Nicolae Ceaușescu's cult of personality

Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, in 1986. Propaganda posters and images of the Ceaușescus are ubiquitous.
A propaganda poster on the streets of Bucharest, 1986. The caption reads "65 years since the creation of the Romanian Communist Party", while in the background it reads "Ceaușescu Era" and "The Party. Ceaușescu. Romania"
Ceaușescu (left) with Ba'athist dictator Hafez al-Assad (right) during his visit to Syria in 1979. Both of their regimes built neo-Stalinist cults of personality to consolidate power
Stamp commemorating the 70th birthday (and 55 years of political activity) of Nicolae Ceaușescu, 1988
Ceaușescu receiving the presidential sceptre from the Chairman of the Grand National Assembly, Ștefan Voitec, to mark his election as President of Romania, 28 March 1974

During the Cold War, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu presided over the most pervasive cult of personality within the Eastern Bloc. Inspired by personality cults surrounding Kim Il Sung in North Korea and Mao Zedong in China, it started with the 1971 July Theses which reversed the liberalization of the 1960s, imposed a strict nationalist ideology, established Stalinist totalitarianism and a return to socialist realism. Initially, the cult of personality was just focused on Ceaușescu himself. By the early 1980s, however, his wife, Elena Ceaușescu—one of the few spouses of a Communist leader to become a power in her own right—was also a focus of the cult.

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