History of Romania since 1989 History of Romania since 1989 After the Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed in the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, the National Salvation Front (FSN) took power, led by Ion Iliescu. The FSN transformed itself into a political party and overwhelmingly won the general election of May 1990, with Iliescu as president. These first months were marked by violent protests and counter-protests, involving among others the coal miners of the Jiu Valley. The government undertook a programme of free market economic reforms and privatization, following a gradualist line rather than shock therapy. Economic reforms have continued, although there was little
Censorship in Communist Romania the loosest during the early period of Ceauşescu's rule, which ended with the July Theses. The purpose of the censorship apparatus was to subordinate all the aspects of the Romanian culture (including literature, history, art and philosophy) to the Communist Party's ideology. All features of the Romanian culture were reinterpreted according to the regime's ideology, and any other interpretations were banned as forms of "bourgeois decadence". Under Nicolae Ceauşescu’s second communist Romanian regime, propagandist material was the only available information to the public across the country and even this propagandist material (spread mostly via the national television and the party’s