Christmas celebrations are in full swing but worth remembering that it wasn’t that way in the Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe. Romania’s Nicolae Ceaucescu, for example, banned the holiday and bulldozed churches in Bucharest. Nicolae and wife Elena lived like royalty as the people lined up for the barest necessities. Midnight arrests, torture and assassination were common, and by the late 1980s the people weren’t going to take it anymore.
In the city of Timisoara, Ceaucescu’s Securitate attacked pastor Laszlo Tokes for criticizing the regime, and on December 17, 1989, the people organized an anti-government demonstration. Ceausescu ordered police to fire on the crowds, killing nearly 100 protesters. Ceausescu gave a speech blaming anti-Romanian forces but the crowd only heckled the dictator. Mass protests broke out across the country and this time the military sided with the people. Ceausescu fled in a helicopter but the pilot forced a landing and soldiers took the couple into custody.
Nicolae and Elena were swiftly tried for crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. Then on Christmas Day, elite troops led the pair toward an outdoor toilet block in a courtyard. Nicolae sang the “Internationale” while Elena screamed filth at a soldier, who hauled off and smashed her face. The troops stood the pair against a wall, set their AK-47s on full automatic, and fired.
The persecutor, torturer and murderer was dead at last, touching off wild celebrations. Joyous Romanians openly celebrated Christmas for the first time in decades and the next year the nation held free elections. That was all good news, but Ceausescu is the only Communist dictator who got what he deserved.
Josef Stalin, murderer of more than 20 million, died of a heart attack on March 5, 1953. The “Great Helmsman” Mao Zedong died peacefully on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82.
Albania’s Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, 76, died of complications from diabetes on April 11, 1985. Erich Honecker, Communist dictator of East Germany and builder of the Berlin Wall, died of cancer in Chile on May 29, 1994, at the age of 81.
Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot, whose campaign of genocide took down nearly 2 million innocents, about 21 percent of the population, died in his sleep on April 15, 1998. Fidel Castro passed away peacefully on November 25, 2016, at the age of 90. These Stalinist vermin were all acting on principle.
As F.A. Voigt explained in his masterful Unto Caesar, Marxism-Leninism is not a philosophy or even a theory. It is a secular religion and in power best understood as “armed idolatry.” Stalinist dictators want people to worship them, so they deploy the power of the state against any moral authority outside of the state.
Christianity is a prime target, so banning Christmas was an easy call for Romania’s Nicolae Ceaucescu. Every December 25, remember that Christmas when the Romanian people struck a long overdue blow for justice.
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