ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a number of significant similarities and differences in the backgrounds, personalities, and political strategies of the two men, and points to avenues of further comparative inquiry into the nature of communist and postcommunist regimes and the origins, methods, and legacies of dictatorial rulers. The concept of totalitarianism can be useful in separating out a specific category of states for comparison and in explaining distinctions between historical periods within a particular state: Stalinism and post-Stalinism in the Soviet Union, for example, or Romania before and after 1971. Both Stalin and Nicolae Ceausescu, motivated by violence and poverty in childhood, discovered revolutionary tendencies in themselves after they left home. Ceausescu also was an outsider in the Romanian Communist Party during and after the war, despite his underground and prison credentials. Despite the Ceausescus' perpetual motion, their inability to tolerate any criticism or questioning of their judgment led to their growing isolation within a group of sycophants.
