Nicolae Massim by the communist authorities because of their "bourgeois" origins. Nicolae Massim Nicolae Massim (1909–1981) was a Romanian theater director. A graduate of the School of Liberal Arts and Philosophy of the University of Cluj, Romania, and of the Institute of Dramatic Arts and Cinematography (IATC) of Bucharest, he made his directorial debut staging historical plays by the renowned historian Nicolae Iorga at the "Cultural League Theatre" of the People's University that Iorga founded in the town of Vălenii de Munte. At the National Theatre Bucharest, Nicolae Massim made his debut as assistant director to Ion Sahighian, and during long and
Nicolae Ceaușescu's cult of personality former Communist Party members. 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, it started with the 1971 July Theses which reversed the liberalization of the 1960s and imposed a strict nationalist ideology, established Stalinist totalitarianism and a return to socialist realism. Initially, the cult of personality was just focused on Ceaușescu himself. By the early 1980s, however, his wife, Elena Ceaușescu—one of the few wives of a Communist leader to become a