"Most of the Communist Party leaders who ruled the countries of Eastern Europe on behalf of their Soviet masters in the decades after the Second World War were pliant stooges. Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania was different. Not only did he make a break with the USSR, but he promoted his own cult of personality as self-declared ‘Genius of the Carpathians’ and diverted his poverty-stricken country’s resources to vast monuments to his own glory while using his Securitate secret police to murder his enemies. He and his wife Elena ruled as a grotesque partnership. When the communist Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989-90, they were the only two of the ousted leaders to be shot."