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Initially, Ceausescu wasn’t considered a bad figure for the Romanian people. In fact, he became very popular not only in Romania and in the Western World. That was due to his free foreign policy which gave rise to the Soviet Union. United States of America gave Romania the most favored nation status in 1975 and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II officially decorated him because he condemned the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan and because he didn’t withdraw Romania from Los Angeles Olympic Games (1984) despite a Soviet bloc boycott.
In the ‘70s, Ceausescu tried to modernize the Romanian economy by investing huge amounts of money borrowed from the Western credit institutions. But his grand projects seemed too much for what the Romanian people could afford. He wanted to pay off Romania’s foreign debt within a short period of time and, for that reason, the Romanian people had to endure a rigorous austerity program. That threw Romania into a deep poverty and misery because Romania exported much of its production of food and fuel.
Ceausescu wanted a large work force for increasing its industrial production and that was the reason why Ceausescu banned abortions and birth control pills for any woman that was under 40 with fewer than 4 children. He invented the Baby Police and compulsory gynecological examinations. People that weren’t married or married people without children paid higher taxes. He discriminated against the minorities too. You could hardly find a Hungarian or a German book and you were not allowed to talk to your foreign relatives abroad. The human rights got even more abusive in the years that followed.
The systematization program for rural development and the constant repression by the Secret Police (Securitate) produced an atmosphere of fear, distrust and uncertainty even between family members because one of four people was an informer for the Secret Police. The key posts were allocated to Ceausescu’s relatives. The fear was so big that even his subordinates hid the real economic situation of Romania. The Romanians were extremely poor and they could hardly buy anything with their wages, not because they couldn’t afford it but because everything was in short supply. The crowds for buying milk, bread or any food product were enormous. People were waiting for 6 hours to buy a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk but Ceausescu continued with his big projects as the Palace of the People (Casa Poporului, now The House of Parliament) in Bucharest or The Danube-Black Sea Canal.
For nearly 25 years, Ceausescu's regime slowly dragged the Romanians into an economic, social and moral deadlock. All these years were dominated by lies, corruption, terror, violation of human rights, and isolation from the Western world. It was one of the most absurd forms of totalitarian government in the 20th century, with a personality cult that was close to mental illness.
