January 26, 1918 - Nicolae Ceaușescu

Nicolae Ceaușescu ( chow-SHESK-oo, Romanian: [nikoˈla.e tʃe̯a.uˈʃesku] ; 26 January [O.S. 13 January] 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian communist politician who led Romania as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 and as president from 1974 until his execution in 1989.

Born in Scornicești, Ceaușescu joined the Romanian Communist Party in his teens and was repeatedly imprisoned under the pre-war and wartime regimes for his communist activism. After World War II, he rose through the party ranks under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the country’s Stalinist leader, whom he succeeded as general secretary.

Upon taking power, Ceaușescu eased press censorship and condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in his speech of 21 August 1968, which resulted in a surge in popularity. However, this period of liberalisation was brief, as his regime soon became rigidly totalitarian. It was widely considered to be one of the most repressive regimes in the Eastern Bloc, and one of the most repressive of modern times. His secret police, the Securitate, was responsible for mass surveillance as well as severe repression and human rights abuses within the country, and controlled the media and press. Ceaușescu's attempts to implement policies that would lead to a significant growth of the population led to a growing number of illegal abortions and increased the number of orphans in state institutions.

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