Nicolae Ceauşescu

Dictator of Romania (1967-1989)

• Born: January 26, 1918
• Birthplace: Scorniceşti, Romania
• Died: December 25, 1989
• Place of death: Târgovişte, Romania

To increase the country’s population and workforce, Romanian dictator Ceauşescu outlawed abortion and contraception, prohibited sex education, discouraged divorce, and required childless couples to pay higher taxes. This led to both an increased birth rate and a great increase in infant mortality and orphaned and abandoned children. Romania lived with this legacy into the twenty-first century. Ceauşescu also mismanaged the economy and instituted an austerity program in the 1980’s that resulted in thousands of deaths. Romania’s environment has also suffered because of his policies.

Early Life

Born in a small Romanian village, Nicolae Ceauşescu (NIH-kohl-ay chow-SHEHS-koo) moved to the capital of Bucharest at age eleven to work as a shoemaker’s apprentice. He joined the Communist Party of Romania, an illegal entity at the time, in early 1932.

Ceauşescu was arrested several times in the next few years, becoming known as a dangerous Communist agitator. He went underground, but in 1936 he was captured and sentenced to two years in Doftana prison for antifascist activities. In 1939 he met Elena Petrescu, who would play an important role in his personal and political lives. They married in 1946. In 1940, Ceauşescu was again imprisoned for political agitating and organizing and was sent to Jilava prison.

In 1943, Ceauşescu was transferred to the Târgu Jiu internment camp, where he shared a cell with and became the protégé of the future first secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. After escaping in 1944, Ceauşescu held a variety of posts within the Communist Party and then within government ranks after the Communist takeover in 1944. Upon the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in March, 1965, Ceauşescu became party leader and appropriated various other party and government roles, surrounding himself with loyal subordinates. Under Ceauşescu’s direction, a new constitution was created, and on August 21 the country was renamed the Socialist Republic of Romania. In December, 1967, he assumed the office of president of the state council. His position as leader of Romania effectively began.

Life’s Work

Initially Ceauşescu was a popular leader, charting an independent course in international affairs and challenging the Soviet Union on several fronts. Nationally, Ceauşescu maintained a communistic, centralized administration and allowed for little dissent or opposition. His secret police maintained rigid controls over free speech, dissent, and the media. Obsessed with power, he created a personality cult, giving himself the titles of Conductor (leader) and Geniul din Carpaţi (Genius of the Carpathians). His administration was very insular, with his wife, Elena, and other members of his family holding many of the most important positions in the government. In 1980, Elena was appointed first deputy premier, becoming the second most powerful figure in Romania.

In 1966, in an effort to increase the population and labor force, Ceauşescu outlawed abortion and contraception, instituted higher taxes for childless couples, discouraged divorce, and prohibited sex education. The birth rate nearly doubled and infant mortality increased greatly, as did unwanted pregnancies. The result was an enormous increase in disabled, orphaned, and abandoned children, who were placed in dismal, state-run institutions. In 1989, after Ceauşescu was removed from power, more than 100,000 disabled and orphaned children were found living in miserable conditions.

An urban and rural systemization law was passed in Romania in 1974, leading to the so-called systematization program. The intent was to convert villages into urban industrial centers, bringing the advantages of modernization to the Romanian countryside. The program destroyed rural villages and forcibly relocated peasant families. While the program was largely defunct by 1980, in the mid-1980’s systematization efforts were renewed, primarily in the area around Bucharest. Nearby villages were demolished, including the destruction of historic churches and monasteries. This prompted a number of nations to protest systematization, especially in its destruction of historic churches and monasteries. Systemization mostly failed, and it had a disastrous impact on Romania.

Early in Ceauşescu’s reign, industrial development remained at a high level, but soon his economic mismanagement left the country with excess production capacity and mounting foreign debt. His opposition to the Soviet Union enabled Ceauşescu to borrow heavily from the West to finance economic development programs and briefly keep the economy afloat. Eventually, however, mismanaged industrial projects and lavish building projects led to tremendous foreign debt. To pay this debt, Ceauşescu introduced in 1982 a rigorous austerity program involving the export of most of the nation’s produce, causing further shortages of food, fuel, and other essentials at home. The standard of living plunged, and it has been estimated that at least fifteen thousand Romanians died each year as a result of the program. While most Romanians struggled under harsh conditions starving, cold, and in the dark Ceauşescu and his family were surrounded by comfort and privilege.

Ceauşescu’s poor management of industry led to inefficient construction with no concern for the environment, leading to greatly increased pollution and substantial degradation of the nation’s air and water quality. By the end of his regime, parts of Romania faced ecological disaster, and the country continued to have severe environmental problems.

Politically, Ceauşescu concentrated his power and overhauled the military and security forces and blended the party and state power structures. His regime became increasingly repressive and corrupt, with its human rights record considered one of the worst, if not the worst, in Eastern Europe. Because of the deteriorating human rights situation and Ceauşescu’s attempts to blame the West for the country’s economic problems, relations between his regime and the West soured and deteriorated.

Protests against Ceauşescu’s human rights abuses, the systemization program, and his economic and social policies became more frequent. On December 16, 1989, demonstrations broke out in Timisoara, in western Romania. The next day protesters marched on the Communist Party headquarters in the city, and Ceauşescu ordered his security forces to fire on the crowd. As many as four thousand people died during the days following the initial confrontation. Demonstrations spread to Bucharest, and on December 22 the Romanian army capitulated to the protestors, thus ending the Ceauşescu regime. Ceauşescu and his wife were captured, and on Christmas Day they were both executed by a firing squad.

Significance

After the fall of Ceauşescu, Romania became known as “the land of the orphans,” as tens of thousands of disabled and orphaned children were trying to survive on the streets and in deplorable conditions in orphanages. Traces of Ceauşescu’s legacy long remained after his departure. Romania had the highest rate of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection and AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) among children in Europe, and the country’s baby boom of the mid-1960’s, with generational echoes, continued to strain the country’s medical and educational systems. Ceauşescu’s economic policies and grandiose building projects reduced Romania from relative prosperity to near starvation. As a result, Romania began the transition from Communism in 1989 with a largely obsolete industrial base and an unmotivated, unhealthy, and unproductive population.

The people of Romania suffered greatly because of Ceauşescu’s oppressive rule. The situation improved to some degree, but Romania remained a nation with extensive poverty and rampant corruption into the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Behr, Edward. Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite: The Rise and Fall of the Ceauşescus. New York: Villard, 1991. An analysis of the rise and fall of Ceauşescu dictatorship in Romania, with an emphasis on both the historical roots of Ceauşescu’s rise to power and his psychological makeup.

Deletant, Dennis. Ceauşescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. An authoritative account of the Ceauşescu years, providing a history of the oppressors and the oppressed. It is the first major work to use the archives of the Romanian secret police.

Gallager, Tom. Romania After Ceauşescu. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 1995. A first-hand account of Romania after the fall of Ceauşescu in 1989. The author argues that former Communists exploited nationalism and ethnic tensions to retain power and prevent transition to an open political system.

Kilch, Kent. Children of Ceauşescu. New York: Umbrage Editions, 2002. Portraits of children with HIV/AIDS in twenty-first century Romania.

Kligman, Gail. The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. An ethnographic account of Ceauşescu’s control of reproduction and sexuality during his rule of Romania. The first in-depth study of its kind.