INSCOP Survey. Two-thirds of Romanians say Ceaușescu was a good leader: “The catastrophic percentages that mythologize life under communism are not just the result of a natural phenomenon”
66% of Romanians believe that former communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu was a good president for the country. 24% of Romanians believe that he was a bad leader for Romania, and 7.8% say they do not know how to appreciate this, according to an INSCOP survey presented by sociologist Remus Ștefureac.
He describes the data as “unimaginable” that 66% of Romanians believe that Nicolae Ceaușescu was a good leader. The percentage comes from the study “Population Perception Regarding Communism. Landmarks of Nostalgia”. The data for the study were collected in July 2025, on a sample of 1,500 respondents, with an error of +/-2.5%.
“With all the failures of the present, with all the social and economic dissatisfaction of a part of the population that amplifies the regret for communism, the catastrophic percentages of the population that mythologize life under communism are not just the result of a natural phenomenon,” Remus Ștefureac wrote on Facebook.
He says that this percentage is a “direct consequence of the information war we are in, of at least 10 years of serious active measures directly coordinated by a hostile power, waves of disinformation, lies and grotesque manipulations propagated on all channels of information multiplication, but especially on social networks.”
“A campaign of destabilization and social vulnerability that has not been fought by the state or society, neither by the public nor by the non-public sphere. A campaign against which we have not built capabilities nor allocated resources to build the right antibodies that we can only find in the attachment to freedom, in good governance, in sincere patriotism, brother with integrity, with honesty and common sense, not with aggression and imported violence,” claims Ștefureac.
The complete data of the study - conducted in partnership with the Institute for the Investigation of Crimes of Communism and the Memory of Communist Exile (IICCMER) - will be published on Tuesday, the INSCOP director also announced.
Jeesus Christ, we’re swinging from side to side now, full-on!
No, my gals, guys and enbies, Ceaușescu was not a good leader! The State was somewhat flourishing, but the people were certainly not living la vida loca!
I’ve heard many people praise the fact that higher education, jobs, and lodgings were pretty much guaranteed, that everyone had some food on their table (although most didn’t have enough), and they forget that culture was… nothing, zero! Buh-bye freedom of religion, of belief, no cable TV, many books were banned and many more were hard enough to get even if not, EVERYONE was the Secret Police (and they did frequent debriefs with Party members who would have to rat out any potential dissenters) and, most importantly, that Ceaușescu was not directly responsible for any of these.
He was placed on top of an Ikea-like manifestation of Communism a la the USSR at the time, which was left to fend for itself after a point. There were elements of what happened then which are fairer and better than what we have now (see local heavy industry, as in having any) and we used our own resources to produce our own stuff, but things aren’t THAT fucking dire in Europe yet! Calm down!
I will agree that shooting him and his wife were a very stupid and heartless thing to do, yes. But I wouldn’t want Ceaușescu back and you wouldn’t, either! Believe me!
years of serious active measures directly coordinated by a hostile power
Why not call out Russia by name?
Imagine how bad your political establishment and economic structure has to fail for people to be nostalgic about that.
It’s really hard to see polls like this when you remember those videos from the Romanian orphanages that came out in 1989 or what the Securitate did. It is terrible when Romanians now remember this horror as a good time
Yeah, we’ve always had a few million sympathizers, usually people that were far better off before 1989. Add to that that all the millions that left the country, sprinkle some well placed propaganda and you get yourself a huge mass of authoritarians. Almost forgot - the young generation that tilts left after being faced with late stage capitalism and looking only at the positives of the old regime. I will admit that I’m somewhat doubtful of the poll as 66% seems excessive, but it’s definitely a large chunk of the population.
Nostalgia for a world in which you had less freedom of choice and everything was decided for you. Do Romanians have a similar concept like “Pravda & Istina”?
These anti-commie mfkers are gonna ignore the material conditions of people and blame nostalgia until the day people revolt. These attitudes aren’t new and didn’t just turn up in the present day media environment. There are very real, past and present material reasons behind them. But Eastern European anti-communists are often unable or unwilling to examine and address issues that might put the past socialist regimes in positive light, despite any data.
😬
