Romanian Communist Party Partidul Comunist Român | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Leader | Gheorghe Cristescu (first) Nicolae Ceaușescu (last) |
| Founded | 8 May 1921; 104 years ago (1921-05-08) |
| Dissolved | 22 December 1989; 35 years ago (1989-12-22) |
| Preceded by | Socialist Party of Romania |
| Succeeded by | Socialist Party of Labour (faction)[1] |
| Headquarters | Bucharest, Romania |
| Newspaper | Scînteia[2] |
| Youth wing | Union of Communist Youth[3] |
| Pioneer wing | Pioneer Organization[4] |
| Paramilitary wing | Patriotic Guards[5] |
| Membership(1989est.) | 3.6 million–4 million[6] |
| Ideology | Communism Marxism–Leninism Stalinism (until 1956)[7] Socialist patriotism Left-wing nationalism Romanian nationalism After 1971: National communism[8] Neo-Stalinism[9] |
| Political position | Far-left[10][11] |
| National affiliation | FND/BPD (1944–1968) FDUS (1968–1989) |
| European affiliation | Balkan Communist Federation (1921–1939) |
| International affiliation | Comintern (1921–1943) Cominform (1947–1956) |
| Colours | Red[12] Gold |
| Anthem | "The Internationale" |
| Party flag | |
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TheRomanian Communist Party (Romanian:Partidul Comunist Român[parˈtidulkomuˈnistroˈmɨn];PCR) was acommunist party inRomania. The successor to the pro-Bolshevik wing of theSocialist Party of Romania, it gave an ideological endorsement to acommunist revolution that would replace the social system of theKingdom of Romania. After being outlawed in 1924, the PCR remained a minor and illegal grouping for much of theinterwar period and submitted to directComintern control. During the 1920s and the 1930s, most of its activists were imprisoned or took refuge in theSoviet Union, which led to the creation of competing factions that sometimes came into open conflict. That did not prevent the party from participating in the political life of the country through variousfront organizations, most notably thePeasant Workers' Bloc. In 1934–1936, PCR reformed itself in the mainland of Romania properly, with foreign observers predicting a possiblecommunist takeover in Romania.[13] The party emerged as a powerful actor on the Romanian political scene in August 1944, when it became involved in theroyal coup that toppled the pro-Nazi government ofIon Antonescu. With support fromSoviet occupational forces, the PCR pressuredKingMichael I into abdicating, and it established theRomanian People's Republic in December 1947.
The party operated as theRomanian Workers' Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Romîn between 1948 and 1964 andPartidul Muncitoresc Român in 1964 and 1965) until it was officially renamed byNicolae Ceaușescu, who had just been elected secretary general. Other legal, political parties existed in Romania, but their influence was limited and they were subordinate to the constitutionally-authorised leading role of the PCR. All other legal parties and entities were part of the Communist-dominatedNational Front.[14] The PCR was acommunist party, organized based ondemocratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist theoreticianVladimir Lenin, which entails a democratic and open discussion on policy on the condition of unity in upholding agreed-upon policies. The highest body within the PCR was theParty Congress, which began in 1969 to convene every five years. The Central Committee was the highest body when Congress was not in session. Because the Central Committee met only twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in Politburo. The party leader held the office of General Secretary and, after 1945, held significant influence over the government. Between 1974 and 1989, the General Secretary also held the office ofPresident of Romania.
Ideologically, the PCR was committed toMarxism–Leninism, a fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theoristKarl Marx, and Lenin, was introduced in 1929 by the Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin, as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so through much of its existence. In 1948, the Communist Party absorbed theRomanian Social Democratic Party and attracted various new members. In the early 1950s, the group aroundGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, with support from Stalin, defeated all other factions and achieved full control over the party and country. After the late 1950s, the party gradually theorizeda "national path" to communism. At the same time, however, the party delayed the time to join itsWarsaw Pact brethren inde-Stalinization. The PCR'sRomanian nationalist and stance was continued under the leadership of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Following an episode ofliberalization in the late 1960s, Ceaușescu again adopted a hard line by imposing the "July Theses",re-Stalinizing the party's rule by intensifying the spread of Marxist–Leninist ideology in Romanian society and solidifying anational communist line. At the same time, he consolidated his grip on power whilst using the party's authority to brew a pervasivecult of personality. Over the years, the PCR massively increased[clarification needed] to become entirely submitted to Ceaușescu's will. From the 1960s onward, it had a reputation for being far more independent of the Soviet Union than its brethren in the Warsaw Pact. However, it also became the most hardline party in theEastern Bloc, which harmed its relationship with theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union. It collapsed in 1989 in the wake of theRomanian revolution, but Romania kept its socialist-era constitution until 1991. Romania also retained its membership in theWarsaw Pact until its dissolution on 1 July 1991; that role had been largely symbolic since the late 1960s.
The PCR co-ordinated several organizations during its existence, including theUnion of Communist Youth, and organized training for its cadres at theȘtefan Gheorghiu Academy (futureSNSPA). In addition toScînteia, its official platform and main newspaper between 1931 and 1989, the party issued several local and national publications at various points in its history (including, after 1944,România Liberă).
The party was founded in 1921 when theBolshevik-inspiredmaximalist faction won control of Romania'sSocial-Democratic party—theSocialist Party of Romania, successor to the defunctRomanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party and the short-livedSocial Democratic Party of Romania (the latter was refounded in 1927, reuniting those opposed to communist policies).[15] The establishment was linked with the socialist group's affiliation to theComintern (just before the latter's Third Congress): after a delegation was sent toBolshevist Russia, a group of moderates (includingIoan Flueraș,Iosif Jumanca,Leon Ghelerter, andConstantin Popovici) left at different intervals beginning with January 1921.[16]
The party renamed itself theSocialist-Communist Party (Partidul Socialist-Comunist)[when?] and, soon after, theCommunist Party of Romania (Partidul Comunist din România orPCdR). Government crackdown and 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[17] or as little as 500[when?];[18] after thefall of one-party rule in 1989, Romanian historians generally asserted that the party only had around 1,000 members at the end of World War II.[19] Other researchers argue that this figure may have been intentionally based on the Muscovite faction figures and, as such, underestimated to undermine the influence of the internal faction; this estimate was afterwards promoted in post-communist historiography to reinforce a stereotypical image of the regime as illegitimate.[20]
The early Communist Party had little influence in Romania. This was due to a number of factors: the country's lack ofindustrial development, which resulted in a relatively small working class (with industry and mining employing fewer than 10% of the active population[21]) and a large peasant population; the minor impact ofMarxism among Romanianintellectuals; the success of state repression in driving the party underground and limiting its activities; and finally, the party's "anti-national" policy, as it began to be stated in the 1920s—supervised by the Comintern, this policy called for the breakup ofGreater Romania, which was regarded as a colonial entity "illegally occupying"Transylvania,Dobruja,Bessarabia andBukovina (regions that, the communists argued, had been denied the right ofself-determination).[22] In 1924, the Comintern provoked Romanian authorities by encouraging theTatarbunary Uprising in southern Bessarabia, in an attempt to create aMoldavian republic on Romanian territory;[23] also in that year, aMoldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, roughly corresponding toTransnistria, was established inside the Soviet Union.
At the same time, the left-wing political spectrum was dominated byPoporanism, an original ideology which partly reflectedNarodnik influence, placed its focus on the peasantry (as it notably did with the early advocacy ofcooperative farming byIon Mihalache'sPeasants' Party), and usually strongly supported the post-1919 territorial status quo—although they tended to oppose thecentralized 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 ofConstantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's quasi-Poporanist ideas inside the latter, as an intellectual basis for the rejection ofLeninism.)[24]
The PCdR's "foreign" image was becauseethnic Romanians were a minority in its ranks until after the end of World War II:[25] between 1924 and 1944, none of itsgeneral 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 wasJews,Hungarians andBulgarians.[26] Actual or perceived ethnic discrimination against these minorities added to the appeal ofrevolutionary ideas in their midst.[27]
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Shortly after its creation, the PCdR's leadership was alleged by authorities to have been involved inMax Goldstein's bomb attack on theParliament of Romania; all major party figures, including the general secretaryGheorghe Cristescu, were prosecuted in theDealul Spirii Trial.[28]Constantin Argetoianu, theMinister of the Interior in theAlexandru Averescu,Take Ionescu, andIon I. C. Brătianu cabinets, equated Comintern membership withconspiracy, ordered the first in a series of repressions, and, in the context of trial, allowed for several communist activists (includingLeonte Filipescu) to be shot while in custody—alleging that they had attempted to flee.[29] Consequently, Argetoianu stated his belief that"communism is over in Romania",[30] which allowed for a momentary relaxing of pressures—begun byKingFerdinand's granting of anamnesty to the tried PCdR.[31]
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 theSoviet Union at various intervals (Romanian groups in Moscow andKharkiv, the sources of a "Muscovite wing" in the following decades).[32][33][34] The interior party only survived as an underground group after it was outlawed by the Brătianu government through theMârzescu Law (named after its proponent,Minister of JusticeGheorghe Gh. Mârzescu), passed in early 1924; Comintern sources indicate that, around 1928, it was losing contact with Soviet overseers.[35] 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 (seeBalkan Communist Federation).[36][37]
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 secretaryVitali Holostenco—appointing insteadAlexander Stefanski, who was at the time a member of theCommunist Party of Poland.[38]
The interior wing began organizing itself as a more efficient conspiratorial network through regained Comintern control.[39] The onset of theGreat Depression in Romania, and the series of strikes infiltrated (and sometimes provoked) by the interior wing signified relative successes (seeLupeni Strike of 1929), but gains were not capitalized—as lack of ideological appeal and suspicion ofStalinist directives remained notable factors.[40] 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 aroundGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej before and after the large-scaleGrivița Strikes.[41][42]
In 1934, Stalin'sPopular Front doctrine was not fully passed into the local party's politics, mainly due to the Soviet territorial policies (culminating in the 1939Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) and the widespread suspicion other left-wing forces maintained toward the Comintern.[43][44] The Communists did, nevertheless, attempt to reach consensus with other groupings on several occasions (in 1934–1943, they established alliances with thePloughmen's Front, theHungarian People's Union, and theSocialist Peasants' Party), and small Communist groups became active in the leftist sections of mainstream parties.[45] In 1934,Petre Constantinescu-Iași and other PCdR supporters createdAmicii URSS, a pro-Soviet group reaching out tointellectuals, itself banned later in the same year.[46][47]
During the1937 elections, the Communists backedIuliu Maniu and theNational Peasants' Party against KingCarol II and theGheorghe Tătărescu government (who had intensified repression of Communist groups),[45] finding themselves placed in an unusual position after theIron Guard, a fascist movement, signed an electoral pact with Maniu;[48] participation in the move was explained by Communisthistoriography as provoked by theSocial-Democrats' refusal to collaborate with the PCdR.[49]
In the years following the elections, the PCdR entered a phase of rapid decline, coinciding with the increasinglyauthoritarian tone of King Carol's regime (but in fact inaugurated by the1936 Craiova Trial ofAna Pauker and other high-ranking Communists).[50][51] Journals viewed as associates of the party were closed down, and all suspected PCdR activists faced detention (seeDoftana Prison).[44][52]Siguranța Statului, the Romaniansecret police, infiltrated the small interior wing and probably obtained valuable information about its activities.[53] The financial resources of the party, ensured by Soviet support and by various satellite organizations (collecting funds in the name of causes such aspacifism or support for theRepublican side in theSpanish Civil War), were severely drained—by political difficulties at home, as well as, after 1939, by the severing of connections with Moscow in France andCzechoslovakia.[54]
Consequently, the executive committee of the Comintern called on Romanian Communists to infiltrate theNational 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.[44]
Until 1944, the group active inside Romania became split between the "prison faction" (political prisoners who looked to Gheorghiu-Dej as their leader) and the one aroundȘtefan Foriș andRemus Koffler.[55][33] The exterior faction of the party was decimated during theGreat 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, andElek Köblös.[56][57][58] It was to beAna Pauker's mission to take over and reshape the surviving structure.[59][60]
In 1940, Romania had to cede Bessarabia andNorthern Bukovina to the Soviet Union andSouthern Dobruja to Bulgaria (seeSoviet occupation of Bessarabia,Treaty of Craiova); in contrast with the general mood, the PCdR welcomed both gestures along the lines of its earlier activism.[61] Official history, after ca. 1950, stated that the PCdR protestedNorthern Transylvania's cession to Hungary later in the same year (theSecond Vienna Arbitration), but evidence is inconclusive[62] (party documents attesting the policy are dated afterNazi Germany'sinvasion of the Soviet Union).[63] As the border changes sparked a political crisis leading to an Iron Guard takeover—theNational Legionary State—the interior wing's confusion intensified: the upper echelon faced investigation fromGeorgi Dimitrov (as well as other Comintern officials) on charges of "Trotskyism",[44] and, since the FRN had crumbled, several low-ranking party officials actually began collaborating with the new regime.[44] At around the same time, a small section of the exterior wing remained active in France, where it eventually joined theResistance toGerman occupation—it includedGheorghe Gaston Marin and theFrancs-tireurs'Olga Bancic,Nicolae Cristea andJoseph Boczov.[64]
As Romania came under the rule ofIon Antonescu and, as anAxis country, joined in the Germanoffensive against the Soviets, the Communist Party began approaching traditional parties that were engaged in semi-clandestine opposition to Antonescu: alongside theSocial Democrats, it began talks with theNational Peasants' and theNational Liberal parties. At the time, virtually all the interior leadership was imprisoned at various locations (most of theminterned atCaransebeș or in aconcentration camp nearTârgu Jiu).[65] Some communists, such asPetre Gheorghe,Filimon Sârbu,Francisc Panet orȘtefan Plavăț, tried to establish organised resistance groups; however, they were quickly captured by the Romanian authorities and executed, as were some of the more active propagandists, such asPompiliu Ștefu. A statistic of theSiguranţa reports that, in Bucharest, between January 1941 and September 1942, 143 individuals were tried for communism, of which 19 were sentenced to death and 78 to prison terms orforced labour.[66] Theantisemitic Antonescu regime established a distinction between PCdR members ofJewish Romanian origin and those ofethnic Romanian or other heritage, deporting the majority of the former, alongside Romanian andBessarabian Jews in general, to camps, prisons and makeshiftghettos in occupiedTransnistria (seeHolocaust in Romania).[67] Most Jews from the PCdR category were held inVapniarka, where improper feeding caused an outbreak of paralysis, and inRîbnița, where some 50 were victims of the authorities'criminal negligence and were shot by retreating German troops in March 1944.[68]
In June 1943, at a time when troops were suffering major defeats on theEastern Front, the PCdR proposed that all parties form aBlocul Național Democrat ("National Democratic Bloc"), in order to arrange for Romania to withdraw from its alliance with Nazi Germany.[69] The ensuing talks were prolonged by various factors, most notably by the opposition of National Peasants' Party leaderIuliu Maniu, who, alarmed by Soviet successes, was trying to reach a satisfactory compromise with theWestern Allies (and, together with the National Liberals' leaderDinu Brătianu, continued to back negotiations initiated by Antonescu andBarbu Știrbey with the United States and the United Kingdom).[70]
In early 1944, as theRed Army reached and crossed thePrut River during theSecond Jassy–Kishinev Offensive, 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.[71] Parallel contacts were established, throughLucrețiu Pătrășcanu andEmil Bodnăraș, between the PCdR, the Soviets, andKingMichael.[72] A seminal event also occurred during those months:Ștefan Foriș, who was still general secretary, was deposed by with Soviet approval by the rival "prison faction"(at the time, it was headed by former inmates of Caransebeș prison); replaced with thetroika formed byGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej,Constantin Pîrvulescu, andIosif Rangheț, Foriș was discreetly assassinated in 1946.[73] Several assessments view Foriș's dismissal as the complete rupture in historical continuity between the PCdR established in 1921 and what became the ruling party ofCommunist Romania.[74]
On 23 August 1944, King Michael, a number ofRomanian Armed Forces officers, and armed Communist-led civilians supported by the National Democratic Bloc arrested dictatorIon Antonescu and seized control of the state (seeKing Michael's Coup).[75] King Michael then proclaimed the old1923 Constitution in force, ordered the Romanian Army to enter aceasefire with the Red Army on theMoldavian front, and withdrew Romania from the Axis.[76] 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).[77]
The King named GeneralConstantin Sănătescu asprime minister of acoalition government which was dominated by the military, but included one representative each from the National Liberal Party, National Peasants' Party and Social Democratic Party, with Pătrășcanu asMinister of Justice—the first Communist to hold high office in Romania. The Red Army enteredBucharest on 31 August, 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 (seeSoviet occupation of Romania).[78]
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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 aroundGheorghe Tătărescu, theNational Liberal Party-Tătărescu, who later entered an alliance with the Communist Party). Soon after 23 August, the Communists also engaged in a campaign against Romania's main political group of the time, the National Peasants' Party, and its leadersIuliu Maniu andIon Mihalache. InVictor Frunză's account, the conflict's first stage was centered on Communist allegations that Maniu had encouraged violence against theHungarian community in newly recoveredNorthern Transylvania.[79]
The Communist Party, engaged in a massive recruitment campaign,[80] was able to attract ethnic Romanians in large numbers—workers and intellectuals alike, including some former members of the fascistIron Guard.[81] By 1947, it grew to around 710,000 members.[82] Although the PCR was still highly disorganized and factionalized,[83] it benefited from Soviet backing (including that ofVladislav Petrovich Vinogradov and other Soviet appointees to theAllied Commission).[84] After 1944, it was leading a paramilitary wing, the Patriotic Defense (Apărarea Patriotică, disbanded in 1948),[85][dubious –discuss] and a cultural society, theRomanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union.[86]
On PCdR initiative, the National Democratic Bloc was dissolved on 8 October 1944; instead, the Communists, Social Democrats, thePloughmen's Front,Mihai Ralea'sSocialist Peasants' Party (which was absorbed by the former in November),[87] theHungarian People's Union (MADOSZ), andMitiţă Constantinescu'sUnion of Patriots formed theNational 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.[88] The FND was soon joined by the Liberal group around Tătărescu,Nicolae L. Lupu'sDemocratic Peasants' Party (the latter claimed the legacy from the defunctPeasants' Party), andAnton Alexandrescu's faction (separated from theNational Peasants' Party).[89]
Sănătescu resigned in November, but was persuaded by KingMichael to form a second government which collapsed within weeks. GeneralNicolae Rădescu was asked to form a government and appointedTeohari Georgescu to theMinistry of the Interior, which allowed for the introduction of Communists into the security forces.[90] The Communist Party subsequently launched a campaign against the Rădescu government, including the mass demonstration of 24 February that resulted in four deaths among the participants.[91] According to Frunză, this culminated in a 13 February 1945 demonstration outside theRoyal Palace, and followed a week later by street fighting between Georgescu's Communist forces and supporters of the National Peasants' Party in Bucharest.[92] In a period of escalating chaos, Rădescu called for elections. The Soviet deputy foreign ministerAndrey Vyshinsky went to Bucharest to request the monarch that he appoint Communist sympathizerPetru Groza as Prime Minister, with the Soviet government suggesting it would reinstate Romanian sovereignty overNorthern Transylvania only in such a scenario.[93] Frunză claimed however that Vyshinsky also intimated a Soviet takeover of the country if the King failed to comply,[94] and that, under pressure from Soviet troops who were supposedly disarming the Romanian military and occupying key installations,[95] Michael agreed and dismissed Rădescu, who fled the country.[96]
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On 6 March, Groza became leader of a Communist-led government and named Communists to lead theRomanian Armed Forces as well as the ministries of theInterior (Georgescu),Justice (Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu),Communications (Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej), Propaganda (Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi) andFinance (Vasile Luca).[97] The non-Communist ministers came from the Social Democrats (who were falling under the control of the pro-CommunistsLothar Rădăceanu andȘtefan Voitec) and the traditionalPloughmen's Front ally, as well as, nominally, from the National Peasants' andNational Liberal parties (followers of Tătărescu and Alexandrescu's dissident wings).[98]
As a result of thePotsdam Conference, whereWestern 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 inSinaia and refused to sign any government decrees or bills (a period colloquially known asgreva regală—"the royal strike").[99] Following Anglo-American mediation, Groza agreed to include politicians from outside his electoral alliance, appointing two secondary figures in their parties (the National LiberalMihail Romniceanu and the National Peasants'Emil Hațieganu) asMinisters without Portfolio (January 1946).[100] At the time, Groza's party and the PCR came to disagree on some issues (with the Front publicly affirming its support for private land ownership), before the Ploughmen's Front was eventually pressured into supporting Communist tenets.[101]
In the meantime, the first measure taken by the cabinet was a newland reform that advertised, among others, an interest into peasant issues and a respect for property (in front of common fears that aLeninist program was about to be adopted).[102] According to Frunză, although contrasted by the Communist press with its previous equivalent, the measure was supposedly 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 1948–1962collectivization.[103]
It was also then that, through Pătrășcanu andAlexandru Drăghici, the Communists consecrated their control of the legal system—the process included the creation of theRomanian People's Tribunals, charged with investigatingwar crimes, and constantly supported byagitprop in the Communist press.[104] 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.[105] Economic dominance, partly responding to Soviet requirements, was first effected through theSovRoms (created in the summer of 1945), directing the bulk of Romanian trade towards the Soviet Union.[106]
The Communist Party held its first open conference (16–22 October 1945, at theMihai Viteazul High School inBucharest) and agreed to replace theGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej–Constantin Pîrvulescu–Iosif Ranghețtroika 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, andVasile Luca became the other main leaders.[107]
The Central Committee had 27 full members
and 8 candidate members
The post-1945 constant growth in membership, by far the highest of allEastern Bloc countries,[108] was to provide a base of support for Gheorghiu-Dej. The conference also saw the first mention of the PCdR as theRomanian Communist Party (PCR), the new name being used as a propaganda tool suggesting a closer connection with thenational interest.[109]
Party control over the security forces was successfully used on 8 November 1945, when the opposition parties organised a demonstration in front of theRoyal Palace to express solidarity with King Michael, who was still refusing to sign his name to new legislation, on the occasion of hisname day.[110] Demonstrators were faced with gunshots; around 10 people were killed, and many wounded.[111] The official account, according to which the Groza government responded to a coup attempt,[112] was disputed by Frunză.[113]
The PCR and its allies, grouped in the Bloc of Democratic Parties, won theRomanian elections of 19 November, although there is evidence of widespreadelectoral fraud.[114] Years later, historian Petre Ţurlea reviewed an incomplete confidential PCR report about the election that confirmed the Bloc won around 48 percent of the vote. He concluded that had the election been conducted fairly, the opposition parties could have won enough votes between them to form a coalition government, albeit with far less than the 80 percent support opposition supporters long claimed.[115]
The following months were dedicated to confronting theNational Peasants' Party, which was annihilated after theTămădău Affair andshow trial of its entire leadership.[116] On 30 December 1947, the Communist Party's power was consolidated when King Michael was forced toabdicate. The Communist-dominated legislature then abolished the monarchy and proclaimed Romania a "People's Republic", firmly aligned with the Soviet Union.[117] According to the king, his signature was obtained after the Groza cabinet representatives threatened to kill 1,000 students they had rounded up in custody.[118]
In February 1948, the Communists ended a long process of infiltrating theRomanian Social Democratic Party (ensuring control through electoral alliances and the two-partyFrontul Unic Muncitoresc—Singular Workers' Front, the PCR had profited from the departure ofConstantin Titel Petrescu's group from the Social Democrats in March 1946). The Social Democrats merged with the PCR to form theRomanian Workers' Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Român, PMR) which remained the ruling party's official name until 24 July 1965 (when it returned to the designation asRomanian Communist Party).[119] Nevertheless, Social Democrats were excluded from most party posts and were forced to support Communist policies on the basis ofdemocratic centralism;[120] it was also reported that only half of the PSD's 500,000 members joined the newly founded grouping.[121] Capitalizing on these gains, the Communist government shunted most of the remaining parties aside after the1948 elections (thePloughmen's Front and theHungarian People's Union dissolved themselves in 1953).[122] The PMR fought the elections as the dominant partner of thePeople's Democratic Front (FND), which won with 93.2 percent of the vote.[123] By then, however, the FND had taken on the same character as other "popular fronts"in the Soviet bloc. The member parties became completely subservient to the PMR, and had to accept its"leading role"as a condition of their continued existence. Groza, however, remained Prime Minister.
A new series of economic changes followed: theNational Bank of Romania was passed into fullpublic ownership (December 1946),[124] and, in order to combat theRomanian leu'sdevaluation, a surprisemonetary reform was imposed as astabilization measure in August 1947 (severely limiting the amount convertible by people without an actual job, primarily members of the aristocracy).[125] TheMarshall Plan was being overtly condemned,[126] whilenationalization and aplanned economy were enforced beginning 11 June 1948.[127] The firstfive-year plan, conceived byMiron Constantinescu's Soviet-Romanian committee, was adopted in 1950.[128] Of newly enforced measures, the arguably most far-reaching wascollectivization—by 1962, when the process was considered complete, 96% of the totalarable land had been enclosed incollective farming, while around 80,000 peasants faced trial for resisting and 17,000 others were uprooted ordeported for beingchiaburi (the Romanian equivalent ofkulaks).[129] Chiaburs were defined by the Party as the common enemies of communism in Romania. Thus, they were subjected to abuses by the cadres.[130] In 1950, the party, which viewed itself as thevanguard of the working class,[131] reported that people ofproletarian origin held 64% of party offices and 40% of higher government posts, while results of the recruitment efforts remained below official expectations.[132]
During the period, the central scene of the PMR was occupied by the conflict between the "Muscovite wing", the "prison wing"led byGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and the newly emerged and weaker"Secretariat wing"led byLucrețiu Pătrășcanu. 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.[133] Beginning that year, the PMR leadership officially questioned its own political support, and began a massive campaign to remove"foreign and hostile elements"[134] from its rapidly expanded structures.[135] In 1952, with Stalin's renewed approval,[136] Gheorghiu-Dej emerged victorious from the confrontation withAna Pauker, his chief "Muscovite"rival, as well as purgingVasile Luca,Teohari Georgescu, and their supporters from the party—alleging that their various political attitudes were proof of"right-wing deviationism".[137] Out of a membership of approximately one million, between 300,000[138] and 465,000[132] members, almost half of the party, was removed in the successive purges. The specific target for the "verification campaign", as it was officially called, were formerIron Guard affiliates.[139]
The move against Pauker's group echoedStalinist purges of Jews in particular from other Communist Parties in theEastern bloc—notably, theanti-"Cosmopolitan" campaign in whichJoseph Stalin targeted Jews in the Soviet Union, and thePrague Trials inCzechoslovakia which removed Jews from leading positions in that country's Communist government.[140] At the same time, anew republican constitution, replacing its 1948 precedent, legislated Stalinist tenets,[141] and proclaimed that "the people's democratic state is consistently carrying out the policy of enclosing and eliminating capitalist elements".[142] Gheorghiu-Dej, who remained an orthodox Stalinist,[143] took the position ofPremier while moving Groza to the presidency of the Presidium of the Great National Assembly (de factoPresident of the People's Republic). Executive and PMR leaderships remained in Gheorghiu-Dej's hands until his death in 1965 (with the exception of 1954–1955, when his office of PMR leader was taken over byGheorghe Apostol).[144]
From the moment it came to power and until Stalin's death, as theCold War erupted, the PMR endorsed Soviet requirements for theEastern Bloc. Aligning the country with theCominform, it officially condemnedJosip Broz Tito'sindependent actions inYugoslavia; Tito was routinely attacked by the official press, and the Romanian-YugoslavDanube border became the scene of massiveagitprop displays (seeTito–Stalin split andInformbiro).[145]
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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 theTwentieth Party Congress of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union, in which Khurshchev initiatedDe-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.[146] After that purge, Gheorghiu-Dej had begun promoting PMR activists who were perceived as more loyal to his own political views; among them wereNicolae Ceauşescu,[147]Gheorghe Stoica,Ghizela Vass,[148]Grigore Preoteasa,[149]Alexandru Bârlădeanu,[150]Ion Gheorghe Maurer,Gheorghe Gaston Marin,Paul Niculescu-Mizil, andGheorghe Rădulescu;[151] in parallel, citing Khrushchevite precedents, the PMR briefly reorganized its leadership on a plural basis (1954–1955),[152] 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 hispersonality cult and encouraged Stalinists toself-criticism).[153]
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.[154] At a party meeting in March 1956, two members of thePolitburo who were supporters of Khruschevite reforms,Miron Constantinescu andIosif Chişinevschi, criticized Gheorghiu-Dej's leadership and identified him with Romanian Stalinism.[155] They were purged in 1957, themselves accused of being Stalinists and of having been plotting with Pauker.[156] Through Ceaușescu's voice, Gheorghiu-Dej also marginalized another group of old members of the PMR, associated withConstantin Doncea (June 1958).[157]
On the outside too, the PMR, leading a country that had joined theWarsaw Pact, remained an agent of political repression: it fully supported Khurshchev's invasion ofHungary in response to theRevolution of 1956, after whichImre Nagy and other dissident Hungarian leaders were imprisoned on Romanian soil.[158] The Hungarian rebellion also sparked student protests in such places as Bucharest,Timișoara,Oradea,Cluj andIași, which contributed to unease inside the PMR and resulted in a wave of arrests.[159] While refusing to allow dissemination of Soviet literature exposing Stalinism (writers such asIlya Ehrenburg andAleksandr Solzhenitsyn), Romanian leaders took active part in the campaign againstBoris Pasternak.[160]
Despite Stalin's death, the massive police apparatus headed by theSecuritate (created in 1949 and rapidly growing in numbers)[161] maintained a steady pace in its suppression of"class enemies", until as late as 1962–1964. In 1962–1964, the party leadership approved a massamnesty, extended to, among other prisoners, ca. 6,700 guilty ofpolitical crimes.[162] 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 andactive anti-communist resistance, as well as againstreligious institutions (most notably, theRomanian Roman Catholic andGreek-Catholic Churches).[163] Estimates for the total number of victims in the 1947/1948-1964 period vary significantly: as low as 160,000[164] or 282,000[165] political prisoners, and as high 600,000[165] (according to one estimate, about 190,000 people were killed or died in custody— ).[165] Notorious penal facilities of the time included theDanube-Black Sea Canal,Sighet,Gherla,Aiud,Pitești, andRâmnicu Sărat; another method of punishment wasdeportation to the inhospitable Bărăgan Plain.[166]
Nationalism andnational communism penetrated official discourse, largely owing to Gheorghiu-Dej's call for economic independence and distancing from theComecon.[167] Moves to withdraw the country from Soviet overseeing were taken in quick succession after 1953. Khrushchev allowed Constantinescu to dissolve theSovRoms in 1954,[168] followed by the closing of Romanian-Soviet cultural ventures such asEditura Cartea Rusă at the end of the decade.[169] Industrialization along the PMR's own directives highlighted Romanian independence—one of its consequences was the massive steel-producing industrial complex inGalați, which, being dependent on imports of iron from overseas, was for long a major strain on the Romanian economy.[170] In 1957, Gheorghiu-Dej andEmil Bodnăraş persuaded the Soviets to withdraw theirremaining troops from Romanian soil.[171] As early as 1956, Romania's political apparatus reconciled withJosip Broz Tito, which led to a series of common economic projects (culminating in theIron Gates venture).[172]
A drastic divergence in ideological outlooks manifested itself only after autumn 1961, when the PMR's leadership felt threatened by the Soviet Union's will to impose the condemnation of Stalinism as the standard in communist states.[173] Following theSino-Soviet split of the late 1950s and theSoviet-Albanian split in 1961, Romania initially gave full support to the Khrushchev's stance,[174] but maintained exceptionally good relations with bothMaoist China[175] andCommunist Albania.[176] Romanian media was alone among Warsaw Pact countries to report Chinese criticism of the Soviet leadership from its source;[177] in return,Maoist officials complimented Romanian nationalism by supporting the view thatBessarabia had been a traditional victim ofRussian imperialism.[178]
The change in policies was to become obvious in 1964, when the Communist regime offered a stiff response to theValev Plan, a Soviet project of creating trans-national economic units and of assigning Romanian areas the task of supplying agricultural products.[179] Several other measures of that year also presented themselves as radical changes in tone: after Gheorghiu-Dej endorsedAndrei Oţetea's publishing ofKarl Marx'sRussophobic texts (uncovered by thePolish historianStanisław Schwann),[180] the PMR itself took a stand against Khrushchevite principles by issuing, in late April, a declaration published inScînteia, through which it stressed its commitment to a "national path" towards Communism[181] (it read: "There does not and cannot exist a "parent" party and a "son" party or "superior" party and "subordinate" parties").[182] During late 1964, the PMR's leadership clashed with new Soviet leaderLeonid Brezhnev over the issue ofKGB advisers still present in theSecuritate, and eventually managed to have them recalled, making Romania theEastern Bloc's first country to have accomplished this.[183]
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.[184] 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.[185] Nevertheless, the PMR's nationalism made it increasingly popular with Romanianintellectuals, and the last stage of the Gheorghiu-Dej regime was popularly identified withliberalization.[186]
Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965 and was succeeded by a collective leadership made up ofNicolae Ceaușescu as general secretary,Chivu Stoica as president andIon Gheorghe Maurer as Premier.[187] Ceaușescu removed rivals such as Stoica,Alexandru Drăghici, andGheorghe Apostol from the government, and ultimately from the party leadership, and began accumulating posts for himself. By 1969, he was in complete control of theCentral Committee.[188] The circumstances surrounding this process are still disputed, but theories evidence that the support given to him byIon Gheorghe Maurer andEmil Bodnăraș, as well as the ascendancy ofIlie Verdeț,Virgil Trofin, andPaul Niculescu-Mizil, were instrumental in ensuring legitimacy.[189] Soon after 1965, Ceaușescu used his prerogatives to convoke a Party Commission headed byIon Popescu-Puțuri, charged with investigating both Stalinist legacy and Gheorghiu-Dej's purges: resulting in therehabilitation of a large number of Communist officials (including, among others,Ștefan Foriș,Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu,Miron Constantinescu,Vasile Luca, and Romanian victims of the SovietGreat Purge).[190] This measure was instrumental in consolidating the new leadership while further increasing its distance from Gheorghiu-Dej's political legacy.[191]
In 1965, Ceaușescu declared that Romania was no longer aPeople's Democracy but aSocialist Republic and changed the name of the party back to theRomanian 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 stressing notions such assovereignty andself-determination.[192] At the time, Ceauşescu made references to Gheorghiu-Dej's ownpersonality cult, while implying that his was to be a new style of leadership.[193] In its official discourse, the PCR introduced the dogmas of "socialist democracy" and direct communication with the masses.[132] From ca. 1965 to 1975, there was a noted rise in thestandard of living for the Romanian population as a whole, which was similar to developments in most other Eastern bloc countries.[194] Political scientistDaniel Barbu, who noted that this social improvement trend began ca. 1950 and benefited 45% of the population, concluded that one of its main effects was to increase the citizens' dependency on the state.[195]
A seminal event occurred in August 1968, when Ceaușescu highlighted his anti-Soviet discourse by vocally opposing theWarsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia; a highly popular measure with the Romanian public, it led to sizable enrollments in the PCR and the newly created paramilitaryPatriotic Guards (created with the goal of meeting a possible Soviet intervention in Romania).[196] From 1965 to 1976, the PCR rose from approximately 1.4 million members to 2.6 million.[197] In the contingency of an anti-Soviet war, the PCR even sought an alliance with the maverickYugoslav leaderJosip Broz Tito—negotiations did not yield a clear result.[198] Although military intervention in Romania was reportedly taken into consideration by the Soviets,[199] there is indication thatLeonid Brezhnev had himself ruled out Romanian participation in Warsaw Pact maneuvers,[198] and that he continued to rely on Ceaușescu's support for other common goals.[200]
While it appears that Romanian leaders genuinely approved of thePrague Spring reforms undertaken byAlexander Dubček,[201] Ceaușescu's gesture also served to consolidate his image as a national and independent communist leader.[202] One year before the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Ceaușescu opened up diplomatic ties withWest Germany, and refused to break links with Israel following theSix-Day War.[203] Starting with the much-publicized visit by France'sCharles de Gaulle (May 1968),[204] Romania was the recipient of Western world support going well into the 1970s (significant visits were paid by United States PresidentsRichard Nixon andGerald Ford, in 1969 and 1975 respectively, while Ceaușescu was frequently received in Western capitals).[205]
Ceaușescu developed acult of personality around himself and his wifeElena (herself promoted to high offices)[206] after visiting North Korea and noting theparallel developed byKim Il Sung,[207] while incorporating in it several aspects of pastauthoritarian regimes in Romania (seeConducător).[208] During the early 1970s, while curbing liberalization, he launched his own version of China'sCultural Revolution, announced by theJuly Theses.[209] In effect, measures to concentrate power in Ceaușescu's hands were taken as early as 1967, when the general secretary became the ultimate authority on foreign policy.[210]
At the time, a new organization was instituted under the name ofFront of Socialist Unity (eventually renamed theFront of Socialist Unity and Democracy). Ostensibly a popular front affiliating virtually all non-party members, it was actually tightly controlled by party activists. It was intended to consolidate the impression that the entire population was backing Ceaușescu's policies.[211] As a result of these new policies, theCentral Committee, which acted as the main PCR body between Congresses, had increased to 265 full members and 181 candidate members (supposed to meet at least four times a year).[132] By then, the general secretary also called for women to be enrolled in greater numbers in all party structures.[132] In parallel, the political doctrine in respect tominorities claimed interest in obtaining allegiance from bothHungarians andGermans, and set up separate workers' councils for both communities.[212]
Members of the upper echelons of the party who objected to Ceaușescu's stance were accused of supporting Soviet policies; they includedAlexandru Bârlădeanu, who criticized the heavy loans contracted in support of industrialization policies.[213] In time, the new leader distanced himself from Maurer andCorneliu Mănescu, while his career profited from the deaths of Stoica (who committed suicide) and Sălăjan (who died while undergoing surgery).[214] Instead, he came to rely on a new generation of activists, among themManea Mănescu.[215]
At the XIth Party Congress in 1974,Gheorghe Cioară, theMayor of Bucharest, proposed to extend Ceaușescu's office as General Secretary for life, but was turned down by the latter.[216] Shortly before that moment, the collective leadership of the Presidium was replaced with a Political Executive Committee, which, in practice, elected itself; together with the Secretariat, it was controlled by Ceaușescu himself, who was president of both bodies.[132] During the same year, the general secretary also made himselfPresident of the Socialist Republic, following a ceremony during which he was handed asceptre;[217] this was the first in a succession of titles, also includingConducător ("Leader"), "supreme commander of theRomanian People's Army", "honorary president of theRomanian Academy", and "first among the country's miners".[218] Progressively after 1967, the large bureaucratic structure of the PCR again replicated and interfered with state administration and economic policies.[219] The President himself became noted for frequent visits on location at various enterprises, where he would dispense directives, for which the termedindicații prețioase ("valuable advice") was coined by official propaganda.[220]
Despite the party's independent, "national communist" course, the absolute control that Ceaușescu had over the party and the country led to some non-Romanian observers describing the PCR as one of the closest things to an old-style Stalinist party. For instance,Encyclopædia Britannica referred to the last 18 years of Ceaușescu's tenure as a period of "neo-Stalinism", and the last edition of theCountry Study on Romania referred to the PCR's "Stalinist repression of individual liberties."[221]
The renewed industrialization, which based itself on both a dogmatic understanding ofMarxian economics and a series ofautarkic goals,[222] brought major economic problems to Romania, beginning with the effects of the1973 oil crisis, and worsened by the1979 energy crisis.[223] The profound neglect ofservices and decline inquality of life, first manifested when much of the budget was diverted to support an over-sized industry,[224] was made more drastic by the political decision to pay in full the country'sexternal debt[225] (in 1983, this was set at 10 billion United States dollars, of which 4.5 billion was accumulatedinterest).[226] By March 1989, the debt had been paid in full.[227]
Two other programs initiated under Ceaușescu 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 13,000communes, the country was supposed to be left with 6,000);[228] it also brought massive changes for the cities—especiallyBucharest, where, following the1977 earthquake and successive demolitions, new architectural guidelines were imposed (seeCeaușima).[229] By 1966, Romaniaoutlawed abortion, and, progressively after that, measures were endorsed to artificially increase the birth rate—including special taxes for childless couples.[230] Another measure, going hand in hand with economic ones, allowed ethnic Germans a chance to leave Romania and settle inWest Germany asAuslandsdeutsche, in return for payments from the latter country.[231] Overall, around 200,000 Germans left, most of themTransylvanian Saxons andBanat Swabians.[232]
Although Romania adhered to theOrganization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (1973) and signed the 1975Helsinki Final Act, Ceauşescu also intensified political repression in the country (beginning in 1971).[233] This took a drastic turn in 1977, when, confronted withPaul Goma's movement in support forCharter 77, the regime expelled him and others from the country.[234] A more serious disobedience occurred in August of the same year, whenJiu Valley miners went on strike, briefly took hold of PremierIlie Verdeţ, and, despite having reached an agreement with the government, were repressed and some of them expelled (seeJiu Valley miners' strike of 1977).[235] A newly created and independent trade union,SLOMR, was crushed and its leaders arrested on various charges in 1979.[236] Progressively during the period, theSecuritate relied oninvoluntary commitment topsychiatric hospitals as a means to punishdissidence.[237]
A major act of discontent occurred inside the party during its XIIth Congress in late November 1979, when PCR veteranConstantin Pîrvulescu spoke out against Ceaușescu's policy of discouraging discussions and relying on obedientcadres (he was subsequently heckled, evicted from the Congress hall, and isolated).[238] In 1983,Radu Filipescu, an engineer working in Bucharest, was imprisoned after distributing 20,000 leaflets which called for a popular rally against the regime,[239] while a protests of miners inMaramureș County against wage cuts was broken up by Securitate forces; three years later a strike organized by Romanian and Hungarian industrial workers inTurda andCluj-Napoca met with the same result.[240] Also in 1983, fearing the multiplication ofsamizdat documents,Minister of the InteriorGeorge Homoștean ordered all citizens to hand over theirtypewriters to the authorities.[241] This coincided with a noted popular rise in support for outspoken dissidents who were kept under house arrest, among whom wereDoina Cornea andMihai Botez.[242]
By 1983, membership of the PCR had risen to 3.3 million,[243] and, in 1989, to 3.7–3.8 million[197]—meaning that, in the end, over 20% of Romanian adults were party members,[132] making the PCR the largest communist group of theEastern Bloc after theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.[197] 64,200 basic party units, answering tocounty committees, varying in number and representing various areas of Romanian society, were officially recorded in 1980.[132] Statistics also indicated that, during the transition from the 1965 PMR (with 8% of the total population) to the 1988 PCR, the membership of workers had grown from 44 to 55%, while that of peasants had dropped from 34 to 15%.[132] In the end, these records contrasted the fact that the PCR had become completely subservient to its leader and no longer had any form of autonomous activity,[197][244] while membership became a basic requirement in numerous social contexts, leading to purely formal allegiances andpolitical clientelism.[245]
At the same time, the ideological viewpoint was changed, with the party no longer seen as thevanguard of the working class,[246] but as the main social factor and the embodiment of thenational interest.[247] In marked contrast with thePerestroika andGlasnost policies developed in the Soviet Union byMikhail Gorbachev, Romania adoptedNeo-Stalinist principles in both its internal policies and its relations with the outside world.[248]
As recorded in 1984, 90% of the PCR members wereethnic Romanians, with 7% Hungarians (the latter group's membership had dropped by more than 2% since the previous Congress).[132] Formal criticism of the new policies regarding minorities had also been voiced by Hungarian activists, includingKároly Király, leader of the PCR inCovasna County.[249] After 1980, the nationalist ideology adopted by the PCR progressively targeted the Hungarian community as a whole, based on suspicions of its allegiance to Hungary, whose policies had become diametrically opposed to the methods of Romanian leaders (seeGoulash Communism).[250]
Especially during the 1980s, clientelism was further enhanced by a new policy,rotația 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 be promoted.[251] This effectively prompted activists who did not approve of the change in tone to retire, while others—Virgil Trofin,Ion Iliescu andPaul Niculescu-Mizil among them—were officially dispatched to low-ranking positions or otherwise marginalized.[252] In June 1988, the leadership of the Political Executive Committee was reduced from 15 to 7 members, including Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife.[132]
While some elements of the PCR were receptive toMikhail Gorbachev's reforms, Ceaușescu himself wanted nothing to do withglasnost orperestroika. As a result, the PCR remained an obstinate bastion of hardline Communism. Gorbachev's distaste for Ceaușescu was well known; he even went as far as to call Ceaușescu "the Romanianführer. "In Gorbachev's mind, Ceaușescu was part of a "Gang of Four" inflexibly hardline leaders unwilling to make the reforms he felt necessary to save Communism, along with Czechoslovakia'sGustáv Husák, Bulgaria'sTodor Zhivkov and East Germany'sErich Honecker. At a meeting between the two, Gorbachev upbraided Ceaușescu for his inflexible attitude. "You are running a dictatorship here," the Soviet leader warned. However, Ceaușescu refused to bend.[253]
Announced by a February 1987 protest of workers and students inIași,[254] the final crisis of the PCR and its regime began in the autumn, when industrial employees inBrașov called a strike that immediately drew echoes with the city's population (seeBrașov Rebellion).[255] In December, authorities convened a publickangaroo trial of the movement's leaders, and handed out sentences of imprisonment and internal exile.[255]
Inaugurated bySilviu Brucan's public criticism of 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 Pârvulescu, together withGheorghe Apostol,Alexandru Bârlădeanu,Grigore Răceanu andCorneliu Mănescu, sent Ceaușescu their so-calledLetter of the Six, publicized overRadio Free Europe.[256] At around the same time,systematization provoked an international response, as Romania was subjected to a resolution of theUnited Nations Commission on Human Rights, which called for an inquiry into the state of ethnic minorities and the rural population; the political isolation experienced by Communist Romania was highlighted by the fact that Hungary endorsed the report,[257] while all other Eastern bloc countries abstained.[258] This followed more than a decade of deteriorating relations between the PCR and theHungarian Socialist Workers' Party.[259]
In the face of the changes that unfolded in the rest of Eastern Europe in 1988 and 1989, the PCR retained its image as one of the most unreconstructed parties in the Soviet bloc. It even went as far as to call for a Warsaw Pact invasion of Poland after that country's Communists announced a power-sharing agreement with theSolidarity trade union—a sharp reversal of its previous opposition to theBrezhnev Doctrine and its vehement opposition to the invasion of Czechoslovakia 21 years earlier.[253] It initially appeared that the PCR would ride out the anti-Communist tide sweeping through Eastern Europe when on 24 November—two weeks after the fall of theBerlin Wall and the same day thatCommunist rule effectively ended in Czechoslovakia—Ceaușescu was reelected for another five-year term as General Secretary.
A month later, both Ceaușescu and the party were overthrown in theRomanian Revolution ofDecember 1989, begun as a popular rebellion inTimișoara and eventually bringing to power theNational Salvation Front, comprising a large number of moderate former PCR members who supported Gorbachev's vision.[260] Having fled the PCR's headquarters under pressure from demonstrators, Ceauşescu and his wife were captured,tried, and executed by the new authorities inTârgoviște. No formal dissolution of the PCR took place. Rather, the party simply disappeared. The speed with which the PCR, one of the largest parties of its kind, dissolved, as well as its spontaneity, were held by commentators as additional proof that its sizable membership presented a largely false image of its true beliefs.[197] In nearly every other Eastern Bloc country, the former ruling Communist parties recast themselves intosocial democratic ordemocratic socialist parties, and remain major players to this day.
Many former members of the PCR have been major players in thepost-1989 political scene. For example, until 2014 every post-revolution president had formerly been a member of the PCR. Among other small parties an unregisteredparty of the same name and the smallRomanian Socialist Party claim to be the successors of the PCR,[261][262] with the latter entering Parliament in the 1992–1996 legislature under its former name ofSocialist Party of Labour.
| Name/Period | Location |
|---|---|
| 1st (May 1921) | Bucharest |
| 2nd (October 1922) | Ploiești |
| 3rd (August 1924) | Vienna |
| 4th (July 1928) | Kharkiv |
| 5th (December 1931) | Moscow |
| 6th (February 1948) | Bucharest |
| 7th (December 1955) | Bucharest |
| 8th (June 1960) | Bucharest |
| 9th (July 1965) | Bucharest |
| 10th (August 1969) | Bucharest |
| 11th (November 1974) | Bucharest |
| 12th (November 1979) | Bucharest |
| 13th (November 1984) | Bucharest |
| 14th (November 1989) | Bucharest |
| Election | Party candidate | Votes | % | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| President elected by the Great National Assembly | ||||
| 1961 | Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej | 465 | 100% | Elected Y |
| 1965 | Chivu Stoica | 465 | 100% | ElectedY |
| 1967 | Nicolae Ceaușescu | 465 | 100% | ElectedY |
| 1974 | 465 | 100% | ElectedY | |
| 1980 | 369 | 100% | ElectedY | |
| 1985 | 369 | 100% | ElectedY | |
In the1961,1965,1967 the head of state was called President of the State Council while after 1973 the post changed to that of president
| Election | Party leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1926 | Elek Köblös | 39,203 as part ofBMȚ | 1.5% | 0 / 387 |  | 6th |
| 1927 | 31,505 as part ofBMȚ | 1.3% | 0 / 387 | | 6th | |
| 1928 | Vitali Holostenco | 38,851 as part ofBMȚ | 1.4% | 0 / 387 | | 6th |
| 1931 | 73,716 as part ofBMȚ | 2.6% | 5 / 387 |  5 |  10th | |
| 1932 | Alexander Danieliuk-Stefanski | 9,441 as part ofBMȚ | 0.3% | 0 / 387 | 5 | 17th |
| 1933 | 3,515 as part ofLabour League | 0.1% | 0 / 387 | | 15th | |
| 1937 | Boris Stefanov | Did not compete | ||||
| 1939 | Bela Breiner | |||||
| 1946 | Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej | as part ofBPD | 68 / 414 | 68 | 4th | |
| 1948 | as part ofFDP | 190 / 405 | 122 | 1st | ||
| 1952 | 428 / 428 | 23 | 1st | |||
| 1957 | 437 / 437 | 9 | 1st | |||
| 1961 | 465 / 465 | 28 | 1st | |||
| 1965 | 465 / 465 | | 1st | |||
| 1969 | Nicolae Ceaușescu | as part ofFUS | 465 / 465 | | 1st | |
| 1975 | 349 / 349 | 116 | 1st | |||
| 1980 | as part ofFDUS | 369 / 369 | 20 | 1st | ||
| 1985 | 369 / 369 | | 1st | |||
... communism is a more radical leftist ideology.
| ||
Italics indicate interim officeholders. | ||
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Figures | |||||
| Political parties |
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| Organizations | |||||
| Popular culture |
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| Nationalists | |||||
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| Other | |
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