Nicolae Ceauşescu

Eliza Gheorghe

pp. 60-80

in: Steven Casey, Jonathan Wright (eds), Mental maps in the era of détente and the end of the Cold War 1968–91, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

In the traditional narrative of the Cold War, Nicolae Ceauşescu, the leader of the Socialist Republic of Romania and General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) from 1965 until 1989, remains the enfant terrible of the Eastern Bloc. By this term, historians underline that he was an adamantly anti-Soviet, nationalist, pro-Western leader, pursuing an independent foreign policy.¹ However, recent scholarship and newly declassified archival documents cast a very different light on Ceauşescu. He was not only eager to cooperate with the USSR, but also bent on undermining the capitalist bloc.² The sources of Ceauşescu's behaviour can be traced to his upbringing and family environment; his education, involvement in the communist movement and international experience; his personal values and role models; and finally his approach towards the structural forces (ideological, political, strategic, economic and geographic) that shaped international affairs during this time. It was interdependence not independence that anchored Ceauşescu's policies in the global Cold War.