Nicolae Ceaușescu's cult of personality

During the Cold War, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu presided over the most pervasive cult of personality within the Eastern Bloc.

Inspired by the personality cult surrounding Kim Il Sung in North Korea and Mao Zedong in China, it started with the 1971 July Theses which reversed the liberalization of the 1960s, imposed a strict nationalist ideology, established Stalinist totalitarianism and a return to socialist realism.

[1] Early seeds of the cult of personality can be found in the acclamation of Ceaușescu following his speech in which he denounced the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Salvador Dalí congratulated him for his new sceptre in a telegram published by the state-controlled press in Romania, which failed to notice its sarcasm: I deeply appreciated your historic decision to establish the presidential sceptre[4]Additionally, Ceaușescu was chairman of the Supreme Council for Economic and Social Development, president of the National Council of Working People, and chairman of the Socialist Democracy and Unity Front.

[7] Ceaușescu began to be portrayed by the Romanian media as a communist theoretician of genius who made significant contributions to Marxism-Leninism[6] and a political leader whose "thought" was the source of all national accomplishments.

They included "architect", "celestial body" (Mihai Beniuc), "demiurge", "secular god" (Corneliu Vadim Tudor), "fir tree", "Prince Charming" (Ion Manole), "genius", "saint" (Eugen Barbu), "miracle", "morning star" (Vasile Andronache), "navigator" (Victor Nistea), "saviour" (Niculae Stoian), "sun" (Alexandru Andrițoiu), "titan" (Ion Potopin), and "visionary" (Viorel Cozma).

"[2] However, he was also described as being a man of humble origins, who had risen to the top through his own efforts, and was thus linked symbolically to common folk heroes in Romanian history, such as Horea and Avram Iancu.

For instance, producers had to take great care to ensure that Ceaușescu's small stature (he was 1.68 metres (5 ft 6 in) tall) was never emphasized on screen.

Consequences for breaking these rules were severe; one producer showed footage of Ceaușescu blinking and stuttering, and was banned for three months.

Mihai Botez said he felt that for years, dissidents like him were perceived as "enemies of the West" because they were trying to distance Ceaușescu from the United States.

[13] This is perhaps why the winner of the 1990 general election was the National Salvation Front, made up largely of former Communist Party members.