Nicolae Andruţă Ceauşescu was a Rumanian statesman , born the January 26th 1918 with Scorniceşti, dead the December 25th 1989 with Târgovişte.
Youth
It leaves its family and settles with Bucharest in 1929 at 11 years. Apprentice Shoe-maker, it is quickly " known services of police". The official story wants that it adhered to the Communist party of Romania as of 1932, that it was stopped the following year for seditious activities during a strike, then again in 1934 to have collected signatures for a petition against a lawsuit made with railwaymen, and still in 1936 for antifascists activities. Its card of police force presented of 1972 to 1989 in all the museums of history of Romania, contained the following appreciations: “dangerous communist agitator” and “activist of communist propaganda and antifascist”. But after 1989, several biographies indicate that it would have been stopped for businesses of common right, and that it is in the Prison of Doftana that it would have known Communists and that it would have joined them, in 1937 or 38, in any case before Fascism does not seize the power.
In 1939, it becomes acquainted with Elena Petrescu, which becomes his wife in 1946 and which will know the same rise and the same final fall. Its influence and its role grow with the years.
In 1940, new arrest and new imprisonment: this time its membership of the P.C.R. is certain. In 1943, it is transferred to the camp from internment from Târgu Jiu, where it becomes acquainted with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, from which it becomes protected.
Rise towards the capacity
At the end of the Second world war, whereas the Romania falls into the Soviet area of influence , he becomes secretary of the union of Communist youths (1944-1945).
In 1947, after the seizure of power by the Communist S and the abolition of the Monarchy, he becomes successively Minister for agriculture, then deputy secretary with the armed forces under the cane of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.
In 1952, a few months after the party had been purged of its Stalinist faction directed by Anna Pauker, it is named at the central committee of the Communist party.
In 1954, it is promoted at the political office and its influence increases until making of him the “number two” of the party.
Exercise of the capacity
The successor of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to the report heading
In March 1965, three days after the death of Gheorghiu-Dej, it is co-opted like first secretary of the Parti the workers of Romania. One of its first decisions is to rename the party in Rumanian Communist party and to declare that its country, rather than a “popular republic”, will be from now on the “socialist Republic of Romania”.In 1967, it consolidates its position while being made elect, moreover, as president of the Council of State.
Its popularity in the European mediums of left is then rather important, because of its independent policy, with regard to the Soviet leaders. While formally remaining member of the Warsaw Pact, Romania ceases taking part in all military operations of alliance, and Ceauşescu goes until condemning the invasion of the Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Pact in 1968, invasion consecutive with the Printemps of Prague. The same year, it receives the visit of the Général de Gaulle, from May 14th to 19th.
The worship of the personality
Like the majority of the dictators, Ceauşescu institutes in his favor a omnipresent Culte of the personality, being made indicate under the titles of Conducător (which corresponds in French to guide , in German with führer , in Italian with duce …) and even of “ geniul DIN Carpaţi ” (literally: genius of Carpates), or while being made manufacture a Sceptre like a king. Besides the Rumanian historiography of the communist time compared it regularly with the large national heroes of the past.These excesses led the painter El Salvador Dalí to send a telegram of congratulations to the conducător . There the daily newspaper of the Communist party Scînteia , without perceiving the irony of the step of the surrealist painter, published the text of the message in its columns, believing to see a testimony of the universal glory of the Rumanian leader.
The Nepotism, usual in many autocratic modes, is also a characteristic of the time Ceauşescu, his wife Elena, allegedly enquiring high level academic, so being promoted with ministerial functions, while other members of their respective families see themselves granting multiple material advantages and honorary.
In 1974, Ceauşescu adds to its harvest of official titles that of president of the Republic. It continues to play on the international scene a part savagely independent of that of the Soviet “big brother”, giving for example its downstream to the participation of Romania in the Olympic Games of summer of 1984 in Los Angeles, which are however boycotted by the vast majority of the countries of the Eastern bloc.
The characteristic of the international relations of Romania under Ceauşescu
Romania is the first of the Eastern European countries to maintain the official relations with the European Economic community: an agreement including Romania in the system of generalized preferences of the Community is signed in 1974 and another, on the industrial products, in 1980. However, Ceauşescu refuses to implement the least reform of liberal inspiration . According to in that the position of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, it is obstinately held with a Stalinist vision , which explains the policy of independence with regard to the Soviet leaders, as the Déstalinisation among members of the Warsaw Pact progresses. Ceauşescu even maintains increases the seizure of the Securitate on freedom of speech in the media, and does not tolerate any internal opposition, even tiniest.
The transformation of the mode
The mode of Ceauşescu underwent a particular evolution. At the time of his accession to the capacity in 1965, the Rumanian leader follows a policy which contrasts with that of its Gheorghiu-Dej predecessor: a modest liberalization starts in the political arena whereas the nepotism and the clientelism are phenomena much less present than later on. The economic results are undeniable and the diplomatic relationship with western powers supports an international climate less tended. However, the mode changes gradually to leave room to an autocracy more and more prégnante. The beginning of the year 1970 can be regarded as the turning of the mode.In 1971, Ceauşescu goes in official visit in Popular republic of China then in North Korea. It expresses a great interest for the idea of the total national transformation as developed in the political program of the Parti the Korean workmen or such as the China during the Cultural revolution had implemented. Shortly after its return in Romania, it starts to imitate the dictatorship North-Korean, influenced by the “philosophy of Perches” of the president Kim It-sung, translating into Rumanian, and widely to distribute in the country, various dedicated works with Perches and the ideological creation of the worked Rumanian New man at the same time by Communism and the national heritage.
Systematization
In 1972, Ceauşescu institutes a program of Systématisation , inspired of the writings of Engels on the reduction of the differences city-countryside. Conceived like a manner of building a socialist company multilatéralement developed , this ambitious policy results by many upheavals in all Romania, and in particular in the systematic demolition of many villages, with displacement of the population in urban small structures, often without same awaiting the completion of the construction schedules.Systematization is most visible with Bucharest even, where a good fifth of the old city is shaven to be rebuilt according to its sights. Many historical treasures and classified buildings disappear thus, the Earthquake of 1977 serving as a pretext for their demolition for " vétusté". A palate of the people , second building in the world by its surface after the Pentagon, is thus built instead of an old district of Bucharest.
In spite of the totalitarian mode , the independent foreign politics with respect to the Soviet Union arouses the interest of the western powers. Ceauşescu secures many loans of the Western financial institutions, ready supposed to finance development programs economic, but which unbalance finances of the country seriously. In the years 1980, Ceauşescu orders the export of most of the productions industrial and agricultural, in order to refund the debts of the country. What was not until there that current shortages in the modes of the Eastern European countries, for many Rumanian is transformed into a daily combat for survival.
Reinforcement of a nationalism of frontage
The identity symbolic system of national order occupies a strategic place in the mode of Conducator: it makes it possible to legitimate the capacity by being pressed on historical characters like Etienne Large the, medieval prince of Moldavie, Burebista, king of the Daces, or Alexandre Ier the Good, prince medieval of Valachie, without forgetting the famous Vlad III Empaleur, prince medieval of Valachie, which gave to Bram Stoker the pretext of the myth of Dracula.
Ceauşescu evokes even the origins daces population of the Romania to regulate the problem of the Hungarian of Transylvania, source of tension with the close Hungary. This nationalism of frontage is reinforced as from 1977 whereas the economic crisis is profiled at the horizon and that the mode is pressurized. But actually, the valorization of the Rumanian identity by Conducator is made only festivals, speech - rivers on the history of the country or of commemorations like the 2050ème birthday of the first state dace allegedly " centralisé" in 1980, whereas on the ground, the cultural heritage, architectural or landscape of the nation, with its Rumanian specificities, is ransacked. Hundreds of localities see their historical centres demolished and replaced by " blocks" out of concrete functional, as one can see some anywhere around the world. The rural traditions are reduced to folklore for weddings or tourists. Literature, artistic creation, history: all is censured, caricatured, reinterpreted. Certain cities are seen joining their ancient name with their current name: Cluj-Napoca, Drobeta-Turnu-Severin (imagine: Paris-Lutetia) whereas in addition many communes had been private their names of origin to the profit of names such as " 23 august" , " 6 martie" or " Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej" , or their deformed names of origin had seen (" Tatanir" instead of " Tatomiresti" …).
Xenophobe, the nationalism of Ceauşescu opposed the minorities and was wary of the foreign influences.
Decline
The industrial relations policy implemented by Ceauşescu contributed to worsen a relatively precarious situation. Obnubilated by a will to increase the manpower of the Rumanian population, Ceauşescu launched out in a policy constraining natalist, prohibiting in 1966 by the decree 770, as well the Avortement as the Contraception and imposing of severe restrictions on the methods of the Divorce. The population increased indeed, but at the price of the abandonment of thousands of children by their families unable to provide for their needs and placed in orphanages of State, badly managed and where prevailed an elevated infant mortality due to the chronic lacks of care and drugs. Ceauşescu “was also distinguished” while refusing to recognize the existence of patients of the AIDS within the Rumanian population, by prohibiting the screening tests before the collections of blood, and while letting use, at the time of blood transfusions made on orphans, not sterilized needles, thus causing a strong contamination of the orphan children by the virus.
Fall of the mode of Ceauşescu
In 1978, the general lieutenant Ion Mihai Pacepa, veteran of the Securitate (Rumanian secret services), made defection and took refuge with the the United States, carrying a severe blow with the mode, constraining Ceauşescu to re-examine all the “architecture” of Securitate. In 1986, Pacepa was to reveal, in its book Red Horizons: Chronicles off has Communist Spy Chief , various details on the mode of Ceauşescu, such its collaboration with Arab terrorists, its companies of industrial espionage to the United States and its efforts constant and worked out to obtain the support of the Western countries.
The mode of Ceauşescu crumbled after having ordered with the armed forces and Securitate to open fire on the demonstrators anticommunists in the town of Timişoara the December 17th 1989. The demonstrations made following the attempt at expulsion, by the mode, of Hungarian Pasteur László Tőkés, the rebellion which was propagated in Bucharest, probably urged on by the decision not very convenient of Ceauşescu to organize there the December 21st 1989 a gathering of mass, supposed to confirm the popular support for the mode. The demonstration, diffused on line on television, was transformed into a massive demonstration of protest against the mode. Eight minutes after the beginning of the speech of Ceauşescu crowd shouts “Timişoara” and Ceauşescu stops its speech with concern whereas the televised transmission is cut. The following day the demonstrators invade the building of the Central committee where Ceauşescu chaired a meeting. Those join a helicopter on the roof of the building to flee with two advisers and three men of crew with an aim of joining a palate of province and of reconstituting the forces still faithful to the mode. The demonstrators then attack the public television channel and at 13:00 manage to take control of it. The armed forces fraternized spontaneously with the demonstrators.
According to the later official version, Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu escaped in the helicopter, allegedly by taking as an hostage his pilot, threatened using a firearm. Because of lack of fuel, the pilot posed the helicopter in the countryside, near the buildings of a farm. An erratic escape of the presidential couple would have been followed from there, during which it would in particular have been taken drives out some by insurgent citizens trying to stop them, before managing to find a respite of short duration in a school. They would finally have been retained prisoners during several hours in a police car, the police officers remaining in the expectancy and listening to the radio to guess in which direction the wind was going to turn, before being delivered to the armed forces.
According to other assumptions, the Stanculescu general would have work for foreign powers (the CIA and the KGB wanting both to get rid of the leader) and the diversion of the presidential helicopter would not be due randomly.
The December 25th 1989, following 55 minutes an expeditious lawsuit returned by a car-proclaimed court (a martial Court of kindness), joined together in secrecy in a school of Târgovişte to 50 km of Bucharest, Nicolae Ceauşescu and Elena Petrescu, culprits of Genocide, were condemned to died and at once shot in the military base of Târgovişte.
The evening even the images of the bodies carried out of the Ceauşescu couple are diffused on television. One notices on this occasion that the wounds of the 2 bodies to the head do not correspond to the impacts of balls of the wall behind them, located rather at the level of the hips. The corpses will be buried in a cemetery of Bucharest in a tomb without name.
Of all the Eastern European countries having reversed the Communist regime after the fall of the Berlin Wall during the autumn and the winter 1989 - 1990, Romania was the only one where this metamorphosis was done in blood: 1.104 dead (of which in Bucharest 564, Timişoara 93, Sibiu 90, Braşov 66, Cluj-Napoca 26) and 3.321 wounded (of which Bucharest 1.761).
In 1990, Ion Iliescu, dignitary of the Communist regime reconverted into the democracy “with Western”, gained the first presidential election of the era post-Communist.
Nicolae Ceauşescu and Elena Petrescu had had three children: a son, Valentine, born in 1947, a girl, Zoia (1949-2006), and a younger son, Nicu (1951-1996). These two last died of the continuations of one dependence to the alcohol, of which many Roumanians deduced that to be children of a dictator does not make happier than in being the victims…
External bonds
- www.ceausescu.org
Sources
- In its third version of November 17th, 2004 to 14:44 (CEST) , this article took again whole or part of the matter contained in l'article, on English Wikipédia, in his version of November 16th, 2004 to 15:39 (UTC) (see the history of the article of source) .
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