section_path: History/Socialist Romania (1947–1989)
section_name: Socialist Romania (1947–1989)
paragraph_text: Socialist Romania (1947–1989)
  
  Less than three years after the Soviet occupation of Romania, in 1947, King Michael I was forced to abdicate and the People's Republic of Romania —a state of "popular democracy"—was proclaimed. The newly established communist regime, led by the Romanian Workers' Party, consolidated its power through a Stalinist-type policy aimed at suppressing any political opposition and transforming the economic and social structures of the old bourgeois regime.
  
  In the early 1960s, the Romanian government began asserting a certain degree of independence from the Soviet Union in its foreign policy, although it did not abandon its repressive policies (which it labeled "revolutionary conquests") in domestic affairs. In 1965, communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej died, ushering in a period of change in Romania. After a brief power struggle, Nicolae Ceaușescu emerged as the head of the communist party, becoming General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965, President of the State Council in 1967, and President of the Socialist Republic of Romania in 1974. Ceaușescu's rule from 1965 to 1989 grew increasingly authoritarian during the 1980s.