Born inScornicești, Ceaușescu joined the bannedRomanian Communist Party in his teens and was repeatedly imprisoned under the pre-war and wartime regimes for his communist activism. AfterWorld War II, he rose through the party ranks underGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the country’sStalinist leader, whom he succeeded as general secretary.
Ceaușescu’s early rule was marked by a degree of independence from theSoviet Union, earning him international recognition after he condemned the USSR’s invasion ofCzechoslovakia in 1968. Over time, however, his regime became increasingly authoritarian and personalist, characterised by an extensivecult of personality, pervasivecensorship, and the repressive control of theSecuritate, Romania’ssecret police. His economic policies—particularly his drive to repay foreign debts and hissystematisation programme—led to severe shortages of food, fuel, and electricity during the 1980s.
By the end of 1989, mounting discontent over the state of the nation and Ceaușescu’s authoritarian rule erupted into theRomanian Revolution. The army defected to the protesters, and Ceaușescu and his wife,Elena, fled the capital but were captured soon afterwards. Following a briefmilitary trial, they wereexecuted by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989, bringing an end to more than four decades of communist rule in Romania.
Ceaușescu was born in the small village of Scornicești, Olt County, being the third of nine children of a poor peasant family (seeCeaușescu family). Based on his birth certificate, he was born on 23 January [O.S. 10 January] 1918,[1][2] rather than the official 26 January [O.S. 13 January] 1918—his birth was registered with a three-day delay, which later led to confusion. According to the information recorded in his autobiography, Nicolae Ceaușescu was born on 26 January 1918.[3] His father Andruță (1886–1969) owned 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of agricultural land and a few sheep, and Nicolae supplemented his large family's income through tailoring.[4] He studied at the village school until the age of 11, when he left forBucharest. The Olt County Service of National Archives holds excerpts from the catalogs of Scornicești Primary School, which certifies that Nicolae A. Ceaușescu passed the first grade with an average of 8.26 and the second grade with an average of 8.18, ranking third, in a class in which 25 students were enrolled.[3] Journalist Cătălin Gruia claimed in 2007 that he ran away from his supposedly extremely religious, abusive and strict father. He initially lived with his sister, Niculina Rusescu.
He became anapprenticeshoemaker,[4] working 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 against the trial of railway workers and twice more for other similar activities. By the mid-1930s, he had been in missions in Bucharest,Craiova,Câmpulung andRâmnicu Vâlcea, being arrested several times.[5]
The profile file from the secret police,Siguranța Statului, named him "a dangerous Communist agitator" and "distributor of Communist and antifascist propaganda materials".[5] For these charges, he was convicted on 6 June 1936 by the Brașov Tribunal to two years in prison, an additional six months forcontempt of court, and one year of forced residence in Scornicești.[5] He spent most of his sentence inDoftana Prison.[5] While out of jail in 1939, he met Lenuța (Elena) Petrescu, whom he married in 1947 and who would play an increasing role in his political life over the years.[6]
Ceaușescu and other Communists at a public meeting inColentina, welcoming the Red Army as it entered Bucharest on 30 August 1944
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), and Târgu Jiu (1943).[5]
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.[7] At Târgu Jiu, Gheorghiu-Dej ran "self-criticism sessions" where various Party members had to confess before the other Party members to misunderstanding the teachings ofKarl Marx,Friedrich Engels,Vladimir Lenin, andJoseph Stalin as interpreted by Gheorghiu-Dej; journalistEdward Behr claimed that Ceaușescu's role in these "self-criticism sessions" was that of the enforcer, the young man allegedly beating those Party members who refused to go with or were insufficiently enthusiastic about the "self-criticism" sessions.[8] These "self-criticism sessions" not only helped to cement Gheorghiu-Dej's control over the Party, but also endeared his protégé Ceaușescu to him.[8] It was Ceaușescu's time at Târgu Jiu that marked the beginning of his rise to power. AfterWorld War II, when Romania was beginning to fall underSoviet influence, Ceaușescu served as secretary of theUnion of Communist Youth (1944–1945).[9]
Ceaușescu giving a speech in 1954
After the Communists seized power in Romania in 1947, and under the patronage of Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceaușescu was elected a member of theGreat National Assembly, the new legislative body of communist Romania.
In May 1948, Ceaușescu was appointed Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, and in March 1949 he was promoted to the position of Deputy Minister.[10] From the Ministry of Agriculture and with no military experience, he was made Deputy Minister in charge of the armed forces, holding the rank of Major General. Later, promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, he became First Deputy to the defence ministry and head of the Army's Higher Political Directorate.[11]
In 1952, Gheorghiu-Dej brought him onto theCentral Committee months after the party's "Muscovite faction" led byAna Pauker had been purged. In the late 1940s-early 1950s, the Party had been divided into the "home communists" headed by Gheorghiu-Dej who remained inside Romania prior to 1944 and the "Muscovites" who had gone into exile in the Soviet Union. With the partial exception of Poland, where thePolish October crisis of 1956 brought to power the previously imprisoned "home communist"Władysław Gomułka, Romania was the only Eastern European nation where the "home communists" triumphed over the "Muscovites". 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. Like his patron Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceaușescu was a "home communist" who benefited from the fall of the "Muscovites" in 1952. In 1954, Ceaușescu became a full member of the Politburo, effectively granting him one of the highest positions of power in the country.
A high-ranking official in the agricultural and defence ministries, Ceaușescu had an important role in the forced collectivisation; according toRomanian Workers' Party's own data, between 1949 and 1952 there were over 80,000 arrests of peasants, with 30,000 receiving prison sentences.[12][13] One example of these arrests is the uprising ofVadu Roșca (Vrancea county), which opposed the state programme of expropriation of private holdings, where military units opened fire on the rebelling peasants, killing 9 and wounding 48. Ceaușescu personally led the investigation which resulted in 18 peasants being imprisoned for "rebellion" and "conspiring against social order".[14][15][13]
When Gheorghiu-Dej died on 19 March 1965, Ceaușescu was not the obvious successor, despite his closeness to the longtime leader. But widespread infighting by older and more connected officials led the Politburo to choose Ceaușescu as a compromise candidate.[16] He was elected general secretary on 22 March 1965, three days after Gheorghiu-Dej's death.
One of Ceaușescu’s first major acts after becoming general secretary in March 1965 was to restore the party’s historical name, changing it from the Romanian Workers’ Party back to theCommunist Party of Romania at the party’s ninth congress later that year.[17][18] Later that year, a new constitution—adopted by theGreat National Assembly in August 1965—renamed the country theSocialist Republic of Romania, replacing the former designation of "Romanian People’s Republic".[17] In December 1967, Ceaușescu consolidated his power when he becamePresident of the State Council, thereby assuming the role of head of state.[19] His regime maintained strict political control, and thousands of dissenters were imprisoned or, in some cases, confined in psychiatric institutions.[20][21]
Initially, Ceaușescu became a popular figure, both in Romania and in the West, because of his independent foreign policy, which challenged the authority of theSoviet Union. In the 1960s, he eased press censorship and ended Romania's active participation in theWarsaw Pact, but Romania formally remained a member. He refused to take part in the1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces and even actively and openly condemned it in his21 August 1968 speech. He travelled toPrague 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 theEastern Bloc.[16]
All of Ceaușescu's economic, foreign, and demographic policies were meant to achieve his ultimate goal: turning Romania into one of the world's great powers.[22]
A series of official visits to Western countries (including the US, France, theUnited Kingdom, Spain and Australia) 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.[25] Ceaușescu negotiated in international affairs, such as the opening of US relations with China in 1969 and the visit ofEgyptian presidentAnwar Sadat to Israel in 1977. In addition, Romania was the only country in the world to maintain normal diplomatic relations with both Israel and thePalestine Liberation Organisation. In 1980, Romania participated in the1980 Summer Olympics inMoscow with its other Soviet bloc allies, but in 1984 was one of the few Communist countries to participate in the1984 Summer Olympics inLos Angeles (going on to win 53 medals, trailing only the US andWest Germany in the overall count)[26][27] while most of the Eastern Bloc's nations boycotted this event.[28]
Ceaușescu withIndira Gandhi during his visit to India in 1969
Ceaușescu refused to implement measures ofeconomic liberalism. The evolution of his regime followed the path begun by Gheorghiu-Dej. He continued with the programme of intensiveindustrialisation aimed at theeconomic self-sufficiency of the country which since 1959 had already doubled industrial production and had reduced the peasant population from 78% at the end of the 1940s to 61% in 1966 and 49% by 1971. However, for Romania, like other Eastern People's Republics, industrialisation did not mean a total social break with the countryside. The peasants returned periodically to the villages or resided in them, commuting daily to the city in a practice called naveta. This allowed Romanians to act as peasants and workers at the same time.[29]
Universities were also founded in smaller Romanian towns, which served to train qualified professionals such as engineers, economists, planners or jurists necessary for the development projects of the country. Romanian healthcare also achieved improvements and recognition by theWorld Health Organization (WHO), whose director general Marcolino Candau in May 1969 visited Romania and declared that the visits of WHO staff to various Romanian hospital establishments had left an extraordinarily good impression.[29]
The social and economic transformations resulted in improved living conditions for Romanians. Economic growth allowed for higher salaries which, combined with the benefits offered by the state (free medical care, pensions, free universal education at all levels, etc.) were a leap compared to the pre-WWII situation of the Romanian population. Certain extra retributions were allowed for the peasants, who started to produce more.[29]
In October 1966, in an attempt to reverse the Romania's low birth and fertility rates, Ceaușescu issuedDecree 770 to restrictabortion andcontraception.[30] The government targeted risingdivorce rates and made divorce more difficult – marriages could only be dissolved in exceptional cases. By the late 1960s, the population began to swell. In turn, a new problem was created, child abandonment, which swelled the orphanage population (see1980s–1990s Romanian orphans phenomenon). Many of the children in these orphanages suffered mental and physical deficiencies (seeCighid).[31]
Measures to encourage reproduction included financial motivations for families who bore children, guaranteed maternity leave, and childcare support for mothers who returned to work, work protection for women, and extensive access to medical control in all stages of pregnancy, as well as after it. Medical control was seen as one of the most productive effects of the law, since all women who became pregnant were under the care of a qualified medical practitioner, even in rural areas. In some cases, if a woman was unable to visit a medical office, a doctor would visit her home.[32] Mothers of at least five children were entitled to receive significant benefits, while mothers of at least ten children were declared "heroine mothers" by the Romanian state.
Ceaușescu visited China, North Korea, Mongolia and North Vietnam in 1971. He took great interest in the idea of total national transformation as embodied in the programmes of North Korea'sJuche and China'sCultural Revolution. He was also inspired by thepersonality cults ofNorth Korea'sKim Il Sung andChina'sMao Zedong. Journalist Edward Behr claimed that Ceaușescu admired both Mao and Kim as leaders who not only totally dominated their nations but had also used totalitarian methods coupled with significant ultra-nationalism mixed in with communism in order to transform both China and North Korea into major world powers.[37] Furthermore, that Kim and even more so Mao had broken free of Soviet control were additional sources of admiration for Ceaușescu. According to British journalist Edward Behr, Elena Ceaușescu allegedly bonded with Mao's wife,Jiang Qing.[37] Behr wrote that the possibility that what Ceaușescu had seen in both China and North Korea were "vastPotemkin villages for the hoodwinking of gullible foreign guests" was something that never seemed to have crossed his mind.[37] Shortly after returning home, he began to emulate North Korea's system. North Korean books onJuche were translated intoRomanian and widely distributed inside the country.[38]
On 6 July 1971, he delivered a speech before the executive committee of the Romanian Communist Party. This quasi-Maoist speech, which came to be known as theJuly 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 associations; 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. Gheorghiu-Dej's process of removingStalinist policies andStalin's cult of personality between 1956 and 1965 was condemned and an index of banned books and authors was re-established.
Propaganda poster in Bucharest, 1986. By the 1970s, the Ceaușescus had developed apersonality cult
The Theses heralded the beginning of a "mini cultural revolution" in Romania, launching aNeo-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 ofSocialist Realism and attacks on non-compliant intellectuals. Strict ideologicalconformity in the humanities and social sciences was demanded.
In a 1972 speech, Ceaușescu stated he wanted "a certain blending of party and state activities ... in the long run we shall witness an ever closer blending of the activities of the party, state and other social bodies". In practice, a number of joint party-state organisations 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. 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. The Communist Party was to be the agency that would so "enlighten" the population, and in the words of the British historian Richard Crampton, "the party would merge state and society, the individual and the collective, and would promote 'the ever more organic participation of party members in the entire social life'".[39]
Ceaușescu had been head of state since 1967, though nominally only as first among equals, deriving his real power from his status as party leader. However, in 1974 Ceaușescu introduced a full-fledgedexecutive presidency as the nation's top decision-maker. He was first elected to this postin 1974 and would be reelected every five years until 1989.
As President, he was empowered to carry out those functions of the State Council that did not requireplenums. He also appointed and dismissed the president of the Supreme Court and the prosecutor general whenever the legislature was not in session. In practice, from 1974 onwards Ceaușescu frequently ruled by decree.[40] Over time, he usurped many powers and functions that nominally were vested in the State Council as a whole.[41]
Effectively, Ceaușescu now held all governing power in the nation; virtually all party and state institutions were subordinated to his will. 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.
Starting with the1973–1974 Arab oil embargo against the West, a period of prolonged high oil prices set in that characterised the rest of the 1970s. Romania as a major oil equipment producer greatly benefited from the high oil prices of the 1970s, which led Ceaușescu to embark on an ambitious plan to invest heavily in oil-refining plants.[42]: 287 Ceaușescu's plan was to make Romania into Europe's number one oil refiner not only of its own oil, but also of oil from Middle Eastern states such as Iraq and Iran, and then to sell all of the refined oil at a profit on the Rotterdam spot market.[43] As Romania lacked the money to build the necessary oil refining plants and Ceaușescu chose to spend the windfall from the high oil prices on aid to theThird World in an attempt to buy Romania international influence, Ceaușescu borrowed heavily from Western banks on the assumption that when the loans came due, the profits from the sales of the refined oil would be more than enough to pay off the loans.[43] Meanwhile, Romania also importedSoviet oil, but the Soviets refused to grant Romania the preferential oil pricing thatWarsaw Pact states received.[42]: 288 The 1977 earthquake which destroyed much of Bucharest led to delays in the oil plan.[43] 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.[43]
In August 1977 over 30,000 miners went on strike in theJiu River valley complaining of low pay and poor working conditions.[22] TheJiu valley miners' strike was the most significant expression of opposition to Ceaușescu's rule prior to the late 1980s. The striking miners were inspired by similar strikes along Poland's Baltic coast in December 1970, and just as in Poland in 1970, the striking Romanian miners demanded face-to-face negotiations with their nation's leader.[22] 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 againà la polonaise, with cries of 'Down with the Red Bourgeoisie!'".[22] Ceaușescu ultimately negotiated a compromise solution to the strike.[22] In the years after the strike, a number of its leaders died of accidents and "premature disease". Rumors emerged thatSecuritate had doctors give the strike leaders 5-minute chest X-rays to ensure the development of cancer.[22]
Ceaușescu preparing to deliver a speech in Moscow on the 60th anniversary of the Soviet UnionCeaușescu withJimmy Carter during a visit in Washington, D.C. in 1978
He continued to follow an independent policy in foreign relations—for example, in 1984, Romania was one of few communist states (notably including the People's Republic of China andYugoslavia) to take part in the1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, despite a Soviet-led boycott. The Socialist Republic of Romania was also the first of theEastern Bloc nations to have official relations with theWestern bloc and theEuropean Community: an agreement including Romania in the Community's Generalised System of Preferences was signed in 1974 and an Agreement on Industrial Products was signed in 1980. On 4 April 1975, Ceaușescu visited Japan and met withEmperor Hirohito. In June 1978, Ceaușescu made a state visit to the UK where a £200m licensing agreement was signed between the Romanian government andBritish Aerospace for the production of more than eightyBAC One-Eleven aircraft. The deal was said at the time to be the biggest between two countries involving civil aircraft.[44] This was the first state visit by a Communist head of state to the UK, and Ceaușescu was given an honorary knighthood by the Queen, which was revoked on the day before his death in 1989.[45][46] Similarly, in 1983,US vice presidentGeorge H. W. Bush and in 1985US Secretary of StateGeorge Shultz also praised the Romanian dictator.[47]
In 1978,Ion Mihai Pacepa, a senior member of the Romanian political police (Securitate, State Security),defected to the US. A two-star general, he was the highest-ranking defector from theEastern Bloc during theCold War. His defection was a powerful blow against the administration, forcing Ceaușescu to overhaul Romania's state security architecture. Pacepa's 1986 book,Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief (ISBN0-89526-570-2), claimed to expose details of Ceaușescu's government activities, such as massive spying on American industry and elaborate efforts to rally Western political support.
Systematisation (Romanian:Sistematizarea) was the programme ofurban planning carried out under Ceaușescu's regime. After a visit toNorth Korea in 1971, Ceaușescu was impressed by theJuche ideology of that country, and began a major campaign shortly afterwards.
Beginning in 1974, the programme consisted largely of the demolition and reconstruction of existing hamlets, villages, towns and cities, in whole or in part, with the stated goal of turning Romania into a "multilaterally developedsocialist society". The policy largely consisted in the mass construction of high-density blocks of flats (blocuri).
During the 1980s, Ceaușescu became obsessed with building himselfa palace of unprecedented proportions, along with an equally grandiose neighborhood,Centrul Civic, to accompany it. The mass demolitions that occurred in the 1980s under which an overall area of eight square kilometres of the historic centre of Bucharest were leveled, including monasteries, churches, synagogues, a hospital and a notedArt Deco sports stadium, in order to make way for the imposingCentrul Civic and the House of the Republic, now officially renamed thePalace of Parliament, were the most extreme manifestation of this policy.
Ceaușescu's political independence from the Soviet Union and his protest against theinvasion 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. Ceaușescu did not realise that the funding was not always favourable, borrowing heavily (more than $13 billion) from the West to finance economic development, with these loans ultimately devastating the country's finances. He also secured a deal for cheap oil fromIran, but the deal fell through after theShahMohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979 during theIranian Revolution.
In an attempt to correct this, Ceaușescu decided to repay Romania'sforeign debts. He organised the1986 military referendum and managed to change the constitution, adding a clause that barred Romania from taking foreign loans in the future. According to official results, the referendum yielded a nearly unanimous "yes" vote.[48]
Romania's record—having all of its debts to commercial banks paid off in full—has not been matched by any other heavily indebted country in the world.[49] The policy to repay—and, in multiple cases, prepay—Romania's external debt became the dominant policy in the late 1980s. The result was economic stagnation throughout the 1980s and, towards the end of the decade, an economic crisis. The country's industrial capacity was eroded as equipment grew obsolete and energy intensity increased, and the standard of living deteriorated significantly. Draconian restrictions were imposed on household energy use to ensure adequate supplies for industry. Convertible currency exports were promoted at all costs and imports severely reduced. In 1988, real GDP contracted by 0.5%, mostly due to a decline in industrial output caused by significantly increased material costs. Despite the 1988 decline, the net foreign balance reached its decade-long peak (9.5% of GDP). In 1989, GDP slumped by a further 5.8% due to growing shortages and the increasingly obsolete capital stock. By March 1989, virtually all external debt had been repaid, including all medium- and long-term external debt. The remaining amount, totalling less than 1 million, consisted of short-term credits (mainly short-term export credits granted by Romania). A 1989 decree legally prohibited Romanian entities from contracting external debt.[50] TheCIA World Factbook edition of 1990 listed Romania's external debt as "none" as of mid-1989.[51]
1995 was the last year in which Romania's economy was dominated by the state. From 1996 onwards, the private sector would account for most of Romania's GDP.[52]
Data for 1975, 1980 and 1982–1988 taken from theStatistical Abstract of the United States.[53]
Data for 1981 and 1985 provided by theWorld Book Year Book.[55]
By April 1989, with its debt virtually zero, Romania was a net external creditor. Foreign borrowing was resumed afterDecember 1989.[56] In order to maintain net creditor status, Romania had to keep its external debt under $2.5 billion, the low estimate of the amount it was owed by oil producers and otherLDCs. This was first achieved in 1988[57] and continued through the early 1990s.[58]
Romanian workers began to mobilise against the economic policies of Ceaușescu. Spontaneous labour conflicts, limited in scale, took place in major industrial strongholds such asCluj-Napoca (November 1986) and the Nicolina platform inIași (February 1987), culminating in a massive strike inBrașov. The draconian measures taken by Ceaușescu involved reducing energy and food consumption, as well as lowering workers' incomes, leading to what political scientistVladimir Tismăneanu called "generalised dissatisfaction".[60]
The first protests began practically on 14 November 1987, at the 440 "Molds" Section of the Red Flag truck company. Initially, the protests were for basic needs: "We want food and heating!", "We want our money!", "We want food for the children!", "We want light and heat!" and "We want bread without a card!" Next to the County Hospital, they sang the anthem of the revolution of 1848,"Deșteaptă-te, române!". Upon arriving in the city centre, thousands of workers from the Tractorul Brașov and Hidromecanica factories, pupils, students, and others joined the demonstration. From this moment on, the protest became political. Participants later claimed to have chanted slogans such as "Down with Ceaușescu!", "Down with communism!", "Down with the dictatorship!" or "Down with the tyrant!". During the march, members of the Securitate disguised as workers infiltrated the demonstrators, or remained on the sidelines as spectators, photographing or even filming.[61]
By dusk,Securitate forces and themilitary surrounded the city centre and disbanded the revolt by force. Some 300 protesters were arrested, and, in order to hide the political nature of the Brașov uprising, tried for disturbing the peace and "outrage against morals".
Those under investigation were beaten and tortured, 61 receiving sentences ranging from 6 months to 3 years in prison, including sentences to be carried out working at various state enterprises across in the country. Although many previous party meetings had called for the death penalty to set an example, the regime was eager to downplay the uprising as "isolated cases ofhooliganism". Protesters were sentenced to deportation, with compulsory residence arranged in other cities, despite such measures having been repealed as far back as the late 1950s. The entire trial lasted only an hour and a half.[61]
A few days after the workers' revolt, Cătălin Bia, a student at the Faculty of Forestry, sat in front of the canteen with a placard that read: "The arrested workers must not die". He was joined by colleagues Lucian Silaghi and Horia Șerban. The three were arrested immediately. Subsequently, graffiti in solidarity with the workers' revolt appeared on the campus, and some students distributed manifestos. Security teams conducted a total of seven arrests. Those arrested were investigated, expelled from the faculty, returned to their home localities and placed under strict supervision, along with their families.[61]
Under the Ceaușescu regime,Romani people in Romania were largely neglected as an ethnic group. They were not listed among the "co-inhabiting nationalities", preventing them from gaining any collective government representation.[62]
However, during the late 1970s and early 1980s the regime conducted asedentarisation campaign for nomadic and semi-nomadic Romani, providing them with dwellings and guaranteeing them jobs. Although this led to some displacement of Romanis from counties with a large nomadic population, historians consider it a social measure rather that an ethnically-motivated policy. Thesystematisation policy provided urban Romanies with better living conditions, as many were moved from insalubrious neighbourhoods at the edges of towns into newly built blocks of flats, however it had negative effects on the cohesion of Romani communities.[62]
Dedicated policies for the Romani community began to be implemented in 1977. A government report from 1983 lists some of these policies: the authorities made land available to them and assisted them in the procurement of building materials for houses; many were given jobs; those lacking official identification were registered at the civil status office; measures were taken to legalise marriages, to send children to school, to enlist men for military services and to supervise their hygiene. The report however notes that a significant part of the Romani population resisted these policies, thus the social integration of the community within the Romanian society was still lagging behind.[62]
In November 1989, the XIVth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) saw Ceaușescu, then aged 71, re-elected for another five years as leader of the PCR. During the Congress, Ceaușescu made a speech denouncing the anti-Communist revolutions happening throughout the rest of Eastern Europe. The following month, Ceaușescu's government itself collapsed after a series of violent events inTimișoara andBucharest.
Czechoslovak PresidentGustáv Husák's resignation on 10 December 1989 amounted to the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, leaving Ceaușescu's Romania as the only remaining hard-line Communist regime in the Warsaw Pact.[63][64][65]
Demonstrations in the city of Timișoara were triggered by the government-sponsored attempt to evictLászló Tőkés, an ethnic Hungarian pastor, accused by the government of incitingethnic hatred. Members of his ethnic Hungariancongregation surrounded his apartment in a show of support.
Romanian students spontaneously joined the demonstration, which soon lost nearly all connection to its initial cause and became a more general anti-government demonstration. Regular military forces, police, and the Securitate fired on demonstrators on 17 December 1989, killing and injuring men, women, and children.
On 18 December 1989, Ceaușescu departed for a state visit toIran, leaving the duty of crushing the Timișoara revolt to his subordinates and his wife. Upon his return to Romania on the evening of 20 December, the situation became even more tense, and he gave a televised speech from the TV studio inside the Central Committee Building (CC Building), in which he spoke about the events at Timișoara in terms of an "interference of foreign forces in Romania's internal affairs" and an "external aggression on Romania's sovereignty".
The country, which had little to no information of the events transpiring in Timișoara from the national media, learned about the revolt from anti-communist radio stations that broadcast news in the Eastern Bloc throughout the Cold War (such asVoice of America andRadio Free Europe) and by word of mouth. On the next day, 21 December, Ceaușescu staged amass meeting in Bucharest. Official media presented it as a "spontaneous movement of support for Ceaușescu", emulating the1968 meeting in which he had spoken against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces.
The mass meeting of 21 December, held in what is nowRevolution Square, began like many of Ceaușescu's speeches over the years. He spoke of the achievements of the "Socialist revolution" and Romania's "multi-laterally developed Socialist society". He also blamed the Timișoara riots on "fascist agitators who want to destroy socialism".[66]
But Ceaușescu had misjudged the crowd's mood. Roughly eight minutes into his speech, several people began jeering and booing, and others began chanting "Timișoara!"[67] 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 200lei per month to a total of 2,200 per month by 1 January. 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.[16]
Failing to control the crowd, the Ceaușescus took cover inside the building that housed the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. The rest of the day saw an open revolt of Bucharest's population, which had assembled in University Square and confronted the police and army at barricades. But the rioters were no match for the military apparatus concentrated in Bucharest, which cleared the streets by midnight and arrested hundreds of people in the process.
By the morning of 22 December 1989, protests had spread to most major cities across Romania. The death of Defence MinisterVasile Milea, announced by state media as a suicide, caused confusion and anger within the armed forces and the public.[68] Ceaușescu convened an emergency meeting of the Political Executive Committee and assumed direct command of the army, but many soldiers and officers defected to the revolution.[17] Later that day he attempted to address the crowd assembled outside the Central Committee building in Bucharest, but was shouted down as demonstrators stormed the headquarters.[69] Ceaușescu, his wife Elena, and several aides escaped by helicopter from the roof shortly before protesters overran the building.[70] TheRomanian Communist Party collapsed soon afterward and has never been re-established.[17]
Early reports in the Western press claimed that tens of thousands of people had been killed bySecuritate forces during the uprising, with some newspapers citing figures of up to 64,000 fatalities across Romania.[17][71] The Hungarian military attaché in Bucharest expressed doubt over these figures, noting that such numbers would have been logistically impossible.[17] In the weeks following Ceaușescu’s overthrow, hospitals across the country reported a death toll of fewer than 1,000, a figure broadly supported by later academic research.[71] Of these, only 306 are documented to have died while Ceaușescu was still in power.[72]
Ceaușescu's original grave,Ghencea Cemetery, BucharestThe current resting place of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu at Ghencea Cemetery. The tombstone erroneously states Elena's year of birth as 1919; she was born on 7 January 1916
Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital withEmil Bobu andManea Mănescu and flew by helicopter to Ceaușescu'sSnagov residence, from which they fled again, this time toTârgoviște. They abandoned the helicopter near Târgoviște, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's airspace. The Ceaușescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually handed over to the army.
On Christmas Day, 25 December 1989, the Ceaușescus were tried before a court convened in a small room on orders of theNational Salvation Front, Romania's provisional government. They faced charges including illegal gathering of wealth andgenocide. Ceaușescu repeatedly denied the court's authority to try him, and asserted he was still legally the President of Romania. At the end of the trial, the Ceaușescus were found guilty andsentenced to death. A soldier standing guard in the proceedings was ordered to take the Ceaușescus outside one by one and shoot them, but the Ceaușescus demanded to die together. The soldiers agreed to this and began to tie their hands behind their backs, which the Ceaușescus protested against, but were powerless to prevent.
The Ceaușescus were executed by a group of soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergeant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cîrlan,[73] and five othernon-commissioned officers who were recruited from twenty volunteers. Before his sentence was carried out, Nicolae Ceaușescu sang "The Internationale" whilst being led towards the wall. The firing squad began shooting as soon as the two were in their positions up against the wall.[74]
Later that day, the execution was also shown on Romanian television.[75] The hasty show trial and the images of the executed Ceaușescus were videotaped and the footage released in numerous Western countries two days after the execution.
The manner in which the trial was conducted has been criticised. However,Ion Iliescu, Romania's provisional president, said in 2009 that the trial was "quite shameful, but necessary" in order to end the state of near-anarchy that had gripped the country in the three days since the Ceaușescus fled Bucharest.[76] 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 Ceaușescuslynched on the streets of Bucharest.[77]
The Ceaușescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition ofcapital punishment on 7 January 1990.[78]
Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were originally buried in simple graves atGhencea Cemetery, in Bucharest, on opposite sides of a path; their graves were often decorated with flowers and symbols of communist rule. In April 2007, their sonValentin Ceaușescu lost an appeal for an investigation into whether the graves were genuine. Upon his death in 1996, the younger son,Nicu, was buried nearby in the same cemetery.[79] According to theJurnalul Național,[80] 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. These demands were denied by the government.
On 21 July 2010, forensic scientistsexhumed the bodies to perform DNA tests to prove conclusively that they were indeed the remains of the Ceaușescus.[79] The body believed to be Elena's had decayed too much to allow for a positive identification, but Nicolae was easily identifiable, wearing the bullet-riddled black winter coat he had been wearing during the execution. DNA tests were able to conclusively prove his identity.[81][82] His family organised a funeral service for the couple,[79] and they were reburied together atGhencea under a tombstone.[83]
ARomanian Encyclopedic Dictionary entry in 1978 underlines the concept[clarification needed] 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".[84]
Ceaușism's main trait was a form ofRomanian nationalism,[85] one which arguably propelled Ceaușescu to power in 1965, and probably led the Party leadership underIon Gheorghe Maurer to select him over the more orthodoxGheorghe Apostol. 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 theSovRom fiasco. He carried this nationalist option inside the Party, manipulating it against the nominated successor, Apostol. This nationalist policy had more timid precedents:[86] for example, Gheorghiu-Dej had overseen the withdrawal of theRed Army in 1958.
Moldavian workers during Ceaușescu's visit toSoviet Moldavia in 1972
This nationalist policy had also engineered the publishing of several works that subverted the Soviet image, no longer glossing over traditional points of tension with the Soviet Union.
Ceaușescu was prepared to take a more decisive step in questioning Soviet policies. In the early years of his rule, he generally relaxed political pressures inside Romanian society,[87] which led to the late 1960s and early 1970s being the most liberal decade in Socialist Romania. Gaining the public's confidence, Ceaușescu took a clear stand against the 1968 crushing of thePrague Spring byLeonid Brezhnev. After a visit fromCharles 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. He immediately attracted Western sympathies and backing, which lasted well beyond the 'liberal' phase of his rule; at the same time, the period brought forward the threat of armed Soviet invasion: significantly, many young men inside Romania joined thePatriotic Guards created on the spur of the moment, in order to meet the perceived threat.[88] President Richard Nixon was invited to Bucharest in 1969, which was the first visit of a US president to a communist country after the start of the Cold War.
Ceaușescu rejectedAlexander Dubček’s reformist programme ofSocialism with a human face, considering it incompatible with Romania’s own communist model.[89][90] Although he condemned the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Ceaușescu maintained an enduring partnership withJosip Broz Tito’sYugoslavia, adapting theTitoist doctrine of “independent socialist development” to Romania’s circumstances.[89] The 1965 constitution renamed the country theSocialist Republic of Romania to emphasize its claim of building socialism free from Moscow’s direction, echoing Yugoslavia’s earlier rebranding in 1963.[91]
Following his 1971 visits to China andNorth Korea, Ceaușescu issued theJuly Theses, inspired in part by Maoist andJuche concepts and signalling a return to strict ideological control.[92][93] At the Eleventh Party Congress in 1974, cultural policy was formally subordinated to nationalist objectives.[94] The regime promotedProtochronism andDacianism, encouraging historians to portray the ancientDacians as precursors of the socialist state, and renamed several cities to reflect Dacian or Roman heritage, such asCluj-Napoca andDrobeta-Turnu Severin.[94][95]
Although Ceaușescu pursued an ostensibly independent “national communist” course, his concentration of power and the pervasivepersonality cult surrounding him led outside observers to describe his regime as among the mostStalinist in Eastern Europe.[96] Among his most visible admirers wasIosif Constantin Drăgan, a Romanian-Italian businessman who propagated Dacianist andprotochronist ideas that paralleled the regime’s nationalist discourse.[95]
Nicolae Ceaușescu had a major influence on modern-day Romanianpopulist rhetoric. In the 1970s, a certain rehabilitation of pro-Nazi dictatorIon Antonescu was permitted to take place: while not explicitly condoned by authorities, the pro-regime novelistMarin Preda painted a "nuanced" and sympathetic picture of Antonescu in his 1975 workDelirul.[42]: 324–325 The conflict with Hungary over the treatment of theMagyar minority in Romania had several unusual aspects: not only was it a vitriolic argument between two officiallySocialist states, it also marked the moment when Hungary, a state behind theIron Curtain, appealed to theOrganisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe for sanctions to be taken against Romania. This meant that the later 1980s were marked by a pronounced anti-Hungarian discourse, which owed more to nationalist tradition than to Marxism,[97] and the ultimate isolation of Romania on the world stage.
The strong opposition to Ceaușescu on all forms ofperestroika andglasnost placed him at odds withMikhail Gorbachev. He was very displeased when other Warsaw Pact countries decided to try their own versions of Gorbachev's reforms. In particular, he was incensed whenPoland's leaders opted for a power-sharing arrangement with theSolidarity trade union. He even went as far as to call for a Warsaw Pact invasion of Poland—a significant reversal, considering how violently he had opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia 20 years earlier.[98] For his part, Gorbachev made no secret of his distaste for Ceaușescu, whom he called "the Romanianführer". At a meeting between the two, Gorbachev upbraided Ceaușescu for his inflexible attitude. "You are running a dictatorship here", the Soviet leader warned.[16]
In November 1989, at the XIVth and last congress of the PCR, Ceaușescu condemned theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact and suggested that the Soviet Union was repeating its mistake ofappeasement towards an aggressive power by growing closer to theUnited States. This provided an indication of Ceaușescu's fear at the time of bothsuperpowers interfering in Romanian domestic affairs.[42]: 326 He also called for the reversal of the Pact's consequences, which would amount to the return of Bessarabia (most of which was then a Soviet republic and since 1991 has been independentMoldova) and northernBukovina; both of these had beenoccupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and again at the end of World War II.[42]: 325–326
Ceaușescu was among the most ardent supporters of dimming lingering tensions between different Balkan states,[99] and went as far as to establish friendly relations with the vituperatively anti-communistRegime of the Colonels in Greece to pursue his objectives of cooperation between Balkan countries.[100]
Ceaușescu's Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that retained diplomatic relations with Israel and did not sever diplomatic relations after Israel's strike onEgypt at the start of theSix-Day War in 1967, to the consternation of the Soviet Union.[101] Ceaușescu made efforts to act as a mediator between thePLO and Israel.[citation needed]
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a close ally and personal friend ofdictatorMobutu Sese Seko ofZaire (now theDemocratic Republic of the Congo). Relations were in fact not just state-to-state, but party-to-party between their respectivepolitical machineries, theMPR and thePCR. Many believe that Ceaușescu's death played a role in influencing Mobutu to "democratise" Zaire in 1990.[105]
Ceaușescu reduced the size of theRomanian People's Army by 5%, for which he called the1986 mock referendum in which 100% voted in favour.[106] In line with his policy of keeping a façade of "popular democracy", he also ordered large rallies for peace to be held.
In August 1976, Nicolae Ceaușescu was the first high-level Romanian visitor to Moldavian SSR since World War II. 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".[107]
Stamp commemorating Ceaușescu's 70th birthday and 55 years of political activity, 1988Ceaușescu receiving the presidential sceptre, 1974[108]
Ceaușescu created a pervasivepersonality cult, giving himself titles such as "Conducător" ("Leader") and "Geniul din Carpați" ("The Genius of the Carpathians"), with inspiration fromProletarian Culture (Proletkult). After his election as President of Romania, he even had a "presidential sceptre" created for himself, thus appropriating aroyal insignia. This excess prompted painterSalvador Dalí to send a congratulatory telegram to the Romanian president, in which he sarcastically congratulated Ceaușescu on his "introducing the presidential sceptre". The Communist Party dailyScînteia published the message, unaware that it was a work of satire.[citation needed]
The most important day of the year during Ceaușescu's rule was his official birthday, 26 January—a day which saw Romanian media saturated with praise for him. According to historianVictor 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.[16]
To lessen the chance of further treason after Pacepa's defection, Ceaușescu also invested his wife Elena and other members of his family with important positions in the government. This led Romanians to joke that Ceaușescu was creating "socialism in one family", a pun on "socialism in one country".[citation needed]
Ceaușescu was greatly concerned about his public image. For years, nearly all official photographs of him showed him in his late 40s. Romanian state television was under strict orders to portray him in the best possible light.[16] Additionally, great care was taken by producers to ensure that Ceaușescu’s height—1.68 metres (5 ft 6 in)—was never conspicuously highlighted on screen.[109] Consequences for breaking these rules were severe; one producer showed footage of Ceaușescu blinking and stuttering, and was banned for three months.[16]
As part of a propaganda ploy arranged by the Ceaușescus through the consular cultural attachés of Romanian embassies,[citation needed] they managed to receive orders and titles from numerous states and institutions. France granted Nicolae Ceaușescu theLegion of Honour. In 1978 he became aKnight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the UK,[110][circular reference] a title of which he was stripped in 1989. Elena Ceaușescu was arranged to be "elected" to membership of a science academy in the US.
To execute a massive redevelopment project, the Ceaușescu government conducted extensive demolition of churches and many other historic structures in Romania. According to Alexandru Budistenu, former chief architect of Bucharest:
"The sight of a church bothered Ceaușescu. It didn't matter if they demolished or moved it, as long as it was no longer in sight"
— Alexandru Budistenu, 9 January 2019
Nevertheless, a project by Romanian engineer Eugeniu Iordachescu was able to move many historic structures to less prominent sites, thus saving them.[111]
In the 1980s under Ceaușescu, the Securitate received six-figure payments from Swedish furniture companyIKEA.[112][113] According to declassified files at theNational Council for the Study of the Securitate Archive, IKEA agreed to overcharge for products made in Romania and some of the overpayment funds were deposited into an account controlled by the Securitate.[citation needed][relevant?]
Ceaușescu had a mixed reputation among international leaders of his time. In his memoirThe Artful Albanian, Albanian communist leaderEnver Hoxha remarked "As if Ceaușescu and company are to bring down imperialism! If the world waits for the Ceaușescus to do such a thing, imperialism will live for tens of thousands of years..."[114] According to Pacepa, Libyan leaderMuammar Gaddafi had an opposite interpretation, allegedly saying, "My brother! You are my brother for the rest of my life!".[115] Ceaușescu even received praise from anti-communists with the Iran's shahMohammad Reza Pahlavi acclaiming Ceaușescu leadership: "I would like to salute [Ceaușescu's] intransigent patriotism and ferocious will for independence. A veritable amity links me to him".[116]
He directed the construction of thePalace of the Parliament in Bucharest, which broke ground in June 1984. It was previously called The House of the People and The People's House. The building of the Palace of the Parliament was the most extreme expression of theSystematisation programme imposed by Ceaușescu upon Romania, being anurban planning programme used toconvert villages into miniature cities. The main architect of the building wasAnca Petrescu (1949–2013), who began her work on the building when she was 28 years old. The building was completed in 1997, after Ceaușescu's death in 1989. TheRomanian Senate, which was originally housed in the former building of the Central Committee of theRomanian Communist Party, has been headquartered in the Parliamentary Palace since 2004.
The Parliamentary Palace building has 1,100 rooms and is the largest civilian government building in the world as measured by volume in one continuous structure. (There arelarger private sector buildings, mainly for the construction of aircraft, that have more continuous volume in one building, such as theBoeing Everett Factory.) Much of the building remains empty, being larger than the Parliament needs, though Parliament shares it with three museums and an international conference centre.[117] It is also the heaviest building in the world, being constructed of 700,000 tonnes ofsteel andbronze, a million square feet ofmarble, and large amounts of crystal and wood.[118][119]
Ceaușescu and his future successor,Ion Iliescu, in 1976
The Ceaușescus had three children:Valentin (born 1948), a nuclear physicist;Zoia (1949–2006), a mathematician; andNicu Ceaușescu (1951–1996), a physicist. After the death of his parents, Nicolae Ceaușescu ordered[how?] the construction of anOrthodox church, the walls of which are decorated with portraits of his parents.[80]
Praising the crimes of totalitarian governments and denigrating their victims is forbidden by law in Romania; this includes the Ceaușescu era. Dinel Staicu was fined 25,000lei (approx. 9,000 US dollars) for praising Ceaușescu and displaying his pictures on his private television channel (3TV Oltenia).[120] Opinion polls held in 2010 indicated that 41% of Romanians would have voted for Ceaușescu if given the opportunity[121][122] and 63% felt their lives were better before 1989.[122][123] In 2014, the percentage of those who would vote for Ceaușescu reached 46%.[124] On 27 December 2018, a poll found 64% of people had a good opinion of him.[125]
After Ceaușescu's overthrow, politicians such asCorneliu Vadim Tudor have coupled the image of his regime with theIon Antonescu regime into their versions of a national Pantheon.[citation needed]
Ceaușescu is played by Constantin Cojocaru in the 2011 Swiss docudramaDie letzten Tage der Ceaușescus.[126][127]
The final song on the 2012 albumBish Bosch byScott Walker titled “The Day The ‘Conducator’ Died (An Xmas Song)” is in reference to Ceaușescu (and his death on Christmas Day.)
A comedy musical enjoyed a world premiere at Seven Arts inLeeds on Sunday 21 May 2017. 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 uponcelebrity culture and the role social media and political correctness play in creatingsocial pariahs.[128]
Ceaușescu was made a knight of the DanishOrder of the Elephant, but this appointment was revoked on 23 December 1989 by the then queen of Denmark,Margrethe II.
Two documentaries have been made about Ceaușescu in the 21st century. The first film was written and directed byBen Lewis for theBBC, titledThe King of Communism: The Pomp & Pageantry of Nicolae Ceaușescu (2002).
The second,Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceaușescu (2011), was created by Romanian writer/directorAndrei Ujica, and an English language version of the film was released simultaneously, titledThe Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu.[139]
TheLeft Behind novels byTim LaHaye andJerry B. Jenkins feature a fictional Romanian politician,Nicolae Carpathia, who rises from Romania’s presidency to become a dictatorial world ruler. Reviewers and scholars have noted that the series’s Antichrist, the Romanian politician Nicolae Carpathia, invites comparison with former Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, given his nationality, authoritarian rule, and personality cult.[140][141]
Report during the joint solemn session of the CC of the Romanian Communist Party, the National Council of the Socialist Unity Front and the Grand National Assembly: Marking the 60th anniversary of the creation of a Unitary Romanian National State, 1978
Major problems of our time: Eliminating underdevelopment, bridging gaps between states, building a new international economic order, 1980
The solving of the national question in Romania (Socio-political thought of Romania's President), 1980
Ceaușescu: Builder of Modern Romania and International Statesman, 1983
The nation and co-habiting nationalities in the contemporary epoch (Philosophical thought of Romania's president), 1983
The history of the Romanian people in the view of the President (Istoria poporului român în concepția președintelui), 1988
^abcdefDeletant, Dennis (1999).Romania under Communist Rule. Center for Romanian Studies. p. 236.ISBN973-9432-17-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)Cite error: The named reference "Deletant1999" was defined multiple times with different content (see thehelp page).
^Verdery, Katherine (1991).National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu's Romania. University of California Press. p. 71.ISBN978-0-520-07038-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Deletant, Dennis (1999).Romania under Communist Rule. Center for Romanian Studies. p. 241.ISBN973-9432-17-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Deletant, Dennis (1995).Ceaușescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965–1989. M. E. Sharpe. pp. 330–333.ISBN978-1-56324-633-2.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Stan, Lavinia (2013).Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of Memory. Cambridge University Press. p. 24.ISBN978-1-107-02334-6.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^abcdefCrampton, RichardEastern Europe In the Twentieth Century – And After, London: Routledge, 1997 p. 355.
^Sajdik, Martin; Schwarzinger, Michaël (2008).European Union enlargement: background, developments, facts. New Jersey: Transaction. p. 10.ISBN978-1-4128-0667-1.
^Phinnemore, David (2006).The EU and Romania: accession and beyond. London: Federal Trust for Education and Research. p. 13.ISBN1-903403-79-0.
^Crampton, Richard (1997),Eastern Europe In the Twentieth Century – And After, London: Routledge, pp. 354–355.
^Grosescu, R. (2004). "The Political Regrouping of Romanian Nomenklatura during the 1989 Revolution".Romanian Journal of Society and Politics, 4(1), 97–123.
^abcRuxandra Cesereanu,Decembrie '89. Deconstrucția unei revoluții, 2nd ed. (Polirom, Iași, 2009), pp. 25, 26, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 40
^abcAchim, Viorel (2013). "Chapter VI. The gypsies during the communist regime. A few points of reference".The Roma in Romanian History. CEUP collection. Central European University Press. pp. 189–202.ISBN978-615-5053-93-1. Retrieved29 August 2019 – via OpenEdition Books.
^"Romanian Defense Minister Is Said to Kill Himself".The New York Times. 23 December 1989.
^"Ceaușescu Flees Capital as Army Joins Revolt".The Washington Post. 23 December 1989.
^"Ceausescu Flees Capital; Army Backs Revolt".Los Angeles Times. 23 December 1989.
^abSiani-Davies, Peter (2005).The Romanian Revolution of December 1989. Cornell University Press. pp. 147–148.ISBN978-0-8014-7393-4.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^abDeletant, Dennis (1999).Romania under Communist Rule. Center for Romanian Studies. pp. 245–246.ISBN973-9432-17-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Siani-Davies, Peter (2005).The Romanian Revolution of December 1989. Cornell University Press. pp. 17–18.ISBN978-0-8014-7393-4.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Deletant, Dennis (1999).Romania under Communist Rule. Center for Romanian Studies. p. 236.ISBN973-9432-17-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Verdery, Katherine (1991).National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu's Romania. University of California Press. p. 95.ISBN978-0-520-07038-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Deletant, Dennis (1999).Romania under Communist Rule. Center for Romanian Studies. pp. 258–261.ISBN973-9432-17-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^abPilon, Geran (1981).Romania: The Continuing Revolution. Westview Press. pp. 61–63.ISBN978-0-89158-734-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^abVerdery, Katherine (1991).National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu's Romania. University of California Press. pp. 133–135.ISBN978-0-520-07038-5.{{cite book}}:Check|isbn= value: checksum (help)
^Litsky, Frank (29 July 1984)."President and Pomp Begin Games".The New York Times. pp. 1, 8, § 5. Retrieved28 August 2020.Of the first 139 nations in the parade, the biggest cheers went to Rumania, the only Warsaw Pact nation competing here.
Dumitru Burlan,Dupa 14 ani – Sosia lui Ceaușescu se destăinuie ("After 14 Years: The Double of Ceaușescu confesses"). Editura Ergorom. 31 July 2003 (inRomanian).
Marian Oprea, "Au trecut 15 ani – Conspirația Securității" ("15 Years Later: The Securitate Conspiracy"), inLumea Magazin Nr 10, 2004: (in Romanian; link leads to table of contents, verifying that the article exists, but the article itself is not online).
Thomas Kunze, Nicolae Ceauşescu: Eine Biographie. Links, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-211-5; 4., 2017, ISBN 978-3-86153-562-1., in romanian language: Rumänische Lizenzausgabe: Nicolae Ceauşescu. O biografie, editura Vremea, București, 2002, ISBN 973-645-025-2, in polish language: Ceauşescu. Piekło na Ziemi, Prószy´nski i S-ka, Warszawa, 2016, ISBN 978-83-8069-430-9.
Dennis Deletant (1995),Ceaușescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965–1989,ISBN978-1563246333 pub. M. E. Sharpe. p. 351
Pinstripes and Reds: An American Ambassador Caught Between the State Department & the Romanian Communists, 1981–1985 Washington, D.C.: Selous Foundation Press, 1987.ISBN0-944273-01-7
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