According to respondents to the INSCOP survey survey, most Romanians believe that the so-called “golden age” of Ceausescu is the state being looked after by its citizens and seeing more cooperation from Romanian humans.
Of the polls, 66.2% believed that CoeaușScu was a good leader and only 24.1% expressed negative views.
Even the communist regime seems to work well with opinion polls. For 55.8% of respondents, it was rather good for Romania, but only 34.5% disagree.
The overwhelming majority of respondents were fully aware of the lack of freedom under the communist era. 80% said there was nothing, but 9% believed there would be more after that.
Data were collected using a telephone interview method for a sample of 1,505 people over the age of 18.
Ceaușescu’s oppressive, iron fist communism was the only regime in Central Europe that ended in bloodshed in the late 1980s.
The results look shocking to countries that are both EU and NATO members. Many in Romania believe that selective memory and nostalgia for a simpler era, recently revived by Russian propaganda, is responsible
Decline and fall
Nicolae Kou Escu was the head of communist Romania from 1965 to December 1989 when the regime was overthrown by a 10-day revolution, just a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
They were the last few months of the Cold War. The communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe marked the end of the Yalta order, changing or falling significantly peacefully. Hungary, Poland, East Germany.
On December 21, days after the fatal oppression in the western city of Timisoarah, the dictator was to deal with 100,000 supporters who marched into Central Bucharest. However, in a few minutes, cheer turned to boo as the Romans became tired of years of misery and oppression by the communist regime.
The repressors fired at the demonstrators, and 24 hours later Ceaușescu and his wife Elena had to hurry away from Bucharest.
On a run from Bucharest, Koussusk and his wife Elena were captured and executed on December 25, 1989 by an army and a new revolutionary political leader about 70 km from the capital to about 70 km from the capital. This is the emergency secretariat, and its founding was announced on December 22nd. This is the beginning of unrest in Bucharest and the mayhem of today’s escape from Palace Square from today’s Revolution Square.
Timioara rebellion, sparks lit in flames
On December 16, 1989, the Hungarian minority in the western city of Timisoarah made a small protest against the Koszk regime for the oppressive measures adopted against the Hungarian Protestant Rev. Laslo Täques, Pastor Laslo Täques, for criticism he expressed on Hungarian television about the communist political system.
This was the species of uprising. The city’s population joined in a small protest that promoted it into a completely blown away anti-communist revolution. Protesters stormed the local Communist Party headquarters and destroyed the character cult symbol of Corshus.
Feared as the Army, political police fired fire at protesters on December 17th, causing dozens of deaths, and the entire city faced the communist regime. On December 20th, after three days of violent oppression, the troops retreated and the city was freed from communism.
The echoes of the Timioara uprising spread throughout the country, paving the way for an epilogue of the regime in Bucharest.
The root cause of economic disruption
The causes that led to the collapse of the CEASESCU administration were determined by both external and internal factors, such as the Cold War sunset and the unbearable weight of the communist dictatorship imposed by the Ceau escu family and its power circles.
By the end of the 1980s, Romanians had only 10 years of economic restrictions and increased oppression of fundamental freedoms by a regime based on a cult of personality. Propaganda calls Koussuk a “Carpathian genius” or simply a “leader.”
Nicolae Sezesook took advantage of the devastating earthquake of 1977 to begin building a new Romania, inspired by the principles of two communist leaders, including China’s Mao Zedong and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung. It was what is called a systematicization.
This was a plan for a rather dysplastic infrastructure urban and farm, aimed at paving the way for the full collectivization of Romanian society.
The old towns and villages were demolished (urbanism in Bucharest, Banat and Transylvanian regions was turned upside down) and the entire population was forced to evacuate, creating a new rural and industrial centre based on Mao Zedong’s China-inspired production model.
Ceaușescu’s grand design was economically unsustainable for the poor (with Central European traditions) and countries borne by heavy foreign debt.
Results: Strengthened general dissatisfaction, and the administration thought that it would resolve the issue by increasing oppression of all forms of objections and simple criticism.
The underground opposition called him the “danabe of thought” and laughed at his irrational political, social and economic policies.
The harsh oppression and dystopia
The administration established strict control of society through the Department of National Security (securities, Stalinist political police structure), which has a vast and extensive network of informants.
Communication was intercepted and controlled, and all typewriter machines in the country were registered by security services.
Securities had complete freedom to torture and eliminate their enemies, even overseas.
Artists and intellectuals were systematically persecuted as ethnic minorities.
The administration banned birth control (even condoms) and abortion, not religious or moral motivations, just to boost demographics and future workforce. Pregnant women were strictly controlled by the authorities.
Multifaceted dictator
Nevertheless, Nicolae Kou Esch enjoyed political respect in the international scene until the early 1980s. The West saw him as an autonomous voice (a visit to Moscow) within the Warsaw Pact. Romania in Ceasescu was the only country in the Socialist Military Alliance that did not send troops to Czechoslovakia to restrain the Prague spring.
From the late 1960s, Romania developed foreign policies that were often separated into socialist countries from the broad boundaries determined by the Soviet Union. This allowed Nikolae Kou Escu to establish political ties with both the West and Mao Zedong’s China, a communist state but opposed to Moscow.
Indeed, the Romanian dictator contributed to the preliminary measures that led to a major settlement between Mao Zedong and Zoo En Lai’s China and Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s America.
This global policy allowed Romania to acquire foreign credit from the Western Bank until in the early 1970s, becoming one of the few socialist countries to become members of the IMF.
Romania in 1974 was the only socialist country to sign a priority tariff treaty with the European Community. It later became the EU.
The 1972 oil shock gave Romania relative power in the international market. The country was in fact a small producer of crude oil and had a priority agreement with Iran and Iraq.
The price of oil has had a major benefit to Coeascu’s policy.
For the first time in its history, the administration was able to implement a vast policy with relative benefits for the population that had access to mass consumption and a rather generous welfare state.
Since the early 1980s, falling oil prices and false economic measures have forced the country to take serious austerity measures with ambition to wipe out foreign debt.
The result was a decline in productivity and mass poverty rather than in the context of harsh political oppression, an explosive mixture that led to the violent end of the administration in 1989.
