Nicolae Ceausescu (26 January 1918-25 December 1989) was the President of the Socialist Republic of Romania from 1967 to 1989, preceding Ion Iliescu. Ceausescu distanced himself from the Soviet Union and was friendly towards Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
Biography[]
Nicolae Ceausescu was born on 26 January 1918 was born in Scornicesti, Olt, in the Kingdom of Romania to a poor Romanian peasant family. He became an apprentice shoemaker after fleeing from his alcoholic father, and during World War II, he distributed communist propaganda materials to the people of Romania, which was occupied by Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht from 1940 to 1944. In the aftermath of the war, he was made Minister of Agriculture in 1947 and became an official of the Romanian government. In 1965, he was elected General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party and in 1967 he became the first president of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Ceausescu distanced Romania from the communist Soviet Union, and disagreed with the USSR's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 during the Prague Spring uprising.
During his tenure as President, Ceausescu illegalized abortion in order to increase the population of Romania, seeking to achieve his nationalist goals. His Securitate secret police were some of the most violent special police forces on Earth, killing opponents to his rule. Ceausescu's outlawing of abortion led to an increase in unwanted children, leading to the children growing up without support and turning towards lives of crime or other low-life jobs.
Death[]
The execution of the president and first lady
In 1989, Ceausescu's reign came to an end on 21 December when the Romanian Revolution began. Influenced by revolutions in all of the other communist nations, the Romanian people took down the iron fist government in a revolution that had 1,000-64,000 (the latter is highly unlikely) casualties. Ceausescu was killed with his wife Elena Ceausescu by a firing squad of Romanians on Christmas Day, and their execution was broadcast on television.