Nicolae Ceaușescu

In 1966, in an attempt to boost the country's population, Ceaușescu made abortion illegal and introduced Decree 770 in order to reverse the Romanian population's low birth and fertility rates. Mothers of at least five children were entitled to receive significant benefits, while mothers of at least ten children were declared "heroine mothers" by the Romanian state. Few women ever sought to receive this status.

The government targeted rising divorce rates, and made divorce more difficult—it was decreed that marriages could only be dissolved in exceptional cases. By the late 1960s, the population began to swell. In turn, a new problem was created, child abandonment, which swelled the orphanage population (see Cighid). Many of the children in these orphanages were rejected due to mental and physical deficiencies.

Measures to encourage reproduction included financial motivations for families who bore children, guaranteed maternity leave, and childcare support for mothers who returned to work, work protection for women, and extensive access to medical control in all stages of pregnancy, as well as after it. Medical control was seen as one of the most productive effects of the law, since all women who became pregnant were under the care of a qualified medical practitioner, even in rural areas. In some cases, if a woman was unable to visit a medical office, a doctor would visit her home.[23]

Ceaușescu's speech of 21 August 1968 represented the apogee of Ceaușescu's rule.[24] It marked the highest point in Ceaușescu's popularity, when he openly condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Ceaușescu meeting with North Korean President Kim Il-sung in 1971

Ceaușescu visited China, North Korea, Mongolia and North Vietnam in 1971. He took great interest in the idea of total national transformation as embodied in the programmes of North Korea's Juche and China's Cultural Revolution. He was also inspired by the personality cults of North Korea's Kim Il-sung and China's Mao Zedong. Journalist Edward Behr claimed that Ceaușescu admired both Mao and Kim as leaders who not only totally dominated their nations, but had also used totalitarian methods coupled with significant ultra-nationalism mixed in with communism in order to transform both China and North Korea into major world powers.[25] Furthermore, that Kim and even more so Mao had broken free of Soviet control were additional sources of admiration for Ceaușescu. According to British journalist Edward Behr, Elena Ceaușescu allegedly bonded with Mao's wife, Jiang Qing.[25] Behr wrote that the possibility that what Ceaușescu had seen in both China and North Korea were "vast Potemkin villages for the hoodwinking of gullible foreign guests" was something that never seemed to have crossed his mind.[25] Shortly after returning home, he began to emulate North Korea's system. North Korean books on Juche were translated into Romanian and widely distributed inside the country.[26]

On 6 July 1971, he delivered a speech before the Executive Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. This quasi-Maoist speech, which came to be known as the July Theses, contained seventeen proposals. Among these were: continuous growth in the "leading role" of the Party; improvement of Party education and of mass political action; youth participation on large construction projects as part of their "patriotic work"; an intensification of political-ideological education in schools and universities, as well as in children's, youth and student organizations; and an expansion of political propaganda, orienting radio and television shows to this end, as well as publishing houses, theatres and cinemas, opera, ballet, artists' unions, promoting a "militant, revolutionary" character in artistic productions. The liberalization of 1965 was condemned and an index of banned books and authors was re-established.

The Theses heralded the beginning of a "mini cultural revolution" in Romania, launching a Neo-Stalinist offensive against cultural autonomy, reaffirming an ideological basis for literature that, in theory, the Party had hardly abandoned. Although presented in terms of "Socialist Humanism", the Theses in fact marked a return to the strict guidelines of Socialist Realism and attacks on non-compliant intellectuals. Strict ideological conformity in the humanities and social sciences was demanded. Competence and aesthetics were to be replaced by ideology; professionals were to be replaced by agitators; and culture was once again to become an instrument for political-ideological propaganda and hardline measures. In a 1972 speech, Ceaușescu stated he wanted "a certain blending of party and state activities... in the long run we shall witness an ever closer blending of the activities of the party, state and other social bodies". In practice, a number of joint party-state organizations were founded such as the Council for Socialist Education and Culture, which had no precise counterpart in any of the other communist states of Eastern Europe, and the Romanian Communist Party was embedded into the daily life of the nation in a way that it never had been before. In 1974, the party programme of the Romanian Communist Party announced that structural changes in society were insufficient to create a full socialist consciousness in the people, and that a full socialist consciousness could only come about if the entire population was made aware of socialist values that guided society. The Communist Party was to be the agency that would so "enlighten" the population and in the words of the British historian Richard Crampton "...the party would merge state and society, the individual and the collective, and would promote 'the ever more organic participation of party members in the entire social life'".[27]

Standard as President of Romania

In 1974, Ceaușescu converted his post of president of the State Council to a full-fledged executive presidency. He was first elected to this post in 1974, and would be reelected every five years until 1989.

Although Ceaușescu had been nominal head of state since 1967, he had merely been first among equals on the State Council, deriving his real power from his status as party leader. The new post, however, made him the nation's top decision-maker both in name and in fact. He was empowered to carry out those functions of the State Council that did not require plenums. He also appointed and dismissed the president of the Supreme Court and the prosecutor general whenever the legislature was not in session. In practice, from 1974 onward Ceaușescu frequently ruled by decree.[28] Over time, he usurped many powers and functions that nominally were vested in the State Council as a whole.[29]

Effectively, Ceaușescu now held all governing power in the nation; virtually all party and state institutions were subordinated to his will. The principles of democratic centralism, combined with the legislature's infrequent sessions (it sat in full session only twice a year) meant that for all intents and purposes, his decisions had the force of law.

Starting with the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo against the West, a period of prolonged high oil prices set in that characterised the rest of the 1970s. Romania as a major oil equipment producer greatly benefited from the high oil prices of the 1970s, which led Ceaușescu to embark on an ambitious plan to invest heavily in oil-refining plants. Ceaușescu's plan was to make Romania into Europe's number one oil refiner not only of its own oil, but also of oil from Middle Eastern states like Iraq and Iran, and then to sell all of the refined oil at a profit on the Rotterdam spot market.[30] As Romania lacked the money to build the necessary oil refining plants and Ceaușescu chose to spend the windfall from the high oil prices on aid to the Third World in an attempt to buy Romania international influence, Ceaușescu borrowed heavily from Western banks on the assumption that when the loans came due, the profits from the sales of the refined oil would be more than enough to pay off the loans.[30] A major problem with Ceaușescu's oil-refining plan which led to Romania taking enormous loans was the low productivity of Romanian workers, which meant that the oil-refining plants were finished years behind schedule. The 1977 earthquake which destroyed much of Bucharest also led to delays in the oil plan.[30] By the time the oil refining plants were finished in the early 1980s, a slump in oil prices had set in, leading to major financial problems for Romania.[30]

Ceaușescu in a meeting with Robert Mugabe in 1976

In August 1977 over 30,000 miners went on strike in the Jiu River valley complaining of low pay and poor working conditions.[14] The Jiu valley miners' strike was the most significant expression of opposition to Ceaușescu's rule prior to the late 1980s. The striking miners were inspired by similar strikes along Poland's Baltic coast in December 1970, and just as in Poland in 1970, the striking Romanian miners demanded face-to-face negotiations with their nation's leader.[14] When Ceaușescu appeared before the miners on the third day of the strike, he was greeted (in the words of the British historian Richard Crampton) "... once again à la polonaise, with cries of 'Down with the Red Bourgeoisie!'".[14] Ceaușescu ultimately negotiated a compromise solution to the strike.[14] In the years after the strike, a number of its leaders died of accidents and "premature disease". Rumors emerged that Securitate had doctors give the strike leaders 5-minute chest X-rays to ensure the development of cancer.[14]

He continued to follow an independent policy in foreign relations—for example, in 1984, Romania was one of few communist states (notably including the People's Republic of China and Yugoslavia) to take part in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, despite a Soviet-led boycott.

Ceaușescu with Jimmy Carter during a visit in Washington, D.C. in 1978

Also, the Socialist Republic of Romania was the first of the Eastern bloc nations to have official relations with the Western bloc and the European Community: an agreement including Romania in the Community's Generalised System of Preferences was signed in 1974 and an Agreement on Industrial Products was signed in 1980. On 4 April 1975, Ceaușescu visited Japan and met with Emperor Hirohito. In June 1978, Ceaușescu made a state visit to the UK where a £200m licensing agreement was signed between the Romanian government and British Aerospace for the production of more than eighty BAC One-Eleven aircraft. The deal was said at the time to be the biggest between two countries involving a civil aircraft.[31] This was the first state visit by a Communist head of state to the UK, and Ceaușescu was given a knighthood by the Queen, which was revoked on the day before his death in 1989.[32][33] Similarly, in 1983, Vice President of the United States George H. W. Bush and in 1985 United States Secretary of State George Shultz also praised the Romanian dictator.[34]

In 1978, Ion Mihai Pacepa, a senior member of the Romanian political police (Securitate, State Security), defected to the United States. A two-star general, he was the highest ranking defector from the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. His defection was a powerful blow against the administration, forcing Ceaușescu to overhaul the architecture of the Security. Pacepa's 1986 book, Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief (ISBN 0-89526-570-2), claims to expose details of Ceaușescu's government activities, such as massive spying on American industry and elaborate efforts to rally Western political support.

By the 1970s, the Ceaușescus had developed a personality cult

Ceaușescu's political independence from the Soviet Union and his protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 drew the interest of Western powers, whose governments briefly believed that he was an anti-Soviet maverick and hoped to create a schism in the Warsaw Pact by funding him. Ceaușescu did not realise that the funding was not always favorable. Ceaușescu was able to borrow heavily (more than $13 billion) from the West to finance economic development programs, but these loans ultimately devastated the country's finances. He also secured a deal for cheap oil from Iran, but that deal fell through after the Shah was overthrown.

In an attempt to correct this, Ceaușescu decided to repay Romania's foreign debts. He organised the 1986 military referendum and managed to change the constitution, adding a clause that barred Romania from taking foreign loans in the future. According to official results, the referendum yielded a nearly unanimous "yes" vote.[35]

Romania's record—having all of its debts to commercial banks paid off in full—has not been matched by any other heavily-indebted country in the world.[36] The policy to repay—and, in multiple cases, prepay—Romania's external debt became the dominant policy in the late 1980s. The result was economic stagnation throughout the 1980s and—towards the end of the decade—the conditions were created for an economic crisis. The country's industrial capacity was eroded as equipment grew obsolete, energy intensity increased and the standard of living deteriorated significantly. Draconian restrictions were imposed on the household energy use to ensure an adequate supply for the industry. Convertible currency exports were promoted at all costs and imports were severely compressed. In 1988, real GDP contracted by 0.5%, mostly due to a decline in industrial output caused by significantly increased material costs. Despite the 1988 decline, the net foreign balance reached its decade peak (9.5% of GDP). In 1989, GDP slumped by a further 5.8% due to growing shortages and the increasingly obsolete capital stock. By March 1989, virtually all of the external debt had been repaid. The entire medium- and long-term external debt was repaid. The lingering amount, totalling less than 1 million, consisted of short-term credits (mainly short-term export credits granted by Romania). A 1989 decree legally prohibited Romanian entities from contracting external debt.[37] The CIA World Factbook edition of 1990 listed Romania's external debt as "none" as of mid-1989.[38]

• 1995 was the last year in which Romania's economy was dominated by the state. From 1996 onwards, the private sector would account for most of Romania's GDP.[39]
• Data for 1975, 1980 and 1982–1988 taken from the Statistical Abstract of the United States.[40]
• Data for 1989–1995 provided by the OECD.[41]
• Data for 1981 and 1985 provided by the World Book Year Book.[42]
• By April 1989, with its debt virtually zero, Romania was a net external creditor. Foreign borrowing was resumed after December 1989.[43] In order to maintain net creditor status, Romania had to keep its external debt under $2.5 billion, the low estimate of the amount it was owed by oil producers and other LDCs. This was first achieved in 1988[44] and continued through the early 1990s.[45]

A tentative coup d'état planned in October 1984 failed when the military unit assigned to carry out the plan was sent to harvest maize instead.[46]

Communist leaders Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania (left) and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union in 1985

Romanian workers began to mobilize against the economic policies of Ceaușescu. Spontaneous labor conflicts, limited in intensity, took place in major industrial centers such as Cluj-Napoca (November 1986) and the Nicolina platform in Iași (February 1987), culminating in a massive strike in Brașov. The draconian measures taken by Ceaușescu involved reducing energy and food consumption, as well as lowering workers' incomes, leading to what political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu called "generalized dissatisfaction".[47]

Over 20,000 workers and a number of townspeople marched against economic policies in Socialist Romania and Nicolae Ceaușescu's policies of rationing of basic foodstuff, rationing electricity and centralized heating.

The first protests began practically on November 14, 1987, at the 440 "Molds" Section of the Red Flag truck company. Initially, the protests were for basic needs: "We want food and heating!", "We want our money!", "We want food for the children!", "We want light and heat!" and "We want bread without a card!". Next to the County Hospital, they sang the anthem of the revolution of 1848, "Deșteaptă-te, române!". Upon arriving in the city center, thousands of workers from the Tractorul Brașov and Hidromecanica factories, pupils, students, and others joined the demonstration. From this moment on, the protest became political. Participants later claimed to have chanted slogans such as "Down Ceaușescu!", "Down with communism!", "Down the dictatorship!" or "Down with the tyrant!". During the march, members of the Securitate disguised as workers infiltrated among the demonstrators, or remained on the sidelines as spectators, photographing or even filming.[48]

By dusk, Securitate forces and the military surrounded the city center and disbanded the revolt by force. Some 300 protesters were arrested and in order to hide the idea that the Brașov uprising had been a political one, the protesters were tried for disturbing the public peace and outrage against morals.

Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1986

Those under investigation were beaten and tortured, 61 of them receiving sentences ranging from 6 months to 3 years in prison, without deprivation of liberty, with execution at work in various enterprises in the country, although previously, in many party meetings, the death penalty was even required for the participants in the uprising, to set an example. In addition, at the trial it was decided to deport them and to fix the compulsory residence in other cities, although the decisions on such administrative measures had been repealed as early as the late 50s. The whole process took only an hour and a half.[48]

A few days after the workers' revolt, Cătălin Bia, a student at the Faculty of Forestry, sat in front of the canteen with a placard that read: "The arrested workers must not die". He was joined by colleagues Lucian Silaghi and Horia Serban. The three were arrested immediately. Subsequently, graffiti of solidarity with the workers' revolt appeared on the student campus, and some students distributed manifestos. The security team conducted a total of seven arrests. Those arrested were investigated then expelled from the Faculty; returned to the localities from whence they came and placed under strict supervision along with their families.[48]

During the Ceaușescu regime, the Romani were largely neglected. This can be seen, perhaps most blatantly, with a motion from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers Party, which largely laid the foundation for the Ceaușescu regime's policies regarding the rights of ethnic minorities. The motion entirely ignored the Romani.[49]

Under the regime, the Romani were excluded from the list of "co-inhabiting nationalities" which was drafted by it, and as a result, they lacked any representation as an ethnic group in the government. This was still the case even after representation increased for other minorities such as Hungarians and Germans. Ceaușescu largely wished to conjure away the living conditions of the Romani, which were ignored by his predecessors and put in place as early as the regime of Ion Antonescu.[49]

The result of the neglect of the Romani, who had long been a highly vulnerable ethnic minority group across Europe, left the majority of the Romani people in Romania in significant poverty and it also left them at risk of becoming victims of hate crimes. Such conditions have lasted into modern-day Romania as demonstrated by the policies of several subsequent presidents.

Demonstrations in the city of Timișoara were triggered by the government-sponsored attempt to evict László Tőkés, an ethnic Hungarian pastor, accused by the government of inciting ethnic hatred. Members of his ethnic Hungarian congregation surrounded his apartment in a show of support.

Romanian students spontaneously joined the demonstration, which soon lost nearly all connection to its initial cause and became a more general anti-government demonstration. Regular military forces, police, and the Securitate fired on demonstrators on 17 December 1989, killing and injuring men, women, and children.

On 18 December 1989, Ceaușescu departed for a state visit to Iran, leaving the duty of crushing the Timișoara revolt to his subordinates and his wife. Upon his return to Romania on the evening of 20 December, the situation became even more tense, and he gave a televised speech from the TV studio inside the Central Committee Building (CC Building), in which he spoke about the events at Timișoara in terms of an "interference of foreign forces in Romania's internal affairs" and an "external aggression on Romania's sovereignty".

The country, which had little to no information of the events transpiring in Timișoara from the national media, learned about the revolt from radio stations (such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe) and by word of mouth. On the next day, 21 December, Ceaușescu staged a mass meeting in Bucharest. Official media presented it as a "spontaneous movement of support for Ceaușescu", emulating the 1968 meeting in which he had spoken against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces.

The mass meeting of 21 December, held in what is now Revolution Square, began like many of Ceaușescu's speeches over the years. He spoke of the achievements of the "Socialist revolution" and Romania's "multi-laterally developed Socialist society". He also blamed the Timișoara riots on "fascist agitators who want to destroy socialism".[53]

However, Ceaușescu had misjudged the crowd's mood. Roughly eight minutes into his speech, several people began jeering and booing, and others began chanting "Timișoara!" He tried to silence them by raising his right hand and calling for the crowd's attention before order was temporarily restored, then proceeded to announce social benefit reforms that included raising the national minimum wage by 200 lei per month to a total of 2,200 per month by 1 January. Images of Ceaușescu's facial expression as the crowd began to boo and heckle him were among the most widely broadcast of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.[13]

Failing to control the crowd, the Ceaușescus finally took cover inside the building that housed the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. The rest of the day saw an open revolt of Bucharest's population, which had assembled in University Square and confronted the police and army at barricades. The rioters, however, were no match for the military apparatus concentrated in Bucharest, which cleared the streets by midnight and arrested hundreds of people in the process.

By the morning of 22 December, the rebellion had already spread to all major cities across the country. The suspicious death of Vasile Milea, Ceaușescu's defence minister, later confirmed as a suicide (he tried to incapacitate himself with a flesh wound but a bullet severed his artery),[54] was announced by the media. Immediately thereafter, Ceaușescu presided over the CPEx (Political Executive Committee) meeting and assumed the leadership of the army. Believing that Milea had been murdered, rank-and-file soldiers switched sides to the revolution almost en masse. The commanders wrote off Ceaușescu as a lost cause and made no effort to keep their men loyal to the government. Ceaușescu made a last desperate attempt to address the crowd gathered in front of the Central Committee building, but the people in the square began throwing stones and other projectiles at him, forcing him to take refuge in the building once more. He, Elena and four others managed to get to the roof and escape by helicopter, only seconds ahead of a group of demonstrators who had followed them there.[13] The Romanian Communist Party disappeared soon afterwards; unlike its kindred parties in the former Soviet bloc, it has never been revived.

During the course of the revolution, the Western press, in an attempt to quell Ceaușescu and support the rebellion, published estimates of the number of people killed by Securitate forces. The count increased rapidly until an estimated 64,000 fatalities were widely reported across front pages.[55] The Hungarian military attaché expressed doubt regarding these figures, pointing out the unfeasible logistics of killing such a large number of people in such a short period of time. After Ceaușescu's death, hospitals across the country reported a death toll of fewer than 1,000, and probably much lower than that.[56]

Ceaușescu's original grave, Ghencea Cemetery, Bucharest (photographed in 2007)

The current resting place of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu at Ghencea Cemetery (photographed in 2018). Note that Elena Ceaușescu's year of birth is incorrectly recorded as 1919; her actual year of birth is 1916.

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital with Emil Bobu and Manea Mănescu and flew by helicopter to Ceaușescu's Snagov residence, from which they fled again, this time to Târgoviște. They abandoned the helicopter near Târgoviște, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's airspace. The Ceaușescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually turned over to the army.

On Christmas Day, 25 December 1989, the Ceaușescus were tried before a court convened in a small room on orders of the National Salvation Front, Romania's provisional government. They faced charges including illegal gathering of wealth and genocide. Ceaușescu repeatedly denied the court's authority to try him, and asserted he was still legally the President of Romania. At the end of the trial, the Ceaușescus were found guilty and sentenced to death. A soldier standing guard in the proceedings was ordered to take the Ceaușescus outside one by one and shoot them, but the Ceaușescus demanded to die together. The soldiers agreed to this and began to tie their hands behind their backs, which the Ceaușescus protested against, but were powerless to prevent.

The Ceaușescus were executed by a gathering of soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergeant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cîrlan,[57] while reportedly hundreds of others also volunteered. Before his sentence was carried out, Nicolae Ceaușescu sang "The Internationale" whilst being led towards the wall. The firing squad began shooting as soon as the two were in their positions up against the wall.

Later that day, the execution was also shown on Romanian television.[58] The hasty show trial and the images of the dead Ceaușescus were videotaped and the footage released in numerous Western countries two days after the execution.

The manner in which the trial was conducted has been criticised. However, Ion Iliescu, Romania's provisional president, said in 2009 that the trial was "quite shameful, but necessary" in order to end the state of near-anarchy that had gripped the country in the three days since the Ceaușescus fled Bucharest.[59] Similarly, Victor Stănculescu, who had been defence minister before going over to the revolution, said, in 2009, that the alternative would have been seeing the Ceaușescus lynched on the streets of Bucharest.[60]

The Ceaușescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on 7 January 1990.[61]

Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were originally buried in simple graves at Ghencea Cemetery, in Bucharest, on opposite sides of a path; their graves were often decorated with flowers and symbols of communist rule. In April 2007, their son, Valentin Ceaușescu, lost an appeal for an investigation into whether the graves were genuine. Upon his death in 1996, the younger son, Nicu, was buried nearby in the same cemetery.[62] According to the Jurnalul Național,[63] requests were made by the Ceaușescus' daughter, Zoia, and by supporters of their political views, to move their remains to mausoleums or to purpose-built churches. These demands were denied by the government.

On 21 July 2010, forensic scientists exhumed the bodies to perform DNA tests to prove conclusively that they were indeed the remains of the Ceaușescus.[62] The body believed to be Elena's had decayed too much to allow for a positive identification, but Nicolae was easily identifiable, wearing the bullet-riddled black winter coat he had been wearing during the execution. DNA tests were able to conclusively prove his identity.[64][65] His family organised a funeral service for the couple,[62] and they were reburied together at Ghencea under a tombstone.[66]

Warsaw Pact leaders in 1987 from left to right: Husák of Czechoslovakia, Zhivkov of Bulgaria, Honecker of East Germany, Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, Ceaușescu, Jaruzelski of Poland and Kádár of Hungary

Ceaușescu's Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that retained diplomatic relations with Israel and did not sever diplomatic relations after Israel's pre-emptive strike against Egypt at the start of the Six-Day War in 1967. Ceaușescu made efforts to act as a mediator between the PLO and Israel.

Similarly, Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country to attend the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which had been boycotted by the Soviets and the rest of their allies in response to the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Ceaușescu's Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country that did not sever diplomatic relations with Chile after Augusto Pinochet's coup.[76]

Nicolae Ceaușescu was a close ally and personal friend of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre. Relations were in fact not just state-to-state, but party-to-party between their respective political machineries, the MPR and the PCR. Many believe that Ceaușescu's death played a role in influencing Mobutu to "democratise" Zaïre in 1990.[77]

Ceaușescu reduced the size of the Romanian People's Army by 5%, for which he organized a mock referendum.[78] In line with his policy of keeping a façade of "popular democracy", he also ordered large rallies for peace to be held.

In August 1976, Nicolae Ceaușescu was the first high-level Romanian visitor to Bessarabia since World War II. In December 1976, at one of his meetings in Bucharest, Ivan Bodiul said that "the good relationship was initiated by Ceaușescu's visit to Soviet Moldova".[79]

Stamp commemorating Ceaușescu's 70th birthday and 55 years of political activity, 1988

Ceaușescu receiving the presidential sceptre, 1974[80]

Propaganda poster, Bucharest 1986)

Ceaușescu created a pervasive personality cult, giving himself such titles as "Conducător" ("Leader") and "Geniul din Carpați" ("The Genius of the Carpathians"), with inspiration from Proletarian Culture (Proletkult). After his election as President of Romania, he even had a "presidential sceptre" created for himself, thus appropriating a royal insignia. This excess prompted painter Salvador Dalí to send a congratulatory telegram to the Romanian president, in which he sarcastically congratulated Ceaușescu on his "introducing the presidential sceptre". The Communist Party daily Scînteia published the message, unaware that it was a work of satire.

The most important day of the year during Ceaușescu's rule was his official birthday, 26 January—a day which saw Romanian media saturated with praise for him. According to historian Victor Sebestyen, it was one of the few days of the year when the average Romanian put on a happy face, since appearing miserable on this day was too risky to contemplate.[13]

To lessen the chance of further treason after Pacepa's defection, Ceaușescu also invested his wife Elena and other members of his family with important positions in the government. This led Romanians to joke that Ceaușescu was creating "socialism in one family", a pun on "socialism in one country".

Not surprisingly, Ceaușescu was greatly concerned about his public image. For years, nearly all official photographs of him showed him in his late 40s. Romanian state television was under strict orders to portray him in the best possible light.[13] Additionally, producers had to take great care to make sure that Ceaușescu's height (he was only 1.68 metres (5 ft 6 in) tall[81]) was never emphasized on screen. Consequences for breaking these rules were severe; one producer showed footage of Ceaușescu blinking and stuttering, and was banned for three months.[13]

As part of a propaganda ploy arranged by the Ceaușescus through the consular cultural attachés of Romanian embassies, they managed to receive orders and titles from numerous states and institutions. France granted Nicolae Ceaușescu the Legion of Honour. In 1978 he became a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the UK,[82] a title of which he was stripped in 1989. Elena Ceaușescu was arranged to be "elected" to membership of a science academy in the U.S.

To execute a massive redevelopment project during the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the government conducted extensive demolition of churches and many other historic structures in Romania. According to Alexandru Budistenu, former chief architect of Bucharest, "The sight of a church bothered Ceaușescu. It didn't matter if they demolished or moved it, as long as it was no longer in sight." Nevertheless, a project organized by Romanian engineer Eugeniu Iordachescu was able to move many historic structures to less-prominent sites and save them.[83]

All titles and decorations were revoked by the provisional government on 26 December 1989.

• Commemorative Medal of the 5th Anniversary of the Republic of Romania
• Commemorative Medal of the 35th Anniversary of the Liberation of Romania
• Hero of Romania, three times (1971, 1978 and 1988)
• Hero of Socialist Labour (Romania) (1964)
• Military Merit Medal (Romania)
• Order of the Victory of Socialism (accompanied each Hero of Romania)
• Order of Labour
• Order of Homeland Defence
• Order of the Star of the Republic of Romania

Several foreign decorations were revoked at the time of the collapse of Ceaușescu's rule.

Argentina

Collar of the Order of the Liberator General San Martín (1974)

Austria

Great Star of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (1969)[99]

Brazil

Order of the Southern Cross (1975)

Bulgaria

Order of Stara Planina (1983)

Cuba

Order of José Martí (1973)

Twentieth Anniversary Commemorative Medal of the Assault on the Moncada Barracks (1976)

Denmark

Knight of the Order of the Elephant (1980; subsequently expelled 1989)

France

Legion of Honour[100]

East Germany

Order of Karl Marx (German Democratic Republic, 1988) – for his defence of Marxism by rejecting Gorbachev's reforms

West Germany

Special class of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany, 1971)

Greece

Athens Gold Medal (1976)

Iran

Commemorative Medal of the 2500th Anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire (Empire of Iran, 1971).[101][102]

Italy

Knight Grand Cross decorated with Grand Cordon of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1973)

Malaysia

Honorary Recipient of the Order of the Crown of the Realm (1984)[103]

Norway

Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olaf (expelled 1989)

Philippines

Grand Collar of the Ancient Order of Sikatuna (1975)[104]

Portugal

Collar of the Order of Saint James of the Sword (1975)

Soviet Union (All Soviet decorations and medals were revoked in 1990)

Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1975)

Order of Lenin, twice (Soviet Union, 1973 and 1988)

Order of the October Revolution (1983)

Sweden

Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim (1980)

United Kingdom

Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (1978; expelled 1989)

• Gold Collar of the Olympic Order (International Olympic Committee, 1984), for decision not to participate in the boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics
• Gold Medal Plate of the International Relations Institute of Rome, an Italian non-profit organization (1979)

Honorary degrees from the University of Bucharest (1973), Lebanese University (1974), University of Buenos Aires (1974), Autonomous University of Yucatán (1975), University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (1975), University of the Philippines (1975), University of Liberia (1988) and North Korea (1988).