Dissent in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu Dissent in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu Dissent in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu was voicing disagreements with the government policies of Communist Romania during the totalitarian rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu after the July Theses in 1971. Because of the strong secret police (the Securitate) and harsh punishments, open dissent was rare. Notable acts of dissent include Paul Goma's 1977 letters to Ceaușescu, the founding of SLOMR (an independent workers' union) in 1979 and a number of work conflicts, such as the Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977 and the Braşov Rebellion of 1987. Dissent from within the Romanian Communist Party came
Nicolae Ceaușescu National Bolshevism such as Jean-François Thiriart, but there was a publicised connection between him and Iosif Constantin Drăgan, an Iron Guardist Romanian-Italian émigré millionaire (Drăgan was already committed to a Dacian Protochronism that largely echoed the official cultural policy). Nicolae Ceaușescu had a major influence on modern-day Romanian populist rhetoric. In his final years, he had begun to rehabilitate the image of pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu. Although Antonescu's image was never a fully official myth in Ceaușescu's time, today's politicians such as Corneliu Vadim Tudor have coupled the images of the two leaders into their versions of a national Pantheon.