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Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Traian Sandu, "Ceausescu: The Ambiguous Dictator" (Perrin, 2023)
Description: Today I talked to Traian Sandu about his book Ceausescu: Le dictateur ambigu (Perrin, 2023). Born in January 1918, Nicolae Ceauşescu began his apprenticeship in Bucharest and discovered the social struggle and its repression at the age of fifteen within the Romanian Communist Party. In 1948, the Stalinist Gheorghiu-Dej, his mentor, having taken power, he took the opportunity to quickly climb the ranks of the party and the state. Installed in power in March 1965, Ceauşescu inherited the policy of his predecessor: avoiding de-Stalinization by playing the nationalist card. Its beginnings were popular thanks to a certain cultural liberalization, the beg...