AP+2016+Nicolae+Ceauseu

Nicolae Ceausescu Courtney Crawford

Aim: Nicolae Ceausescu was the communist leader of Romania from 1965 to 1989. He was born into a poor family of ten children (Bishop). Growing up in the impoverished lower class likely had a large influence on Ceausescu’s decision to join the Union of Communist Youth and pursue the politics of creating a communist state. Communism promised the prosperity and equality that Ceausescu had never experienced and from the time that he was fourteen he had worked in communist support groups and the army. His aim was ultimately to become the supreme Romanian leader and thus “over the next two decades, with his old friend, Gheorghiu-Dej—having claimed power as the country's top ruler—Ceausescu took on an increasingly prominent role in the country's government and Communist party” (Bishop). When Gheorghiu-Dej died of cancer in 1965, he named Ceausescu as the new President of communist Romania.

Audience: Ceausescu was extremely unpopular amongst his audience of the Romanian people. Ceausescu sought to bring economic prosperity, but did so by starting enormous building and agricultural projects. This put Romania in great debt and to compensate, not only did Ceausescu work the Romanian people under horrific conditions and hours, but he decided to sell all of the agricultural and industrial products to other countries. This made the problem worse and put the people of Romania near starvation and lack of basic necessities like energy and medicine (Bishop). By 1989, Romania had had enough of Ceausescu and a revolution began. Even the Romanian military, who would ordinarily support communist leaders, could no longer live under such tyranny. A prior commander of a military base near the Romanian capital recalls Ceausescu’s rule and states, “Among all the communist countries — Hungary Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Poland — we had it the worst, except maybe Russia" (Nelson) .  With the help of the military, the Romanian people brought Ceausescu to trial and sentenced to death on Christmas day of 1989.

Historical: Though he brought Romania great economic, social, and political stress, Ceausescu had an enormous historical impact. “ By the time a three-man firing squad shot him and his wife Elena on Christmas Day 1989, he would become one his country’s most hated people” (Hough). But this hatred of his  tyrannical ruling ended up inspired the people of Romania to start a revolution and end communism in their nation. Ceausescu’s death was the beginning of this revolution. Romania had been a nation of shifting governments since 1918 when World War II started. At this point, they were a liberal constitutional monarchy, but this didn’t last for long. By the second world war in 1938, Romania was under the rule of a dictatorship. After the war, they were forced to live under soviet rule and later joined the socialist republic under the Warsaw Pact (Nelson). This is the period when Ceausescu came to rule. It is obvious that the Romanian people had been under tyrannical and unfair rulings for nearly 50 years but the events that happened under Ceausescu’s rule proved to inspire the Romanian people to make a change. After his death, the Romanians began to transition to a democratic government and a free market economy. They were able to create a new constitution join the free world (Nelson). Romania remains a democratic nation today. Therefore, Ceausescu had a historical impact on the people of Romania that fueled a revolution that would bring the people to the type of government and treatment that they ultimately had always wanted.

Cultural: Due to the fact that Ceausescu was a communist leader, he had a significant cultural impact on the people of Romania. Before Ceausescu’s rule, Romania hadn’t been under communist leadership for long and once he came to rule, communist culture took over to a point that hadn’t been reached before. Censorship was present in music, television, and radio programs (Hough). The people of Romania were only able to read falsified history that glorified Ceausescu. “Even literature was censored. Writers whose works were not “politically correct” from the communist point of view were not allowed to print their books. Translations from other languages were very few, and of course, only “politically correct” works were translated” (Hough). The very culture of the Romanian people had been demolished and they couldn’t practice their own beliefs through listening to their own music, watching their favorite television shows, or reading classical Romanian books. As stated previously, even though Ceausescu’s tyranny inspired a revolution that brought the Romanian culture that had been oppressed, the result of Ceausescu’s rule is that his communist ways are now unknowingly integrated into the new culture of Romanian people.

Bishop, Patrick. "Nicolae Ceausescu and Romania's Christmas Revolution."The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 22 Dec. 2014. Web. 05 Jan. 2016. Hough, Andrew. "Nicolae Ceausescu: A Profile of the Former Communist Dictator." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 22 July 2010. Web. 06 Jan. 2016. Nelson, Soraya Sarhaddi. "25 Years After Death, A Dictator Still Casts A Shadow In Romania." NPR. NPR, 24 Dec. 2014. Web. 05 Jan. 2016. "Nicolae Ceausescu | President of Romania." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Feb. 2014. Web. 06 Jan. 2016.