At the end of the eighties, within the Eastern Bloc, Romania was particularly in bad shape economically. To my knowledge (but I shall be corrected if this is bad info), this had to do with something Ceauşescu did differently from his colleagues.
From the seventies, the Eastern Bloc states minus the USSR began to take Western credit, and spend it -- building up a growing debt. (I have read recently te claim that this was conscious policy by the West after they saw that revolutionary propaganda doesn't work after 1956 and 1968, but I wasn't convinced.) Ceauşescu, who followed a separate line since refusing to join the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, however decided one day that enough is enough: Romania shall pay back all its debt! Which came to be, cash-starving the already poor economy, bringing similar hardship as what followed only after the arrival of capitalism elsewhere. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The way I know it, the execution was not the work of those who suffered, but orchestrated in secret by a circle in the Party/Army elite that long planned a coup and only used the unrest for their own benefit (Iliescu's rule being the end result), but I should read up on the state of research on this myself. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
One definite effect of the execution, and the fast publication of the videotape, was that the troops fighting for him gave up. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Well like Stalin, Ceauşescu has his incorrigible fans, too. According to the latest poll I could find, 23% think he is the greatest Romanian politician of the last century (while 24% think he was the one doing the most damage over the same period).
