[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

Typical bouregoise crap.

If he was so great, why did so many people come out to boo him off his podium during his last speech before he was shot?

The party organized the rally.Thousands of Ceausescu supporters came out.As the rally started a large amount of students infiltrated and started booing.Conflict arose between the two gripus as the students started booing ludly.Ceausescu left.

If he was so great, why did the Securitate have to fire into crowds in Timisoara?

Most people accept that these shootings of about 1000 protestors were the work of Ceausescu’s ministry of interior officials (the interior controls police etc.) or that they were the work of terrorists.

If he was so popular, why was he abandoned on the side of a highway by his bodyguards?

He was not abandoned.The gas ran out and he started walking and was surrounded by the putschists and captured.

That little article seems to gloss over the 1980s. When he got Romania the title "Ethiopia of Europe". When he demolished whole city blocks with a wave of his hand for his systematization campaign. When hundreds of thousands of people, who are supposed to have loved him, came out to demand his removal.

Ethiopia of Europe?Since I pride myself on having done the most reading on Ceausescu then anything else in my life and have not heard this-I would say its nonsense and means nothing.What do you mean?Ceausescu demolished apartment flats in his campiagn to build new and more efficent ones.And he did that.I particurally admire his plan for the urbanazation of Romania.If he had lived to implement this a bit more then Romania's economy would not be in the state it is today.As for that last thing,I have already talked about it.

[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

Ceausescu's Romania had most-favoured nation trading status with the US for some years... it was revoked in the 1980s. The American government seemed to like him because he was willing to defy the Soviets - such as in opposing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

well things change.Big whoop.Ceausescu didn't do things live denounce the invasion of Checkoslovakia,he did it because he recognized imperialism in all forms.

I think I've also read he received a knighthood from the Queen... also revoked in the late 1980s.

It was removed a day or two before his lovely and fair 'trial'.

[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

Ceausescu had the worst of Titioism and Khruschievims all in one...with a spice of good old fashined Balkan nationalism...

Oh...BTW...who was Ceausescu biggest supporter??? Good Ol' Ronnie Reagan...same as he was Tito's biggest supporter. Western imperialism found a freind in Ceausescu.

Regan never met Ceausescu.He met Nixon and Carter.

[Steve]

The party organized the rally.Thousands of Ceausescu supporters came out.As the rally started a large amount of students infiltrated and started booing.Conflict arose between the two gripus as the students started booing ludly.Ceausescu left.

Must have been an awful lot of students to get him to stop dead in his tracks during a speech, and to get Elena to tell him "promise them something!" And then, he had to flee by helicopter from people who had gone into the Central Committee building he was speaking from.

Most people accept that these shootings of about 1000 protestors were the work of Ceausescu’s ministry of interior officials (the interior controls police etc.) or that they were the work of terrorists.

Can you show me some proof of this? Either way, the government shot 1000 people over those few days. A real testament to Ceausescu's greatness.

Ethiopia of Europe?Since I pride myself on having done the most reading on Ceausescu then anything else in my life and have not heard this-I would say its nonsense and means nothing.What do you mean?Ceausescu demolished apartment flats in his campiagn to build new and more efficent ones.And he did that.I particurally admire his plan for the urbanazation of Romania.If he had lived to implement this a bit more then Romania's economy would not be in the state it is today.As for that last thing,I have already talked about it.

Ethiopia of Europe... I have heard that somewhere, I will try to find it. It may have been in a book I borrowed from the library, and when I return my current ones I'll get it again.

It would refer to his plan to export all of Romania's food to pay off external debts that he racked up. And if you admire his plan to smash rural villages, well I'll leave you to that.

well things change.Big whoop.Ceausescu didn't do things live denounce the invasion of Checkoslovakia,he did it because he recognized imperialism in all forms.

Can you clarify this, I'm not quite sure of what you mean.

[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

Where is the proof to any of these claims? I have a recording of the speech, do you? He did not stop at all. You can hear the commotion in the crowd. A large section of people cheer,and then some boo.It was a lot of students? Where is the proof Elena said that?The government shot 1000 people? Are you kidding? The official statistics from the Romanian government today from the coup is about 100 dead-on both sides. I just read a bit more about this part in the last few minutes.Anyway,Hundreds of Ceausescuists were shot and killed during the coup. They include this in the official statistic. I have read this in a few magazine articles. Ceausescu did not say to shoot anyone. Also,you're sarcastic comments are uncalled for and disgusting.

Can you clarify this, I'm not quite sure of what you mean.

What I mean is,some communists think that the Soviet invasions of Checkoslavakia and Afgahnisthan were justified.They weren't-it was imperialism and Ceausescu called it. He was right.

[Collective]

These nutters are Marxism-Leninism's answer to Trotskyites. The same dogmatism, sectarianism and bickering over irrelevent subjects.

No wonder people who consider themselves 'anti-revisionist' split from Communist Parties, just like Trotskyites split every other week. No concept of discipline or pragmatism. Their analysis is based on subjective feelings for certain leaders or states and their habit of seeing things exactly how they wish they were, rather than how they really are.

The Trots would say a certain socialist state is a 'deformed workers state' or 'state capitalist', these loonies would say it is 'revisionist'. Its all the same counter-productive crap which is used in place of real analysis.

[Al Khabir]

Just an observation:

If Ceausesco was such a great freind to the proletariat as well as an economic success, why did they shoot him?

He may have been better than current leaders, but he was certainly not a great man.

As for revisionism and sectarianism- As Lawrence of Arabia said:

"While the arabs remain divided they will always be a little people, small and insignificant, dominated by others."

[Steve]

http://www.ceausescu.org/ceausescu_media/ultima.html

He does stop, several times. Particularly at the beginning of this clip. I have seen the video carried on state TV, it was on a biography I saw of him. Maybe if you get the Biography channel you can wait until they cycle him through again. As for Elena, I might have been mistaken.

On December 21st 1989 Ceausescu held his last speech to the public. 80,000 people thronged this square, then called Piata Republica (Republican Square) today Piata Revolutiei (Revolution Square), located on Calea Victoriei. They were supposedly there for a rally to support the President after riots broke out in Timisoara over the arrest of an outspoken priest. Thinking he was among friends, Ceausescu appeared on the balcony of the Central Committee Building to address the crowd. However, eight minutes into the speech, people began to chant 'Ti-mi-soa-ra, Ti-mi-soa-ra.' As the chanting grew louder, the shock on Ceausescu's face pinpointed the true moment of his downfall - a moment televised all over Romania and, later, the world. Ceausescu looked shocked and TV censors pulled the plug on the broadcast.

On 21 December, Ceausescu called a "mass meeting" in Bucharest intended to show that he still had strong support. The assembly, made up of 50,000 "enthusiastic" Ceausescu supporters, was carried live on television. But instead of a staged rally, astonished viewers - and a shocked Ceausescu - saw the members of the crowd raise their fists, boo and shout "Ceausescu Dictator". For two minutes television pictures went black.

You yourself stated 1000 people. (a typo, maybe, but I only got into more research this morning)

Most people accept that these shootings of about 1000 protestors

Actually, after some more research it appears that the army did it, either way. I also learned that there was a lot of Securitate sympathy for the revolution. Interesting.

One last thing:

Nicolae Ceausescu loved nothing better than a monument to himself. But his ministerial palaces and avenues paled next to another of his schemes for building socialism: a plan to increase Romania's population from 23 million to 30 million by the year 2000. He began his campaign in 1966 with a decree that virtually made pregnancy a state policy. "The fetus is the property of the entire society," Ceausescu proclaimed. "Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity."

It was one of the late dictator's cruelest commands. At first Romania's birthrate nearly doubled. But poor nutrition and inadequate prenatal care endangered many pregnant women. The country's infant-mortality rate soard to 83 deaths in every 1,000 births (against a Western European average of less than 10 per thousand). About one in 10 babies was born underweight; newborns weighing 1,500 grams (3 pounds, 5 ounces) were classified as miscarriages and denied treatment. Unwanted survivors often ended up in orphanages. "The law only forbade abortion," says Dr. Alexander Floran Anca of Bucharest. "It did nothing to promote life."

Ceausescu made mockery of family planning. He forbade sex education. Books on human sexuality and reproduction were classified as "state secrets," to be used only as medical textbooks. With contraception banned, Romanians had to smuggle in condoms and birth-control pills. Though strictly illegal, abortions remained a widespread birth-control measure of last resort. Nationwide, Western sources estimate, 60 percent of all pregnancies ended in abortion or miscarriage.

The government's enforcement techniques were as bad as the law. Women under the age of 45 were rounded up at their workplaces every one to three months and taken to clinics, where they were examined for signs of pregnancy, often in the presence of government agents - dubbed the "menstrual police" by some Romanians. A pregnant woman who failed to "produce" a baby at the proper time could expect to be summoned for questioning. Women who miscarried were suspected of arranging an abortion. Some doctors resorted for forging statistics. "If a child died in our district, we lost 10 to 25 percent of our salary," says Dr. Geta Stanescu of Bucharest. "But it wasn't our fault: we had no medicine or milk, and the families were poor."

Abortion was legal in some cases: if a woman was over 40, if she already had four children, if her life was in danger - or, in practice, if she had Communist Party connections. Otherwise, illegal abortions cost from two to four months' wages. If something went wrong, the legal consequences were enough to deter many women from seeking timely medical help. "Usually women were so terrified to come to the hospital that by the time we saw them it was too late," says Dr. Anca. "Often they died at home." No one knows how many women died from these back-alley abortions.

"Celibacy tax": A woman didn't have to be pregnant to come under scrutiny. In 1986 members of the Communist youth group were sent to quiz citizens about their sex lives. "How often do you have sexual intercourse?" the questionnaire read. "Why have you failed to conceive?" Women who did not have children, even if they could not, paid a "celibacy tax" of up to 10 percent of their monthly salaries.

The rebels who overthrew Ceausescu last month quickly rescinded the policy. "I would have killed Ceausescu for that law alone," says Maria Dulce from her bed at Bucharest's Municipal Hospital. The 29-year-old mother of two is recovering from a self-induced abortion. Here eyes are bruised with fatigue. She is among a half dozen women in the dingy hospital room. Dulce says she terminated her pregnancy because of the trauma associated with caring for her second child, an 18-month-old boy. "We had to buy milk on the black market," she says, "and we had to buy a heater just for the baby's room." She had to have an emergency hysterectomy only days before the uprising. "Now that it's possible for a woman to be a woman again I'm mutilated," Dulce says through tears. "And now there is a reason to have a child in this country."

from Karen Breslau, "Overplanned Parenthood: Ceausescu's cruel law", Newsweek, Jan. 22, 1990, p. 35.

I had forgotton about this until now.

[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

I have read all those things before.The secreutariate was fighting against the putshcers.

[Truth-a-naut]

Just an observation:

If Ceausesco was such a great freind to the proletariat as well as an economic success, why did they shoot him?

I would like to know this as well.

[Tovarish Spetsnaz]

I have read all those things before.The secreutariate was fighting against the putshcers.

I don't see an explonation there...

If Ceausesco was such a great freind to the proletariat as well as an economic success, why did they shoot him?

Ceausescu was by far the worst leader of the "socialist block". He was Romania's version of Tito...a man who took his country into deep debt with the west, managed to antagonize the entire "socialist" world, was quite a megalomaniac, had crazy repressive laws...

I'd just like to point out once more...that just like Ix's Dear Leader, Ceausescu was no communist and no socialist.

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Comrade Ceausescu

I have read all those things before.The secreutariate was fighting against the putshcers.

Don't listen to the rest comrade, you are a great asset to our cause- don't let them tear you down with lies.

[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

You are saying the putschers were proletariat?Ion Illescu was part of the intelligensia class.Saying otherwise would be foolish and absurd. But then again, these are the kind of claims I come to excpect from you all anti-communists.The proletarita were the ones marching in favor of Ceausescu. It was the young,un-rully,radio free Europe students marching against him.

Don't listen to the rest comrade, you are a great asset to our cause- don't let them tear you down with lies.

Thank you comrade. I truly appreciate it.

[Tovarish Spetsnaz]

These nutters are Marxism-Leninism's answer to Trotskyites. The same dogmatism, sectarianism and bickering over irrelevent subjects.

No these "nutters"...and I hope you are not including me into this (I am opposing him on Romania)...are no Marxism-Leninism's answer to the Trots. They are about as constructive to the movement as the Trots themselves. But you have to realize that followers of the cults of Kim and Ceausescu are rather "slim".

[Truth-a-naut]

Thank you comrade. I truly appreciate it.

Do you even know who 'comrade stalin' used to be?

[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

I have not been here long,so no,I haven't an idea.

[Adrien]

I have not been here long,so no,I haven't an idea.

I think it's Rickshaw, but i can be wrong.

No wonder people who consider themselves 'anti-revisionist' split from Communist Parties, just like Trotskyites split every other week. No concept of discipline or pragmatism. Their analysis is based on subjective feelings for certain leaders or states and their habit of seeing things exactly how they wish they were, rather than how they really are.

People that openly state their anti-revisionist stance don't necessarily "split" from their parties, however they won't hesitate to condemn the actions of its leadership, to attack those "ideologically corrupt" leaders. For instance the PCF must be one of the worst Revisionist parties in the world (in 1993 its leaders claimed that "the party {couldn't} be defined anymore through its relationship with the working class or marxist theory) but you will find within it many anti-revisionist movements. I myself chose to join the PCF knowing basically how it was run.

The Trots would say a certain socialist state is a 'deformed workers state' or 'state capitalist', these loonies would say it is 'revisionist'. Its all the same counter-productive crap which is used in place of real analysis.

The denounciation of what we can today call the "Revisionist" drift is in itself a real analysis of the facts, of both the economical and political policies of the studied regimes, peoples or movements. And this analysis is more than useful since it allows us to go forward, to "plan" changes and measures for the future.

And since this analysis is based on studies of the economics (and Marxism-Leninism is first an economical doctrine) and politics, studies of facts, of what happened, it is way more relevant that the "Trotskyst" claims about the Soviet Union being a "deformed" state, claims that were indeed subjective, the result of a feeling, and not based on an analysis of facts and structures of the Soviet Union

[jpyy]

The proletarita were the ones marching in favor of Ceausescu. It was the young,un-rully,radio free Europe students marching against him.

So, it was the students only that managed to pull of such a revolution?
And can you actually have respect for a man that letted his dogs ride around in a limo while the people starved?

[Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu]

You sound like the people who claim Nicolae was a vampire!So what,he had a pet dog and he kept it with him while he rode in a limo.That is what happend.

[Collective]

these "nutters"...and I hope you are not including me into this

lol, no I don't include you in that group Its a select group, led by the Dear Leaders intimate friend.