Romania under Ceausescu

The communists destroyed the liberal party, but they adopted the liberals’ desire to create a strong and independent industry in Romania in full and initially implemented it with great success. Since 1950, hundreds of energy, metallurgical and mechanical engineering enterprises have been built throughout Romania. Hydroelectric dams block the Carpathian rivers and then the Danube. Old metallurgical production in Transylvania is being expanded, and a huge steelmaking plant is being created in Galati. Already in the 1960s, Romanian enterprises produced large quantities of machine tools, turbines for power plants, cars, locomotives, tractors, combine harvesters, trucks, and various household appliances.

According to official statistics, during the fifth and sixth decades of the 20th century, industrial production in Romania increased 40 times! Without a doubt, this astonishing figure contains a significant amount of attributions from officials who reported on the exemplary implementation of plans, but still demonstrates the impressive growth and changing face of the Romanian economy. Under the conditions of the state monopoly on foreign trade, the quality and technological level of the products of the Romanian industry could not be tested through competition on the world market, which in the future would inevitably lead to the depreciation and loss of much of what the Romanian people had spent so much effort on.

But these losses are still in the future, and in the sixties the Romanian leadership can rejoice that the presence of developed heavy industry allows Romania to begin creating its own military-industrial complex, independent of the Soviet one (since 1964, this task has become urgent). In 1957, an experimental nuclear reactor was launched in the suburbs of Bucharest. At the same time, Romanian television began broadcasting.

Industrial development is pushing an increasingly large part of the population to part with rural antiquity - in 1948, 23% of Romanians lived in cities, by the end of the 1960s - 40%. Cities are growing, their historical centers are surrounded, and in some places are swallowed up by blocks of multi-apartment concrete buildings. In 1955 In Romania, 60 thousand square meters of housing were built, and in 1965 - 200 thousand. Most citizens received separate apartments. Communal apartments, although they became familiar to Romanians after the consolidation of the forties and fifties, turned out to be a smaller-scale and long-term phenomenon than that of their “big brother”.

However, the interwar dispute between liberals and Tsarenists about ways to modernize Romania continued into communist times. In conditions when the opinion of the Communist Party, which took on the role of liberals, was the only correct one, no one could speak from the positions of the Tsaraniists within Romania. But this was done by the country’s CMEA partners - the USSR, supported by the GDR and Czechoslovakia. Based on the fact that, unlike the interwar USSR that existed “in a hostile environment,” brothers in the communist bloc did not need economic independence from each other, the Soviet leadership introduced in 1960 a proposal for a division of labor within the framework of the CMEA. Romania, as a country with a good climate but without a significant tradition of industrial production, was assigned the role of supplier of agricultural products.

Georgiou-Dej, who from the very beginning saw his state as a “small USSR,” did not agree with this approach. Several years passed in uncertainty - the cautious Romanian leader did not dare to categorically reject the proposal of his “big brother”. But there were no Soviet troops in Romania for a long time; nothing even remotely resembling a threat to communist power came from within the country. And the new strong man in the Romanian leadership - Gheorghe Maurer, who became Prime Minister in 1961 - led the country more and more confidently along the path of industrialization and more and more decisively pushed it towards open confrontation with the USSR.

Having made a decision, Georgiou-Dej goes to the end. The first step was taken in a western direction - Romania managed to greatly and pleasantly surprise the Americans when, in November 1963, the Romanian Foreign Minister secretly informed them that in the event of a conflict between the USA and the USSR, Bucharest would remain neutral. Once at least favorable attention was guaranteed from the main rival of the “big brother”, it was possible to move on.

At the meeting of the CMEA Executive Committee that opened on April 21, 1964, the Romanian delegation finally rejected the project for the division of labor between the countries of the communist bloc, but the matter did not end there. On April 23, a statement by the leadership of the RRP is published that state sovereignty is more important than socialist internationalism and other inventions designed to undermine traditional nations. At the end of the same year, Bucharest persistently asks Moscow to remove Soviet advisers from the Romanian state security department, and Moscow has to agree. From now on, Romania's participation in the Comecon and Warsaw Wars becomes largely formal. This was the crowning achievement of Gheorghiu-Dej's political career, whose character so successfully combined caution and determination - having received power over the Romanians from the hands of the USSR, he led Romania to unprecedented independence from the “big brother” within the Eastern bloc.

At the same time, Georgiu-Dej did one more thing, which, it would seem, could not have been expected from this no matter how capable and unyielding student of Stalin. In 1964, all 9 thousand Romanian political prisoners were released. The largest thaw in the history of communist Romania begins. And Gheorghiu-Dej’s earthly journey ends - he dies on March 19, 1965.

Now the most influential person in the Romanian leadership is Maurer. But the rest of Gheorghiu-Dej's associates are afraid of this strong personality, so the head of government makes an old (and so often wrong) political move. He promotes to a leadership post a man whom he himself said a little earlier that he “doesn’t understand anything,” hoping that he will be able to manipulate the new general secretary. Party comrades agree - they are also satisfied with the figure of a weak politician. Nicolae Ceausescu becomes the new party leader.

On formal grounds, Ceausescu cannot be called a prince. Born in 1918 into a poor peasant family, he went as a teenager to Bucharest, where he made his living as a shoemaker and was arrested more than once for participating in underground communist activities. The future all-powerful ruler of Romania pulled out his lucky ticket in 1943, when he was put in the same cell with Georgiu-Dej. From that moment on, the young communist was unquestioningly loyal to the party leader, and he knew how to pay well for loyalty. And being elevated to the ranks of the political elite in 1944, at the age of 26, Ceausescu became a real spoiled prince - selfish, vain, stubborn and narcissistic.

At the feet of the new Secretary General lay a country in which it seemed that Dracula's dream had come true. Deprived of property and turned into servants of the state, the people were obedient and disciplined, and maybe even contented to some extent, diligently glorifying the party and building factories. The best confirmation of Romanian strength was that the powerful Soviet “big brother” meekly swallowed the bitter pill that Gheorghiu Dej handed to him towards the end of his life. Ceausescu wanted to think that he ruled a great power.

The direction where the illusion of grandeur initially turned out to be close to reality was foreign policy. Both Ceausescu and Maurer agreed with the course of strengthening independence from the USSR, so it was decisively implemented. In 1967, Romania, contrary to the instructions of the Soviet Union, maintained diplomatic relations with Israel. That same year, the Romanians were the first from the communist bloc, again without Moscow's sanction, to recognize West Germany. The West begins to reciprocate - in May 1968, Romanians get the opportunity to see the President of their beloved France, de Gaulle, in their capital.

With regard to the internal political course, the situation was not so clear and unambiguous. Maurer may have wanted to turn the thaw into spring, but he will not determine the further course of Romanian history. But Ceausescu didn’t want any spring. So, during the thaw that began in 1964, Romania walked somewhere along the very edge of freedom, never crossing the line that separated it from totalitarianism. They condemned the violations of the law under Gheorghiu Dej and rehabilitated the main communist victim, Patrascanu, and therefore Ceausescu removed from the party leadership the most important associates of the former secretary general, who were hindering the strengthening of his power.

To the feeling of moral satisfaction from the condemnation of the crimes of the past among the people, some material joys were added. More Western goods began to be sold in Romania. Moreover, for some time it became possible for Romanians to create private companies. Although the general administrative and economic environment remained hostile to private owners, and few dared to undertake entrepreneurial adventures, the emergence of private shops and restaurants in the late 1960s made Romanian cities more pleasant, raising hopes for a better future.

Internationalism and friendship with the USSR were finally thrown out of the ideology, and the doctrine of socialism was adopted as the best path to the triumph of an independent and monolithic national state. The Romanians had to consume this propaganda dish in incredible quantities, to the point of setting their teeth on edge, but at first the change in the general line, which many accepted as real freedom, pleased the intelligentsia.

Some aspects of the implementation of the national ideal began to worry Ceausescu from the first years of his reign. The development of industry and associated urbanization had one important consequence. The movement of people into cities around the world is leading to declining birth rates. Romania was no exception, where the effect of the rejection of the traditional peasant way of life was strengthened by the destruction of Christian morality by the communists. It turned out that if in the 1930s in capitalist Romania 28 babies were born per 1 thousand population, then the population of the communist country grew at a rate of only 19 births per 1 thousand. In terms of birth rates, Romania in the sixties was on par with the most urbanized countries of the West, its population reached only 19 million, without even fully compensating for the loss associated with the loss of the eastern lands during the war.

The new ruler of the country reacts to this situation in the simplest way in which he will respond to all other challenges that will arise during his long reign. Ceausescu believes that “we need to be stricter” with the people. In 1966, abortion was banned in Romania. In the first years after the adoption of this law, the birth rate actually increased.

Such interference in personal life was a warning about the coming tightening of despotism. In the meantime, the despot fought for freedom, even in a situation that required considerable courage. In 1968 The second Western country after Hungary, driven into the socialist camp by the circumstances of World War II, is attempting to escape from it. This time everything is happening more peacefully and moderately - in Czechoslovakia, the liberalization process is being launched by the country's communist leadership itself, led by Dubcek, who came to power in January 1968.

Unlike 1956, the “elder brother” hesitates for some time to call the “younger” to order. The new General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Brezhnev, has neither Stalin’s cruelty and inflexibility, nor Khrushchev’s temperament. He wants peace and only peace, so for several months he has been exhorting the Czechoslovak leadership to return to the traditional totalitarian system on their own. The rulers of East Germany and Poland, fearing the spread of the Czechoslovak contagion to their own countries, insist on the invasion. But Ceausescu is not afraid of anything like that; he demonstrates solidarity with Dubcek during his visit to Prague on August 15-17, on the very eve of the invasion.

On August 21, 1968, the armies of the USSR and its allies in the Warsaw Division occupied Czechoslovakia. Romania did not send troops to Czechoslovakia, but Ceausescu did not stop there. Pride and vanity make people do a lot of stupid things, but often give them courage, as happened in August 1968. Then Ceausescu acted very un-Romanian - he disdained the survival strategy and took enormous risks in order to fight for abstract ideals. On August 22, the leader of Romania, going out onto the balcony in front of the people gathered in the square near the headquarters of the Romanian communists, demolished Soviet imperialism with such genuine rage and inspiration that the anti-communist propagandists of America and Western Europe could only envy.

The people, as usual, went to the rally according to the orders of the party organizations, but this was one of the rare exceptions when for many the “call of the heart” was not an empty phrase. Once in the USSR the party and people united to repel the Nazi invasion; in Romania in 1968 they were ready to together confront the Soviet threat. There were rumors about the transfer of Soviet troops to the Romanian border. Ceausescu announced the creation of the Patriotic Guard, into which the entire adult population of the country was mobilized. But Soviet tanks did not cross the Prut either in a week, or in a month, or in a year, or in 24 years.

Why is that? There is no obvious explanation for the refusal to invade (with the exception of a story floating around the Romanian network about how the Soviet army was afraid of “laser weapons created by Romanian inventors”), but, most likely, Brezhnev did not raise his hand against his own. Dubcek, having begun the transition to democracy and a market economy, ceased to be one of his own, and, despite all the reluctance to make sudden movements, he had to be put under pressure. And Ceausescu remained the leader of a totalitarian state created on the Soviet model. So even open hatred of the country that once showed this example was forgiven him. Still, fate played a whimsical game with Romania - it subjected it to a lot of suffering, but in return it often provided miraculous salvation in hopeless situations.

After August 1968, the Romanian leader enjoyed a blaze of glory. His own people sincerely applauded him. Western politicians rushed to shake his hand. In August 1969, US President Nixon paid a visit to Romania - it became the first communist country visited by the head of the American state; trips to Moscow followed later. Other Western leaders followed suit in Bucharest, and Ceausescu was warmly received in the capitals of Europe and America. “Political tourism” delights the Romanian ruler, so that gradually the need to admire the guard of honor stamping their steps and the carpets of the next presidential palace will become a real mania. For two decades, Ceausescu will tirelessly wander around the world, first in Western capitals, and when he is no longer invited there, across Asia and Africa, right down to the most remote corners of the “third world.” In the end, during his next official visit he will be caught by the revolution.

Friendship with the West brought tangible benefits. In 1971, Romania joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the International Monetary Fund. After numerous bureaucratic delays, in 1975 the United States granted Romania MFN trade status. Access to global markets and hard currency loans is becoming more convenient. The Romanian leadership, in fact, now proceeded from the fact that the country should not isolate itself within the framework of the CMEA. The reduction in the share of trade with socialist countries, which in the 1960s accounted for more than 70% of total foreign trade turnover, implied a partial abandonment of the simple and reliable exchange of raw materials and low-quality industrial products and the search for a niche in the world market.

Ceausescu considered the most important prerequisite for successful competition in foreign markets to be strengthening party and state control over the economy and ideology. Perhaps the solidarity of the party and the people played a cruel joke on the Romanians in 1968. The motive that arose then to confront a strong external enemy, which now tacitly meant the Soviet Union, created an atmosphere in the country favorable to tightening the screws. In 1971, the thaw ended - experiments to expand the independence of state enterprises were curtailed, the few private shops disappeared, timid concessions for the intelligentsia were replaced by ideological elaborations, the very dark shade of which is given by the name “small cultural revolution”, invented in imitation of the Chinese.

This line did not correspond to the aspirations of the prime minister, but he did not resist. The system acted inexorably, and the “weak” Ceausescu, who rose to the heights of power, crushed the “strong” Maurer without visible effort. At the same time, Ceausescu took another step, which looked very advantageous against the backdrop of the Soviet Union of those times, where party princelings had been in constant control of the industries and territories entrusted to them for decades. A system of constant rotation of party and government personnel was introduced. The first person to try it on was Maurer - in 1974 the prime minister was dismissed.

This order made it possible to control bureaucrats more strictly and effectively, but the pinnacle of power was absolutely inaccessible to any control. And the end result was even worse than in the USSR.

In the same year, Ceausescu considered that the position of Secretary General, which gave unlimited power, still sounded too undignified for such a large-scale personality like him. The post of president was created. I think it is clear who was unanimously elected as the first president of Romania.

Changing his political course from liberal to hard, Ceausescu got rid of another functionary, whom he had nominated during the Thaw. In 1971, he was removed from his post as Minister of Youth Affairs and sent to lead the remote county of Ion Iliescu.

Throughout much of the 1970s, urban Romanians continued to live well. Jobs and the purchasing power of wages were stable, supplies were bearable. In addition to residential buildings with separate apartments, numerous resorts were built on the Black Sea and in the Carpathians, which may have seemed like luxurious places to many of yesterday’s inhabitants of villages and workers’ settlements. They were spoiled by the harsh “apartheid” that separated foreign currency tourists from second-rate “builders of a comprehensively developed Romanian socialism.” Friendly Americans sold Pepsi-Cola in Romania and built the beautiful Intercontinental Hotel skyscraper in the center of Bucharest. And some lucky Romanians were even able to afford, to the envy of the rest of the communist world, to buy big and shiny American cars. A much wider range of people in the country were able to rejoice when Romania began producing its own, simple and unreliable, but relatively affordable to many, Dacia passenger car. This achievement marked the pinnacle of development of Romanian consumer society under communist rule.

The established and mature totalitarian society severely limited people's freedom. But historically, most Romanians have always had few opportunities. But now, with guaranteed jobs and a universal (for the urban population) social security system, they could fully enjoy a relaxing “confidence in the future.” The mixture of fear and hatred of some with the hope of others, characteristic of the forties, was left behind, finally giving way to laziness, indifference and conformism. The Romanian Communist Party (Ceausescu returned this name to the RRP in 1965) was accepted without special restrictions, so that it reached a strength of 4 million. Romania became the country with the largest percentage of communists per capita in the world. Numerous new communists came up with a new decoding of the abbreviation of their party PCR - pile cunostinte relatii - blat acquaintance communication.

Romanian culture was worthily represented by Eliade, Cioran and Ionescu, who lived and worked far from their homeland, and the local creators, who obediently followed the ideological general line, failed to create anything memorable. Some poets managed to remain in the field of pure art, where many readers followed them. The most famous of them was Nikita Stanescu, who worked in the sixties and seventies, and died in 1983. Talented poets of the younger generation - Adrian Paunescu and Anna Blandiana - will live to see other times and make their mark in politics. The first at the end of Ceausescu’s reign, the second at the dawn of the new Romanian democracy.

The rich tradition of Romanian village prose was continued by the writer Marin Preda, who in the 1960s wrote the novel “Moromets” (the so-called inhabitants of a provincial and patriarchal Transylvanian area). In the story about the difficult fate of the peasants of pre-communist Romania, one could recognize many of the realities of the modern Prede country.

Driven into cooperatives, supplied with a certain number of tractors and deprived of part of the population during urbanization, the Romanian village still remained poor, crowded and patriarchal. Nothing similar to the large-scale agricultural modernization programs implemented in neighboring Bulgaria and Eastern Moldova was undertaken in Romania. But the collapse of the communist economy will be less painful for the Romanian peasants than for their Bulgarian and Moldovan brothers.

President Ceausescu was pleased not only with the stable socio-economic situation in Romania, but also with the fact that those who interfered with its ethnic monolith were becoming less and less visible in the country. Urbanization contributed greatly to this. In 1948, the share of Hungarians in the population of Transylvania was 25%, but, like many centuries ago, Romanians lived mainly in the countryside, and the cities remained predominantly Hungarian-German - 40% of the urban population of the region were Hungarians. The communists managed to deal a crushing blow, ending this state of affairs forever. At first, the economic position of the Hungarian urban middle class was radically undermined by nationalization, then a stream of immigrants from the countryside poured into the cities, most of whom were, of course, Romanians.

In 1966, the share of Hungarians in the urban population of Transylvania was 27%, in 1992 - 13%. This was the second, after the agrarian reform of 1921 that destroyed the Hungarian aristocracy, a big blow to the Hungarians - now that the former masters of Transylvania did not make up the majority of the urban population, the dominance of the Romanians in Transylvanian society was reliably ensured. At the same time, the share of Hungarians in the population of the region as a whole decreased insignificantly - in 1992 there were 21%. The last Hungarian stronghold in Transylvania was the Székely region - in this poor rural region, located almost in the center of Romania, Hungarians still make up the majority.

The approach of the Romanian authorities towards the Hungarians was not constant. In the early years of communist rule, the Hungarian minority was treated favorably. This largely happened under pressure from the Soviet Union, which sought to maintain a balance between its new vassals. The most important step in the implementation of such a policy was the creation in 1950 of Hungarian autonomy in the Székely lands.

Attitudes are changing as Romania's independence strengthens. The first bad sign for Hungarians was the closure of the Hungarian-language university in Cluj in 1959. In 1968, Hungarian autonomy was liquidated. From this point on, the systematic oppression of the Hungarian language and culture in the fields of education and the media begins.

However, the fate of the Hungarians turned out well compared to the other urban community of Transylvania - the Germans. The measures taken in 1945 against representatives of the defeated nation pushed the Germans back to the bottom of Romanian society. Under these conditions, the good relations established in 1967 between West Germany and Romania had happy consequences for many personal destinies, but catastrophic ones for the Transylvanian Saxon people as a whole. The desire of the majority of Germans to leave Romania was obvious, and the West German government asked for their compatriots. And the Romanian government already had experience in solving the Jewish question, which so wonderfully combined approaching the ethnic monolithic nature of Romanian society and obtaining material benefits.

No wonder the propagandists of the Ceausescu era once again fell in love with remembering the Roman origins of the Romanians. If the link between Jewish emigration and economic assistance to Romania was only implied, but not directly stated, then the Romanian-German negotiations became as similar as possible to trading in the slave markets of the Roman Empire. For an ordinary German, the Romanians took 1,800 marks, for a skilled worker - 2,900, and for a specialist with a higher education - 11,000. Subsequently, the Romanian side revised the prices for Germans upward several times.

West Germany paid regularly, so the Saxon towns and villages of Transylvania began to empty out. From 1967 to 1989, 200 thousand Germans left. By the time the communists were overthrown, between 200 and 300 thousand Germans remained in Transylvania out of the 750 thousand who lived there in the 1930s. But this was not the last act of the drama of the Saxon exodus.

The liquidation of private property, and then the pushing to the periphery or abroad of the peoples who historically constituted the Transylvanian elite, deprived Transylvania of a significant part of its former European luster. The cities became impoverished and lost their former social and cultural environment. Romania as a whole has become much more uniform - the differences that have accumulated over centuries between the level and nature of development of the regions on different sides of the Carpathians have now been largely leveled out. Moreover, the leveling took place at the level of Wallachia and Moldova, due to the degradation of Transylvania.

In their quest for ethnic monolithicity, the communists defeated all the non-Romanian peoples of the country, except one - the Roma. The latter have long been a prominent part of Romania's social landscape, but their share of the population was negligible - 0.4% in 1956. However, the birth rate of the Romanians fell, while that of the Roma remained the same, and sometimes increased (they were the ones who most actively took advantage of those social benefits for large families, which, along with the ban on abortion, were introduced in 1966), so that the ratio began to change. In 1992, the share of Roma in the population of Romania, according to official data, was 1.8%, according to unofficial estimates - almost 5%.

Meanwhile, Ceausescu is leading his increasingly monolithic people to conquer world markets. If at first ensuring economic independence from the communist bloc was more a matter of national prestige, it is gradually becoming a vital necessity. In the context of the outflow of population to the cities, agriculture, which remained extremely inefficient, not only lost its export potential, but also coped increasingly worse with the task of feeding its own country. Since 1975, food shortages have begun to be felt in Romanian cities. To maintain consumption levels it is necessary to resort to imports. There are no sufficient food supplies within the communist bloc - the “big brother” has been importing food for more than ten years. This means we need currency.

No one has any illusions about the ability of products from the seemingly powerful Romanian mechanical engineering industry to compete in the free market. All that remains is the solution that saved Romania before communist industrialization - oil. But things aren’t going great with her either. In 1976, Romania reaches its highest oil production level - 300 thousand barrels per day. That's double what it was in the 1930s, already indicating a slowdown in growth compared to the early 20th century, and then the oil industry's performance is down. Romanian oil reserves were small and were now approaching depletion.

In response to this situation, a decision is made to turn Romania into a transshipment point on the way of Middle Eastern oil to Europe and a major global center of the oil refining industry. The country's forces are mobilizing to build huge oil refineries. Although the task of creating alternative routes to transport oil to Europe by sea is not easy, the Romanian leadership proceeds from the fact that the project will be in demand, since demand for oil has been growing over the past more than half a century. True, after the energy crisis of 1973, growth slowed down significantly, but they chose not to pay attention to this.

Good relations with Iran and Arab countries are urgently being established. The most proactive Romanians managed to get a job in the emirates of the Persian Gulf. Numerous Arab students appeared in Romania, engaged in supplying the country with Western shortages and Eastern drugs, and also became the object of burning hatred of Romanian male youth - these exotic aliens from the capitalist world easily stole the best girls.

Mobilizing the country's resources for new great construction projects requires reducing consumption and increasing working hours, which is being done, although so far on a relatively modest scale. And then there is a group of the population that unexpectedly reacts sharply to the tightening of exploitation - the miners of the Jiu Valley. On July 30, 1977, in the city of Lupen, 35 thousand miners go on strike demanding a reduction in working hours, improved supplies for the mining region and the reversal of the decision to increase the retirement age. Judging by the actions of the leadership, after many years of unshakable internal stability, it was in the most sincere confusion. At some point, the miners turn out to be unusually strong - on August 2, they capture the party delegation that came to them from Bucharest and demand that Ceausescu arrive without fail. He appears the next day, at first apparently not frightened, but, on the contrary, confident that his fatherly suggestion will quickly calm the proletariat. But, hearing how a crowd of thousands does not listen to him in silent submission, but responds with furious shouts, Ceausescu may actually be frightened. He immediately agrees with the demands of the miners, since they were purely economic and concerned one small region. Ceausescu was able to hear in that menacing roar of the crowd in 1977 a foreshadowing of other despair and fury that would erupt twelve years later. But he is not used to listening to anything other than his own desires.

After the miners, satisfied with their victory, return to work, the best state security forces are quietly deployed to the Jiu Valley. Strike leaders are arrested or die under unclear circumstances. 4 thousand of the most active participants are forced to change jobs and move. But the rest enjoy social benefits knocked out of the government - the Jiu Valley becomes an island of relative prosperity in an impoverished country.

Perhaps Ceausescu was lucky with the Jiu Valley miners' strike. These people, who knew how to stand up for themselves, acted very early - at the very beginning of a new period of Romanian disasters, when the majority of the country's population did not yet consider their situation bad enough to take the risk of participating in anti-government protests. If this had happened somewhere in the 1980s, the Jiu Valley could have become the detonator of a major rebellion, or even a revolution. But the 1977 uprising meant that the miners faced the worst of times, bribed and leaderless.

The miners' strike was a warning to Ceausescu that Dracula's dream had not really come true, and Romania would not necessarily obediently follow any wave of his hand. Dissidents are emerging, demanding that the authorities fulfill the obligations to respect human rights contained in the documents of the Helsinki Conference (CSCE) signed by Romania in 1975. In 1977, the writer Paul Goma wrote a memorandum on human rights violations in Romania addressed to the foreign ministers of the CSCE participating countries gathered in Belgrade. 200 people sign it. In 1979, several dissidents proclaim the creation of the Free Romanian Trade Union. Goma are forced to leave the country, the founders of the trade union are imprisoned. In Transylvania, Hungarian activists, supported by the Lutheran and Calvinist communities, appear to protest against increasing national discrimination. Even the head of the official organization of Hungarians, Laszlo Takacs, is protesting. They kill him.

Thanks to these protests, Romania fit into a general trend throughout the communist world - by the end of the 1970s, attempts to create independent public organizations were being made throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR. The independent social movements themselves were small in number and quickly destroyed by the authorities, but they turned out to be only one of the manifestations of the general breakdown that occurred in the communist bloc during this apparently prosperous decade. Resources for economic development, which should be understood not only (and even not so much) as the possibility of using a new labor force and new mineral resources, but also the fear of repression, which forced people to work without market incentives, were close to exhaustion. But fatigue, disappointment and apathy have gripped most of society, not excluding the ruling elite. In one of the countries that was initially the weakest link in the Eastern European “outer empire” of the Soviet Union, these trends led to revolution at the beginning of the next decade.

And a little earlier than the Polish revolution, the Iranian revolution broke out. In November 1978, a general strike paralyzed Iran's oil industry. In 1979, there followed the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the seizure of power by Islamists, their taking of American diplomats hostage, the severance of economic relations between the West and Iran, and the threat of a major war in the Persian Gulf. The price of a barrel of oil increased from 16 dollars in the spring of 1979 to 40 in the spring of 1980. Western governments began to actively implement strategies for energy conservation and the use of alternative energy sources that had been developed since the time of the first energy crisis. As a result, since 1980 the world has entered a long period of declining demand for oil and petroleum products.

Since 1977, Romania has become an oil importer. And the entire development strategy of the country’s oil refining industry was designed to maintain low prices and continue to grow demand for this fuel. In the early 1980s, foreign trade transactions tied to the purchase of oil and the sale of petroleum products brought Romania a loss of $900 thousand daily.

The Romanian economy is stalling - the officially announced annual growth rate of industrial production is declining from 9.5% in 1976 - 1980. up to 2.8% in 1981 – 1985 In general, from 1970 to 1990, industrial production increased 4 times. Even official statistics indicate a significant decline in dynamics, and by adjusting for postscripts, we can get stagnation and then decline of the Romanian economy.

Urgent measures taken to avoid economic collapse threaten to bury Ceausescu's dream of an economically self-sufficient Romania. The payment deficit is covered by external loans, which by 1981 brings the external debt to a noticeable, although not catastrophic, figure of $9.5 billion. Ensuring the economic independence of Romania from its allies in the communist bloc was one of the main goals of Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu, but they had to step on the throat of this song. Buying oil at new world prices was absolutely unbearable in conditions when Soviet supplies to CMEA partners continued to be cheap and with the possibility of paying for low-quality products of the socialist industry. So while Romania managed to reduce the CMEA share of its foreign trade to 35% by the mid-1970s, it rose again to 60% in the 1980s.

Despite the need to return to closer economic cooperation

During the Cold War, Romania was one of the most obstinate states of the socialist bloc. Bucharest has always sought to balance between Moscow and the Western world, although formally it was a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the Warsaw Pact Organization (WTO).

Socialist Romania reached its heyday during the initial period of the reign of Nicolae Ceausescu, who headed the Communist Party in March 1965. In December 1967, he was appointed chairman of the State Council, and in March 1969 he became chairman of the Defense Council.

Ceausescu concentrated in his hands all the threads of party and state power. In the first half of the 1970s, he finally got rid of his party rivals.

In March 1974, in Romania, as a result of constitutional reform, the post of president was established, who was elected by parliament for five years. Ceausescu became the first and only president of socialist Romania.

Such an outright usurpation of power took place with the full support of the people. The first decade of his reign was marked by explosive industrial growth. In 1974, the volume of industrial production increased 100 times compared to 1944. This allowed Ceausescu to increase salaries and pensions and give the Romanians a well-fed, prosperous life.

Romania as a superpower

Despite his reputation as an ardent communist, the Romanian leader openly demonstrated his sympathy for the West. A foreign policy course that was emphatically independent from Moscow contributed to the growth of Ceausescu’s popularity. Thus, in 1968, he condemned the introduction of the ATS group into Czechoslovakia, and in 1979 he did not support the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.

The West was impressed by the anti-Soviet statements that Ceausescu periodically allowed himself. In the 1970s, Bucharest began to receive loans from Western funds. Most of the finance was allocated by the IMF. The loans were invested in the development of the energy sector and the mining industry. As a result, by 1981, Romania's total debts amounted to $10.2 billion.

Ceausescu's political course was characterized by extraordinary diversity. The socialist orientation, which assumed the supremacy of the principle of internationalism, did not prevent the dictator from promoting the idea of ​​​​the exclusivity of the Romanian people.

• Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena in Bucharest

In particular, Ceausescu called the Romanians the heirs of the ancient Romans. The authorities even initiated the process of searching for scientific evidence of this continuity, and special groups of scientists were created within the structure of the Academy of Sciences.

This behavior of Ceausescu caused misunderstanding in the socialist camp and in the USSR. The thesis of imperial succession reminded communist leaders of the research that was carried out in Nazi Germany to scientifically substantiate racial theory and the special mission of the German people.

However, no one from the socialist camp entered into a public debate with Ceausescu. Western politicians also preferred to ignore the statements of the Romanian president that went beyond the bounds of reasonableness.

Historians believe that Ceausescu sought to transform Romania into a European superpower.

In addition to flirting with nationalism, he militarized the economy, increasing spending on the army and intelligence services. The Romanian defense complex was faced with the task of establishing the production of the widest possible range of weapons, so as not to depend on supplies from the USSR.

At the same time, Bucharest was developing nuclear weapons, collaborating with Germany and Pakistan. On April 14, 1989, the dictator announced that Romania had the technology to produce nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles and launchers.

Cult of personality and austerity

Historians believe that in the second half of the 1970s, Ceausescu created a platform to promote the cult of personality. The result of this policy was the establishment of a strict authoritarian regime.

Ceausescu became the subject of street posters and numerous works of art. At various demonstrations he was thanked for his wisdom and concern for the people.

Romania in the 1980s is often compared to North Korea. Both states were united not only by an extremely centralized vertical of power and a cult of personality, but also by the participation of family members in the system of government. Thus, in March 1980, Ceausescu's wife Elena was appointed first deputy prime minister.

Romanian society was sensitive to the austerity regime initiated by Ceausescu in 1981. In particular, a card system for issuing food products was introduced in the republic. Fueling a car with gasoline was only allowed with coupons, and electricity could be used for a limited number of hours.

The Romanian economy worked to maximize export earnings rather than to meet the needs of the population.

In a short time, citizens found themselves deprived of the material and social benefits received in the 1970s.

The paradox was that Ceausescu might not be in a hurry to pay off his debts, but, fearing to become dependent on the West, he decided to repay the loans unscheduled - taking into account interest, Bucharest accumulated $21 billion in debt.

“To put it bluntly, Ceausescu tried to create a second DPRK. Brezhnev's and, even more so, Gorbachev's USSR, against the backdrop of Romania, seemed like a paradise of freedom. But Romanians until recently had the right to private property. Almost everyone was probably dissatisfied with this state of affairs,” said Dmitry Zykin, a Russian historian and author of the book “Coups and Revolutions,” in a conversation with RT.

Explosion of discontent

On April 12, 1989, Ceausescu announced the early completion of the payment of external debt. However, there were no immediate positive changes in the country. Moreover, the foreign policy situation for Romania deteriorated significantly: regime liberalization began in the USSR and socialist countries, which later resulted in a change of power.

After the destruction of the Berlin Wall (November 1989), Ceausescu remained the only socialist leader who refused to carry out any reforms.

The situation for Ceausescu was negatively affected by the strained relations with neighboring Hungary, which was rapidly democratizing. On December 16, 1989, unrest broke out in the city of Timisoara (northwest of the country) due to the authorities’ attempts to deport ethnic Hungarian pastor László Tökes from Romania on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred.”

The police and army were prohibited from opening fire. Taking advantage of the passivity of the security forces, demonstrators began to seize armored vehicles and military facilities. On December 17, units of the armed forces received orders to open fire to kill, and on December 18 the rebels were dispersed.

• Romanian tank crews who went over to the side of the rebels
• Reuters
• Charles Platiau

According to official data, about 60 people became victims of the riots. However, rumors spread throughout Romania about an incredible number of deaths, up to 60 thousand people, despite the fact that the population of the city was 300 thousand people.

On December 20, speaking on national television, Ceausescu accused foreign intelligence services of inciting the conflict in Timisoara. On December 21, he decided to address the people, going out onto the balcony of his residence in the center of Bucharest. However, Ceausescu's words drowned out the cries of dissatisfied citizens, and he was forced to retreat.

On this day, the capital of Romania turned into an arena of fierce fighting. Some army units went over to the side of the rebels. The rebels were supported by Ceausescu's former ally Ion Iliescu, who became president of post-socialist Romania in 1990.

Flash Tribunal

On December 21, the Ceausescu couple fled the capital by helicopter. On December 22, the fugitives were detained near the city of Targovishte (about 100 km from Bucharest). On December 25, a tribunal was held over Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu at the headquarters of the military garrison in Targovishte, which lasted no more than two hours.

The former leaders of Romania were found guilty of destroying the national economy, state institutions, genocide and “armed action against the people and the state.” The tribunal determined the highest penalty - execution. The sentence was immediately carried out, although formally ten days were allotted for its execution.

National television showed footage of the execution of the Ceausescu couple on December 28, 1989. Romania became the only post-socialist state in Eastern Europe where the change of power took place by force, and the former leader of the state was executed. According to official data, in total more than a thousand people became victims of the unrest in Timisoara and Bucharest.

The rapid development of events in Romania has given rise to many versions. In 2004, German journalist Susanne Brandstetter accused the CIA and European intelligence services, including Hungarian intelligence, of overthrowing Ceausescu. According to eyewitnesses of the riots, many rumors circulated in Bucharest about snipers who allegedly shot at both conflicting sides.

The new Romanian authorities conducted several investigations into the tragic events of December 1989. 275 people were convicted for participation in “repressions against the revolution.” However, the conclusions of the prosecutor's office changed every time after a change in government leadership. Accusations were brought both against Ceausescu and his associates, and against the opposition.

Today in Romania there is no consensus on who provoked the riots. At the same time, as foreign media write with reference to opinion polls, nostalgia for the times of Ceausescu is growing in the country. Political scientists explain the metamorphosis by the fact that the democratic authorities did not turn Romania into a prosperous country.

• Ceausescu's grave in Bucharest
• Reuters

“Fatigue of the elites” and “the hand of the West”

Director of the Institute of Eastern Europe Alexander Pogorelsky believes that the main reason for the Romanian revolution was the inadequate policy of Ceausescu, which caused an aggressive reaction from the people and party bosses. According to Pogorelsky, in 1989 the power of the Romanian leader was deprived of any social support.

“Elite fatigue was a key factor in the change of power in Romania. Ceausescu finally lost his shores. The socialist camp was becoming a thing of the past, but nothing changed in Romania. The elite was no longer satisfied with the figure of Ceausescu and the existing economic model. At the same time, state and party functionaries sought to somehow monetize their power,” Pogorelsky noted in an interview with RT.

The hasty trial and execution of the Ceausescu couple, according to the political scientist, were dictated by completely pragmatic considerations. During a critical period for Romania, the rebels sought to deprive their opponents of the symbol of struggle. Also, the death of the dictator made it possible to attribute all the country’s internal problems to the consequences of his policies.

“I don’t believe the story about snipers and Western intervention. The large number of deaths is explained by the fact that in Bucharest there were battles between security forces who used a variety of weapons. The tank crews shot at each other, and naturally, unarmed people also died from shell explosions,” stated RT’s interlocutor.

Historian Dmitry Zykin takes a slightly different point of view. He agreed that the military-political elite of Romania was indeed opposed to Ceausescu. Opposition sentiments among the elite found a lively response among the people, who were irritated by the deterioration in living standards. At the same time, Zykin considers it wrong to discount the version of outside interference.

“The elite had their own economic interests, and the Ceausescu regime prevented them from being realized. Although I do not exclude the participation of external forces in the Romanian events. At least behind the apparent spontaneity in the actions of the rebels, one can see a plan to overthrow Ceausescu at any cost. The quick success of the rebels, the speedy trial and reprisal against the couple fit well into this logic,” Zykin suggested.

The expert notes that the dictator personally turned future executioners against himself. However, according to Zykin, disinformation played too big a role in the Romanian revolution. Long before the coup, there were persistent rumors that, against the backdrop of general poverty, Ceausescu was leading a luxurious lifestyle and allegedly had accounts abroad. During the period of street fighting, information was spread about the colossal number of victims.

“No doubt the people were very irritated, and for good reason. But all the rumors turned out to be false. The scenario of the Romanian revolution is not much different from other coups d'etat, including those that we have seen quite recently. A violent change of power always occurs at the will of the elites and meets the interests of external forces. Manipulations are being used that give carte blanche for any cruelty towards the current regime,” Zykin concluded.

“The Genius of the Carpathians” is how the local press dubbed the Romanian leader during his lifetime. Under Ceausescu, the country strengthened its intelligence services and began total surveillance of ordinary citizens. An administrative-command system brought to the point of absurdity, implicated in nationalism, ignorance, greed - all this found its complete expression in the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu

He himself and his wife, “a world-famous academician,” came from the lower social classes of pre-war Romania. Their rise to the heights of power was accompanied by the destruction of their moral and cultural foundations, degradation of personality, and loss of concepts of elementary human norms.

Secretary General of Romania Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena. In December 1989, Ceausescu was overthrown. On Christmas Day both he and his wife were executed.

The reform of the socialist economy proclaimed by Ceausescu was based not on a system of incentives, but on a system of deductions and fines. In accordance with the law adopted in 1978, 20-25% was withheld from the salaries of workers every month. This part was paid as a “bonus” only if the plan was fulfilled, and no objective reasons for its non-fulfillment (for example, lack of raw materials) were not taken into account.

According to official instructions, only one 15-watt light bulb was allowed to be lit in an apartment; the use of refrigerators and other household electrical appliances in winter was strictly prohibited, as was the use of gas to heat living quarters.

Violations were detected by the “economic police” created for this purpose and punished by fines and then by cutting off gas and electricity altogether. There was practically no hot water supplied to the apartments, and the television worked 2-3 hours a day. Electricity consumption per capita in Romania was then the lowest in Europe. In the name of a “bright future” the country was on a starvation diet.

The policy regarding agriculture was no less absurd. The agricultural sector was especially crippled by the campaign for the so-called “systematization” - the liquidation of several thousand “unpromising” villages and the creation of “socialist agro-cities”, but in reality - the construction for the purpose of “socialist reconstruction of the village” of premature and poorly equipped multi-storey barracks, where peasants were forcibly resettled .

According to existing instructions, communication between any Romanian citizen and foreigners could only take place in the presence of witnesses, and the content of the conversation had to be reported in writing the next day “to the right place” - to the Securitate secret police.

Nevertheless, reports of many glaring facts of Romanian reality penetrated outside the country, including the fact that, according to an order issued in the mid-80s, newborns were subject to registration only at two months of age. This was done in order not to “spoil” the statistical indicators of child mortality, since many of those born immediately died, since even in maternity hospitals the temperature in winter did not exceed 7-9°C.

The country was literally reduced to impoverishment. Since the beginning of the 80s, when emaciated and barefoot peasants began to appear more and more often in Bucharest, and peasant children in the outback ran out to passing trains and begged for alms.

1989 Children on the street of Bucharest.

So it is not surprising that the protest against the Ceausescu regime grew. Since the second half of the 70s, spontaneous strikes have occurred repeatedly in Romania. They were suppressed with constant cruelty, as happened, for example, in Brasov on November 15, 1987. The events that took place in this city were the first open political protest against the totalitarian regime. According to eyewitnesses, on that day about 7,000 workers gathered at the city hall (also the district committee of the RCP) demanding bread (which became impossible to buy even with coupons) and a reduction in deductions that reached 40% of wages. The mayor (who is also the secretary of the district committee of the RCP) began to threaten the workers that if they did not disperse, then in a month they and their children would be eating straw. The workers did not disperse, but stormed the city hall. There they found banquet tables laden with all sorts of food on the occasion of the election of a mayor to the Grand National Assembly.

Outraged workers tore portraits of Ceausescu from the walls of their offices and burned them in the square in front of the city hall. The soldiers of the regular army drowned in blood the action of the workers of Brasov, many of them disappeared without a trace...

While the population was impoverished due to the government's economic policies, the cult of personality of the national leader and his family reached unprecedented proportions. However, neither the omnipotence of the Securitate secret police nor the state propaganda machine could overcome rumors of the luxury in which the president’s couple lived.

Ceausescu with his wife and son at one of the parties.

Under the Central Committee of the RCP, a “Service and Supply Bureau” was created for senior party functionaries and members of their families (mostly Ceausescu’s relatives). The Bureau provided them with apartments, furniture, clothing, and food free of charge. In 1989, the budget of this bureau was 70 million lei (10 million dollars).

In June 1989, the Romanian political weekly Lumea noted: “With a feeling of deep satisfaction and patriotic pride, the communists, all citizens of socialist Romania, fully approved the decision of the plenum to propose to the XIV Congress the re-election of comrade Nicolae Ceausescu - a hero among heroes, an outstanding leader of the nation, a brilliant architect of socialist Romania , an outstanding personality of our time - to the highest position of General Secretary of the RCP." In the fall of the same year, at a party plenum, Ceausescu said that he did not “want to listen to lectures from Gorbachev,” since he had long ago carried out his own “perestroika” and “developed socialist democracy in Romania like no one else.”

However, despite such statements, internal discontent in the country grew steadily. The end of the Romanian regime was approaching.

Street protests in Romania began in December 1989 in the city of Timisoara. Authorities attempted to evict popular dissident Pastor Laszlo Tekes, a Hungarian by nationality, from his home in the city of Timisoara, who six months earlier had sharply criticized the economic policies of the Romanian government in an interview on Hungarian television. Hungarian parishioners sided with the priest, and the protest quickly expanded to several thousand people. Soon the original reason was forgotten, and the action turned into a large-scale anti-government protest. By that time, protests had been flaring up periodically for more than ten years, the Ceausescu regime had brutally and effectively suppressed them and had absolutely no idea that anything special would happen this time.

As usual, they tried to suppress the protest by the forces of the Securitate, the Romanian KGB, but this time they were few. The only way out was to send troops into the city. But even the army was able to restore order only when tank fire was opened to kill.

Ceausescu ordered the army and police to open fire on the demonstrators. Stalin's habits took precedence over reason.

The exact number of victims of this massacre is still unknown.

According to some reports, 60 people were killed and more than 250 were injured. There is information about 40 corpses that, on the personal orders of Ceausescu’s wife, were taken from the city morgue and cremated in Bucharest.

On December 17, the Romanian Secretary General held a secret “teleconference” with the military leadership of all counties, declaring a combat alert and ordering the armed forces to be put on high alert and to open fire on “the rebels without warning.”

On December 20, in a televised address, Ceausescu, as often happens, accused “foreign forces” of organizing the protests. But the Secretary General forgot that his people were living on the brink of poverty...

Despite the massive public protests that began, the dictator was fully confident that his regime was not in danger. After the suppression of the uprising in Timisoara, he calmly flew off on a visit to Iran. However, he was forced to return.

On December 22, the dictator ordered Ceausescu to hold a mass rally in his support, but as a result he received a protest rally of one hundred thousand people already in the central square of the capital.

Ceausescu was met with angry shouts.

The troops went over to the side of the rebels.

The crowd began to storm the building.

Ceausescu and his wife escaped at the last moment by helicopter.

The pilot landed the helicopter in a field near the city of Targovishte. Ceausescu and their guards decided to catch cars on the road: in the first one they drove not far away - the driver pretended that he had run out of gas. The Ceausescu continued to flee in another car and reached Targovishte, where in the evening they were arrested and brought to trial.

The state prosecutor at the trial was Major General Jiku Popa, deputy chairman of the military tribunal for Bucharest. As one of the participants in the trial recalled, even the lawyers assigned to Ceausescu were more like prosecutors than defenders.

Ceausescu was accused of genocide of his own people and that with his policies he led the country to poverty and hunger.

The arrested spouses were placed in a cell at the military police station. They stayed there for three days while their fate was decided.

The court-martial lasted two hours. Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were accused of genocide. Having announced the figure of sixty thousand dead.

The defendants refused to admit the charge. The chairman of the military tribunal, Georgica Popa, said that the ex-ruler and his wife were as stupid as usual at that moment. Both he and she. There was no way to have a dialogue with them. Hearing the word “genocide”... Elena asked me several times what it meant”...

On December 25, 1989, the tribunal found the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena (Deputy Prime Minister of Romania) guilty and sentenced them to death.

The Ceausescu spouses were taken out into the courtyard of the soldiers' barracks. English journalists who collected material about their execution say that the ex-ruler and his wife behaved provocatively. On the way to execution, Elena asked one of the soldiers: “What are you doing with us? After all, I was your mother.” The soldier dryly objected: “What kind of mother are you, you killed our mothers!”

Hundreds of volunteers volunteered to shoot the Ceausescu couple, but only four were selected - an officer and three soldiers. They lined up and took aim. Ceausescu only had time to shout: “I don’t deserve...”, and then shots rang out. The Ceausescu couple were shot near the wall of the soldiers' latrine.

The Ceausescu couple had about $400 million in Swiss bank accounts.

The execution of Nicolae Ceausescu was the prologue to the collapse and death of the ruling clan (according to some sources, the number of his relatives and brothers-in-law in various levels of the RCP apparatus reached 300-400 people). Among the direct relatives of the dictator, his son Niku (39 years old) stood out. The investigation established that as a result of his order to open fire on participants in a peaceful demonstration in Sibiu on December 21-22, 89 people were killed and 219 were wounded. In addition to Nicu, two other Ceausescu children, Valentin and Zoya, were brought to trial, accused of using state property for personal purposes.

Another Ceausescu brother, Ilie, a lieutenant general, served as deputy minister of defense, and the dictator’s sister, Elena Bărbulescu, having a four-year education, received a doctorate in history and the post of head of the school inspectorate in her native county of Olt, where she became famous for persecuting honest people, corruption and theft. During her arrest, bank checks worth about half a million lei were confiscated.

The dictator's brother, mentioned above, was charged with aggravated murder and incitement to genocide. And his other brother, Marin, who was the head of the trade mission in Austria, committed suicide immediately after the revolution.

The site of the execution of the President of the Socialist Republic of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, and his wife Elena is now shown to tourists.

Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-1989) is a prominent statesman and political figure in Romania. General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party since 1965, President of the Socialist Republic of Romania since 1974, Chairman of the State Council of the Socialist Republic of Romania since 1967. But such high positions did not save the leader of the Romanian people. On December 25, 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu was executed. His wife Elena Ceausescu (1919-1989) was shot along with him. But why did the couple suffer such a severe punishment? To answer this question, you must first familiarize yourself with the biography of the Romanian leader and trace his fateful path to the fatal end.

Brief biography of Nicolae Ceausescu

The future outstanding personality was born on January 26, 1918 in the south of Romania in the village of Scornicesti into a peasant family. Nicolae was the third of ten children. He received his primary education, completing 5 classes at a rural school. As a teenager, he moved to Budapest, where he became an apprentice to shoemaker Alexander Sandulescu. He was a member of the Romanian Communist Party, which was illegal. And it so happened that Ceausescu, at a very young age, found himself in the thick of the revolutionary struggle.

The young man began to actively engage in communist propaganda and in 1933 was first arrested by the police. Then he was arrested many times and even sent to hard labor prison for 2 years. But the arbitrariness of the authorities did not break Nikolai. He continued his propaganda activities, and in prison he met authoritative Romanian communists. It was thanks to these connections that he subsequently occupied the highest government positions.

In 1936, the young man, who turned 18, became a member of the Communist Party. At this time he was already well known to both the Romanian communists and the secret police. That same year, Nicolae was imprisoned for 3.5 years for communist and anti-fascist agitation. The young communist was released from prison in 1939 and soon met the same young communist Elena Petrescu. From this meeting their love affair began, and they formalized their marriage in 1946.

In 1940, Ceausescu was arrested again. He spent almost the entire war in various camps and prisons, which further strengthened his authority among party members. At the end of August 1944, the dictatorial regime of Ion Antonescu fell. People oriented towards an alliance with the USSR came to power. The Communist Party of Romania emerged from underground, and from that moment the rapid career of the young communist Nicolae Ceausescu began.

The most authoritative Romanian communist, Gheorghiu-Dej, took custody of him. From 1948 to 1965, he led the state and needed young, energetic people devoted to the communist idea. In 1948, Nicolae took the post of Minister of Agriculture, then the post of Deputy Minister of the Armed Forces. In 1955, Ceausescu was brought into the Politburo, where he began to oversee party personnel and the work of the intelligence services. He received the rank of lieutenant general, although he did not serve a single day in the army.

Gheorghiu-Dej died on March 19, 1965 from cancer. Immediately after the death of the leader, a struggle for power began between his closest associates. These were serious and authoritative people, and the rise to power of one of them meant the fall of the others. Therefore, they decided to elect a compromise figure as the General Secretary of the party. She turned out to be 47-year-old Nicolae Ceausescu. He was unanimously elected to the highest party post.

But as often happens, the figure that suited everyone quickly took all the real power into his hands. In 1967, the party leader took the post of Chairman of the State Council of the Socialist Republic of Romania and concentrated party and state power in his hands.

The last step towards dictatorship was changes to the constitution made on March 28, 1974. According to them, all executive power from the State Council, which was a collegial body, passed to the president. The State Council was assigned only additional functions under the head of state. The President was to be elected by the Grand National Assembly (Parliament) for a period of 5 years. Nicolae Ceausescu was first elected president on March 29, 1974 and was subsequently re-elected as the only candidate, meaning he effectively became the head of Romania for life.

Nicolae Ceausescu - President of Romania

This is how a man with a 5th grade education ended up being the sole ruler of an entire state. He began to lead in accordance with his education and worldview. He placed his closest relatives in key positions, and his wife became her husband’s main adviser on all domestic and foreign political issues. A kind of family contract was formed, concentrating all the power in the country in its hands.

It must be said that Nicolae Ceausescu made several fateful political decisions. In 1968, he supported the Prague Spring and condemned the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. In 1973, he established diplomatic relations with Augusto Pinochet, under whose leadership a military coup was carried out in Chile. In 1979, he condemned the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. In addition, he prohibited the deployment of Soviet troops on Romanian territory.

The Romanian dictator also repeatedly declared his country’s historical rights to Moldova, the Odessa and Chernivtsi regions of the Ukrainian SSR, which were part of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Soviet troops occupied these lands in 1940. Ceausescu actively developed relations with Western Europe, trying to present himself as a communist reformer. In 1984, Romania refused to boycott the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. And when Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, Ceausescu sharply criticized his perestroika.

In domestic politics, the 70s were marked by economic growth. This was largely facilitated by loans taken from Western countries. The national debt reached $22 billion. Romania was supposed to pay it off by the mid-90s. But Ceausescu decided to start paying it in 1980. After this, severe measures were taken throughout the country. Products began to be issued on ration cards, and electricity consumption was sharply limited. energy, prohibited the use of vacuum cleaners, and in winter, refrigerators. The economy was transferred to export to the detriment of domestic consumption.

The country fell into a regime of severe austerity. This gave results. In April 1989, Romania paid off its external debt at the expense of the complete impoverishment of the people. But the economy could not withstand such a load and was on the verge of collapse. Nicolae announced that he would no longer take out any loans, which disappointed his Western partners, and relations with them cooled.

The Romanian leader was no longer invited to the EEC countries, and at the same time there was a final break with the USSR. Romania lost favorable foreign markets. The only allies left are Albania, North Korea, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Libya, and Iraq. But these were not the countries with which friendship would ensure prosperity for the Romanian people. In the impoverished country, tensions have reached their peak.

Execution of Nicolae Ceausescu

Quite often, the stunning state foundations of a revolution begin with minor events, to which no one at first attaches serious importance. Romania was no exception in this matter. In it, on the western tip of the country, is the city of Timisoara with a population of more than 300 thousand people. Pastor Laszlo Tekesa, a Hungarian by nationality, lived there.

And this pastor was accused of anti-state activities and evicted from his own home. Such arbitrariness outraged the Hungarian parishioners, and on December 16, 1989, protests began in the city. They grew into rallies with anti-government slogans. Local law enforcement agencies tried to counteract the protesters, but this resulted in nationwide outrage with pogroms and robberies. Thus, it all started trivially, and culminated in the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife.

Early in the morning of December 17, troops under the command of General Victor Stanculescu entered the city. But this did not stop the rebels, and then fire was opened on them. As a result of this, according to unverified data, about 40 people died. Their corpses were allegedly sent to Bucharest and cremated there. There was a rumor among the people that Nicolae Ceausescu personally ordered the shooting at people. The leader of Romania himself flew to Iran on December 18 for negotiations on economic cooperation. But already on December 20, he returned back, as unrest began in other Romanian cities.

At noon on December 21, near the building of the Central Committee of the party, the authorities organized a mass rally, which was supposed to demonstrate support for the existing regime and condemn the unrest in Timisoara. But as soon as Ceausescu stepped out onto the balcony and began to speak, there were shouts and insults directed at the dictator. Someone threw firecrackers and they exploded. The President had no choice but to leave the balcony. After this, unrest began in Bucharest.

The next day, the body of Minister of War Vasile Mil was discovered. A rumor immediately spread that he was killed on the orders of Nicolae Ceausescu, since the minister refused to give the order to shoot at the protesters. After this, the army went over to the side of the rebels. The television center in Bucharest was occupied and the fall of the dictatorial regime was announced.

Nicolae Ceausescu with his wife Elena

On the same day, December 22, at noon, the dictator, along with his wife, two party colleagues and two security guards, boarded a helicopter standing on the roof of the Central Committee building. The car took off, but no one knew where to run from Bucharest. We flew to the presidential residence in Snagov, but it was not safe there. His comrades remained, and the dictator with his wife and guards took to the air again. The pilot dropped the passengers off in a field near the town of Targovishte and hurriedly flew away.

Having stopped a passing car, the dictatorial couple and their guards reached the city. But the residents were extremely hostile and, recognizing Ceausescu, began throwing stones at him. The guards ran away, leaving Nikolai and Elena alone. Soon the couple was arrested by the military. They took the detainees to the military police station and placed them in a cell. The dethroned President of Romania and his wife spent 2 days there.

On the morning of December 25, Nicolae and Elena were put into an armored personnel carrier and taken to the military district headquarters in Targovishte. There they were taken into a classroom and announced that a military tribunal trial would now take place in this room. It was created by order of the new Minister of War Victor Stanculescu. He, by the way, was considered a friend of the president, but, as they say, today's friends are tomorrow's enemies.

The tribunal consisted of 7 people: the chairman - Colonel of Justice Jiku Popa, tribunal member Ioan Nistor, 3 people's assessors, a secretary and a state prosecutor - military prosecutor Dan Voina. The accused were provided with 2 defense attorneys. The entire trial took no more than an hour and a half. The presidential couple was accused of destroying the national economy, destroying government structures, genocide and armed rebellion against the people. The verdict was unequivocal - the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.

At first, the unhappy and confused 70-year-olds didn’t even understand where they were and what was happening. But when they realized that this was a trial, they declared it illegal and categorically refused to answer any questions. But this did not bother the members of the tribunal. The verdict was read out and the defendants were given 10 days to appeal. However, out of fear that Ceausescu’s supporters would be able to free the condemned, they decided to shoot them immediately.

At approximately 16:00 in the afternoon, the Romanian dictator and his wife were taken out into the courtyard. They behaved with dignity and calm. Elena even asked one of the soldiers: “Son, why are you shooting us, after all, I was your mother?” To which the soldier replied: “What kind of mother are you, since you killed our mothers.” The dictator himself did not communicate with anyone. He sang “The Internationale” as he walked to the place of execution.

The wall near which Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were shot

In total, 1 officer and 3 soldiers took part in the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. They were personally chosen by General Stanculescu. The condemned were placed against the wall, behind which there was a soldier's restroom, and they opened fire. A tarpaulin was thrown over the corpses while they were waiting for the car. The bodies were taken to the Steaua stadium. There they lay for a day, and then were secretly interred in a military cemetery in Bucharest. Moreover, the husband and wife were buried not in the same grave, but at a distance of 50 meters from each other. In 2010, the ashes of the couple were placed in one grave and a red granite monument was erected.

Today, 50% of Romanians believe that the Romanian dictator was a worthy president of his country. And 82% are of the opinion that the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife had nothing to do with justice. It was a political assassination organized by Victor Stanculescu and a group of generals.

It is now reliably known that the leader of the Romanian people did not give the order to shoot at people. In Timisoara and other cities of Romania, Stanculescu was in charge, and it was he who gave orders for the use of weapons. In total, about a thousand people died in 2 days of the Romanian Revolution, and it itself became a catalyst, provoking revolutions in other countries of Eastern Europe.

At the turn of the 1980s - 1990s, a series of so-called “velvet revolutions” swept across Eastern Europe, during which former socialist leaders of countries transferred power to the opposition.

Events in Romania fall out of this series. Overthrow of the regime Nicolae Ceausescu It turned out bloody and ended with the execution of the former leader of the country.

Immediately after the incident in December 1989, the following interpretation of events was generally accepted: “the angry people dealt with the bloody dictator who gave the order to shoot the hungry workers.”

But the further we go, the more questions the researchers have. Were the events in Romania spontaneous, or were they organized by professionals? Were the main culprits of the bloodshed really representatives of the Romanian secret services, loyal to Ceausescu? Why did the revolutionaries so hastily execute the captured head of state?

Out of the Shadows

47-year-old Nicolae Ceausescu came to the post of leader of the Romanian Workers' Party in 1965, after the death of Gheorghe Geogiu-Deja, who held this position for 17 years. Like Leonid Brezhnev in the USSR, Nicolae Ceausescu was viewed by more influential party members as a temporary figure.

And, as in the case of Brezhnev, Ceausescu’s party comrades underestimated him. He very quickly gained popularity among the people, criticizing and exposing previous methods of leadership.

To improve the image and emphasize the difference in the policies of the new leadership, Ceausescu even achieved the renaming of the country - the Romanian People's Republic (PRR) was renamed the Socialist Republic of Romania.

Two years later, Nicolae Ceausescu took the post of Chairman of the State Council, concentrating the highest state and party power in his hands.

Under Ceausescu, Romania began to pursue a fairly independent foreign policy, actively interacting with Western countries. Ceausescu did not support the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, and refused to support the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in 1979. And in 1984, when the USSR boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Romanian athletes participated in the Games in the USA.

In 1974, by amending the Constitution of Romania, Ceausescu became the country's president, a post he held until his death.

Ceausescu receives the presidential scepter from the hands of the President of the Grand National Assembly, Stefan Wojtek (1974). Photo: Fototeca online a comunismului românesc

Liberal from the socialist camp

The first years of Ceausescu's reign were marked by liberal reforms that significantly softened attitudes towards dissidents. Entry and exit from the country was relatively free, the Romanian leadership did not create obstacles to the emigration of citizens, and foreign press was freely sold in the country.

Western countries actively collaborated with Ceausescu, who positioned himself as a communist reformer, and provided him with multimillion-dollar loans. Under Ceausescu, the country's industry began to actively develop, since the leader saw the future of the state in moving away from the predominance of the agricultural sector.

Ceausescu actively collaborated with the IMF and the World Bank, receiving loans of more than $22 billion.

Thanks to this, the country's economy experienced rapid growth - the volume of industrial production in Romania in 1974 was 100 times higher than in 1944.

President against debts

Soon, however, problems began. Romania was struck by a crisis of overproduction - Romanian industrial goods did not find sufficient sales in the CMEA countries, and they turned out to be completely uncompetitive in Western markets.

Ceausescu, the first of the socialist leaders to feel the charm of billions of dollars in Western loans, was the first to feel their suffocating effect. He did not want to put up with the prospect of debt bondage, and in 1983, with the help of a referendum, he achieved a ban on further foreign borrowing.

The West offered the leader of Romania an elegant way out - writing off all debts and providing new ones in exchange for withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact and CMEA and ending cooperation with the USSR.

Ceausescu flatly refused. The point here was not only and not so much about loyalty to the communist ideology, but about the fact that, freed from a certain dependence on the USSR, Romania would inevitably become dependent on the West. Ceausescu was quite happy with his isolated position in the socialist camp.

To ensure the payment of debts, austerity measures were introduced in the country - food on cards, gasoline on coupons, electricity on the hour. The standard of living of Romanians began to fall, and with it the popularity of Ceausescu.

At the same time, in political life there is little left of the former liberal freedoms. A rigid authoritarian system was established in the country, and a Ceausescu personality cult was formed. Leading government positions were occupied by people close to the president, sometimes just members of his family. The manifestation of discontent in society was suppressed by the Securitate security police.

Ceausescu went ahead, but by April 1989 he achieved his goal - the country paid off its external debts. However, the situation in the economy by that time was extremely difficult.

Nicolae Ceausescu at Brezhnev's funeral. Photo: RIA Novosti / Alexander Makarov

Fight on two fronts

What was even worse was that Ceausescu had no one to rely on in foreign policy. The West, which did not forgive Ceausescu for refusing his proposals and adherence to principles regarding the issue of debt repayment, transferred the Romanian leader to the category of “bad guys.”

And perestroika was raging in the Soviet Union, and Mikhail Gorbachev strongly advised the head of Romania to follow the same course. However, Ceausescu was not inspired by the course. The politician, who was not afraid of Brezhnev’s anger in 1968 and 1979, was not afraid of Gorbachev’s discontent.

Moreover, in August 1989, when the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, deprived of the support of the USSR, were bursting at the seams, Nicolae Ceausescu, at the celebration of the 45th anniversary of the liberation of Romania from fascism, said: “The Danube would sooner flow backward than perestroika would take place in Romania.”

The last meeting between Gorbachev and Ceausescu took place in Moscow on December 6, 1989, and, according to members of the Romanian delegation, the Soviet leader directly said that failure to reform would result in “consequences.”

Ceausescu became a bone in the throat for both the West, Gorbachev, and the opposition in Romania itself. In the Soviet press they began to call him a “Stalinist,” and in the West, having forgotten previous articles about the “good guy from Romania,” they wrote about the “monstrous crimes of the Romanian dictator.”

Nicolae Ceausescu found himself in a “one against all” situation. At the same time, he seemed to have the situation in the country under control.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Nicolae Ceausescu with their spouses. Photo: RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin

Riot in Timisoara

On December 16, 1989, unrest began in Timisoara, caused by the removal from his post and eviction from his home dissident pastor László Tökes, a Hungarian by nationality, an anti-communist and one of the leaders of the separatist movement, who advocated “full ethnic autonomy” for several regions with a significant proportion of the Hungarian population.

Separatist slogans very quickly gave way to anti-communist ones, and pogroms of local government bodies began.

It should be noted that ordinary citizens, dissatisfied with the decline in living standards, also took part in the riots. The harsh suppression of unrest caused outrage throughout the country.

On the night of December 16-17, the riots were suppressed. To this day, the exact number of victims of the clashes in Timisoara is unknown. More or less objective data indicate several dozen people, but rumors spread throughout the country, which were immediately picked up by foreign media, that several hundred or even several thousand people were killed in the city. Gradually, the number of those killed, which appeared in rumors, reached 60 thousand people. Much later it became known that the total number of victims of the Romanian revolution, not only in Timisoara, but throughout the country, during the entire crisis on both sides was about 1,100 killed and 1,400 wounded, so the story about “60 thousand killed” appeared solely to escalate passions and creating more outrage in society.

Mass protests in Bucharest (1989). Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org /

The dictator's last speech

It was not possible to completely calm the situation in Timisoara. On December 20, Ceausescu spoke on national television. The speech of the Romanian leader a quarter of a century later looks surprisingly logical and reasonable. Ceausescu said that the clashes in Timisoara were initiated by "groups of hooligans who provoked a series of incidents in Timisoara, opposing a legitimate judicial decision", that the unrest was supported by the intelligence services of other countries, that the purpose of these actions was to "undermine the independence, integrity and sovereignty and return the country to the times foreign domination, to eliminate socialist gains."

Isn’t it true that Ceausescu described a scenario known in the modern world as a “color revolution”? This, of course, did not negate the fact that not only extremists took part in the riots, but also citizens simply exhausted by the difficult economic situation, as always happens in such cases.

Ceausescu also acted quite traditionally from the current point of view. On December 21, 1989, a rally of 100,000 supporters of the president was gathered in Bucharest. But they gathered people there not according to the call of their hearts, but according to instructions. Therefore, groups of oppositionists who penetrated the crowd, chanting and exploding firecrackers, managed to cause chaos and confusion and disrupt Ceausescu’s speech from the balcony of the presidential palace. The story about groups of oppositionists in the crowd is not fabrications of Ceausescu supporters, but revelations Casimir Ionescu, one of the leaders who came to power after the overthrow of the President of the National Salvation Front.

Escape

Nicolae Ceausescu was confused. He is unaccustomed to speaking in front of masses of people who are not 100% loyal. His departure from the balcony of the presidential palace was tantamount to defeat.

Within hours, chaos reigned in Bucharest. The sounds of shooting were heard, and it was unclear who was shooting at whom. On the morning of December 22, the death became known Romanian Defense Minister Vasile Mil. Although there was no evidence of this, the opposition stated that the minister was killed for refusing to shoot at the people. After this, a massive transition of military units to the side of the opposition began. The rebels seized the television center and announced the fall of the Ceausescu regime.

Fighting begins in the city between military units and Securitate units. But by this time, Ceausescu is no longer in Bucharest - he flies away in a helicopter from the roof of the building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania. They flee with him wife Elena, who was a prominent functionary of the regime, two associates - ex-Prime Minister Manya Menscu And ex-Minister of Labor Emil Bobou, as well as two Securitate employees.

Manescu and Boba remain at the presidential dacha on Lake Snagov, where the helicopter made an intermediate landing. Ceausescu is trying to contact the commanders of the military districts loyal to him. Finally, he receives similar confirmation from the city of Piesti. But by this time new Minister of Defense Victor Stanculescu he gives the order to shoot down the helicopter with the president. The pilot, warned about this, lands the car in a field near the city of Targovishte and announces that he is going over to the side of the rebels.

Ceausescu with his wife and guards are trying to get to Piesti by car, but in Targovishte itself they fall into the hands of the military.

Fighting on the streets of Bucharest, December 1989. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Denoel Paris and other photographers

Flash Tribunal

Nicholas and Elena Ceausescu are kept in the military prison of the Targovishte garrison for two days. And then, right there, in Targovishte, a military tribunal is being organized to try the Ceausescu couple.

The piquancy of the situation lies in the fact that the main initiator of the tribunal is the Minister of Defense Stanculescu - the man who commanded the suppression of the protests in Timisoara, from which the revolution in Romania began. Stanculescu will stand trial for this in 2008.

And on December 25, 1989, the minister rushed to condemn the ousted president. The state prosecutor at the trial was Major General Georgica Popa, deputy chairman of the military tribunal for Bucharest, who was specially summoned to Targovishte and learned about who he was to accuse only before the trial.

Nicholas and Elena Ceausescu were accused of destroying the national economy, armed action against the people and the state, destruction of state institutions and genocide.

The two-hour process was more like a squabble. Ceausescu, it seems, understood how it would end, and did not so much answer the investigator’s questions as sum up his own life. He said that he fed the Romanians, provided them with housing and work, and made the Socialist Republic of Romania the envy of the whole world. It is unlikely that Ceausescu was lying; rather, this is how he saw the results of his reign.

What Ceausescu was right about and what Ceausescu was wrong about, a two-hour process could not have established purely physically. But he had no such goal. Having performed a formal ritual, the tribunal announced that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were found guilty on all counts and sentenced to capital punishment - death by firing squad with confiscation of all property belonging to them.

Operation "Liquidation"

According to the verdict, the Ceausescu spouses had 10 days to appeal. However, it was announced that it would be carried out on the same day, so that the ousted president would not be recaptured by his supporters.

At four o'clock in the afternoon on December 25, Nicholas and Elena Ceausescu were taken into the courtyard of the barracks, placed against the wall of the soldiers' latrine and shot.

Three days later, the execution of the ousted president and his wife was shown on Romanian television. The bodies of those executed were interred at the Bucharest Genca cemetery.

The politician, who at the end of his life began to interfere with too many people, is gone. Over time, the events of December 1989 in Romania are increasingly being called not a popular uprising, but a well-thought-out and organized operation to change the regime and physically eliminate the unwanted leader.

And one last thing. Among the accusations made against Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu was the opening of secret accounts in foreign banks. Allegedly, the Ceausescu spouses intended to flee abroad, where the money stolen from the Romanian people was supposed to ensure a comfortable life. The amounts ranged from 400 million to more than $1 billion. After 20 years of searching head of the special commission of the Romanian parliament Sabin Cutas stated: “After hearing numerous witnesses who had information on this matter, including the chairman of the board of the central bank, as well as other bankers and journalists, we came to the conclusion that Nicolae Ceausescu did not have bank accounts abroad and never transferred public finances abroad.” .