The Romanian How Ceausescu ruled a nation by fear
IN December 2019, just before the United Kingdom would hold a historic Christmas general election, there were celebrations in one part of eastern Europe.
Romania was toasting 30 years since the fall of Communism in their country and the execution of vile dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena.
In 1989, there had been much to contemplate.
The most dramatic symbol of totalitarian tyranny, the Berlin Wall, had fallen dramatically.
The Evil Empire, as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union, was dissolving.
The Soviet satellites were gone: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria all deposed their communist rulers.
Even the Soviet republics were restless, heading out of the Russian-dominated union.
Lithuania was just a couple months away from declaring independence.
Even the ruthless totalitarian state created by Romania’s dictator and dictatress, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, was now gone.
Now the pair would be subjected to justice after 24 years in power.
After a trial lasting less than an hour, they were lined up against an outside correction centre toilet block and shot dead by firing squad.
NICOLAE Ceausescu grew up a member of Romania’s communist youth movement and was arrested and jailed multiple times.
His country passed from a traditional monarchy to a troubled democracy to royal dictatorship to military control to occupied territory.
In World War I, Bucharest had gained territory seized from the collapsing Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires.
But as the Second World War approached, Romania lost those lands.
At first allied with the Nazis, Bucharest switched sides in 1944 but was still dominated by the conquering Soviet Union, which established a communist government.
Shifted
Ceausescu rose within the system, becoming party general secretary in 1965 and president in 1967.
He trended liberal at first, easing strict censorship and denouncing the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. But by 1971, he had shifted back, imposing what he called “Socialist Humanism,” the ultimate oxymoron.
He vied with Albania’s Enver Hoxha to establish the most totalitarian communist state in Europe, while maintaining independence from Moscow.
In fact, Ceausescu became the West’s favourite Communist, despite the devastation that he wreaked on his own people.
His economic policies proved disastrous, destroying his people’s (though not his own) standard of living. Up to 500,000 “orphans”, many of them children taken from parents forced to have them but unable to afford them, were dumped in appalling homes.
By the time the dictator was killed, up to 20,000 had died in Romania’s “children’s homes”.
In some cases, they had even been eaten by rats.
Photos of the surviving kids were beamed around the planet that would, for many across the world, be the defining image of the aftermath of Romania’s 1989 revolution.
Emaciated children clothed in rags, looking into the camera with desperate eyes amid the squalid decay of the country’s orphanages.
The homes had begun to fill up from the late 1960s, when the state decided to battle a demographic crisis by banning abortion and removing contraception from sale.
Many of those in the orphanages were not actually orphans, but those whose parents felt they could not cope financially with raising a child.
The most horrific abuse took place in homes for disabled children, who were taken away from their families and totally institutionalised.
At the age of three, disabled children would be sorted by hospital commissions into three categories: the so-called “curable”, the “partially curable” and the “incurable”.
The children who were sorted into the third category, some of whom had minor or no disabilities, were to be subjected to particularly brutal conditions.
Personality
But Ceausescu, who was operating in a world before the internet and social media, had established a cult of personality rare in the European communist states.
Among his titles were “Leader” and “Genius of the Carpathians”.
His wife, Elena, who pretended to be a learned scientist, filled a high-profile political role, along with his son Nicu, expected to become his successor.
The despicable family demonstrated its unique greed on a state visit to France in 1978, when the Ceausescus looted their quarters at the elite Elysee Palace, behaving like “burglars”, complained
his criticism of the regime but expanded their protests to target Ceausescu.
On the 17th, security forces began firing on demonstrators. Scores died, hundreds were wounded, and news of the atrocities spread across the country.
To reassert control, the arrogant yet clueless Ceausescu called a large rally in Bucharest on the 21st touted as a
“spontaneous movement of support” for him.
He began his usual harangue to the seemingly docile crowd, who were holding signs and pictures of him and Elena.
Then the unthinkable happened. People started jeering and shouted him down.
His face registered shock as he sought to quiet the crowd by waving his right hand and shouting: “Keep calm!”
But he eventually fled the balcony he was preaching from, taking refuge in what was the Communist Party Central Committee HQ.
That night, security forces battled people on the streets of Bucharest. The next day protests had spread across the country.
Ceausescu sought to address the gathered crowds again, only to be met by a barrage of stones and other objects.
The Ceausescus then fled by helicopter from the building’s roof as crowds broke into it.
The fugitive couple left the capital behind but were captured on the run later that day.
Demonstrators were “overwhelmed by joy” as the regime at last disintegrated.
Confusing
The secret police, or Securitate, sought to regain control. But then the army turned on the Ceausescus and battled them, too.
Whether the fight was an unscripted revolution or orchestrated by other communist party leaders determined to take power remains unclear.
Nearly 1,000 people died and more than 2,100 were injured in the confusing battles that continued for days across Romania.
But Ceausescu’s time in power had ended.
On Christmas Day Nicolae, 71, and Elena, 73, faced a court-martial, captured on videotape.
In a 55-minute trial, they were found guilty of the genocide of 60,000, subverting state power, destroying public property, undermining the national economy, and attempting to flee Romania with public funds.
The end result was preordained. General Victor Stanculescu had already chosen the execution squad and location to carry out the sentence.
The prisoners were bound, with Elena shouting “shame” and claiming that she had raised the soldiers like their mother.
Bullets
Hundreds of soldiers volunteered for the duty. One officer said: “Everyone wanted to shoot.”
Those chosen didn’t wait for orders to fire couple were hit by 120 bullets.
The show trial was “quite shameful, but necessary,” said one commentator.
General Stanculescu similarly said the trial was “not just, but it was necessary” to avoid a public lynching.
Or, as many feared and the Ceausescus hoped, rescue by the secret police.
For the first time in decades, Romanians were able to celebrate Christmas, and had something to celebrate.
An awful, disastrous, tyrannical reign had come to an end.
The children in the orphanages could now detect a glimmer of hope in their futures.
More than 30 years have passed since then, but it is important never to forget the evil that men and women can commit.
And how humanity’s worst tendencies are exacerbated by power, and of tyrants.