Article by Wagner Hertzog
During his rule, Nicolae Ceaușescu became one of the most brutal and repressive dictators of the eastern bloc. Nicolae Ceaușescu was the brutal and hostile dictator of communist Romania, from 1965 to 1989, when he was forcefully deposed by a popular revolution, and sentenced to death along with his wife. Getting involved in communism while he was very young, slowly Ceaușescu rose through the ranks of the communist party, assuming power when Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, then political leader of Romania, died in 1965.
Initially not a harsh leader himself – on the contrary, gaining some popularity for taking apparently popular stances –, within some years of government, Nicolae Ceaușescu proved to be a cruel and perfidious tyrant, eager to implement severe and aggressive measures to restrict the population. Consolidating a political police named Securitate, Ceaușescu managed to control literally everything within the country’s borders, and rapidly suppressed freedom of expression, freedom of the press, political opposition and consolidated a centralized control of the means of production, which would eventually took Romania to the verge of collapse.
Being a rude dictator with no real political or administrative skills, Ceaușescu’s government proved to be disastrous for Romanians. Increased corruption, economic inefficiency, catastrophic financial decisions and an intransigent rule more preoccupied on its authoritarian and repressive stance, as the basic means to secure his unlimited and unrestricted power, caused the country to experience a horrendous and abject decline. As a result, the quality of living for the Romanian population, as a whole, suffered a dramatic downfall. As an obvious consequence, basic goods like food, medication and hygiene products entered a period of severe shortage, which threatened to disintegrate the country completely.
Initially not a harsh leader himself – on the contrary, gaining some popularity for taking apparently popular stances –, within some years of government, Nicolae Ceaușescu proved to be a cruel and perfidious tyrant, eager to implement severe and aggressive measures to restrict the population. Consolidating a political police named Securitate, Ceaușescu managed to control literally everything within the country’s borders, and rapidly suppressed freedom of expression, freedom of the press, political opposition and consolidated a centralized control of the means of production, which would eventually took Romania to the verge of collapse.
Being a rude dictator with no real political or administrative skills, Ceaușescu’s government proved to be disastrous for Romanians. Increased corruption, economic inefficiency, catastrophic financial decisions and an intransigent rule more preoccupied on its authoritarian and repressive stance, as the basic means to secure his unlimited and unrestricted power, caused the country to experience a horrendous and abject decline. As a result, the quality of living for the Romanian population, as a whole, suffered a dramatic downfall. As an obvious consequence, basic goods like food, medication and hygiene products entered a period of severe shortage, which threatened to disintegrate the country completely.
Ceaușescu was deposed in the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Like these measures weren’t terrible enough, Ceaușescu always increased the level of brutality and repression. The cult of personality promoted around him also increased dramatically over the years. His birthday was considered a national holiday, and Romanians forcibly had to smile all day long, since appearing sorrowful on this day was something too dangerous to contemplate. So the population in general had to fake a level of happiness they didn’t really felt, only to survive.
In 1989, the Romanian population had become saturated with the oppressive effects of a terrible, inhumane and dogmatic tyranny. Freedom was something they simply didn’t have, to such an extent that people really wanted to rebel, feeling apathy at the best possible evaluation, concerning the possibility of state reprimand. Like a pressure cooker ready to explode, people simply wanted to get rid of the regime. They couldn’t endure oppression anymore. When Ceaușescu did his final speech, which entered history, as the crowd openly manifested scorn and aversion towards him, screaming, interrupting and explicitly disobeying him – with the exception of people in the front row, composed of members from the communist party, strategically placed there to appear that Ceaușescu had, at least, some level of popular support –, it became obvious that the complete dissatisfaction and the total rejection the population felt towards him was too dangerous to be faced directly. Ceaușescu, like the coward dictator that he was, searched for shelter in the government building, along with his security personnel. Nevertheless, the popular agitation that soon followed was easily repressed by the state apparatus.
The revolution that started some days earlier in Timișoara – which Ceaușescu mentioned in his last speech –, evolved to a national conflagration. Then, millions of Romanians, encouraged by the fact that so many of their comrades were eager to fight, became determined to overthrown the tyrannical regime, and to depose the dictator. Soon after, the situation escalated to such a dramatic extent that even the armed forces didn’t have the courage to face the anger of the populace, and the commandeers-in-chief rapidly switched sides, doesn’t even trying to save Ceaușescu and the old regime, that seemed destined to be disintegrated by the popular upheaval.
In 1989, the Romanian population had become saturated with the oppressive effects of a terrible, inhumane and dogmatic tyranny. Freedom was something they simply didn’t have, to such an extent that people really wanted to rebel, feeling apathy at the best possible evaluation, concerning the possibility of state reprimand. Like a pressure cooker ready to explode, people simply wanted to get rid of the regime. They couldn’t endure oppression anymore. When Ceaușescu did his final speech, which entered history, as the crowd openly manifested scorn and aversion towards him, screaming, interrupting and explicitly disobeying him – with the exception of people in the front row, composed of members from the communist party, strategically placed there to appear that Ceaușescu had, at least, some level of popular support –, it became obvious that the complete dissatisfaction and the total rejection the population felt towards him was too dangerous to be faced directly. Ceaușescu, like the coward dictator that he was, searched for shelter in the government building, along with his security personnel. Nevertheless, the popular agitation that soon followed was easily repressed by the state apparatus.
The revolution that started some days earlier in Timișoara – which Ceaușescu mentioned in his last speech –, evolved to a national conflagration. Then, millions of Romanians, encouraged by the fact that so many of their comrades were eager to fight, became determined to overthrown the tyrannical regime, and to depose the dictator. Soon after, the situation escalated to such a dramatic extent that even the armed forces didn’t have the courage to face the anger of the populace, and the commandeers-in-chief rapidly switched sides, doesn’t even trying to save Ceaușescu and the old regime, that seemed destined to be disintegrated by the popular upheaval.
When the insurgents invaded the government building, Ceaușescu and his wife managed to escape by helicopter. Nevertheless, they were eventually captured by the police, and handled over to the military. After a puppet trial, both were killed together by a firing squad. It was the end of communist rule in Romania, and communism then was turned illegal.
With a mediocre theoretical view of communism, that was never taken seriously by the intellectual elite, Ceaușescu was, at the best possible evaluation, a terribly insignificant individual, that, as a statesman, was a vehemently incompetent politician, whose greatest “quality” as a dictator was his authoritarianism, that managed to project only suffering, misery and poverty over the nation. His insignificant legacy, practically nothing to the Romanian population and to the nation as a whole, is reduced to a sordid past, that no one is interested to revive or to remember.
With a mediocre theoretical view of communism, that was never taken seriously by the intellectual elite, Ceaușescu was, at the best possible evaluation, a terribly insignificant individual, that, as a statesman, was a vehemently incompetent politician, whose greatest “quality” as a dictator was his authoritarianism, that managed to project only suffering, misery and poverty over the nation. His insignificant legacy, practically nothing to the Romanian population and to the nation as a whole, is reduced to a sordid past, that no one is interested to revive or to remember.
