (1940), Caransebeș (1942), Văcărești (1943), Târgu Jiu (1943).[6] In 1943, he was transferred to Târgu Jiu internment camp where he shared a cell with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, becoming his protégé. After World War II, when Romania was beginning to fall under Soviet influence, he served as secretary of the Union of Communist Youth (1944–1945).[5]
After the Communists seized power in Romania in 1947, he headed the ministry of agriculture, then served as deputy minister of the armed forces under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, becoming a major-general. In 1952, Gheorghiu-Dej brought him onto the Central Committee months after the party's "Muscovite faction" led by Ana Pauker had been purged. In 1954, he became a full member of the Politburo and eventually rose to occupy the second-highest position in the party hierarchy.[5]
Leadership of Romania[edit]
Ceaușescu was not the obvious successor to Gheorghiu-Dej when he died on 19 March 1965, despite his closeness to the longtime leader, but amid widespread infighting among older and more connected officials the Politburo turned to Ceaușescu as a compromise candidate.[7] He was elected general secretary on 22 March 1965, three days after Gheorghiu-Dej's death. One of his first acts was to change the name of the party from the Romanian Workers' Party back to the Communist Party of Romania, and declare the country a socialist republic rather than apeople's republic. In 1967, he consolidated his power by becoming president of the State Council (head of state).
Initially, Ceaușescu became a popular figure in Romania and also in the Western World, because of his independent foreign policy, challenging the authority of the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, he eased press censorship and ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact (though Romania formally remained a member). He not only refused to take part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, but actively and openly condemned that action in his 21 August 1968 speech. He even traveled to Prague a week before the invasion to offer moral support to his Czechoslovak counterpart, Alexander Dubček. Although the Soviet Union largely tolerated Ceaușescu's recalcitrance, his seeming independence from Moscow earned Romania maverick status within the Eastern Bloc.[7]
During the following years Ceaușescu pursued an open policy towards the United States and Western Europe. Romania was the first Warsaw Pact country to recognize West Germany, the first to join the International Monetary Fund, and the first to receive a US President, Richard Nixon.[8] In 1971, Romania became a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Romania and Yugoslavia were also the only Eastern European countries that entered into trade agreements with the European Economic Community before the fall of the Eastern Bloc.[9]
A series of official visits to Western countries (including the US, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain) helped Ceaușescu to present himself as a reforming Communist, pursuing an independent foreign policy within the Soviet Bloc. He also became eager to be seen as an enlightened international statesman, able to mediate in international conflicts and to gain international respect for Romania.[10] Ceaușescu negotiated in international affairs, such as the opening of US relations with China in 1969 and the visit of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to Israel in 1977. Also Romania was the only country in the world to maintain normal diplomatic relations with both Israel and the PLO.[11]
The 1966 decree[edit]
In 1966, Ceaușescu, in an attempt to boost the country's population, made abortion illegal, and introduced Decree 770 to reverse the very low birth rate and fertility rate. Mothers of at least five children would be entitled to significant benefits, while mothers of at least ten children were declaredheroine mothers by the Romanian state. Few women ever sought this status; instead, the average Romanian family during the time had two to three children (see Demographics of Romania).[12] Furthermore, a considerable number of women either died or were maimed during clandestine abortions.[13]
The government also targeted rising divorce rates and made divorce much more difficult—it was decreed that a marriage could be dissolved only in exceptional cases. By the late 1960s, the population began to swell. In turn, a new problem was created by child abandonment, which swelled the orphanage population (see Cighid). Transfusions of untested blood led to Romania accounting for many of Europe's pediatric HIV/AIDS cases at the turn of the 21st century despite having a population that only makes up around 3% of Europe's total population.[14][15]
Speech of 21 August 1968[edit]
Main article: Ceaușescu's speech of 21 August 1968
Ceaușescu's speech of 21 August 1968 represented the apogee of Ceaușescu's regime.[16] It marked the highest point in Ceaușescu's popularity, when he openly condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
July Theses[edit]
Main article: July Theses
Ceaușescu visited the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Mongolia and North Vietnam in 1971. He took great interest in the idea of total national transformation as embodied in the programs of North Korea's Juche and China's Cultural Revolution. He was also inspired by the personality cults of North Korea's Kim Il-sung and China's Mao Zedong. Shortly after returning home, he began to emulate North Korea's system. North Korean books on Juche were translated into Romanian and widely distributed inside the country.
On 6 July 1971, he delivered a speech before the Executive Committee of the PCR. This quasi-Maoist speech, which came to be known as the July Theses, contained seventeen proposals. Among these were: continuous growth in the "leading role" of the Party; improvement of Party education and of mass political action; youth participation on large construction projects as part of their "patriotic work"; an intensification of political-ideological education in schools and universities, as well as in children's, youth and student organizations; and an expansion of political propaganda, orienting radio and television shows to this end, as well as publishing houses, theatres and cinemas, opera, ballet, artists' unions, promoting a "militant, revolutionary" character in artistic productions. The liberalisation of 1965 was condemned and an index of banned books and authors was re-established.
The Theses heralded the beginning of a "mini cultural revolution" in Romania, launching a Neo-Stalinist offensive against cultural autonomy, reaffirming an ideological basis for literature that, in theory, the Party had hardly abandoned. Although presented in terms of "Socialist Humanism", the Theses in fact marked a return to the strict guidelines of Socialist Realism, and attacks on non-compliant intellectuals. Strict ideological conformity in the humanities and social sciences was demanded. Competence and aesthetics were to be replaced by ideology; professionals were to be replaced by agitators; and culture was once again to become an instrument for political-ideological propaganda and hardline measures.
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