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Nicolae Ceaușescu Quotes

Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian communist politician and leader. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989 and hence the second and last Communist leader of Romania. He was also the country's head of state from 1967, serving as President of the State Council and from 1974 concurrently as President of the Republic until his overthrow and execution in the Romanian Revolution in December 1989, part of a series of anti-Communist and anti-Soviet Union uprisings in Eastern Europe that year.

Born in 1918 in Scornicești, Olt County, Ceaușescu was a member of the Romanian Communist youth movement. Ceaușescu rose up through the ranks of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's Socialist government and, upon Gheorghiu-Dej's death in 1965, he succeeded to the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party as general secretary.Upon his rise to power, he eased press censorship and openly condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in his speech on 21 August 1968, which resulted in a surge in popularity. However, the resulting period of stability was very brief as his government very soon became severely totalitarian and was considered the most repressive in the Eastern Bloc at the time. His secret police, the Securitate, was responsible for mass surveillance as well as severe repression and human rights abuses within the country and he suppressed and controlled the media and press, implementing methods that were among the harshest, most restrictive and brutal in the world. Economic mismanagement due to failed oil ventures during the 1970s led to skyrocketing foreign debts for Romania. In 1982, he exported much of the country's agricultural and industrial production in an effort to repay them. The shortages that followed drastically lowered living standards, leading to heavy rationing of food, water, oil, heat, electricity, medicine and other necessities. His cult of personality experienced unprecedented elevation, followed by extensive nepotism and the intense deterioration of foreign relations, even with the Soviet Union.

As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceaușescu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country. The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the turn of the Revolutions of 1989. Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital in a helicopter, but they were captured by the military after the armed forces changed sides. After being tried and convicted of economic sabotage and genocide, they were immediately executed by firing squad on 25 December and Ceaușescu was succeeded as President by Ion Iliescu, who had played a major part in the revolution. Capital punishment was abolished shortly thereafter.



Wikipedia  

✵ 26. January 1918 – 25. December 1989
Nicolae Ceaușescu photo
Nicolae Ceaușescu: 13   quotes 2   likes

Famous Nicolae Ceaușescu Quotes

“We want to ensure a multilateral development of society, the thriving of all sides of social life, economy, science and culture, the improvement of management, the moulding of the new man and the promotion of socialist ethics and equity.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Nicolae Ceaușescu, Builder of Modern Romania and International Statesman (1983)

“It's expensive to keep Communism alive today. I've already got a huge foreign debt staring me in the face, and I can't reduce it by exporting tomatoes or toilet paper. We should be making dollars any way we can. And we should be exporting arms any way and every way, openly and secretly, legally or by smuggling-I don't care how.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 119

“Stealing from capitalism is not like stealing out of our own pockets. Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world revolution.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 47

“Our experience shows that today the West is commendably eager to encourage the slightest sign of independence within the Soviet bloc. Let's take advantage of their eagerness… We must make cleverness our national trait… Stop showing a sullen, frowning face and clenched fist to the West. Start making it feel compassion for us, and you'll see how fast Western boycotts change into magnanimity. Let's present Romania as a Latin island in the Slavic sea… Our millenia-old traditions of independence are now up against Moscow's political centrism… A pawn between two superpowers.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 8 on 22 February 1972

“Oil, Jews and Germans, are our most important export commodities.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 73 during 1977, said to be "his favorite slogan"

“There can be no justification to admit, in any way, the use of armed forced to intervene in the internal affairs of a WTO [Warsaw Treaty Organization] member country. The solving of domestic problems belongs exclusively to the Party and people of each country and any kind of interference can only do harm to the cause of socialism, friendship and collaboration among the socialist countries.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Commencement address at the Romanian Military Academy (14 August 1968), quoted in The Prague Spring (2010) by M. Mark Stolarik

“Dialectical materialism works like cocaine, let's say. If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 25

“Nicolae Ceaușescu had the fame of a heretic, but he was very different from Tito. He was the most Stalinist of the Balkan Communist tyrants, in tune with the past of his homeland, Oltenia, a land of dark forests and Ottoman atrocities.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Enzo Bettiza, Corriere della sera, interview by Aldo Cazzullo, 12 maggio 2009
About Ceaușescu

“As if Ceausescu and company are to bring down imperialism!! If the world waits for the Ceausescus to do such a thing, imperialism will live for tens of thousands of years…”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Enver Hoxha (1986) The Artful Albanian, (Chatto & Windus, London), ISBN 0701129700
About Ceaușescu

Nicolae Ceaușescu Quotes about people

“It is a lie that I made the people starve. A lie, a lie in my face. This shows how little patriotism there is, how many treasonable offenses were committed.… At no point was there such an upswing, so much construction, so much consolidation in the Romanian provinces. I guaranteed that every village has its schools, hospitals and doctors. I have done everything to create a decent and rich life for the people in the country, like in no other country in the world.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Statements at trial http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_the_closed_trial_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Ceau%C5%9Fescu (25 December 1989)

“Gheorghiu-Dej put more people in prison, but he had a motive. Ceausescu had no motive to do what he did. Things were worse under the last ten years of Ceausescu. It was terrible what he did.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Serban Ghica, as quoted in John Sweeney, The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceausescu (Hutchinson, 1991), p. 75
About Ceaușescu

“Esteemed chairman of the court, today we have to pass a verdict on the defendants Nicolae Ceaușescu and Elena Ceaușescu who have committed the following offenses: Crimes against the people. They carried out acts that are incompatible with human dignity and social thinking; they acted in a despotic and criminal way; they destroyed the people whose leaders they claimed to be. Because of the crimes they committed against the people, I plead, on behalf of the victims of these two tyrants, for the death sentence for the two defendants.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Chief prosecutor Dan Voinea at the Ceaușescus' trial http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_the_closed_trial_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Ceau%C5%9Fescu (25 December 1989)
About Ceaușescu

“Our goals are the same, to have a just system of economics and politics, to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom, and in the benefits to be derived from the proper utilization of natural resources. We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Jimmy Carter welcoming Ceaușescu (April 1978). [Muravchik, Joshua, Our Worst Ex-President, Commentary magazine., February 2007, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10824&page=2]
About Ceaușescu

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