Power and Ridicule – Elena CeauȘescu in Communist Humour

Abstract

Although one of the most influential figures of Romanian Communism, Elena Ceaușescu has been the subject of a rather limited literature exploring her historical figure. I intend to revisit the political humour of Romanian communism in order to reveal the manners and strategies employed by this type of folklore in affirming the hyperbolized clichés that defined the dictator’s wife in the public mind of that age. I also intend to bring into discussion the common traditional prejudice that blamed Elena Ceaușescu for her husband’s catastrophic politics that impoverished and isolated Romania in the Eastern Bloc.