Laughing about Nicolae Ceausescu. Humour and Everyday Resistance in Communist Romania
Laughing about Nicolae Ceausescu. Humour and Everyday Resistance in Communist Romania

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims at challenging the unanimous accepted opinion about the people’s complete subordination to the Romanian communist regime during 1980s by considering joke telling as a means of their everyday resistance to Nicolae Ceausescu’s cult of personality. After the introductory remarks regarding the definition of everyday resistance, I will document the interest the former Securitate had in monitoring the spread of the political jokes made at the expanse of Ceausescu. The thematic analysis of the political jokes the jokes indicates Ceausescu’s leadership activity as the main source of the „multilateral” failure of building the Romanian socialism and also of the deprivation and restrictions of all kinds which population had to face during their daily existence. Although it did not pose a direct challenge to the stability of the communist regime, the proliferation of political jokes about Nicolae Ceausescu and implicitly of the critical analysis they contained in brought its own contribution to the gradual weakening of his authority and legitimacy that together with other developments in home politics ignited the population’s opposition to the Romanian communist regime in December 1989.

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