- Joined
- Jan 29, 2023
General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (1965-1989)
President of the Socialist Republic of Romania (1974-1989)
"Tovarășul Conducător" - "Comrade Conductor"
"The Genius of the Carpathians"
Nowadays, sites like Reddit are filled with mentally disturbed individuals who devote every moment of their lives to two things: seeking validation and screaming about murdering "le heckin fascists" (everyone who disagrees with them). Now, you may be asking yourself, What would happen if one of these people was handed the reins of power over an entire country? It would probably look like Nicolae Ceaușescu's tenure as the leader of Romania, marked by a feverish cult of personality dedicated to him and his beloved wife, Elena (we'll get to her later), the construction of countless vanity projects at the expense of the Romanian people, brutal political repression, and Ceaușescu's own massive ego - one so large that he couldn't even comprehend that his people were revolting against him in 1989. Today, the fallout of Ceaușescu's retarded policies can still be felt in Romania, and his story serves as an important lesson - NEVER let a Cluster B personality run your country.
Ceaușescu would put his tailoring talents to work in a shoemaking shop owned by Alexandru Săndulescu, a dissident communist. Săndulescu
Romania quickly fell under Soviet influence after World War 2, experiencing a falsified election in 1946 with an overwhelming communist victory. Gheorghiu-Dej would head this new government. Around this time, Ceaușescu would marry Elena, which had the effect of cementing both of their positions in the new government. Soon after, the Monarchy was abolished, and the soviets had succeeded in establishing yet another satellite state. Ceaușescu, being a close friend of the most powerful man in the country, quickly rose through the ranks due to nepotism. Every year brought a new title. in 1947, Ceaușescu was a member of the national assembly. The next year, he was named Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, only to become the Minister of Agriculture himself the next year. From there, Gheorghiu-Dej made him deputy minister of the armed forces (despite having no military experience or knowledge of tactics), and later promoted him to serve on the communist party's Central Committee. Was he qualified for any of these jobs? No, but he was qualified to beat dissidents. Using his position in the party, Ceaușescu would personally enforce the collectivization of the country's agricultural sector (most likely spurred by his disdain for his dad), often sending hundreds to labor camps on a whim.
In 1965, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej died of cancer because he kept a piece of uranium on his desk. No I am not kidding. Ceaușescu was not his first choice for leader, but he emerged on top because Gheorghiu-Dej's prime minister hated the front runner for the job, Gheorghe Apostol. At long last, on March 22nd, 1965, Ceaușescu finally achieved what he had always wanted - total control.
Later in the 60s, Ceaușescu began the process of officially breaking away from his wranglers. In 1968, he condemned the Warsaw Pact's intervention in Czechoslovakia and offered aid to the government. After that, he began to establish diplomatic ties with many western countries, culminating with the recognition of West Germany in 1971. For a brief time in the early months of 1971, Western observers saw Ceaușescu's Romania as an eastern bloc country that they could actually work with to thaw global tensions. That all ended on July 6th. Earlier in the summer, Ceaușescu and his wife had travelled to North Korea, and they absolutely adored what they saw. From the beginning, the couple had wanted absolute power, and that's what they saw there. After returning home, Ceaușescu delivered a speech condemning the liberalization of government that he had helped to herald in. What little political freedom was offered in Romania was instantly relinquished. Book bans were reinstated en masse, the Securitate secret police grew massively in scale and influence, and Ceaușescu took what remaining power the national assembly had for himself. Additionally, a state sponsored cult of personality surrounding him sprung up almost overnight. Every household was to have a portrait of him hung on display (specifically his 1965 portrait, as to make him appear as youthful as possible), statues and murals of him and Elena and slogans from his speeches were propped up all over the country, and citizens were forced by the police to attend his rallies.
To cement his image, Ceaușescu also grew obsessed with urban planning. His perfect Romania couldn't be a series of villages in the mountains - it had to be a highly urbanized society with metropolises to rival that of New York and Moscow. To accomplish this, Ceaușescu ordered the demolition of vast swaths of existing homes and businesses so that the government could build shitty commieblocks. Additionally, any moderately sized village would be redesignated as a town and become host to rows and rows of even more commieblocks. No historic buildings were spared from demolition either. After all, Ceaușescu needed homes for the millions of new souls that would carry out the will of his world power-status Romania. A single exception was granted during Ceaușescu's entire urbanization program, which was his own childhood home in Scornicești. Speaking of homes, the 1980s saw Ceaușescu growing obsessed with the idea of having a massive palace for him and his wife in the center of Bucharest. To make room for it, Ceaușescu demolished countless homes, 3 monasteries, 20 churches, 3 synagogues, 3 hospitals, 2 theatres, and a sports stadium. What replaced all of those is the building you see to your right, which now serves as Romania's parliament. It is the heaviest building in the world. Of course, Elena held massive sway over the country's infrastructure as well. Romania's television network, TVR, which was color capable in 1972, did not broadcast in color until 1983 because Elena didn't like color TV, and an entire metro station near one of Bucharest's major universities was shelved because she thought the students were "fat" and thought they should walk.
Of course, Ceaușescu rarely hunted alone. He was often joined by his family, friends in the country, and his friends from abroad. Many of the Eastern Bloc's leaders also shared a love for hunting and often competed against Ceaușescu for his records. However, Ceaușescu had no friend closer than Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga, the dictator of Zaire. After all, they both could bond over their shared love for killing things and making pointless, retarded decisions that were to the detriment of their people. When Ceaușescu was hard at work making scientists credit their work to Elena, Mobutu was sending people to jail for having "European" names. Even when Mobutu drifted away from Communism, their personal friendship remained so strong that Ceaușescu set up a diplomatic mission between the parties of Romania and Zaire, which allowed the two to collaborate on as many bad policies as possible. Ceaușescu also shared a friendship/hunting rivalry with Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, but that wasn't nearly as close as his friendship with Mobutu. Tito setting Europe's bear record shortly before his death caused Ceaușescu to seethe so much that he made the restrictions on hunting harsher for a few years until he could bag a better bear himself to one up him.
With Ceaușescu spending all of the country's money on vanity projects like his palace and hunting, Romania rapidly fell into debt throughout the 1980s. This had the effect of making workers angrier, which caused the government to add tax after tax to their paychecks. By the end of the decade, the conditions created by Ceaușescu were brewing a perfect storm. The new generation of Romanians fostered by Decree 770 were left discontent by having nowhere to go, all of Ceaușescu's expensive construction projects were both demolishing all the homes in the country and wasting the entire budget, and his iconography everywhere gave the people something to rally against. This storm exploded into the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
By 1989, the communist satellite states across Europe were all collapsing. The Berlin wall was coming down, the hardliners in Europe had all either resigned or were being actively pressured out, and the Soviet Union was in no position to prop the regimes up anymore. Ceaușescu was entirely alone, but the decade and a half he had spent building his cult of personality meant he was starting to drink his own Kool-Aid. When demonstrations against his treatment of the Hungarian minority and his urbanization plans sprung up in the city of Timișoara, he assumed that all he would need to do was send in local law enforcement to crack down. After all, Ceaușescu was no stranger to beating protestors with sticks. When this failed to quell the riots, he sent in the military. When this failed, he fucked off to Iran for a few days and had local officials (and Elena) deal with it. Elena's genius response was to take a bunch of random factory workers from rural Romania, give them clubs, and send them to Timișoara to go beat the "Hungarian hooligans". Instead of beating the protestors, the underpaid factory workers turned their clubs on the police and military. Despite heavy state media censorship, the word of the Timișoara protests spread throughout the country rapidly, and a protest was scheduled for December 21st - the day after Ceaușescu's return from Iran.
On the morning of December 21st, Ceaușescu took to the stage in the center of Bucharest to condemn the events in Timișoara. As usual for his events, tens of thousands were bussed in and given flags and the pictures of the dear leader to wave around. However, this would just add fuel to the fire. A minute into his speech, screams could be heard in the crowd, which intensified as the disgruntled populace joined in to interrupt Ceaușescu's speech. loud cracks of supposed gunfire could also be heard. Completely dumbfounded, Ceaușescu just stood there and waved his hand.
Ceaușescu tried to regain control of the crowd, but it was already too late. It was clear to him that the people had turned against him. The protests across Bucharest turned into a riot. Ceaușescu retreated to his palace and ordered the military to fire on the demonstrators. His defense minister, Vasile Milea, did not want to do this, so he "committed suicide" under suspicious circumstances the next day. Milea's death caused the military to turn on Ceaușescu, even at the highest level. Milea's replacement, Victor Stănculescu, ordered his soldiers to stand down and to not oppose the rioters. Many defected and joined forces with them as they stormed Ceaușescu's palace.
The Ceaușescus, scared shitless, escaped on their private helicopter along with two senior officials.
Ceaușescu's helicopter had to make numerous stops to avoid being shot down by the rogue Romanian air force. On one of these stops, he leveraged what little power he still had to get the senior officials off of the overcrowded helicopter. This would be one of his last acts. The helicopter made a final stop on the road to Târgoviște, where a doctor offered to drive the couple into the city under false pretenses of safety. The army was informed of this, and they intercepted the couple at an agricultural institute. the couple was taken to the city's military garrison and held for 3 days pending a trial. At the trial, which took place on Christmas day, Ceaușescu's defense attorney told Ceaușescu that his best outcome would be a life sentence, which led Ceaușescu to berate him relentlessly. Not that it would matter, though. The trial, in which Ceaușescu was charged with genocide, was always a foregone conclusion. Guilty. Both Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu received the death sentence and were executed not long afterward.
If any lesson can be learned from Ceaușescu's life, it's that believing too strongly in something can swallow you whole. Whether it be his devotion to his wife or to the teachings of Marx, Ceaușescu took things to such an extreme degree that they were to the detriment of millions. He wanted to build a great power to rival the US and USSR, but all he got in the end was 120 rounds of 7.62x39 dumped into his chest. Also Elena is fat and I would not have sex with her.
BONUS: PHONEBOOK
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