[1] Upon achieving 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.

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital in a helicopter enrouting to Vatican via Vienna, Austria, but they were captured in Romanian territory by the military after the armed forces defected.

Soon after being freed, he was arrested again and sentenced for "conspiracy against social order", spending the time during the war in prisons and internment camps: Jilava (1940), Caransebeș (1942), Văcărești (1943), and Târgu Jiu (1943).

[16][17] One example is the uprising of Vadu Roșca (Vrancea county) which opposed the state program of expropriation of private holdings, when military units opened fire on the rebelling peasants, killing 9 and wounding 48.

[28] Universities were also founded in small Romanian towns, which served to train qualified professionals such as engineers, economists, planners or jurists necessary for the industrialization and development project of the country.

Journalist Edward Behr claimed that Ceaușescu admired both Mao and Kim as leaders who not only totally dominated their nations but had also used totalitarian methods coupled with significant ultra-nationalism mixed in with communism in order to transform both China and North Korea into major world powers.

[33] Behr wrote that the possibility that what Ceaușescu had seen in both China and North Korea were "vast Potemkin villages for the hoodwinking of gullible foreign guests" was something that never seemed to have crossed his mind.

Among these were: continuous growth in the "leading role" of the Party; improvement of Party education and of mass political action; youth participation on large construction projects as part of their "patriotic work"; an intensification of political-ideological education in schools and universities, as well as in children's, youth and student organizations; and an expansion of political propaganda, orienting radio and television shows to this end, as well as publishing houses, theatres and cinemas, opera, ballet, artists' unions, promoting a "militant, revolutionary" character in artistic productions.

[21] When Ceaușescu appeared before the miners on the third day of the strike, he was greeted (in the words of the British historian Richard Crampton) "once again à la polonaise, with cries of 'Down with the Red Bourgeoisie!'".

[21] He continued to follow an independent policy in foreign relations—for example, in 1984, Romania was one of few communist states (notably including the People's Republic of China and Yugoslavia) to take part in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, despite a Soviet-led boycott.

In June 1978, Ceaușescu made a state visit to the UK where a £200m licensing agreement was signed between the Romanian government and British Aerospace for the production of more than eighty BAC One-Eleven aircraft.

Beginning in 1974, systematization consisted largely of the demolition and reconstruction of existing hamlets, villages, towns, and cities, in whole or in part, with the stated goal of turning Romania into a "multilaterally developed socialist society".

Ceaușescu's political independence from the Soviet Union and his protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 drew the interest of Western powers, whose governments briefly believed that he was an anti-Soviet maverick and hoped to create a schism in the Warsaw Pact by funding him.

Spontaneous labor conflicts, limited in scale, took place in major industrial centers such as Cluj-Napoca (November 1986) and the Nicolina platform in Iași (February 1987), culminating in a massive strike in Brașov.

The draconian measures taken by Ceaușescu involved reducing energy and food consumption, as well as lowering workers' incomes, leading to what political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu called "generalized dissatisfaction".

This can be seen, perhaps most blatantly, in a motion from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers Party, which largely laid the foundation for the Ceaușescu regime's policies regarding the rights of ethnic minorities.

Ceaușescu largely wished to ignore the living conditions of the Romani, who had suffered similar institutional neglect at the hands of his predecessors as far back as Ion Antonescu.

The suspicious death of Vasile Milea, Ceaușescu's defence minister, later confirmed as a suicide (he had tried to incapacitate himself with a flesh wound but a bullet severed his artery),[63] was announced by the media.

The Ceaușescus were executed by a group of soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergeant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cîrlan,[66] and five other non-commissioned officers who were recruited from twenty volunteers.

However, Ion Iliescu, Romania's provisional president, said in 2009 that the trial was "quite shameful, but necessary" in order to end the state of near-anarchy that had gripped the country in the three days since the Ceaușescus fled Bucharest.

Although he had previously been a careful supporter of the official lines, Ceaușescu came to embody Romanian society's wish for independence after what many considered years of Soviet directives and purges, during and after the SovRom fiasco.

After a visit from Charles de Gaulle earlier in the same year, during which the French President gave recognition to the incipient maverick, Ceaușescu's public speech in August deeply impressed the population, not only through its themes, but also because, uniquely, it was unscripted.

[citation needed] In 1971, the Party, which had already been completely purged of internal opposition (with the possible exception of Gheorghe Gaston Marin),[79] approved the July Theses, expressing Ceaușescu's disdain of Western models as a whole, and the reevaluation of the recent liberalisation as bourgeois.

[83] Although Ceaușescu maintained an independent, "national Communist" course, his absolute control over the country, as well as the intensity of the personality cult surrounding him, led many non-Romanian observers to describe his rule as one of the closest things to an old-style Stalinist regime.

[93] Ceaușescu created a pervasive personality cult, giving himself such titles as "Conducător" ("Leader") and "Geniul din Carpați" ("The Genius of the Carpathians"), with inspiration from Proletarian Culture (Proletkult).

This excess prompted painter Salvador Dalí to send a congratulatory telegram to the Romanian president, in which he sarcastically congratulated Ceaușescu on his "introducing the presidential sceptre".

[20] As part of a propaganda ploy arranged by the Ceaușescus through the consular cultural attachés of Romanian embassies,[citation needed] they managed to receive orders and titles from numerous states and institutions.

If the world waits for the Ceaușescus to do such a thing, imperialism will live for tens of thousands of years..."[100] According to Pacepa, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had an opposite interpretation, allegedly saying, "My brother!

Ceaușescu was likewise stripped of his honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (GCB) status by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom on the day before his execution.

[114] On his 70th birthday in 1988, Ceaușescu was decorated with the Karl-Marx-Order by then Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) chief Erich Honecker; through this he was honoured for his rejection of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms.