Area Handbook for Romania Part 3

Although Romania's territorial integrity had been guaranteed by both Great Britain and France after the fall of Czechoslovakia, these a.s.surances were nullified by the early German military successes achieved following the outbreak of World War II. After the conclusion of a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939, Germany invaded and occupied Poland and, by mid-1940, had defeated France and forced the evacuation of the European mainland by British forces. Faced with the loss of its two strongest partners in the alliance system and with the aggressive ambitions of the two strongest totalitarian powers on the European continent--Germany and the Soviet Union--Romania had little chance of continued independent survival.

WORLD WAR II

The first claims against Romania were made by the Soviet Union, which in June 1940 demanded the immediate cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Under German pressure Romania acceded to these demands, as well as to the later loss of northern Transylvania, which Germany and Italy transferred to Hungary at a joint conference held in Vienna on August 30, 1940. A third loss of territory, also under German pressure, followed one week later with the return of southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, which had already entered the war on the side of Germany.

The crisis caused by these territorial losses had a serious impact within the country. King Carol was forced to appoint a pro-German cabinet, and the government was heavily infiltrated with members of the Iron Guard, most of whom were released from custody under German pressure. A national protest against the king in early September culminated in his abdication in favor of his son, Michael. A new government under General Ion Antonescu was formed, composed almost entirely of members of the Iron Guard, whose leader was made vice premier. German troops entered the country under the pretext of protecting the oilfields, and on November 23, 1940, Romania joined Germany, Italy, and j.a.pan in the Anti-Comintern Pact.

In January 1941 members of the Iron Guard, attempting to seize full control of the government, initiated a terroristic campaign that was suppressed with much bloodshed by the Romanian army, which had remained loyal to the government. With the continued support of the Germans, Antonescu dissolved the Iron Guard and formed an almost exclusively military dictatorship. After stabilization of the government, Romania entered the war against the Soviet Union and incurred heavy losses in the prolonged fighting on the eastern front.

After the defeat of the German and Romanian forces at Stalingrad in early 1943, the Soviets mounted a counteroffensive, which by mid-1944 had liberated the southwestern portions of the Soviet Union and had advanced deep into Romania and threatened Bucharest. On August 23, 1944, King Michael, with the support of the major political and military leaders, overthrew the regime of Antonescu, halted all fighting, and installed a new, moderate, coalition government. Under the terms of the armistice that followed, Romania reentered the war on the side of the Allies, agreed to reparation payments, and accepted the military occupation of the country until the conclusion of a final peace settlement.

Romanian forces that continued the war were committed in support of the Soviet army in Transylvania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Those engaged on the Moldavian front were disarmed, and control over the greater part of the country was maintained by the Soviets. Among the occupation troops stationed in Romania was the communist-indoctrinated "Tudor Vladimirescu" division, a force composed of captured Romanian prisoners that had been organized after the German-Romanian defeat at Stalingrad.

In addition, the Soviets were given the chairmanship of the Allied Control Commission, the joint body that was established to administer the occupied country.

COMMUNIST SEIZURE OF POWER

The several conferences held by the Allied powers concerning postwar arrangements and the understandings that resulted from bilateral discussion among individual leaders indicated that the Soviet Union was to become the dominant military and political power in the Balkans. As a result, the Soviets, from the outset of their period of occupation, acted determinedly to consolidate their position within Romania and to influence the development of a permanent postwar governmental system designed along communist lines.

Although Romania had surrendered in August 1944, it took several months to create a government stable enough to carry out essential programs.

The first postwar coalition regimes included relatively few Communists who ostensibly cooperated with the revived traditional political parties. Despite their small numbers, however, they vigorously engaged in disruptive antigovernment tactics to prevent the stabilization of political authority along democratic lines. This course of action was dictated by the general weakness of the Communists who had surfaced after the war and was handicapped by the absence of partisan or resistance organizations, which could have been used as a basis for expanding political control.

Lacking popular support, the Communist Party set about creating ma.s.s organizations, labor unions, and front organizations through which they could increase their power. Among the leaders in these activities were Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, an early Communist who had been imprisoned during the war, and Ana Pauker, who had spent the war years in Moscow before returning to Romania after the entry of Soviet forces. By the fall of 1944 the Communists had been successful in grouping a leftist-oriented agrarian party called the Plowman's Front, splinter elements of the Social Democratic Party, various labor unions, and several social welfare organizations into the National Democratic Front.

The front became the princ.i.p.al instrument through which the party worked to achieve political dominance.

The National Democratic Front received recognition in the December 1944 government of General Nicolae Radescu and, although given a number of important posts, was generally held to a role subordinate to that of the National Peasant, the Liberal, and the Social Democratic parties. In late January 1945 after a visit to Moscow by Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej, the leftist leadership within the government initiated a virulent campaign of disorder, agitation, and denunciation against Radescu and called for the replacement of his regime with one to be formed by the National Democratic Front.

The anti-Radescu campaign was prolonged and intensified by the Communists who, through their control of the printer's union, were able to silence the opposition press and thus enhance their own propaganda.

In February 1945, during a staged demonstration, the Communists provoked an incident in which several partic.i.p.ants were killed. Demands were made for Radescu's arrest, and he was forced to seek asylum within a foreign mission. Using this latest incident as a pretext, Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs Andrei Vyshinsky, who arrived from Moscow within two days of the event, forced King Michael to accept a National Democratic Front government to be headed by Petru Groza, the leader of the Plowman's Front and longtime communist sympathizer.

The government installed by Groza on March 6, 1945, was dominated by Communists and fellow travelers and represented an effective seizure of power by relatively peaceful means. Although a few dissident former members of the Liberal and National Peasant parties were given posts to maintain the facade of representative government, no leaders or representative members of the historic political parties were included.

After recognition by the Soviet Union in August 1945 and by the United States and Great Britain in February 1946, the Groza government held rigged elections for the Grand National a.s.sembly and emerged with 379 of the 414 seats. Having thus achieved legislative as well as executive control, the Communists proceeded methodically during the following year to eliminate all political opposition. National Peasant and Liberal leaders were arrested and tried, and these two major parties were outlawed in June 1947. This action was followed in the spring of 1948 by the fusion of the Social Democrats with the Communists into a new party called the Romanian Workers' Party, which the Communists controlled. As a final step the National Democratic Front was reorganized into the People's Democratic Front, which then included the Romanian Workers'

Party, the Plowman's Front, and two new puppet organizations--the National Popular Party and the Hungarian People's Union.

By the end of 1947 the only remaining link with the prewar system was the monarchy. King Michael, in addition to being a popular ruler, represented a national symbol around whom anticommunist opposition could rally and, as such, was an unacceptable threat to the embryonic communist dictatorship. Accordingly, in a meeting in December requested by Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej, King Michael was forced to abdicate under the threat of civil war. On the same day the government announced the creation of the Romanian People's Republic. This action represented the last step in the seizure of power and placed Romania under complete communist control.

THE COMMUNIST STATE

Having seized effective control of the government, the Communists embarked on a program of organizing the state along totalitarian lines.

As the first step toward consolidating their position, the Communists initiated extensive purges and liquidation of anticommunist elements in preparation for the holding of new parliamentary elections. The carefully controlled elections held in March 1948 overwhelmingly favored the single list of candidates put forward by the People's Democratic Front, which received 405 of the 414 seats. The new National a.s.sembly met the following month, adopted a const.i.tution modeled after that of the Soviet Union, and formalized the establishment of the Romanian People's Republic.

Over the next five years the country rapidly a.s.sumed the characteristics of a satellite state of the Soviet Union. The Allied Control Commission was withdrawn by mutual consent, and the Soviets were given the right to retain occupation troops in the country beyond the 1947 peace treaty date on the basis of an alleged need to protect the lines of communication with other Soviet forces being maintained in Austria.

Under these favorable conditions and with close party supervision, locally appointed people's councils had little difficulty in administratively organizing the local governments in accordance with the Soviet system.

Soviet-style instruments of control also appeared in a broad pattern in all major fields and included the collectivization of agriculture, the nationalization of industry, the centralization of control of the national economy on a planned basis, and the creation of militia and police forces whose function was to maintain the authority of the communist regime and to eliminate all actual or potential opposition to its policies.

The 1951-53 show trials and political purges within the communist ranks, which were spearheaded from Moscow, served more to strengthen than to weaken Romanian leadership in the party. Although Gheorghiu-Dej, a native leader, had headed the party as its general secretary since 1945, his influence and that of other Romanian Communists in government affairs was limited. The Moscow-trained element led by Pauker, which followed the Soviet forces into Romania, had become dominant in the party organization, largely because it enjoyed both the support and confidence of the Soviets. This group, considered essentially foreign within the Romanian communist movement, firmly controlled the party apparatus, including the secret police, the key posts that dealt with foreign affairs, and the domestic economy.

This maldistribution of power within the ruling group led to factional disputes and internal bickerings, which were brought to the surface and finally solved by the purging of Pauker and the remainder of the Muscovite group in 1952. After the purges Gheorghiu-Dej and his close collaborators a.s.sumed full and undivided authority within the party. The party was successful in maintaining a high degree of h.o.m.ogeneity in its leadership, and the resultant stability within its ranks enabled it to adopt, and later carry out, policies that favored Romanian over international interests in communist affairs.

After the purges Gheorghiu-Dej a.s.sumed the premiership and, as the government and party machinery were now in Romanian hands, the nationalistic character of the communist government began to appear. In the early stages emphasis was placed on disengaging the country from many of the tight Soviet controls that still existed. As an initial move the Romanians in 1954 successfully negotiated the dissolution of the onerous joint Soviet-Romanian industrial concerns that had been used by the Soviets to drain the Romanian economy during the postwar years. This was followed in 1958 by obtaining Soviet agreement to the withdrawal of all occupation forces from Romanian territory. At the same time efforts to stimulate and improve the economy led to the establishment of limited economic relations with several Western and noncommunist bloc countries (see ch. 14).

Despite the nationalistic shift in Romanian external policy during this period, the Romanians were careful to indicate to Moscow that, although they wished to conduct their affairs with a minimum of Soviet interference, they had no intention either of abandoning their adherence to the Soviet bloc or of diminishing their efforts toward the achievement of all basic communist aims in the country. The manner and form of internal control in Romania remained repressive and essentially Stalinist; only minor liberalizing changes took place over the next several years.

After the death of Stalin in 1953 Gheorghiu-Dej supported the new form of collective leadership, which separated government and party functions. Following the Soviet pattern he gave up his party post but reclaimed it two years later, coincidentally with the emergence of Nikita Khrushchev as the leading figure in the Soviet hierarchy. Also, Romania further demonstrated its allegiance to the communist cause by formally endorsing the drastic action taken by the Soviets in suppressing the Hungarian revolt against the communist regime in 1956.

The next step in the pursuit of national goals was taken in the economic field and consisted of measures that sought to lessen Romania's economic dependence on the Soviet Union and the more developed East European countries. These goals were embodied in the country's Five-Year Plan (1960-65), which called for the accelerated creation of an expanded industrial base supported by its own natural resources and technical a.s.sistance from the more advanced noncommunist countries. This ambitious program was vigorously pursued beginning in 1960 and, by 1962, had come into sharp conflict with Premier Khrushchev's announced plans of revitalizing the Council for Mutual Economic a.s.sistance (COMECON) and transforming it into a unified system that would integrate the economies of all Eastern European member nations (see ch. 14).

COMECON, set up by the Soviets in 1949 as a counterpoise to the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), was basically an economic commission designed to a.s.sist the economic development of the communist Eastern European nations during the post-World War II period. Within this organization Romania had acted largely as a supplier of agricultural products, petroleum, and other raw materials and depended on the more industrialized member states for most manufactured goods. Under the Khrushchev plan, Romania's role in this organization would remain unchanged, and all domestic plans that had been developed to produce a balanced economy through increased industrialization would be effectively nullified.

Khrushchev, in pushing his revised plans for COMECON, publicly called for the creation of a supranational planning agency within the organization that would be empowered to select investment projects, allocate regional resources, and prescribe economic tasks to be undertaken by the individual member states on the basis of a majority vote. Romanian leaders reacted firmly and resolutely to this suggestion by publishing a statement of the party Central Committee that definitely rejected the policy of supranational economic integration and the utilization of majority decisions as a means of forcing economic cooperation. The committee's resolution further pointed out that economic collaboration should be based on respect for national independence, sovereignty, and the equality inherent in the rights of nations.

Pressure was exerted to bring the Romanian leadership into line. To counter this, the Romanians took steps to demonstrate their determination to hold to their independent views. A program of desovietization was begun throughout the country, during which Soviet bookshops were closed, the compulsory study of the Russian language in schools was ended, and those street names that had been changed to honor Soviet persons or events reverted to their original Romanian designations. Also, in the field of foreign policy Romania adopted an att.i.tude of nonalignment in the Sino-Soviet dispute, resumed relations with Albania (which had been severed after that country left the Soviet bloc in 1961), and conducted negotiations for increased trade with the People's Republic of China as well as with several Western nations.

By the end of 1963 it was apparent that Soviet plans for revising COMECON could not be implemented and, with Romania retaining its membership, it remained an organization of national economies cooperating with one another along both bilateral and multilateral lines. The Soviets, however, retained leadership of the organization and continued to be a major benefactor from its operation.

The surfacing of the policy conflict with Moscow and the subsequent activities of the Romanians in defiance of general Soviet interests and leadership were followed in April 1964 by a formal statement published by the party Central Committee that proclaimed Romania's inalienable right to national autonomy and full equality in the communist world.

This so-called declaration of independence made it abundantly clear that the national and independent character of Romanian policy had been extended to all fields and would be applied in both domestic and foreign relations.

The policy of greater national autonomy and political independence from the Soviet Union was continued by Nicolae Ceausescu, who succeeded Gheorghiu-Dej as party chief after the latter's sudden death in March 1965. A militant nationalist in the Gheorghiu-Dej pattern, Ceausescu acted quickly after a.s.suming power not only to maintain the political momentum generated by the new national line but also to more closely identify the communist leadership and policies with this expression of traditional national aspiration (see ch. 9).

In April the name of the Romanian Workers' Party was changed to the Romanian Communist Party, and new organizational measures were adopted that were intended to broaden the party's popular base. This action was followed by the adoption of a new const.i.tution, which changed the name of the country to the Socialist Republic of Romania, a step that elevated the country to an advanced status in the communist system by self-proclamation.

In 1967 Ceausescu's position was further strengthened when he a.s.sumed the presidency of the Council of State to become the head of the country in t.i.tle as well as in fact. Since that time Romania has maintained a firm, orthodox communist control pattern in its domestic affairs but has continued to pursue an independent foreign policy, which has diverged remarkably, from time to time, from those of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact) allies.

Differences have included opposition to the full integration of the Warsaw Pact military alliance, refusal to joint the Soviet bloc in condemning Israel after the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War, and unilateral establishment of diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Perhaps the strongest position vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was taken in 1968, when Ceausescu denounced the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty among socialist nations, which was used by the Soviets to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia (see ch. 10).

CHAPTER 3

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT AND POPULATION

Romania, located in southeastern Europe and usually referred to as one of the Balkan states, shares land borders with Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union and has a sh.o.r.eline on the Black Sea (see fig. 1). The interior of the country is a broad plateau almost surrounded by mountains, which, in turn, are surrounded, except in the north, by plains. The mountains are not unduly rugged, and their gentle slopes plus the rolling interior plateau and the arc of lowlands on the country's periphery provide an unusually large percentage of arable land.

Romanian historians have remarked that their country's history might have been different had its mountains been located on its borders rather than in the interior. Romania's mountains provided a refuge for indigenous populations but did not const.i.tute barriers against invaders who sought to dominate the area or use it as a crossroad for deeper invasions of the Balkan region (see ch. 2).

The prevailing weather is eastern European continental, with hot, clear summers and cold winters. Rainfall is adequate in all sections, and in normal seasons the greater share falls during the summer months when it is of most benefit to vegetation and crops. Soils on the average are fertile. Forests occupy about 27 percent of the land surface.

All of the major streams drain eventually into the Danube River and to the Black Sea. The entire length of the Danube in or bordering the country is navigable. There are few ca.n.a.ls, and the Prut River is the only other waterway that is navigable for any considerable distance.

Several of the rivers originating in the Carpathians have a good potential for hydroelectric power but, because oil and natural gas are abundant, their development has not had high priority.

In 1971 railroads carried by far the greatest volume of long-distance freight and pa.s.senger traffic, but highway transport was supplanting them in short-haul traffic of both types. Commercial aviation had multiplied its capacities since 1950 but still carried only a minute percentage of total traffic. Pipelines were the princ.i.p.al carriers of liquid petroleum and natural gas. The merchant marine had developed relatively rapidly after 1960 and, although still small, consisted almost entirely of modern ships and equipment.