{"id":335724,"date":"2025-12-08T21:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T21:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/335724\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T21:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T21:24:09","slug":"today-in-history-december-9-the-hated-dictator-who-built-huge-monument-to-his-megalomania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/335724\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History – December 9: The hated dictator who built huge monument to his megalomania"},"content":{"rendered":"

O\ufeffne of the harshest and most eccentric dictators took power on December 9, 1967, when Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu was elected president of Romania.<\/p>\n

Ceau\u0219escu, the uneducated son of a shoemaker, in the east European power had climbed the ranks of the ruling Romanian communist party through canny alliance building and the ruthless elimination of rivals.<\/p>\n

On becoming president, \ufeffCeau\u0219escu promised to lift living standards in Romania, one of the poorest nations in Europe.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Romanian leader Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu and his wife Elena ran the country like a personal fiefdom. (Getty)<\/p>\n

He also displayed a willingness to take Romania out of the orbit of the powerful the Soviet Union, criticising the Russian military’s ruthless 1968 intervention to suppress protests in the then Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n

But egged on by his power-hungry wife Elena, he swiftly established an iron rule that rivalled the Kim dynasty in secretive North Korea.<\/p>\n

Dissent in Romania was crushed by a ruthless secret police, while his people suffered food shortages when Ceau\u0219escu decided to export much of the country’s food to help pay off foreign debts.<\/p>\n

By the 1970s, \ufeffwith the nation’s coffers almost bankrupt, Ceau\u0219escu decided to launch an extravagant programme to build huge new buildings and monuments for the state.<\/p>\n

The biggest was the grandiose Parliamentary Palace in Romania’s capital Bucharest, which became the third largest building in the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/The Parliamentary Palace in Bucharest is one of the biggest buildings in the world. (Public Domain)<\/p>\n

Its construction materials included 220,000 square metres of carpet, 3500 tonnes of crystal and one million cubic metres of marble. <\/p>\n

Ceau\u0219escu decided to build the monster structure when an earthquake in 1977 levelled most of the lower city centre of Bucharest.<\/p>\n

Officials ordered 40,000 people to move out as a huge construction site sprung up.<\/p>\n

The workforce included 700 architects and 20,000 building workers doing three shifts a day, plus 5000 troops.<\/p>\n

Ironically, \ufeffCeau\u0219escu never got to see the monument to his megalomania.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Mass protests across Romania in December 1989 triggered the downfall of Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu. (Photo by Palani Mohan\/Fairfax Media). (Palani Mohan\/Fairfax Media)<\/p>\n

By December 1989, with the Parliamentary Palace only two-thirds built, a seismic political change hit eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall came down.<\/p>\n

With Soviet domination crumbling, dictatorial communist regimes were on the nose and Ceau\u0219escu was not immune.<\/p>\n

When he ordered his secret police to suppress demonstrations, his once loyal security apparatus switched sides and the army took control.<\/p>\n

\ufeffNicolae and Elena Ceau\u0219escu were put on trial and executed by firing squad on December 25, 1989.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"O\ufeffne of the harshest and most eccentric dictators took power on December 9, 1967, when Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-335724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}