As the winds of change buffeted the communist world in the 1980s, Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania’s Stalinist-style dictator, hunkered down.

The “Genius of the Carpathians” had once been genuinely popular at home and lauded abroad for his refusal to toe the Kremlin’s party line, but Ceausescu and his wife Elena were soon living the cliche of absolute power and absolute corruption. By the late 1980s, instead of Christmas, the most festive day in Romania had become Ceausescu’s birthday.

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Nicolae Ceausescu amid a sea of applauding locals in central Bucharest in 1970. Interfoto/Alamy

Obsessed with paying off the country’s debt, Ceausescu sold much of the country’s raw materials to foreign creditors, leading to extreme shortages of food, heating, and electricity. During Romania’s winters, hundreds froze to death inside their dimly lit apartments, or died of asphyxiation as gas stoves -- the only source of heat for many -- were shut off, then turned back on without warning, filling sleeping apartments with gas.