The dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, wasn’t a fun dictator to live under.
Seduced by Ceausescu’s “independent” foreign policy, Western leaders were slow to turn against a regime that, by the late 1970s, had become increasingly harsh, arbitrary, and capricious. Rapid economic growth fueled by foreign credits gradually gave way to wrenching austerity and severe political repression, which became increasingly draconian through the 1980s. During the 1947–1962 period, many people were arbitrarily killed or imprisoned for political, economic or unknown reasons:[74] detainees in prisons or camps, deported, persons under house arrest, and administrative detainees. There were hundreds of thousands of abuses, deaths and incidents of torture against a large range of people, from political opponents to ordinary citizens.[75] Between 60,000[76] and 80,000 political prisoners were detained as psychiatric patients and treated in some of the most sadistic ways by doctors.[77] Even though between 1962 and 1964 some political prisoners were freed in a series of amnesties, it is estimated that, in total, two million people were direct victims of the communism repression.[78][79]
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Romania
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I would imagine that the living conditions twisted quite a few people there.
I remember watching Ceausescu and his wife given a drumhead court martial and summary execution on television way back when — was it 1989? — I think it was, because I watched it in my soon-to-be father-in-law’s front room in Christchurch, and that was around Christmastime 1989.
It seemed a very perfunctory affair, devoid of any niceties. As I recall, the court martial convenor pronounced sentence, they had their hands bound behind their backs, and they were then frog-marched out to a brick wall in front of a firing squad, with the video cameras rolling. Seconds later, they were mowed down. All up, it seemed to be over with inside of one minute.
Ceausescu must have been a pretty nasty piece of work to deserve that sort of treatment. His firing squad had all the pomp and ceremony of Saddam Hussein’s hanging — that is to say, approximately none.