Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918-1989) - Romanian communist activist and dictator. He was active in the Communist Party of Romania since 1936. From 1954, he made a career in the Central Committee, and then in the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. In 1965, he became the secretary general of the Romanian Communist Party and thus the de facto leader of the state.
He introduced a reign of terror combined with an absurd cult of personality. In his time in Romania, wiretapping became a standard, and the paranoia of power translated into an enormous excess of bureaucracy. Typewriter permits were even issued and samples of handwriting from all citizens were collected. Ceaușescu - described among others as the "genius of the Carpathians" or "strategist of the Carpathians" deliberately modeled himself on the cult of the leaders of China, Mao Zedong and North Korea - Kim Il-sung. He expected his portraits to decorate any building and gave speeches often lasting up to five hours.
Ceaușescu introduced a total ban on not only abortion but also contraception, which has led to a huge increase in the number of unwanted children. He also developed the secret police (Securitate), which became a kind of state within the state and used coercive measures on a massive scale, including brutal torture. His extravagant policy, focused on enormous and economically unjustified projects, resulted in a scourge of hunger, unprecedented in Europe.
He was the only leader of the communist bloc who was not only arrested in 1989, but also sentenced to death and executed.