Biography: Nicolae Ceausescu
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Born on:
1918,
January
26th
Dead on:
1989,
December
25th
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Countries:
Romania
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Categories:
Heads of state
Presidents
Military officials
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Related works:
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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).
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.
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.
On Christmas Day 1989, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed after a sudden pro-democracy movement, assisted by the army, ousted their two-decade dictatorship. The aging couple had long been scorned for leading 23 million Romanians into a ruinous, repressive era marked by dire poverty for the majority and a pervasive fear of the government and its secret police. It was widely considered the most iron-fisted dictatorship in modern history.
Ceausescu was born in 1918 into a large peasant family in Scornicesti, Romania. As a youth, he became active in revolutionary leftist movements, and was jailed on several occasions. By the 1940s he was the protégé of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who led Romania into a new era as a socialist republic in the postwar period. Ceausescu succeeded Gheorgiu-Dej at the latter's death in 1965. But Ceausescu quickly implemented a policy of rapid industrialization that impoverished the country dramatically over the next two decades. Furthermore, in an attempt to pare down Romania's large foreign debt, Ceausescu imposed an austerity program, which meant daily hardships for the average Romanian. Much of what Romania produced was exported to earn hard currency, and Romanians were issued ration coupons for paltry amounts of meat and cooking oil per month. Even services like electricity, provided by government monopoly in a socialist economy, were reduced. There were only two hours of television a night, and the first hour showcased Ceausescu and his achievements. In hospitals, patients sometimes had to share a bed.
Meanwhile, Ceausescu, who was said to be barely literate, and his wife lived in unimaginable luxury. Elena Petrescu Ceausescu was a dedicated Communist when they wed in 1939, and eventually earned degrees in chemistry. She ran Romania's Central Chemical Research Institute and was made deputy prime minister in 1980; her other official titles included "The Great Scientist." They lived in a forty-room mansion that boasted a swimming pool, tennis courts, and even a boxing ring. The country's secret police, called the Securitate, monitored all aspects of Romanian life. People believed that their telephones were installed with microphones that allowed the government to eavesdrop. In an effort to encourage population growth, official policy dictated that Romanian families should produce five children each. Women of childbearing age regularly underwent examinations by doctors at their workplace to find for evidence of birth control usage or an illegal abortion.
In December of 1989, ethnic unrest occurred in the Transylvanian city of Timisoara as a result of discriminatory policies aimed at Romania's ethnic Hungarian population. A massive protest arose after Securitate agents came to evict a dissident priest and his family. Furious, the seventy-one-year-old Ceausescu ordered a full military crackdown in Timisoara, and the soldiers of the Romanian army fired on its own people. Within a few days, it was estimated that 4,000 had died in the bloodshed. Ceausescu declared a state of emergency, as pro-democracy rallies in Bucharest had turned bloody before: this time, the army sided with the protesters. The Ceausescus fled the city but were captured by the army. On Christmas Day, Romanian television broadcast footage of the Ceausescus being tried before a military tribunal. They were charged with genocide and sentenced to death, and footage of their dead bodies was also shown around the world. |
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