Romania during Nicolae Ceaușescu' s dictatorship

Student: Tomescu Elena-Diana

I live in a country where the remnants of communism, unfortunately, have not yet faded, and
even revived as some spectators who take a new look and a different name.
Before I decided to write my essay about Romania during the communist period I did not
know much about the one who was Nicolae Ceausescu. I made this essay of the desire to find out
how a regime looks like - a regime that cultivates power for power, the absolute power, whose
only purpose is the endless consolidation of power, the power as a narcotic that marks not only
the dictator himself, but also those in around him and even the whole society, every citizen who,
from childhood, was accustomed to living in some sort of slavery.
The historical road to democracy coincides with the liberation of the long tradition of
arbitrary leaders, the liberation obtained through three radical changes: the control of arbitrary
leaders, the substitution of the rules of arbitrariness through fair and rational rules and the
involvement of the population in the establishment of the new rules.
Political power represents, in all its variants, a fundamental mechanism of social inequality.
The historical asymmetry of these variants is conceptualized in the antagonism of democracy-
dictatorship. Any political power tends towards personification, but any personified power does
not become a personal power. The transformation of personified power into personal power is
the basis of dictatorships. In the political landscape of Europe at the end of the twentieth century,
the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu is an extreme case of personal power.

A brief presentation of Ceausescu's political rise

After spending several years in prison for his political activities, Nicolae Ceausescu ascended
the hierarchy of the Romanian Communist Party being helped by Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej.
After the death of Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej (1963), in Romania a new era began - the Ceausescu
era. While Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania, the communist regime could be identified with
Ceausescu.
Between 1936 and 1955, Ceausescu occupied several positions in the Communist Youth
Union.
After becoming First Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) in March 1965,
Nicolae Ceausescu was continuously expanding his attributions, so that in 1974 he also served as
President of the Socialist Republic of Romania.
Ceausescu was favored in 1965 because he was the product of the regime installed in
Romania in 1947.
Since 1974, the domestic political situation has changed. A presidential regime based on the
cult of personality "The Leader" was created. In other words, starting with this year, the political
regime was personalized itself. Ceausescu's wife, Elena Ceausescu, three brothers, a son and a
brother-in-law occupied key posts in the state apparatus. Ceausescu wanted absolute control.
The cult of personality was manifested as follows:
  The native village, Scornicesti, became a place of pilgrimage and legend;
 The head of the state was celebrated for his science and competence (he writes books,
makes research);
 Ceausescu became a member of the Academy of Social and Political Science;
 Memorials dedicated to the president were written;
 Elena Ceausescu, his wife, became "doctor" in chemical sciences, scientist, author of
books published in many languages, member of the Academy of the Socialist Republic
of Romania;
 Ceausescu's children , Nicu and Zoe, published books.

The development of Romania during Ceausescu's leadership

Ceausescu's internal politics justified the sense of optimism in Dej's time. Ceausescu
continued rapid industrialization. At the 9th Congress of the RCP, Ceausescu, under the slogan
"Everything for industrialization", said that the country had to move from the state of agrarian
society to the state of joint, agrarian-industrial society.
During the time he led the country, Nicolae Ceausescu managed to carry out a different
policy from the other communist countries, managing to maintain trade relations with the
Communist bloc states as well as those from the West. The reason why he was left by the Soviet
Union to do so was the fact that Romania did not bind directly with the Western states and was
not considered vital in the case of an attack by the Western powers.
After Romania's strong industrialization in the 1950s and 1960s, Romania needed large
quantities of raw materials and markets for its products.
As Romanian products were not competitive on Western markets, Ceausescu developed close
relationships with less developed countries to provide the necessary raw material and markets for
Romanian products.
During this period Romania has developed close economic relations with countries in Africa,
Asia and the Middle East. One of Romania's most important economic partners was Libya,
which provided the bulk of oil imported by our country. Romania provided technology and aid
for the installation and operation of these technologies in exchange for raw materials.
The single party remained the supreme court, but its structures have changed. A new
Constitution was adopted in 1965.
The grandiose economic initiatives aimed at raising the living standards in Romania.
Apparently, industrialization brings good fortune, but negative results are seen over a few years.
The rapid industrialization and the development of the steel industry and petrochemicals industry
occupied the workforce, urbanized localities, raised the standard of living.
Industrialization was not a bad thing in itself, it has created explosive economic growth since
the late 1960s and almost throughout the 1970s, and has been based on investment, resource
import, export of finished goods and technology transfers . Most likely, Ion Gheorghe-Maurer
was the artisan of this development plan, but Ceausescu's merits had not to be minimized at this
stage, although he was uneducated (he only had four classes and a boys apprenticeship school),
he was still capable to understand difficult economic concepts such as balance of payments,
labor productivity.
Between 1965 and 1989 Romania became relatively economically independent from the
Soviet Union.
By 1980, Romania had one of the highest capital accumulation rates in the world.
Romania was one of the world's largest producers of finished petroleum products, steel,
locomotives, airplanes and oil installations, with industrial production in 1970 being 100 times
higher than in 1945.
Many projects have been developed during this period, such as the Iron Gates I and II Hydro
Power Plants, the Danube-Black Sea Canal, over 100 hydroelectric plants, many refineries and
ore processing plants, the Cernavoda nuclear power plant project, Bucharest metro and many
more. Many projects of this period were carried out with the help of "volunteers" who were
ousted to work for the benefit of the community. The army, pupils, students and teachers were
most often used as "volunteers."
Much of the production was not suitable for export, and although Romania was the largest
cereal producer in Eastern Europe, because of communism's collectivization and communist
mentality, agriculture was far underweight.
The 1980s were the heaviest years for Romania's population. Nicolae Ceausescu became
obsessed with paying off Romania's foreign debt and thus set up a series of austerity measures
such as:
 increased exports to the detriment of the population;
 reduced imports;
 rationalized basic foods (this was due to the fact that "scientists" at that time considered
that Romanians eat too much and that for a healthy life they have to follow the "advice
and diet" of RCP (Romanian Communist Party);
 fuel, electricity and heat were rationally based.
 the population was controlled and intimidated by the Security system who recorded the
telephone conversations and followed any movement of the population through the vast
network of informants (one in three Romanians was believed to have been an informant).
During this period Romania was considered the country with the lowest living standard in
Europe after Albania.
After almost 10 years of torture, Romania managed to pay its external debt and in 1989
Ceausescu announced that Romania no longer has debts to other countries.

Orientation and reorientation of culture

The period of cultural opening and political liberalization

It was the period of relative liberalization, which had beneficial effects on the cultural
environment, between 1964 and 1974. It was the period in which the national wonders of culture
were rediscovered and revalued, in which the intellectual contacts with the Western world
resumed; art and cultural activities claimed and obtained relative autonomy from the official
policy directives, directives that also knew a relaxation phase, and ideological censorship became
more permissive. The plastic arts, theater, cinema, literature and cultural press knew a substance
renewal, stylistic diversification and performance achievements.
The peak of this period was reached in 1968 when Romania refused to participate in the
invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Treaty troops. Nicolae Ceausescu s leadind position
strengthened the adhesion of the population and intellectuals. Especially since the regime
encouraged an open critique of Stalinist dogmatism and repressive practices in the "decade
obsessive" (1950s). Lucretiu Patrascanu, the victim of terror in the 1950s, was rehabilitated. A
number of writers and thinkers who were previously banned or marginalized (Arghezi, Blaga,
Goga, Voiculescu) were rehabilitated.
The ideological distance from the canons of proletculism and of "socialist realism" favored
the emergence of a new artistic generation that would be imposed with performance
achievements in all fields, from poetry, novel, criticism and dramaturgy to music, film, theater,
painting and sculpture. It was the period when, together with Zaharia Stancu, Geo Bogza, Marin
Preda and Eugen Barbu, after Nicolae Labis (died in 1956), the generation of Nichita Stanescu,
Marin Sorescu, Ion Alexandru, Nicolae Breban, D. R. Popescu, George Balaita, Augustin
Buzura, Adrian Paunescu, Ana Blandiana, Theodor Mazilu. In the plastic arts and in the theater
movement, in the music and cinematography appeared valuable works, the new literary formulas
were assimilated, the literary critique acquired a solid theoretical foundation, radically renewed
its language, approaches, style, the scale of values was restored according to aesthetic criteria,
aberrant mistakes and errors in the years of proletculation were eliminated. In general, there was
a diversification of the cultural field, groups that promoted certain styles, magazines that were
individualized by promoting aesthetic directions and programs, some intellectuals, escaped from
prison, publishing in magazines, some were gradually integrated into education or research. In
the main county centers there were cultural magazines that showed a new generation of
intellectuals, detached from Marxist dogmatism, with reference to contemporary theoretical
models.
This new political orientation also had a beneficial effect on the process of restitution of
cultural heritage. A special revival was visible in historical disciplines, which rectified past
errors and rehabilitated scientific approaches with added documentation. The classical and
modern writers were rehabilitated, a great action of "critical valorization of the cultural heritage"
was initiated, which, with all its limitations, was a beginning for the printing of fundamental
works of Romanian thinkers. The action of capitalizing on the cultural inheritance, although
limited and ideologically supervised, had made it possible to bring into the topicality and the
public circuit personalities of the national culture, the great thinking systems and their
problematic substance.

The redefine period and the cultural dissent

After 1971, the communist regime manifested an increasing tendency of redefining the
cultural environment and tighten censorship. The political regime was gradually evolving
towards a restoration, by imposing an "ideological line" on the culture and cult of the personality
of the dictator Ceausescu. The effect of this ideological quotient was contradictory on a cultural
level. Now there was also a reaction, diffused at first, by the opposition to the policy of the
regime. More and more frequent forms of social and intellectual protest occurred.
Cultural environments now had consolidated structures, independent of political ones, and
the positions acquired by a number of personalities and some publications in the previous period
were encouraging some acts of individual dissent that would amplify in the 1980s. But cultural
environments were divided by different theoretical and ideological engagements, including
different attitudes to cultural tradition; the themes and disputes of the interwar period were
resumed.
Literature revealed the aberrations of the communist system, but in a symbolic, allusive and
"esoic" language, in order to be able to pass through censorship. In social and intellectual
environments a codified language was developed through which people expressed their aversion
to the regime; was the age of double language, of duplicate conduct, as survival strategies and
symbolic opposition.
It was the period when censorship was getting tighter, magazines and publishing houses were
once again strictly controlled, the information circuit was supervised, and in the 1980s, citizens
who had had writing machines were regularly required to register them with the militia; the
television cut down its schedule two hours a day, in which only programs were broadcast in
which the dictator's despicable cult was made. Although propaganda intensified, it was no longer
effective, the regime was no longer believed, and the cultural world opposed various forms of
resistance, passive or manifested. Under these conditions, double language, "key" literature, and
duplicate conduct in the culture space had developed.
In order to legitimize the dictatorship, the Ceausescu regime resorted to a great action of
exaltation of the national idea, trying to attach to this nationalist policy and sectors of artistic
creation. In fact, under these practices, which disfigured history and transformed the national
idea into a propaganda theme, a cult of the dictator's personality was promoted, a cult that had
become suffocating and caricatured.
Although those who did not like the official propaganda had difficulty publishing, a number
of intellectuals refused to compromise, did not give up the aesthetic and moral attire, retreated to
the cultural space, building valuable works. This attitude was later called "resistance through
culture." Some groups had isolated themselves and had worked extensively in the sphere of
major cultural disciplines or concerns, such as the group around Constantin Noica from Paltinis.
At the same time, in the intellectual media, Opposition actions against the regime (the movement
initiated by Paul Goma in 1977), some creators (artists, directors, performers, actors) chose the
way of exile, some writers and intellectuals (Mihai Botez, Dorin Tudoran, Dan Petrescu, Doina
Cornea) had been publicly denounced by human rights violations and freedom of speech.
Towards the end of the 1970s, due to the cult of personality, culture knew a new orientation,
being a field planned, coordinated and controlled by the Communist Party. Thus, the
historiography was liquidated, as well as the Academy as a research institution, many important
institutions were despoiled (The Institute of Mathematics - 1975, The Historical Monuments
Committee - 1977, The Institute of Pedagogy - 1982). Theoretical, social and human disciplines
are eliminated from schools.
Through everything that had happened, the thread of cultural continuity has been interrupted
by violent political action. In culture, it was important to build solidly through continuity.
Romania had lived an era of effective "demolition" of national culture under the motto of
proletarian internationalism. The demolition of the epoch is also illustrated by the intention of
"culturists", zealous activists of the Communist Party, to physically demolish the Endless
Column, built by Brancusi in Targu Jiu. It was the era in which the great authors were put on the
index, forbidden to read, so some students from the faculty of philosophy were jailed for reading
Kant.

Rational feeding

The rational food program was aimed at reducing state spending to pay for external debt.
The "scientific" nutritional plan of the 1980s was not a novelty within the Romanian communist
regime. Rational eating rules based on age, gender, profession, energy consumption,
physiological status were developed since 1964.
The program implemented in the 1980s was seen by the Communist regime as a necessity of
the moment, because the old rules were considered scientifically outdated. In order to achieve
this goal, the state leadership turned to healthcare professionals (nutrition specialists, metabolic
diseases), persons from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry. Communist press, but
also trade unions and other mass, political or public organizations were involved. Basically, for a
rational nutrition of society, the Communist state has set in motion a huge apparatus of
elaboration, propaganda and implementation of the program that wanted to correspond to the
"new realities". The stated purpose was to improve the health of the population. But everything
was related to the current economic situation. If the official statistics spoke of general and
constant economic progress, the reality was that of an economy stifled by the ambition to pay
Nicolae Ceausescu's external debts and megalomanic and costly projects.
In 1976, the Minister of Health, Nicolae Nicolaescu, proposed a specialized committee to
develop rational nutrition rules. The head of this committee was Professor Iulian Mincu, Head of
Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases Department at MFI Bucharest, director of the Nutrition and
Metabolic Diseases Center. After the elaboration of the norms, their validation was done with the
consent of the Council of Ministers, on the basis of the opinions of the central synthesis bodies to
assess the possible economic implications. Being a large-scale national project with multiple
implications in various institutional areas, approval by the Grand National Assembly and
publication in the Official Bulletin of the "Program" was done only in 1984. "The Scientific
Supply Program of the Population" led to a shortage generalized and suffering of the population.
Regarding the cartelization of food, there were small variations from one area of the country
to another, but the common denominator was their acute lack. The card, insufficient in itself by
the quantities written on it, did not assure anyone that those products could be purchased.
Depending on geographic areas and the political context of the moment, rations could be more
draconian. The population had developed an underground economy where personal relations,
exchanges in nature and various subterfuges for survival were the first. The queue' phenomenon
had become, in turn, a common good of the people, the whole of the social life being practiced
around the food obsession.
Following massive industrialization, foreign debt had increased. External debt payments had
been made by reducing food imports, by doing food exports and other austerity measures. As
soon as the cards are introduced, the flour, the bread, the sugar, the milk, the oil and the meat
were rationalized. Personal monthly rates fell backward. Restrictions were also imposed on the
consumption of electricity, water, heat, natural gases and gasoline. For example, hot water was
one day a week, and the maximum temperature was 14 degrees Celsius.

The collapse

The last four and a half years of the dictatorship-that was, the period that began with the
takeover of power in the Kremlin by Mihail Gorbachev on March 11, 1985, and ended on
December 22, 1989, when Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu embarked on the helicopter that took
them out of Bucharest - was the story of the total crash of the Carpathian Genius system. All the
negative tendencies that had occurred earlier and which in previous years had come to life in
other countries developed further, reaching forms that frightened the absurd. The
maneuverability of the system and the efficiency of leadership, both at the top of the hierarchy -
where the leader's age was more and more felt - and at its base, where the upper orders were
often sabotaged by those who, when it came to responsibility, were washed in their hands. As a
result, the decision-making process not only continued indefinitely, but it was more and more
difficult to assess objectively whether the orders of the leadership had been correctly applied, or
that the performers were only confined to making an optimistic report. Mutual misinformation of
officials at all levels of the hierarchy reached such values that no one was able to give a correct
diagnosis of the country's situation.
The new ruler of the Soviet Union was renowned as the reformer. Nicolae Ceausescu, who
until then was considered a partner, though uncertain, under the Warsaw Treaty, did not
correspond to the image of communism built by the new Kremlin team. Perestroika was to be
launched by Gorbachev soon, and if it could be applied, it should have led to the elimination of
the most stubborn leaders: Ceauşescu, Jivkov, Husák and Honecker. The only way to reach a
compromise was to remove these activists.
From a chronological point of view, in 1985-1989, Romania can be divided into two stages:
the death of the regime and the revolution. The first lasted until the end of the 14th Congress of
the Romanian Communist Party in November 1989. The last chance to remove Ceausescu from
his leadership positions was then given up. An important crunch was also the fall of 1987, when
Ceausescu admitted that his position was threatened and changed the head of the Security
System. On 3 October, this function was left by the activist, Tudor Postelnicu, to be taken over
by Iulian Vlad, as some of his subordinates later stated: "the only professional Romanian who
has been at the forefront of Eugen Cristescu's intelligence and counterinformation apparatus" (C.
Troncotă, Duplicitarii ..., p. 156; Eugen Cristescu was the head of the Special Intelligence
Service during Marshal Ion Antonescu). In the following month, there was the rebellion of the
workers in Brasov, which, however, did not activate but a few opponents and dissidents.
From March 1985 to October 1987, we can therefore speak of a stagnation and a slow death of
the system, followed by the confrontation - hidden by the eyes of the population - with the anti-
communist opposition primarily in the party and state apparatus.
The second stage is the events of December 1989, in relation to which even today we have
not reached a generally accepted point: it was a revolution, a riot within the leading team or a
foreign diversion. The term "revolution" does not represent a position in favor of none of the
three options but only considers a certain feature of the December disturbances. This stage ended
with the Nicolae Ceausescu era, on December 22, 1989, 12.06, when the dictatorial couple
ascended aboard the helicopter and headed for Snagov. From that moment on, the dictator
became de facto an army hostage - in other words, its chief, General Victor Atanasie
Stanculescu. Everything that happened next, including the farce of the trial and the execution of
Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu on December 25, is just a simple epilogue.
Ceausescu's removal was inevitable because of the very strong external and internal pressure.
External pressure manifests itself in various ways, including through agency activities - it is the
moment of foreign diversion. In the context of the collapse of the communist system in Europe,
the system existing until then in Romania became impossible to save. But it is not certain that the
new authorities that emerged in December 1989 were aware of this. A part of the leadership team
was aware of the inevitability of some changes, and struggled to prepare their arrival better. The
statement is also valid in relation to some of the lower level officials. Among the members of the
higher nomenclature, there were at least two groups opposing Ceausescu, but who did not fully
collaborate with each other: the "Letters of the Six" signatories and those headed by Ion Iliescu.
The person who linked the two camps was Silviu Brucan.
The mainstream of leadership, represented by Ceausescu and his closest collaborators, was
convinced that the problems that had arisen were transitory and that nothing could break the
dictatorship. Such a state of affairs was, among other things, the consequence of automatisation
in relation to the real situation in the country and the world.
With the exception of a few small groups across the country, the population remained passive
throughout the revolution. In the case of a paralyzed state and a passive population, the initiative
was taken over by a handful of enthusiasts among whom there were no missing persons who
could not be identified later, which is the basis of the thesis on inspiration from outside. They
just caused the first crises in Iasi and Timisoara. This is the moment when the outside
intervention overlaps with the popular revolution.
The history of Ceausescu's fall can be staged quite easily if we are able to distinguish certain
events in the course of events with a decisive character for the fate of the regime established by
him. Since the post of Secretary General of the CPSU(Communist Party of the Soviet Union) has
been taken over by Mihail Gorbachev, a trial has started that has led to the removal and
liquidation of the Romanian dictator. The main purpose of Soviet policy was the introduction of
perestroika in the entire socialist bloc, which required the change of rulers until then. The
Socialist Republic of Romania’ leadership could only react by rejecting the situation, because it
was too weak to create a new reality. The only serious attempt of such an action - the message to
the "fraternal" parties of 19 August 1989 - ended in a compromise. Here are the successive stages
of the fall of the dictatorship:

 March 1985 - May 1987: During this period, the Soviet leaders especially strived to
persuade Ceausescu to introduce perestroika into the Socialist Republic of Romania. This
would necessarily suppose his replacement from the leadership, but it all seems to
indicate that the Soviet Union's representatives were trying at that moment to solve this
problem peacefully through concessions and negotiations. At the upper level of the
Romanian nomenclature circulated different versions in relation to the eventually at that
time. This stage ends with Gorbachev's visit to Romania. The Soviet leader convinced
himself that he had no discussion partners here.
 June-November 1987: After Gorbachev's unsuccessful visit, everyone was convinced that
a confrontation had become inevitable. Ceausescu made significant changes to cadres, of
which the most important was the passing of Security Department into the subordinate of
Iulian Vlad. This stage ends with the revolt of the workers in Brasov.
 November 1987 - November 1989: The protest in Brasov brought back into action
opponents and dissidents in the party, also provoking an increase of the interest of the
international public opinion towards the events in Romania. Despite the insurgency of
some people, a party capable of carrying out a coup d'etat could not appear inside the
party. At the beginning of December 1989 it was clear that there would be bloodshed.
 December 14-22, 1989: The Revolution, often defined as "December events" because of
disagreement over its causes and deployment.

Instead of closing…

The mark that Ceausescu imparted in the history of this country is not only due to an
interference between the length of his regime and the extent to which he has assigned all the
levers of power. It is also due to the character's originality. To understand the originality of the
character, consider the following:
 Ceausescu was the only one who did not acquire the supreme position in a crisis
situation, as in other Stalinist states;
 He did not get this function by removing its predecessor;
 He did not get his appointment to the Kremlin's recommendation;
 He established his own cult not to impose his legitimacy;
 He enjoyed the sympathy of the West;
 Ceausescu faces the Soviet Union opposed to the social model the Kremlin wanted to
impose.
Ceausescu's negative originality is due to three Stalinist tendencies: forced industrialization
fueled by the restriction of consumption; the refusal of all reforms except the ideological one and
the change of balance through the passage of power from the Communist Party to the Secrecy
Police. These Stalinist tendencies were personalized by Ceausescu.
Ceausescu remains alone among his counterparts not only through what he did during his life
but also through his death. None of the Stalinist leaders removed from power in 1989 lost at the
same time his power and his life, too
Ceausescu's vocation for excess is found in his political and human destiny, which unites his
moment of glory in August 1968 with his bloody ending in December 1989. His originality is
present in each of these two moments, but rather in their articulation. He remains the only
Stalinist leader who manages to build an authentic political legitimacy.

Bibliography

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Polirom Publishing House, 2011;
Doina, Barcan,Bogdan, Sterpu, Communist Regime in Romania, European Institute, 2003;
Ion, Coja, The Truth About Communism in Romania, fragment from The Decalogue of the
Nationalist Jun, 30 October 2015;
Liviu, Chelcea, Puiu, Latea, Deep Romania in Communism, Nemira Publishing House, 2000;
Pavel, Campeanu, Ceausescu, years of inverse count, Polirom Publishing House, 2002;
Thomas, Kunze, Nicolae Ceausescu – a biography, Vremea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002;
ro.nccmn.wikia.com/wiki/Economia_României_comuniste;
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