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
Alexandru Drăghici As historian Marius Oprea notes, this initiative of his was the culmination of periodic antisemitic purges inside and outside the party structures. When Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965, Ion Gheorghe Maurer, Chivu Stoica, and Emil Bodnăraș, fearful of seeing Drăghici come to power, all backed Ceaușescu as the new leader. Maurer also considered that Ceaușescu had stood up to Khrushchev, while Drăghici was seen as a loyal follower of the Soviet Union. Bacon writes: "So powerful was the apparatus of terror that its chief, Alexandru Dr[ă]ghici, challenged Ceau[ș]escu for political power following Gheorghiu-Dej's death. It is a tribute to Ceau[ș]escu's