Ceaușescu, Nicolae

Nicolae Ceauşescu

* 26.1.1918 Scornicesti, Romania
+ 25.12.1989 Bucharest, Romania


Romanian dictator, one of the greatest communist tyrants.


Nicolae Ceausescu was born in the Romanian town of Scornicesti on 26 January 1918, and as early as the 1930s he supported communist ideology, subsequently also joining the (then banned) Communist Party and being imprisoned several times for his beliefs (first in 1936).


In 1939 he marries his wife Elena (Elena Ceausescu, maiden name Elena Petrescu. She was born on 7 January 1919 into a peasant family where her father worked as a ploughman, and as a staunch communist she also met Nicolae in the 1930s) and shortly afterwards (in 1940) he is imprisoned again for his political views.


In prison, he meets the then leader of the Romanian Communists, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, whom he considers his future ideological mentor. In August 1944, shortly before the entry of the Red Army into Romania, Ceausescu manages to escape from prison and immediately becomes actively involved in the efforts to regain Communist power in the country.


At this time, Ceausescu's career gains momentum, becoming secretary of the Romanian Communist Youth Union in 1944-45 and then a candidate for the Communist Party Central Committee in 1945. In 1947, the Communists took power in Romania and Ceausescu served as Minister of Agriculture (1948-50) and then as Deputy Minister of National Defence (1950-54).


On September 1, 1951, the Ceausescu family gives birth to a son, Nicu (Nicu Ceausescu held important positions in his father's reign as an adult, for whose abuses he was arrested and convicted in 1994, and died of cirrhosis of the liver in a hospital in Vienna in 1996).


In 1955, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej takes the helm of the Communist Party of Romania, and Ceausescu, as his favorite, already finds himself as head of the party secretariat and a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Romania. In March 1965, when Gheorghiu-Dej dies, he succeeds to his position (Gheorghiu-Dej) (in July 1965, he becomes Secretary General of the Communist Party of Romania). In December 1967, he is elected President of the Council of State and, after the change of the Constitution (in 1974), President of the country.


During his now indefinite reign, Ceausescu pushes his radical path towards communism and manages not to succumb to the influence of the USSR and Moscow, even opposing the USSR's invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia in 1968 and also Afghanistan in 1979. Under his rule, he carried out a kind of industrialisation of the country, evicting the countryside and forcing the population to live in urban housing estates. As a result, Romania is deeply in debt abroad, which it is trying to resolve by constantly increasing exports, which is reflected in the hardship of the country's population. There are shortages of food, fuel, etc. Against this state of affairs, however, he builds his cult of personality (and his wife Elena) on wealth, has mansions built, and secures lucrative positions in the running of the country for his friends and acquaintances. He also successfully covers any attempt to remove his regime and brutally suppresses numerous strikes and coup attempts in the 1980s.


Yet the pressure of discontent continues to build, culminating in 1989 when he does not hesitate to order the shooting of demonstrators in the city of Timisoara.


In December, when the situation is no longer tenable, Ceausescu and his wife attempt to flee the country, but are arrested and, after a brief court martial on 25 December 1989, both (practically on live television) are shot dead.

PEOPLE'S PALACE


Ceausescu had this absurdly monumental marble structure, over eighty metres high, built to house the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania. Construction began in 1984, with the large old Bucharest housing estate being recklessly evicted and subsequently razed to the ground.


Only one church "survived", but it had to be moved several hundred metres away. It was built by around 17,000 people of all professions, it took 300 trains of marble, 700 tons of bronze, and its interior is full of luxury. It's 84 metres high and 50 metres deep and has over 1,000 rooms. Ceausescu and his wife personally managed the construction, but after his fall it is still practically unfinished. It now houses the Romanian parliament.