Nicolae Ceaușescu Nicolae Ceaușescu Nicolae Ceaușescu (; ; 26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian Communist politician. He was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and hence the second and last Communist leader of Romania. He was also the country's head of state from 1967, serving as President of the State Council, from 1974 concurrently as President of the Republic, until his overthrow in the Romanian Revolution in December 1989, part of a series of anti-Communist and anti-Soviet Union uprisings in Eastern Europe that year. Born in 1918 in Scornicești, Olt County, Ceaușescu
Revolutions of 1989 Communist Party abandoned Marxism–Leninism in April 1990 and renamed itself as the Bulgarian Socialist Party. In June 1990 the first free elections since 1931 were held, won by the Bulgarian Socialist Party. After having suppressed the Braşov Rebellion in 1987, Nicolae Ceauşescu was re-elected for another five years as leader of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) in November 1989, signalling that he intended to ride out the anti-Communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Europe. As Ceauşescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, his Securitate ordered the arrest and exile of a local Hungarian Calvinist minister, László Tőkés,