This was the case even after representation increased for other minorities such as Hungarians and Germans. [11] He spent most of his sentence in Doftana Prison. [citation needed] Ceaușescu found himself briefly aligned with Dubček's Czechoslovakia and Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia. In the rest of the Soviet bloc, there were a series of purges in this period that led to the "home communists" being executed or imprisoned. The 1974 XIth Party Congress tightened the Party's grip on Romanian culture, guiding it towards Ceaușescu's nationalist principles. He is the author of many best-selling Kindle works on Amazon. Nevertheless, a project organized by Romanian engineer Eugeniu Iordachescu was able to move many historic structures to less-prominent sites and save them. If there was money to be made, the Ceaușescu’s had their hands in it. It was previously called The House of the People and The People's House. Before his sentence was carried out, Nicolae Ceaușescu sang "The Internationale" whilst being led up against the wall. [27] Over time, he usurped many powers and functions that nominally were vested in the State Council as a whole.[28]. During this time, all regional radio stations were closed, and television was limited to a single channel broadcasting for only two hours a day. She was the wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918-89), who ruled Romania with an iron fist in the years 1965-89. "The Political Regrouping of Romanian Nomenklatura during the 1989 Revolution". Since 2004 the Romanian Senate has been headquartered in the Parliamentary Palace and was originally housed in the former building of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. The execution was also the symbolic punctuation point for one … Elena was self-conscious of her large nose, posterior and plain “peasant” features. In practice, a number of joint party-state organizations were founded such as the Council for Socialist Education and Culture, which had no precise counterpart in any of the other communist states of Eastern Europe, and the Romanian Communist Party was embedded into the daily life of the nation in a way that it never had been before. It had also engineered the publishing of several works that subverted the Russian and Soviet image, no longer glossing over traditional points of tension with Russia and the Soviet Union (even alluding to an "unlawful" Soviet presence in Bessarabia). Images of Ceaușescu's facial expression as the crowd began to boo and heckle him were among the most widely broadcast of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.[14]. He was also inspired by the personality cults of North Korea's Kim Il-sung and China's Mao Zedong. (eds) Mental Maps in the Era of Détente and the End of the Cold War 1968–91. [71][72], Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu had three children: Valentin Ceaușescu (born 1948), a nuclear physicist; Zoia Ceaușescu (1949–2006), a mathematician; and Nicu Ceaușescu (1951–1996), a physicist. 23 January] 1918[1][2] – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician and leader. He initially lived with his sister, Niculina Rusescu, and then became an apprentice shoemaker. In 1974, the party programme of the Romanian Communist Party announced that structural changes in society were insufficient to create a full socialist consciousness in the people, and that a full socialist consciousness could only come about if the entire population was made aware of socialist values that guided society. Born in 1918 in Scornicești, Olt County, Ceaușescu was a member of the Romanian Communist youth movement. Also Romania was the only country in the world to maintain normal diplomatic relations with both Israel and the PLO. Ion Iliescu, a communist opponent of Ceaușescu… They faced charges including illegal gathering of wealth and genocide. Although the Soviet Union largely tolerated Ceaușescu's recalcitrance, his seeming independence from Moscow earned Romania a maverick status within the Eastern Bloc.[14]. published estimates of the number of people killed by Securitate forces in an attempt to quell Ceaușescu and support the rebellion[citation needed]. Elena Ceaușescu was arranged to be "elected" to membership of a science academy in the U.S. To execute a massive redevelopment project during the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, the government conducted extensive demolition of churches and many other historic structures in Romania. Photo by Romanian National History Museum. [46] According to the Jurnalul Național,[47] requests were made by the Ceaușescus' daughter, Zoia, and by supporters of their political views, to move their remains to mausoleums or to purpose-built churches. In December 1976, at one of his meetings in Bucharest, Ivan Bodiul said that "the good relationship was initiated by Ceaușescu's visit to Soviet Moldova". The other, the Prime Minister of Great Britain Margaret Thatcher, was elected by the people of her country. [13] It was Ceaușescu's time at Târgu Jiu that marked the beginning of his rise to power. In an attempt to correct this, Ceaușescu decided to repay Romania's foreign debts. The military had apprehended the couple just a few days before, and after a summary trial, the end was inevitable. [citation needed] A Romanian Encyclopedic Dictionary entry in 1978 underlines the concept as "a new, superior, stage in the Socialist development of Romania [...] begun by the 1971–1975 Five-Year Plan, prolonged over several [succeeding and projected] Five-Year Plans".[51]. [50], While the term Ceaușism became widely used inside Romania,[citation needed] usually as a pejorative, it never achieved status in academia. As his rule went on, Ceauseșcu not only fostered his own cult of personality, but became prey to it. At the end of the quick show trial, the Ceaușescus were found guilty and sentenced to death. The resulting domestic shortages made the everyday lives of Romanians a fight for survival as food rationing was introduced and heating, gas and electricity blackouts became the rule. Elena Ceausescu was the president’s wife, and was perhaps not only the most powerful woman on the Continent, but the most hated as well. He refused to take part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces and even actively and openly condemned that action in his 21 August 1968 speech. He tried to silence them by raising his right hand and calling for the crowd's attention before order was temporarily restored, then proceeded to announce social benefit reforms that included raising the national minimum wage by 200 lei per month to a total of 2,200 per month by 1 January. By the morning of 22 December, the rebellion had already spread to all major cities across the country. In the 1960s, he eased press censorship and ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact, but Romania formally remained a member. [14], A tentative coup d'état planned in October 1984 failed when the military unit assigned to carry out the plan was sent to harvest maize instead. Ratesh, N. (1991). Ceaușescu was made a knight of the Danish Order of the Elephant, but this appointment was revoked on 23 December 1989 by the queen of Denmark, Margrethe II. At a meeting between the two, Gorbachev upbraided Ceaușescu for his inflexible attitude. The systematization was a program of urban planning carried out by Ceaușescu. 1 of 6 It also started adding Dacian or Roman versions to the names of cities and towns (Drobeta to Turnu Severin, Napoca to Cluj). His cult of personality experienced unprecedented elevation, followed by extensive nepotism and the intense deterioration of foreign relations, even with the Soviet Union. Ceaușescu's political independence from the Soviet Union and his protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 drew the interest of Western powers, whose governments briefly believed that he was an anti-Soviet maverick and hoped to create a schism in the Warsaw Pact by funding him. Effectively, Ceaușescu now held all governing power in the nation; virtually all party and state institutions were subordinated to his will. As far as anyone can tell, it was “love at first sight” for Nicolae, and many Romanians and historians believe that almost from the start, Elena had him in the palm of her hand. [42] The hasty show trial and the images of the dead Ceaușescus were videotaped and the footage released in numerous Western countries two days after the execution. In 1967, he consolidated his power by becoming president of the State Council, making him de jure head of state. Presiding with his wife Elena, whom he tapped as deputy prime minister, Ceausescu turned his back on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his … For years, nearly all official photographs of him showed him in his late 40s. Elena Ceausescu (left) with Lyudmila Zhivkova. The BBC's John Simpson reports on the news that Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena had been executed by firing squad on 25 December 1989. (There are private sector buildings, mainly for the construction of aircraft that have more continuous volume in one building, such as the Boeing Everett Factory in Everett, Washington; see the List of largest buildings#Largest usable volume.) Enticed with substantial bribes, the camp authorities gave the Communist prisoners much freedom in running their cell block, provided they did not attempt to break out of prison. 46% dintre românii intervievaţi l-ar vota acum pe Nicolae Ceauşescu la prezidenţiale", https://transylvanianow.com/ceausescu-still-most-beloved-president-of-romania/, "IMDb entry for 'Die letzten Tage der Ceausescus, "Ceausescu the Musical | the culture vulture", "Senarai Penuh Penerima Darjah Kebesaran, Bintang dan Pingat Persekutuan Tahun 1984", "President's Week in Review: April 7 – April 13, 1975", Gheorghe E. (2015) Nicolae Ceauşescu. [citation needed] In 1971, the Party, which had already been completely purged of internal opposition (with the possible exception of Gheorghe Gaston Marin),[53] approved the July Theses, expressing Ceaușescu's disdain of Western models as a whole, and the reevaluation of the recent liberalisation as bourgeois. Elena Ceaușescu receiving an honorary doctorate in Manila (1975). The commanders wrote off Ceaușescu as a lost cause and made no effort to keep their men loyal to the government. Other articles where Elena Ceauşescu is discussed: Nicolae Ceaușescu: In 1939 he married Elena Petrescu, a Communist activist. The subsequent generation of children is known as generația nefericită (generation unfortunate) in Romania. On his 70th birthday in 1988, Ceaușescu was decorated with the Karl-Marx-Order by then Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) chief Erich Honecker; through this he was honoured for his rejection of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. The country, which had little to no information of the events transpiring in Timișoara from the national media, learned about the revolt from radio stations (such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe) and by word of mouth. The principles of democratic centralism, combined with the legislature's infrequent sessions (it sat in full session only twice a year) meant that for all intents and purposes, his decisions had the force of law. As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. [68] Ceaușescu even received praise from anti-communists with the leader of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi saying "I would like to salute [Ceaușescu's] intransigent patriotism and ferocious will for independence. [55] President Richard Nixon was invited to Bucharest in 1969, which was the first visit of a United States president to a communist country after the start of the Cold War. [78], He was played by Constantin Cojocaru in the 2011 Swiss docudrama, Die letzten Tage der Ceausescus. This nationalist policy had more timid precedents:[53] for example, Gheorghiu-Dej had overseen the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1958. Such conditions have lasted into modern-day Romania with the policies of several subsequent presidents. 23 January] 1918. [14] The Romanian Communist Party disappeared soon afterwards; unlike its kindred parties in the former Soviet bloc, it has never been revived. While in prison, Ceaușescu became a protégé of his cell mate, the Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who would become the undisputed Communist leader of Romania beginning in 1952. [44], The Ceaușescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on 7 January 1990.[45]. [14], Such excesses prompted painter Salvador Dalí to send a congratulatory telegram to the Romanian president, in which he sarcastically congratulated Ceaușescu on his "introducing the presidential sceptre". [29], In August 1977 over 30,000 miners went on strike in the Jiu River valley complaining of low pay and poor working conditions. Upon his death in 1996, the youngest son, Nicu, was buried nearby in the same cemetery. He did introduce some benefits to workers and over the course of his first years in office, made his own way in foreign policy at a time when most communist regimes in Eastern Europe took their cues from Moscow. Like his patron Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceaușescu was a "home communist" who benefited from the fall of the "Muscovites" in 1952. During the Congress, Ceaușescu made a speech denouncing the anti-Communist revolutions happening throughout the rest of Eastern Europe. [70] It is also the heaviest building in the world, being constructed of 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze, a million square feet of marble, and large amounts of crystal and wood. Ceaușescu was likewise stripped of his honorary GCB (Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath) status by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom on the day before his execution. Rumors emerged that Securitate had doctors give the strike leaders 5-minute chest X-rays to ensure the development of cancer.[15]. After a visit from Charles de Gaulle earlier in the same year, during which the French President gave recognition to the incipient maverick, Ceaușescu's public speech in August deeply impressed the population, not only through its themes, but also because, uniquely, it was unscripted. Photo by André Cros CC BY-SA 4.0. [75][76] In 2014, the percentage of those who would vote for Ceaușescu reached 46%. Nicolae Ceausescu was born on January 26, 1918, to a humble family of peasants in the town of Scornicesti, on the outskirts of Bucharest. Photo by fototeca.iiccr.ro. His political apparatus sent many thousands of political opponents to prison or psychiatric hospitals. In her role as the head of the countries sciences, she gained a nickname, and not a flattering one: “Codoi,” which is the Romanian pronunciation of the abbreviation of CO². [15] In the years after the strike,a number of its leaders died of accidents and "premature disease". [43] Similarly, Victor Stănculescu, who had been defence minister before going over to the revolution, said, in 2009, that the alternative would have been seeing the Ceaușescus lynched on the streets of Bucharest. [citation needed] Romania proclaimed itself a "Socialist" (in place of "People's") Republic to show that it was fulfilling Marxist goals without Moscow's oversight. [56] The government continued its cultural dialogue with ancient forms, with Ceaușescu connecting his cult of personality to figures such as Mircea cel Bătrân (lit. [24] Furthermore, that Kim and even more so Mao had broken free of Soviet control were additional sources of admiration for Ceaușescu. Nicolae Ceaușescu had a major influence on modern-day Romanian populist rhetoric. In the 1980s, Ceaușescu ordered the export of much of the country's agricultural and industrial production in order to repay its debts. How can a death be necessary? 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. Ceaușescu was born in the small village of Scornicești, Olt County on 8 February [O.S. According to historian Victor Sebestyen, it was one of the few days of the year when the average Romanian put on a happy face, since appearing miserable on this day was too risky to contemplate. [29] By the time the oil refining plants were finished in the early 1980s, a slump in oil prices had set in, leading to major financial problems for Romania. The system's nationalist traits grew and progressively blended with North Korean Juche and Chinese Maoist ideals. (2001). In particular, he was incensed when Poland's leaders opted for a power-sharing arrangement with the Solidarity trade union. He was first elected to this post in 1974, and would be reelected every five years until 1989. In effect, this amounted to a demand for the return of Bessarabia (most of which was then a Soviet republic and since 1991 has been independent Moldova) and northern Bukovina, both of which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and again at the end of World War II. November 1986 : Verkleinerung des Heeres, Senkung der Rüstungsausgaben um 5%, "Romanian-Moldavian SSR relations, by Patrick Moore and the Romanian Section", "Un Ceauşescu pe care nu îl ştiaţi: creţ, cu ochii "blonzi" şi nasul borcănat". Ceaușescu reduced the size of the Romanian People's Army by 5%, for which he organized a mock referendum. [63], Ceaușescu created a pervasive personality cult, giving himself such titles as "Conducător" ("Leader") and "Geniul din Carpați" ("The Genius of the Carpathians"), with inspiration from Proletarian Culture (Proletkult). Although he had previously been a careful supporter of the official lines, Ceaușescu came to embody Romanian society's wish for independence after what many considered years of Soviet directives and purges, during and after the SovRom fiasco. Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were originally buried in simple graves at Ghencea Cemetery, in Bucharest, on opposite sides of a path; their graves were often decorated with flowers and symbols of communist rule. However, the real story is that she paid off/coerced noted scientists to write her doctorate and other papers. After being tried and convicted of economic sabotage and genocide,[6] they were immediately executed by firing squad on 25 December[7] and Ceaușescu was succeeded as President by Ion Iliescu, who had played a major part in the revolution. [15] When Ceaușescu appeared before the miners on the third day of the strike, he was greeted (in the words of the British historian Richard Crampton) "... once again á la polonaise, with cries of 'Down with the Red Bourgeoisie!'". Mr. and Mrs. Ceauşescu in 1970. From 1972 on, however, as her husband solidified his power, she was elevated to more and more powerful government positions. Instead, the average Romanian family had two to three children during this period (see Demographics of Romania). The liberalization of 1965 was condemned and an index of banned books and authors was re-established. Romanian state television was under strict orders to portray him in the best possible light. Nicolae Ceausescu and wife Elena's remains dug up to end mystery THE remains of Romania’s brutal dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife … Her enemies, real or perceived, found themselves in dead-end jobs in remote parts of the country, or worse, a bunk in a labor camp or at the end of a rifle barrel. Photo by Fototeca online a comunismului românesc. On Christmas Day, 25 December 1989, the Ceaușescus were tried before a court convened in a small room on orders of the National Salvation Front, Romania's provisional government. 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. It was written by Tom Bailey and Greg Jameson, with songs by Allan Stelmach, and depicted Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu and their son Valentin in a piece of meta musical theatre that was also a comment upon celebrity culture and the role social media and political correctness play in creating social pariahs.[80]. [62] In line with his policy of keeping a facade of "popular democracy" he also ordered large rallies for peace to be held. In a small courtyard outside a building in Targoviste, Romania’s tyrannical communist dictator was executed by firing squad. 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