Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Ceaușescu’s name is linked to his Promethean attempt to secure Romania’s independence from the Soviet tutelary power and to build a modern industrial state out of the agricultural and industrial Romania modernised during the 1950s following the Stalinist model. This international and social challenge was implemented through the mobilisation of nationalist ideology and the strengthening of the relation between the leader and his people. To attract the masses, Ceaușescu’s charisma did not refer to any objective and inner quality of the leader but to his capacity to embody and manipulate the aspirations of large part of society thanks to a vast housing and industrialization program and a call to nationalism. Even if this populist policy eventually failed in 1989, it consolidated the regime for almost 30 years.
Author: Traian Sandu
Institution: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3101640010