Romanian Communist Party

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The Romanian Communist Party (Romanian: Partidul Comunist Român, PCR) was a Communist political party in Romania. Illegal for much of its early existence, it emerged as a successful force in Romanian politics after World War II. The PCR was the ruling party of Communist Romania, and disappeared after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Socialist-Communists: creation 1.2 PCdR: Comintern and internal wing 1.3 PCdR: late 1930s decline 1.4 PCdR: World War II 1.5 PCdR: in opposition to Sănătescu and Rădescu 1.6 PCdR: First Groza cabinet 1.7 PCR: 1945 restructuring and second Groza cabinet 1.8 PMR: creation 1.9 PMR: internal purges 1.10 PMR: Gheorghiu-Dej and de-Stalinization 1.11 PMR: Gheorghiu-Dej and the "national path" 1.12 PCR: Ceauşescu's rise 1.13 PCR: Ceauşescu's supremacy 1.14 PCR: 1980s 2 Membership 3 Organization 4 Party Congresses 5 General Secretaries 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References

[edit] History

[edit] Socialist-Communists: creation

Main article: Socialist Party of Romania

The party was founded in 1921 when the Bolshevik-inspired maximalist faction won control of Romania's Social-Democratic party - the Socialist Party of Romania, successor to the defunct Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party and the short-lived Romanian Social Democratic Party (the latter was refounded in 1927, reuniting those opposed to communist policies).^[1] The establishment was linked with the socialist group's affiliation to the Comintern (just before the latter's Third Congress): after a delegation was sent to Bolshevist Russia, a group of moderates (including Ioan Flueraş, Iosif Jumanca, Leon Ghelerter, and Constantin Popovici) left at different intervals beginning in May 1921.^[2]

The party renamed itself the Socialist-Communist Party (Partidul Socialist-Comunist) and, soon after, the Communist Party of Romania (Partidul Comunist din România or PCdR). Competition with other socialist groups brought a drastic reduction in its membership — from the ca. 40,000 members the Socialist Party had, the new group was left with as much as 2,000^[3] or as little as 500;^[4] at the end of World War II, it had only around 1,000 members.^[5]

The early Communist Party had little influence in Romania due to the country's lack of industrial development, which resulted in a relatively small working class and a large peasant population, the minor impact of Marxism among Romanian intellectuals, the success of state repression in driving the party underground and limiting its activities, and the party's "anti-national" policy as it began to be stated in the 1920s - supervised by the Comintern, and calling for the breakup of Greater Romania, which was regarded as a colonial entity "illegally occupying" Transylvania, Dobruja, Bessarabia and Bukovina (regions that had been denied the right of self-determination).^[6] In 1924, the Comintern provoked Romanian authorities by encouraging the Tatarbunary Uprising in southern Bessarabia, in an attempt to create a Moldavian republic on Romanian territory;^[7] also in that year, a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, roughly corresponding to Transnistria, was established inside the Soviet Union.

At the same time, the left-wing political spectrum was dominated by Poporanism, an original ideology which partly reflected Narodnik influence, placed its focus on the peasantry (as it notably did with the early advocacy of cooperative farming by Ion Mihalache's Peasants' Party), and usually strongly supported the post-1919 territorial status quo - although they tended to oppose the centralized system it had come to imply. (In turn, the early conflict between the PCdR and other minor socialist groups has been attributed to the legacy of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's quasi-Poporanist ideas inside the latter, as an intellectual basis for the rejection of Leninism.)^[8]

The PCdR's "foreign" image was due to the fact that ethnic Romanians were a minority in its ranks until after the end of World War II:^[9] between 1924 and 1944, none of its general secretaries was of Romanian ethnicity. Interwar Romania had a minority population of 30%, and it was largely from this section that the party drew its membership - a large percentage of it was comprised of Jews, Hungarians and Bulgarians.^[10] Actual or perceived ethnic discrimination against these minorities added to the appeal of revolutionary ideas in their midst.^[11]

[edit] PCdR: Comintern and internal wing

Shortly after its creation, the PCdR's leadership was alleged by authorities to have been involved in Max Goldstein's bomb attack on the Parliament of Romania; all major party figures, including the general secretary Gheorghe Cristescu, were prosecuted in the Dealul Spirii Trial.^[12] Constantin Argetoianu, the Minister of the Interior in the Alexandru Averescu, Take Ionescu, and Ion I. C. Brătianu cabinets, equated Comintern membership with conspiracy, ordered the first in a series of repressions, and, in the context of trial, allowed for several communist activists (including Leonte Filipescu) to be shot while in custody — alleging that they had attempted to flee.^[13] Consequently, he stated his belief that "communism is over in Romania",^[14] which allowed for a momentary relaxing of pressures — begun by King Ferdinand's granting of an amnesty to the tried PCdR.^[15]

The PCdR was thus unable to send representatives to the Comintern, and was virtually replaced abroad by a delegation of various activists who had fled to the Soviet Union at various intervals (Romanian groups in Moscow and Kharkiv, the sources of a "Muscovite wing" in the following decades).^[16] The interior party only survived as an underground group after it was outlawed by the Brătianu government through the Mârzescu Law (named after its proponent, Minister of Justice Gheorghe Gh. Mârzescu), passed in April 1924; Comintern sources indicate that, around 1928, it was losing contact with Soviet overseers.^[17] In 1925, the question of Romania's borders as posed by the Comintern led to protests by Cristescu and, eventually, to his exclusion from the party.^[18]

Around the time of the party's Fifth Congress in 1931, the Muscovite wing became the PCdR's main political factor: Joseph Stalin replaced the entire party leadership, including the general secretary Vitali Holostenco — appointing instead Alexander Stefanski, who was at the time a member of the Communist Party of Poland.^[19]

Through regained Comintern control, the interior wing began organizing itself as a more efficient conspirative network.^[20] The onset of the Great Depression in Romania, and the series of strikes infiltrated (and sometimes provoked) by the interior wing signified relative successes (see Lupeni Strike of 1929), but gains were not capitalized — as lack of ideological appeal and suspicion of Stalinist directives remained notable factors.^[21] In parallel, its leadership suffered changes that were meant to place it under an ethnic Romanian and working class leadership — the emergence of a Stalin-backed group around Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej before and after the large-scale Griviţa Strikes.^[22]

In 1934, Stalin's Popular Front doctrine was not fully passed into the local party's politics, mainly due to the Soviet territorial policies (culminating in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) and the widespread suspicion other left-wing forces maintained toward the Comintern.^[23] The Communists did, nevertheless, attempt to reach consensus with other groupings on several occasions (in 1934-1943, they established alliances with the Ploughmen's Front, the Hungarian People's Union, and the Socialist Peasants' Party), and small Communist groups became active in the leftist sections of mainstream parties.^[24] In 1934, Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi and other PCdR supporters created Amicii URSS, a pro-Soviet group reaching out to intellectuals, itself banned later in the same year.^[25]

During the 1937 elections, Communists backed Iuliu Maniu and the National Peasants' Party against King Carol II and the Gheorghe Tătărescu government (who had intensified repression of Communist groups),^[26] finding themselves placed in an unusual position after the Iron Guard, a fascist movement, signed an electoral pact with Maniu;^[27] participation in the move was explained by Communist historiography as provoked by the Social-Democrats' refusal to collaborate with the PCdR.^[28]

[edit] PCdR: late 1930s decline

In the years following the elections, the PCdR entered a phase of rapid decline, coinciding with the increasingly authoritarian tone of King Carol's regime (but in fact inaugurated by the 1936 trial of Ana Pauker and other high-ranking Communists in Craiova).^[29] Journals viewed as associates of the party were closed down, and all suspected PCdR activists faced detention (see Doftana Prison).^[30] Siguranţa Statului, the Romanian secret police, infiltrated the small interior wing and probably obtained valuable information about its activities.^[31] The financial resources of the party, ensured by Soviet support and by various satellite organizations (collecting funds in the name of causes such as pacifism or support for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War), were severely drained — by political difficulties at home, as well as, after 1939, by the severing of connections with Moscow in France and Czechoslovakia.^[32]

Consequently, the Executive Committee of the Comintern called on Romanian Communists to infiltrate the National Renaissance Front (FRN), the newly-created sole legal party of Carol's dictatorship, and attempt to attract members of its structures to the revolutionary cause.^[33]

Until 1944, the group active inside Romania became split between the "prison faction" (detainees who looked to Gheorghiu-Dej as their leader) and the one around Ştefan Foriş and Remus Koffler.^[34] The exterior faction of the party was decimated during the Great Purge: an entire generation of party activists was killed on Stalin's orders, including, among others, Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea, David Fabian, Ecaterina Arbore, Imre Aladar, Elena Filipescu, Dumitru Grofu, Ion Dic Dicescu, Eugen Rozvan, Marcel Pauker, Alexander Stefanski, Timotei Marin, and Elek Köblös.^[35] It was to be Ana Pauker's mission to take over and reshape the surviving structure.^[36]

[edit] PCdR: World War II

Main article: Romania during World War II

In 1940, Romania had to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union and Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria (see Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, Treaty of Craiova); in contrast with the general mood, the PCdR welcomed both gestures along the lines of its earlier activism.^[37] Official history, after ca. 1950, stated that the PCdR protested Northern Transylvania's cession to Hungary later in the same year (the Second Vienna Arbitration), but evidence is inconclusive^[38] (party documents attesting the policy are dated after Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union).^[39] As the border changes sparked a political crisis leading to an Iron Guard takeover — the National Legionary State — the interior wing's confusion intensified: the upper echelon faced investigation from Georgi Dimitrov (as well as other Comintern officials) on charges of "Trotskyism",^[40] and, since the FRN had crumbled, several low-ranking party officials actually began collaborating with the new regime.^[41] At around the same period, a small section of the exterior wing remained active in France, where it eventually joined the Resistance to German occupation — it included Haia Lifschitz, Gheorghe Gaston Marin, and the Francs-tireurs' Olga Bancic.^[42]

As Romania came under the rule of Ion Antonescu and, as an Axis country, joined in the German offensive against the Soviets, the Communist Party began approaching traditional parties that were engaged in semi-clandestine opposition to Antonescu: alongside the Social Democrats, it began talks with the National Peasants' and the National Liberal parties. At the time, virtually all the interior leadership was imprisoned at various locations (most of them interned near Târgu Jiu).^[43] In June 1943, after troops were suffering major defeats on the Eastern Front, the PCdR proposed that all parties form a Blocul Naţional Democrat ("National Democratic Bloc"), in order to arrange for Romania to withdraw from its alliance with Nazi Germany.^[44] The ensuing talks were prolonged by various factors, most notably by the opposition of the National Peasants' Party leader Iuliu Maniu, who, alarmed by Soviet successes, was trying to reach a satisfactory compromise with the Western Allies (and, together with the National Liberals' leader Dinu Brătianu, continued to back negotiations initiated by Antonescu and Barbu Ştirbey with the United States and the United Kingdom).^[45]

In early 1944, as the Red Army reached and crossed the Prut River (see Battle of Târgul Frumos), the self-confidence and status gained by the PCdR made possible the creation of the Bloc, which was designed as the basis of a future anti-Axis government.^[46] Parallel contacts were established, through Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu and Emil Bodnăraş, between the PCdR, the Soviets, and King Michael.^[47] A seminal event also occurred during those months: Ştefan Foriş, who was still general secretary, was deposed by with Soviet approval by a the rival "prison faction" (at the time, it was headed by former inmates of the prison in Caransebeş); replaced with the troika formed by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Constantin Pîrvulescu, and Iosif Rangheţ, Foriş was discreetly assassinated in 1946.^[48] Several assessments view Foriş' dismissal as the complete rupture in historical continuity between the PCdR established in 1921 and what became the ruling party of Communist Romania.^[49]

On August 23, 1944, King Michael, a number of Romanian Army officers, and armed Communist-led civilians supported by the National Democratic Bloc arrested dictator Ion Antonescu into a safe and seized control of the government.^[50] King Michael then proclaimed the old 1923 Constitution in force, ordered the Romanian Army to enter a ceasefire with the Red Army on the Moldavian front, and withdrew Romania from the Axis.^[51] Later party discourse tended to dismiss the importance of both the Soviet offensive and the dialogue with other forces (and eventually described the coup as a revolt with large popular support).^[52]

The King named General Constantin Sănătescu as Prime Minister of a coalition government which was dominated by the National Peasants' Party and National Liberal Party, but included Pătrăşcanu as Minister of Justice - the first Communist to hold high office in Romania. The Red Army entered Bucharest on August 31, and thereafter played a crucial role in supporting the Communist Party's rise to power as the Soviet military command virtually ruled the city and the country (see Soviet occupation of Romania).^[53]

[edit] PCdR: in opposition to Sănătescu and Rădescu

After having been underground for two decades, the Communists enjoyed little popular support at first, compared to the other opposition parties (however, the decrease in popularity of the National Liberals was reflected in the forming of a splinter-group around Gheorghe Tătărescu, the National Liberal Party-Tătărescu, who later entered an alliance with the Communist Party). Soon after August 23, the Communists also engaged in an increasingly violent campaign against Romania's main political group of the times, the National Peasants' Party, and its leaders Iuliu Maniu and Ion Mihalache. The conflict's first stage was centered on Communist allegations that Maniu had encouraged violence against the Hungarian community in newly-recovered Northern Transylvania^[54] — at a time when the region's status was being assessed by the Paris Peace Conference.

The Communist Party, engaged in a massive recruitment campaign,^[55] was able to attract ethnic Romanians in large numbers — workers and intellectuals alike, as well as former members of the fascist Iron Guard.^[56] By 1947, it grew to around 710,000 members.^[57] Although the PCR was still highly disorganized and factionalized,^[58] it benefited from Soviet backing (including that of Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov and other Soviet appointees to the Allied Commission).^[59] After 1944, it was leading a paramilitary wing, the Patriotic Defense (Apărarea Patriotică, disbanded in 1948),^[60] and a cultural society, the Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union.^[61]

On PCdR initiative, the National Democratic Bloc was dissolved on October 8, 1944; instead, the Communists, Social Democrats, the Ploughmen's Front, Mihai Ralea's Socialist Peasants' Party (which was absorbed by the former in November),^[62] the Hungarian People's Union (MADOSZ), and Mitiţă Constantinescu's Union of Patriots formed Frontul Naţional Democrat (the "National Democratic Front", FND) which, campaigned against the government, demanding the appointment of more Communist officials and sympathizers, while claiming democratic legitimacy and alleging that Sănătescu had dictatorial ambitions.^[63] The FND was soon joined by the Liberal group around Tătărescu, Nicolae L. Lupu's Democratic Peasants' Party (the latter claimed the legacy from the defunct Peasants' Party), and Anton Alexandrescu's faction (separated from the National Peasants' Party).^[64]

Sănătescu resigned in November, but was persuaded by King Michael to form a second government which collapsed within weeks. General Nicolae Rădescu was asked to form a government and appointed Teohari Georgescu to the Ministry of the Interior, which allowed for the introduction of Communists into the security forces.^[65] The Communist Party subsequently launched a campaign against the Rădescu government, culminating in a February 13, 1945 demonstration outside the Royal Palace, and followed a week later by street fighting between Georgescu's Communist forces and supporters of the National Peasants' Party in Bucharest.^[66] In a period of escalating chaos, Rădescu called for elections. The Soviet deputy foreign minister Andrey Vyshinsky went to Bucharest to demand to the monarch that he appoint Communist sympathizer Petru Groza as Prime Minister, offering that Romania would be given sovereignty over Transylvania if he agreed, and intimating a Soviet takeover of the country if he did not.^[67] King Michael, under pressure from Soviet troops who were disarming the Romanian military and occupying key installations,^[68] agreed and dismissed Rădescu, who fled the country.^[69]

[edit] PCdR: First Groza cabinet

On March 6, Groza became leader of a Communist-dominated government and named Communists to lead the Romanian Army as well as the ministries of the Interior (Georgescu), Justice (Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu), Communications (Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej), Propaganda (Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi) and Finance (Vasile Luca).^[70] The non-Communist ministers came from the Social Democrats (who were falling under the control of the pro-Communists Lothar Rădăceanu and Ştefan Voitec) and the traditional Ploughmen's Front ally, as well as, nominally, from the National Peasants' and National Liberal parties (followers of Tătărescu and Alexandrescu's dissident wings).^[71]

As a result of the Potsdam Conference, where Western Allied governments refused to recognize Groza's administration, King Michael called on Groza to resign. When he refused, the monarch went to his summer home in Sinaia and refused to sign any government decrees or bills (a period colloquially known as greva regală - "the royal strike").^[72] Following Anglo-American mediation, Groza agreed to include politicians from outside his electoral alliance, appointing two secondary figures in their parties (the National Liberal Mihail Romaniceanu and the National Peasants' Emil Haţieganu) as Ministers without Portfolio (January 1946).^[73] At the time, Groza's party and the PCR came to publicly disagree on several agrarian issues, before the Ploughmen's Front was eventually pressured into supporting Communist tenets.^[74]

In the meantime, the first measure taken by the cabinet was a new land reform that advertised, among others, an interest into peasant issues and a respect for property (in front of common fears that a Leninist program was about to be adopted).^[75] Although contrasted by the Communist press with its previous equivalent, the measure was in fact much less relevant — land awarded to individual farmers in 1923 was more than three times the 1945 figures, and all effects were canceled by the 1948-1962 collectivization.^[76]

It was also then that, through Pătrăşcanu and Alexandru Drăghici, the Communists consecrated their control of the legal system — the process included the creation of the Romanian People's Tribunals, charged with investigating war crimes, and constantly supported by agitprop in the Communist press.^[77] During the period, government-backed Communists used various means to exercising influence over the vast majority of the press, and began infiltrating or competing with independent cultural forums.^[78] Economic dominance, partly responding to Soviet requirements, was first effected through the SovRoms (created in the summer of 1945), directing the bulk of Romanian trade towards the Soviet Union.^[79]

[edit] PCR: 1945 restructuring and second Groza cabinet

Main article: Romanian general election, 1946

The Communist Party held its first open conference (October 1945, at the Mihai Viteazul High School in Bucharest) and agreed to replace the Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej-Constantin Pîrvulescu-Iosif Rangheţ troika with a joint leadership reflecting an uneasy balance between the external and internal wings: while Gheorghiu-Dej retained his general secretary position, Ana Pauker, Teohari Georgescu and Vasile Luca became the other main leaders.^[80] The post-1945 constant growth in membership, by far the highest of all Eastern Bloc countries,^[81] was to provide a base of support for Gheorghiu-Dej. The conference also saw the first mention of the PCdR as the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), the new name being used as a propaganda tool suggesting a closer connection with the national interest.^[82]

Party control over the security forces was successfully used on November 8, 1945, when the Bucharest populace gathered in front of the Royal Palace to express solidarity with King Michael, who was still refusing to sign his name to new legislation, on the occasion of his name day.^[83] Demonstrators were faced with gunshots; around 10 people were killed, and many wounded.^[84] The official account, according to which the Groza government responded to a coup attempt,^[85] was dismissed in many recent researches.^[86]

The PCR and its allies won the Romanian elections of November 19, although there is evidence of widespread electoral fraud.^[87] The following months were dedicated to confronting the National Peasants' Party, which was annihilated after the Tămădău Affair and show trial of its entire leadership.^[88] On December 30, 1947, the Communist Party's power was consolidated when King Michael was forced to abdicate and a "People's Republic", firmly aligned with the Soviet Union, was proclaimed.^[89]

[edit] PMR: creation

In February 1948, the Communists ended a long process of infiltrating the Romanian Social Democratic Party (ensuring control through electoral alliances and the two-party Frontul Unic Muncitoresc — Singular Workers' Front, the PCR had profited from the departure of Constantin Titel Petrescu's group from the Social Democrats in March 1946). The Social Democrats fused with he PCR to form the Romanian Workers' Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Român, PMR) which remained the ruling party's official name until 1965 (when it returned to the designation as Romanian Communist Party).^[90] Nevertheless, Social Democrats were excluded from most party posts and were forced to support Communist policies on the basis of democratic centralism.^[91] Capitalizing on these gains, the Communist government banned almost all other political parties after winning purely formal elections in 1948 (the Ploughmen's Front and the Hungarian People's Union dissolved themselves in 1953).^[92]

A new series of economic changes followed: the National Bank of Romania was passed into full public ownership (December 1946),^[93] and, in order to combat the Romanian leu's devaluation, a surprise monetary reform was imposed as a stabilization measure in August 1947 (with disastrous consequences on the livelihoods of middle class citizens);^[94] the Marshall Plan was being overtly condemned,^[95] while nationalization and a planned economy were enforced beginning June 11, 1948.^[96] The first five-year plan, conceived by Miron Constantinescu's Soviet-Romanian committee, was adopted in 1950.^[97] Of newly-enforced measures, the arguably most far-reaching was collectivization — by 1962, when the process was considered complete, 96% of the total arable land had been enclosed in collective farming, while around 80,000 peasants faced trial for resisting and 17,000 others were uprooted or deported for being chiaburi (the Romanian equivalent of kulaks).^[98]

[edit] PMR: internal purges

During the period, the central scene of the PMR was occupied by the conflict between the "Muscovite wing", the "prison wing" led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and the newly-emerged and weaker "Secretariat wing" led by Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu. After October 1945, the two former groups had associated in neutralizing Pătrăşcanu's — exposed as "bourgeois" and progressively marginalized, it was ultimately decapitated in 1948.^[99] Beginning that year, the PMR leadership officially questioned its own political support, and began a massive campaign to remove "foreign and hostile elements"^[100] from its rapidly expanded structures.^[101] In 1952, with Stalin's renewed approval,^[102] Gheorghiu-Dej emerged victorious from the confrontation with Ana Pauker, his chief "Muscovite" rival, as well as purging Vasile Luca, Teohari Georgescu, and their supporters from the party — alleging that their various political attitudes were proof of "right-wing deviationism".^[103] Out of a membership of approximately one million, between 300,000^[104] and 465,000^[105] members, almost half of the party, was removed in the successive purges.

The move against Pauker's group echoed Stalinist purges of Jews in particular from other Communist Parties in the Eastern bloc — notably, the anti-"Cosmopolitan" campaign in which Joseph Stalin targeted Jews in the Soviet Union, and the Prague Trials in Czechoslovakia which removed Jews from leading positions in that country's Communist government.^[106] At the same time, a new republican constitution, replacing its 1948 precedent, legislated Stalinist tenets,^[107] and proclaimed that "the people's democratic state is consistently carrying out the policy of enclosing and eliminating capitalist elements".^[108] Gheorghiu-Dej, who remained an orthodox Stalinist,^[109] took the position of Premier while moving Petru Groza to the Presidency of the People's Republic. Executive and PMR leaderships remained in Gheorghiu-Dej's charge until his death in 1965 (with the exception of 1954-1955, when his office of PMR leader was taken over by Gheorghe Apostol).^[110]

From the moment it came to power and until Stalin's death, as the Cold War erupted, the PMR endorsed Soviet requirements for the Eastern Bloc. Aligning the country with the Cominform, it officially condemned Josip Broz Tito's independent actions in Yugoslavia; Tito was routinely attacked by the official press, and the Romanian-Yugoslav Danube border became the scene of massive agitprop displays (see Tito-Stalin split and Informbiro).^[111]

[edit] PMR: Gheorghiu-Dej and de-Stalinization

Uncomfortable and possibly threatened by the reformist measures adopted by Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, Gheorghiu-Dej began to steer Romania towards a more "independent" path while remaining within the Soviet orbit during the late 1950s . Following the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in which Khurshchev initiated De-Stalinization, Gheorghiu-Dej issued propaganda accusing Pauker, Luca and Georgescu of having been an arch-Stalinists responsible for the party's excesses in the late 1940s and early 1950s (notably, in regard to collectivization) — despite the fact that they had occasionally opposed a number of radical measures advocated by the General Secretary.^[112] After that purge, Gheorghiu-Dej had begun promoting PMR activists who were perceived as more loyal to his own political views; they notably included Nicolae Ceauşescu,^[113] Gheorghe Stoica, Ghizela Vass,^[114] Grigore Preoteasa,^[115] Alexandru Bârlădeanu,^[116] Ion Gheorghe Maurer, Gheorghe Gaston Marin, Paul Niculescu-Mizil, and Gheorghe Rădulescu;^[117] in parallel, citing Khrushchevite precedents, the PMR briefly reorganized its leadership on a plural basis (1954-1955),^[118] while Gheorghiu-Dej reshaped party doctrine to include ambiguous messages about Stalin's legacy (insisting on the defunct Soviet's leader contribution to Marxist thought, official documents also deplored his personality cult and encouraged Stalinists to self-criticism).^[119]

In this context, the PMR soon dismissed all the relevant consequences of the Twentieth Soviet Congress, and Gheorghiu-Dej even argued that De-Stalinization had been imposed by his team right after 1952.^[120] At a party meeting in March 1956, two members of the Politburo who were supporters of Khruschevite reforms, Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chişinevschi, criticized Gheorghiu-Dej's leadership and identified him with Romanian Stalinism.^[121] They were purged in 1957, themselves accused of being Stalinists and of having been plotting with Pauker.^[122] On the outside too, the PMR, leading a country that had joined the Warsaw Pact, remained an agent of political repression: it fully supported Khurshchev's invasion of Hungary in response to the Revolution of 1956, after which Imre Nagy and other dissident Hungarian leaders were imprisoned on Romanian soil.^[123] While refusing to allow dissemination of Soviet literature exposing Stalinism (writers such as Ilya Ehrenburg and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), Romanian leaders took active part in the campaign against Boris Pasternak.^[124]

Despite Stalin's death, the massive police apparatus headed by the Securitate (created in 1949 and rapidly growing in numbers)^[125] maintained a steady pace in its suppression of "class enemies", until as late as 1962-1964 — in 1964, the party leadership approved a mass amnesty, extended to, among other prisoners, ca. 5,700 guilty of political crimes.^[126] This marked a toning down in the violence and scale of repression, after almost twenty years during which the Party had acted against political opposition and active anti-communist resistance, as well as against religious institutions (most notably, the Romanian Roman-Catholic and Greek-Catholic Churches).^[127] Estimates for the total number of victims in the 1947/1948-1964 period vary significantly: as low as 160,000^[128] or 282,000^[129] political prisoners, and as high 600,000^[130] (a great number were killed or died in custody - according to an estimate, about 190,000 people).^[131] Notorious penal facilities of the time included the Danube-Black Sea Canal, Sighet, Gherla, Aiud, Piteşti, and Râmnicu Sărat; another method of punishment was deportation to the inhospitable Bărăgan Plain.^[132]

[edit] PMR: Gheorghiu-Dej and the "national path"

Nationalism penetrated official discourse, largely owing to Gheorghiu-Dej's call for economic independence and distancing from the Comecon.^[133] Moves to withdraw the country from Soviet overseeing were taken in quick succession after 1953. Khrushchev allowed Constantinescu to dissolve the SovRoms in 1954,^[134] followed by the closing of Romanian-Soviet cultural ventures such as Editura Cartea Rusă at the end of the decade.^[135] Industrialization along the PMR's own directives highlighted Romanian independence — one of its consequences was the massive steel-producing industrial complex in Galaţi, which, being dependent on imports of iron from overseas, was for long a major strain on Romanian economy.^[136]

In 1957, with the support of the Communist Party of China, Gheorghiu-Dej persuaded the Soviets to withdraw their remaining troops from Romanian soil.^[137] As early as 1956, Romania's political apparatus reconciled with Josip Broz Tito, which led to a series of common economic projects (culminating in the Đerdap venture).^[138] Following the Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s and the Soviet-Albanian split in 1961, Romania maintained relations with both the People's Republic of China^[139] and Communist Albania.^[140] Romanian media was alone among Warsaw Pact countries to report Chinese criticism of the Soviet leadership from its source;^[141] in return, Maoist officials complimented Romanian nationalism by supporting the view that Bessarabia had been a traditional victim of Russian imperialism.^[142]

The change in policies was to become obvious in 1964, when the Communist regime offered a stiff response to the Valev Plan, a Soviet project of creating trans-national economic units and of assigning Romanian areas the task of supplying agricultural products^[143] (the PMR stated: "There does not and cannot exist a «parent» party and a «son» party or «superior» party and «subordinate» parties").^[144] Several other measures of that year also presented themselves as radical changes in tone: after Gheorghiu-Dej endorsed Andrei Oţetea's publishing of Karl Marx's Russophobic texts (uncovered by the Polish historian Stanisław Schwann),^[145] the PMR itself took a stand against Khrushchevite principles by stating, in late April, its commitment to a "national path" towards Communism.^[146]

These actions gave Romania greater freedom in pursuing the program which Gheorghiu-Dej had been committed to since 1954, one allowing Romania to defy reforms in the Eastern Bloc and to maintain a largely Stalinist course.^[147] It has also been argued that Romania's emancipation was, in effect, limited to economic relations and military cooperation, being as such dependent on a relatively tolerant mood inside the Soviet Union.^[148] Nevertheless, the PMR's nationalism made it increasingly popular with Romanian intellectuals, and the last stage of the Gheorghiu-Dej regime was popularly identified with liberalization.^[149]

[edit] PCR: Ceauşescu's rise

Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965 and was succeeded by a collective leadership made up of Nicolae Ceauşescu as general secretary, Chivu Stoica as President and Ion Gheorghe Maurer as Premier.^[150] Ceauşescu removed rivals such as Stoica, Alexandru Drăghici, and Gheorghe Apostol from the government, and ultimately from the party leadership, and began accumulating posts for himself. By 1969, he was in complete control of the Central Committee.^[151] The circumstances surrounding this process are still disputed, but theories evidence that the support given to him by Ion Gheorghe Maurer and Emil Bodnăraş, as well as the ascendancy of Ilie Verdeţ, Virgil Trofin, and Paul Niculescu-Mizil, were instrumental in ensuring legitimacy.^[152] Soon after 1965, Ceauşescu used his prerogatives to convoke a Party Commission headed by Ion Popescu-Puţuri, charged with investigating both Stalinist legacy and Gheorghiu-Dej's purges: resulting in the rehabilitation of a large number of Communist officials (including, among others, Ştefan Foriş, Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Miron Constantinescu, Vasile Luca, and Romanian victims of the Soviet Great Purge).^[153] This measure was instrumental in consolidating the new leadership while further increasing its distance from Gheorghiu-Dej's political legacy.^[154]

In 1965, Ceauşescu declared that Romania was no longer a People's Democracy but a Socialist Republic and changed the name of the party back to the Romanian Communist Party - steps which were meant to indicate that Romania was following strict Marxist policies while remaining independent. He continued Romanianization and de-Sovietization efforts by altering national propaganda so that the Soviet Union was no longer referred to as having "liberated Romania from fascism".

A seminal event occurred in August 1968, when Ceauşescu highlighted his anti-Soviet discourse by vocally opposing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia; a highly popular measure with the Romanian public, it lead to massive enrollments in the PCR and the newly-created paramilitary Patriotic Guards (created with the goal of meeting a possible Soviet intervention in Romania).^[155] From 1965 to 1976, the PCR rose from aproximately 1.4 million members to 2.6 million.^[156]

In the contingency of an anti-Soviet war, the PCR even sought an alliance with the maverick Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito — negotiations did not yield a clear result.^[157] Nevertheless, there is indication that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had himself ruled out Romanian participation in Warsaw Pact maneuvers, and continued to rely on Ceauşescu's support for other common goals.^[158] While it appears that Romanian leaders genuinely approved of reforms undertaken by Alexander Dubček,^[159] Ceauşescu's gesture also served to consolidate his image as a national and independent communist leader.^[160] Starting with an earlier and much-publicized visit by France's Charles de Gaulle (May 1968),^[161] Romania was the recipient of Western world support going well into the 1970s (significant visits were payed by United States Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, in 1969 and 1975 respectively, while Ceauşescu was frequently received in Western capitals).^[162]

[edit] PCR: Ceauşescu's supremacy

Ceauşescu developed a cult of personality around himself and his wife Elena (herself promoted to high offices)^[163] after visiting North Korea and noting the parallel developed by Kim Il-sung, while incorporating in it several aspects of past authoritarian regimes in Romania (see Conducător).^[164] Curbing liberalization, he also launched his own version of China's Cultural Revolution, announced by the July Theses.^[165] At the XIth Party Congress in 1974, a proposal was advanced to extend Ceauşescu's office as General Secretary for life, but was turned down by the latter.^[166] During the same year, he inaugurated the office of President of the Socialist Republic, following a ceremonial during which he was handed a sceptre;^[167] this was the first in a succession of titles (they also included "supreme commander of the Romanian Army", "honorary president of the Romanian Academy", and "first among the country's miners").^[168]

The renewed industrialization brought major economic problems to Romania, beginning with the effects of the 1973 oil crisis, and worsened by the 1979 energy crisis.^[169] The profound neglect of services and decline in quality of life, first manifested when much of the budget was diverted to support an over-sized industry,^[170] was worsened by the political decision to pay in full the country's external debt^[171] (in 1983, this was set at 10 billion United States dollars, of which 4.5 was accumulated interest).^[172] By March 1989, the debt had been paid in full.^[173]

Two other programs initiated under Ceauşescu had massive consequences on social life. One of them was the plan, announced as early as 1965, to "systemize rural areas", which was meant to urbanize Romania at a fast pace (of over 13,000 communes, the country was to be left with 6,000);^[174] it also brought massive changes for the cities — especially Bucharest, where, following the 1977 Earthquake and successive demolitions, new architectural guidelines were imposed (see Ceauşima).^[175] Another measure, going hand in hand with economic ones, allowed ethnic Germans a chance to leave Romania and settle in West Germany as Auslandsdeutsche, in return for payments from the latter country^[176] (overall, around 200,000 Germans left, most of them Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians).^[177]

Although Romania adhered to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (1973) and signed the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, Ceauşescu also intensified political repression in the country (beginning in 1971).^[178] This took a drastic turn in 1977, when, confronted with Paul Goma's movement in support for Charter 77, the regime expelled him and others from the country.^[179] A more serious disobedience occurred in August of the same year, when Jiu Valley miners went on strike, briefly took hold of Premier Ilie Verdeţ, and, despite having reached an agreement with the government, were repressed and some of them expelled (see Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977).^[180] A newly-created and independent trade union, SLOMR, was crushed and its leaders arrested on various charges in 1979.^[181] Progressively during the period, the Securitate relied on involuntary commitment to psychiatric hospitals as a means to punish dissidence.^[182]

[edit] PCR: 1980s

A major act of discontent occurred inside the party during its XIIth Congress in late November 1979, when PCR veteran Constantin Pîrvulescu spoke out against Ceauşescu's policy of discouraging discussions and relying on obedient cadres (he was subsequently heckled, evicted from the Congress hall, and isolated).^[183] By 1983, fearing the multiplication of samizdat documents, Minister of the Interior George Homoştean ordered all citizens to hand down their typewriters to the authorities.^[184]

By 1989, membership of the PCR had risen to 3.8 million^[185] — meaning that over 20% of Romanian adults were party members, making the PCR the largest communist group of the Eastern Bloc after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.^[186] In the end, this statistic contrasted the fact that the PCR had become completely submitted to its leader and no longer had any form of autonomous activity,^[187] while membership became a basic requirement in numerous of social contexts, leading to a purely formal allegiances and political clientelism.^[188]

Especially during the 1980s, clientelism was further enhanced by a new policy, rotaţia cadrelor ("cadre rotation" or "reshuffling"), placing strain on low-level officials to seek the protection of higher placed ones as a means to preserve their position or to promote.^[189] At the same time, the ideological viewpoint was changed, with the party no longer seen as the vanguard of the working class,^[190] but as the main social factor and the embodiment of the national interest.^[191] In marked contrast with the Perestroika and Glasnost developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev, Romania revived Stalinist policies in both its internal policies and its relation to the outside.^[192]

The final crisis of the PCR and its regime began in the autumn of 1987, when industrial workers in Braşov called a strike that immediately drew echoes with the city's population (see Braşov Rebellion).^[193] In December, authorities convened a public kangaroo trial of the movement's leaders, and handed out sentences of imprisonment and internal exile.^[194] Inaugurated by Silviu Brucan's protest against the Braşov repression, and inspired by the impact of changes in other Eastern Bloc countries, protests of marginalized PCR activists became notorious after March 1989, when Brucan and Pîrvulescu, together with Gheorghe Apostol, Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Grigore Răceanu and Corneliu Mănescu, sent Ceauşescu their so-called Letter of the Six, publicized over Radio Free Europe.^[195]

Eventually, both Ceauşescu and the party were overthrown in the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, begun as a popular rebellion in Timişoara and eventually bringing to power the National Salvation Front, comprising an important number of former PCR members who supported Gorbachev's vision.^[196] The general secretary was executed together with Elena Ceauşescu, and the PCR disbanded. The spontaneity of the latter move and the rapid pace at which the PCR, one of the largest political parties of its kind, dissolved itself were held by commentators as additional proof that membership provided a highly inaccurate image in respect to actual convictions.^[197]

[edit] Membership

The party grew rapidly after World War II, and had more than one million members by 1948. This changed the ethnic composition of the party and, along with officially sanctioned anti-Semitism by Joseph Stalin and pre-existing chauvinism in the country, led to minorities and particularly Jews being sidelined - especially after 1952, when Ana Pauker was purged along with almost half of the party who were either seen as her supporters or former social democrats. Many of the party's ethnic minority members (particularly Hungarians and Jews who were predominant in the "Muscovite faction") were removed during the purge.

In 1950 the party claimed that 64% of its leadership positions were held by members of the working class. A 1962 relaxation of the conditions required for admission to the party led to a 22% rise in membership, to 1,100,000.

When the Romanian Workers' Party became the Romanian Communist Party in 1965, it was reported that the party had 1,450,000 members or 8% of the population, with 44% of the members being workers, 34% peasants, 10% intellectuals and 12% in other categories. By 1988 the percentage of workers had grown to 55%, while the percentage of peasants had fallen to 15%. By 1971, the party had 2.1 million members, and this grew to 3 million by the party's 12th Party Congress in 1979. In 1988 an estimate of 3.7 million members was given, meaning 23% of Romanian adults were party members.

In 1984 the party composition was announced as being 90% ethnic Romanian, 7% Hungarian, less than 1% German and the remaining 2% other nationalities (roughly proportional with the ethnic groups of Romania).

[edit] Organization

Officially, as with other Communist parties, the supreme body of the Romanian Communist Party and its predecessors was the party congress held once every five years with one delegate for every 1,000 party members. The Party Congress elected a Central Committee and the general secretary and adopted the party's program and other documents.

The Central Committee would be the main party body between Congresses. In 1984, the Central Committee consisted of 265 full members and 181 candidate members. The body was responsible for implementing the decisions of the party congress and the direction of party activities, and was supposed to meet at least four times a year.

In 1974 the Presidium of the Central Committee (in effect the Politburo), which had been elected by the Central Committee, was replaced by a new body, the Political Executive Committee Permanent Bureau, which, although nominally elected by the Central Committee, was, in practice, appointed by the general secretary as was the other leading body of the party, the Secretariat (both of which generally had the same members).

In practice as well there was little differentiation between the party and the government. The Permanent Bureau was the highest body in the party and had five members when it was created in 1974 and expanded to fifteen in 1979. In 1984 it was reduced to eight members with both Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu sitting on the body. This shrank to seven members in 1988, essentially the Ceauşescus and their close allies. The Political Executive Committee which it reported to was essentially a rubber stamp acting when the Central Committee was not in session. The Secretariat was the administrative body of the party and, in effect, also took directions from the Permanent Bureau.

The basic unit of the party was local party clubs in factories, cooperatives, military and police units and other workplaces. There were 64,200 of these units existing in 1980, ranging in size from a handful of people to several hundred. These bodies reported to town or municipal party committees which had their own first secretaries, vice-chairmen and other officials and reported and, in theory, elected delegates to higher regional bodies and then the national bodies of the party. The party had direct control over the nation's economic life through national and local party commissions.

[edit] Party Congresses

Name. Period	Location
Ist (May 1921)	Bucharest
IInd (October 1922)	Ploieşti
IIIrd (August 1924)	Vienna
IVth (July 1928)	Kharkiv
Vth (December 1931)	Gorikovo
VIth (February 1948)	Bucharest
VIIth (December 1955)	Bucharest
VIIIth (June 1960)	Bucharest
IXth (July 1965)	Bucharest
Xth (August 1969)	Bucharest
XIth (November 1974)	Bucharest
XIIth (November 1979)	Bucharest
XIIIth (November 1984)	Bucharest
XIVth (November 1989)	Bucharest

[edit] General Secretaries

Gheorghe Cristescu	1921–1924
Elek Köblös	1924–1927
Vitali Holostenco	1927–1931
Alexander Stefanski	1931–1936
Boris Stefanov	1936–1940
Ştefan Foriş	1940–1944
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej	1945–1954
Gheorghe Apostol	1954–1955
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej	1955–1965
Nicolae Ceauşescu	1965–1989

[edit] See also

• Balkan Communist Federation
• Communist Romania
• List of Romanian communists
• Scînteia
• Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy
• Union of Communist Youth

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• "The Communist Party" from the US Library of Congress' Country Study of Romania, 1990
• Lucian Boia, ed., Miturile comunismului românesc ("The Myths of Romanian Communism"), Editura Nemira, Bucharest, 1998:
  • Daniel Barbu, "Destinul colectiv, servitutea involuntară, nefericirea totalitară: trei mituri ale comunismului românesc" interbelică la comunism" ("Collective Destiny, Involuntary Servitude, Totalitarian Misery: Three Myths of Romanian Communism"), p.175-197
  • Eugen Negrici, "Mitul patriei primejduite" ("The Myth of the Fatherland in Peril"), p.220-226
• Adrian Cioroianu,
  • (Romanian) "Comunismul şi cel care a trăit Iluzia" ("Communism and the Man Who Lived the Illusion"), in Revista 22, June 2002
  • Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc ("On the Shoulders of Marx. An Incursion into the History of Romanian Communism"), Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2005
• (Romanian) Radu Colt, "80 în Bucureşti şi mai puţin de 1000 în toată ţara" ("80 in Bucharest and Less throughout the Country"), in Magazin Istoric
• Dennis Deletant, Romania, 1948-1989: A Historical Overview
• Dennis Deletant, Mihail Ionescu, "Romania and the Warsaw Pact: 1955-1989", in Cold War International History Project, Working Paper #43, April 2004 (PDF)
• Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România ("The History of Stalinism in Romania"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
• Constantin Iordachi, The Anatomy of a Historical Conflict: Romanian-Hungarian Diplomatic Conflict in the 1980s
• T. A. Pokivailova, "1939-1940. Cominternul şi Partidul Comunist din România" (1939-1940. The Comintern and the Communist Party of Romania"), in Magazin Istoric, March 1997
• Vladimir Tismăneanu, Gheorghiu-Dej and the Romanian Workers' Party: From De-Sovietization to the Emergence of National Communism (Working Paper No.37), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., 2002 (PDF)
• Cristian Troncotă, "Siguranţa şi spectrul revoluţiei comuniste" ("Siguranţa and the Spectre of Communist Revolution"), in Dosarele Istoriei, 4(44)/2000
• Francisco Veiga, Istoria Gărzii de Fier, 1919-1941: Mistica ultranaţionalismului ("The History of the Iron Guard, 1919-1941: The Mystique of Ultra-Nationalism"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1993

 

Historical political parties in Romania (1856-1947)

Liberal: National Liberal Party, Free and Independent Faction, National Liberal Party-Brătianu, National Liberal Party-Tătărescu Conservative: Conservative Party, Constitutional Party Agrarian: National Peasants' Party, Bessarabian Peasants' Party, National Agrarian Party, Peasants' Party, Ploughmen's Front, Socialist Peasants' Party Fascist, corporatist, and far right: Iron Guard, Crusade of Romanianism, National-Christian Defense League, National Christian Party, National Fascist Movement, National Italo-Romanian Cultural and Economic Movement, National Renaissance Front, National Romanian Fascia, National Socialist Party, Romanian Front Communist, socialist, and social democratic: Romanian Communist Party, Romanian Social Democratic Party, Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, Socialist Party of Romania Nationalist: Democratic Nationalist Party, National Party, People's Party, Romanian National Party Ethnic minority: German Party, Hungarian People's Union, Jewish Party, Magyar Party Other: Union of Patriots