Just how significant the strike's implications were becomes apparent when considering the miner's place in Communist myth-making: he represented an "archetypal proletarian", a "new man" whose symbolic aura was conferred by his Stakhanovite determination. The idea of the new man particularly caught on in areas dominated by a single industry, like the Jiu Valley, where the working masses could easily be controlled by the party. The uneducated miners, drawn largely from poor rural or socially disadvantaged layers of society, believed in the Communist ideology and discourse, which rang true to them, and awaited the arrival of a classless society. The tough conditions in which they actually lived did not match the propaganda, and the disillusioned miners responded forcefully. After the strike, Ceaușescu took to posing as an "honorary miner" or as a national leader flanked by Securitate members dressed up as miners. He had been genuinely shocked that the representatives "par excellence" of the new man had unexpectedly revolted against the system that had so carefully crafted them. The image of the model miner had come crashing down, and for that reason the strikers were terrorized—they had destroyed a myth that had served not only them and other "new men", but also Ceaușescu himself.