So, why did Ceausescu want to increase his population?
He was installed by the Soviets to run Romania under Stalinist principles, but was perceived as being free-thinking and independent. I wasn’t paying attention in the 1970’s to have my own opinion about him.
He was president for 15 years.
He wanted Romania to become a major European power, so he decided oil was the way to do that. He borrowed in order to build all his refineries-- but they didn’t produce the profits he was looking for. So suddenly, Romania has about $10B in 1981 dollars in debt. Plus, at the same time, they were suffering from crop failures and earthquake damage.
So, as frequently happens in Communist/Stalinist regimes, the birthrate was declining. Ceausescu wanted to reverse that, and increase the population for 25M to 30M. But even though he was trying to increase the population, the conditions were generally impoverished, while he and his inner circle had palaces, expensive cars, other luxury items, and helped themselves to the public treasury. (Which also happens in Communist/Stalinist regimes.) So eventually, a revolution happened, they were captured, given a show trial, and were executed. The end.
So, looking up
state orphanages and Decree 770—
Ceaușescu borrowed the 1930s Stalinist dogma that population growth would fuel economic growth and fused this idea with the conservatism of his rural childhood. In the first year of his rule, his government issued Decree 770, which outlawed abortion for women under 40 with fewer than four children. “The foetus is the property of the entire society,” Ceaușescu announced. “Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.”
(The birth rate doubled, all childless persons regardless of sex or marital status were required to pay a fine, all women with fewer than 4 children were banned from abortions, motherhood became a state duty, women were examined four times per year for signs of pregnancy and were punished if they failed to give birth.)
This policy, coupled with Romania’s poverty, meant that more and more unwanted children were abandoned to state care. No one knows how many. Estimates for the number of children in orphanages in 1989 start at 100,000 and go up from there. Since the second world war, there had been a system of state institutions for children. But after 1982, when Ceaușescu redirected most of the budget to paying off the national debt, the economy tanked and conditions in the orphanages suffered. Electricity and heat were often intermittent, there were not enough staff, there was not enough food. Physical needs were assessed, emotional needs were ignored. Doctors and professionals were denied access to foreign periodicals and research, nurses were woefully undertrained (many orphans contracted HIV because hypodermic needles were seldom sterilised) and developmental delays were routinely diagnosed as mental disability. Institutional abuse flourished unchecked. While some caretakers did their best, others stole food from the orphanage kitchens and drugged their charges into docility.
