Ceaușescu began as a reformer cheered for defying Moscow, then ruled Romania by fear
In August 1968 Nicolae Ceaușescu stood up and condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Romanians loved him for it. Two decades later his own people chased him from Bucharest in a helicopter, and on Christmas Day 1989 he and his wife Elena faced a firing squad.
He grew up in Scornicești, the third of nine children in a poor peasant household whose father owned about three hectares and a few sheep. Even his birthday is muddled: his birth certificate says 5 February 1918, the official date was 8 February, and his autobiography gave 26 January, because the registration was three days late. He left the village school at 11 for Bucharest, where he apprenticed with a shoemaker who belonged to the outlawed Communist Party. He joined in 1932 and was first arrested at 15, for street fighting during a strike, followed by several more arrests in the 1930s.
After the Second World War he climbed the party under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and succeeded him as general secretary in 1965, becoming head of state two years later and President of the Republic in 1974. His early relaxation of press censorship proved short-lived. Romania hardened into one of the harshest regimes in the Eastern Bloc, watched by the Securitate secret police, which also controlled the press.
His policies had grim side effects. A drive to boost the population produced more illegal abortions and filled state orphanages. Failed oil ventures in the 1970s ran up heavy foreign debts, and the austerity used to repay them worked but was bitterly resented. Meanwhile his personality cult swelled and relations even with the Soviet Union soured.
Discontent exploded in 1989. On 17 December he ordered troops to fire on protesters in Timișoara, causing many deaths and injuries. When the unrest reached Bucharest, the couple fled, but the army turned against them. A show trial convicted them of economic sabotage and genocide, and their execution ended 42 years of communist rule. Oddly, nostalgia persists: a 2018 poll found 64 percent of Romanians viewed his rule positively.
Source: Nicolae Ceaușescu
