Nicolae Ceausescu

Nicolae Ceauşescu was born on January 26, 1918 in Scorniceşti village, Olt County[?], Oltenia, Romania. He was the communist leader of Romania from 1965 until his execution in 1989.

A member of the illegal inter-war Romanian Communist Party (PCR) (rumour has that while being an apprentice of a shoe maker and wandering through the railway station he stole a piece of luggage - he was caught by the police alas the suitcase was full of Communist Party flyers thus he got arrested as a commie and imprisoned at Doftana[?] together with other commies), Ceauşescu was imprisoned in 1936 and in 1940 for his activities. After WWII, with Romania entering under Soviet influence, Ceauşescu served as secretary of the Union of Communist Youth (1944-1945). After the communists seized power in Romania in 1947, he headed the ministry of agriculture, and then served as deputy minister of the armed forces. Under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej[?]'s Stalinist regime, Ceauşescu climbed to occupy the second highest position in the party hierarchy.

With the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in March 1965, Ceauşescu became leader of the PCR, and then president of the State Council, in 1967. He soon become a popular figure, thanks to his independent policy, challenging the supremacy of the Soviet Union in Romania. In the 1960s Ceauşescu ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact military alliance. His finest hour was the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, when he publicly condemned the action (1968). In 1974 Ceauşescu became president of Romania as well. He followed an independent policy in foreign relations - e.g : in 1984, Romania was one of only two communist-ruled countries to take part in the American organized 1984 Summer Olympics. Also, the country was the first of the Eastern Block to have official relations with the European Community: an agreement including Romania in the community's Generalized System of Preferences in 1974 and an Agreement on Industrial Products in 1980 were signed.

However, Ceauşescu refused any liberal reforms. The secret police (Securitate[?]) maintained firm control over free speech and the media, and tolerated no internal opposition. The situation worsened in the 1980s. To pay back the foreign debt accumulated for accelerated industralization in the previous decade, Ceauşescu ordered the export of much of the country's agricultural and industrial production. The resulting shortage of food, lack of energy, medicines etc, made the everyday life of Romanian citizens a fight for survival. Ceauşescu also instituted a North Korean-style personality cult and invested his wife, Elena, and the members of his family in high posts in the government.

Over one fifth of central Bucharest, including churches and historic buildings, was demolished during Ceauşescu's rule in the 1980s, to rebuild the city in a socialist style. Many people died during the erection of The People's House[?] ("Casa Poporului") in Bucharest, now the Parliament House, the world's second largest building after The Pentagon. Ceauşescu also planned to bulldoze the villages in order to move the peasants into blocks of flats.

Ceauşescu's regime collapsed after he ordered regular military forces and Securitate[?] to fire on anticommunist demonstrators in the city of Timişoara in 17 December 1989. The rebellion spread to Bucharest, and on December 22 the army fraternized with the demonstrators. On the same day Ceauşescu and his wife fled the capital in a helicopter - an aide held a gun to the pilot's head. The pilot landed after faking an engine failure, and the Ceauşescus were captured by the armed forces at a road block. On December 25 the two were condemned to death by a kangaroo military court on a range of charges including genocide, and executed by firing squad in Târgovişte[?]. Romania was the only Eastern Block country to violently overthrow its communist regime.

After the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Ion Iliescu won the Romanian presidential election in 1990.