Romania INTRODUCTION
Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of Romania, 1989
UNTIL LATE DECEMBER 1989, it appeared that the
Socialist
Republic of Romania would enter the final decade of the
century as
one of the few remaining orthodox communist states.
Revelling in
his recent political triumphs at the Fourteenth Congress
of the
Romanian Communist Party (Partidul Communist Român--PCR),
President
Nicolae Ceausescu adamantly refused to bow to
international
pressure to relax his iron-fisted rule. Ceausescu cast
himself as
the last true defender of socialism and rejected the
liberalizing
reforms adopted by other Eastern European states and the
Soviet
Union. Instead, his regime unflinchingly continued its
Stalinist
policies of repression of individual liberties, forced
Romanianization of ethnic minorities, destruction of the
nation's
architectural heritage, and adherence to failed economic
policies
that had reduced Romania's standard of living to Third
World
levels.
Despite Ceausescu's growing international isolation,
Romania's
state-controlled media continued to lionize the "genius of
the
Carpathians." The period after 1965 was termed the "golden
age of
Ceausescu," an era when Romania purportedly had taken
great strides
toward its goal of becoming a multilaterally developed
socialist state (see Glossary)
by the year 2000. The international
community
regarded the regime's depiction of its achievements as
self-serving
distortions of reality. But no one could deny that
Ceausescu's long
rule had radically changed Romania.
When he came to power in 1965, Ceausescu inherited a
political
model that differed little from the Stalinist prototype
imposed in
1948. Under his shrewd direction, however, new control
mechanisms
evolved, giving Romania the most highly centralized power
structure
in Eastern Europe. After his election to the newly created
office
of president of the republic in 1974, Ceausescu officially
assumed
the duties of head of state while remaining leader of the
Romanian
Communist Party and supreme commander of the armed forces.
Also in
1974, Ceausescu engineered the abolition of the Central
Committee's
Standing Presidium, among whose members were some of the
most
influential individuals in the party. Thereafter,
policy-making
powers would increasingly reside in the Political
Executive
Committee and its Permanent Bureau, which were staffed
with
Ceausescu's most trusted allies.
Ceausescu tightened his control of policy making and
administration through the mechanism of joint party-state
councils,
which had no precise counterpart in other communist
regimes. The
councils went a step beyond the typical Stalinist pattern
of
interlocking party and state directorates, in which state
institutions preserved at least the appearance of
autonomy. The
fusion of party and state bodies enabled Ceausescu to
exercise
immediate control over many of the functions the
Constitution had
granted to the Grand National Assembly, the Council of
State, the
Council of Ministers, the State Planning Committee and
other
government entities. Five of the nine joint party-state
councils
that had emerged by 1989 were chaired by Ceausescu himself
or by
his wife, Elena.
The appointment of close family members to critical
party and
government positions was a tactic of power consolidation
that
Ceausescu employed throughout his tenure. Indeed, the
extent of
nepotism in his regime was unparalleled in Eastern Europe.
In 1989
at least twenty-seven Ceausescu relatives held influential
positions in the party and state apparatus. Elena
Ceausescu was
elected to the Central Committee in 1972 and immediately
began
amassing power in her own right. From her position as
chief of the
Party and State Cadres Commission, she was able to dictate
organizational and personnel changes throughout the party
and the
government. And as head of the National Council of Science
and
Technology, she played a central role in setting economic
goals and
policy. Ceausescu's brother, Ilie, became deputy minister
of
national defense and chief of the Higher Political Council
of the
Army after an alleged military coup attempt in 1983.
Ceausescu's
son, Nicu, despite a playboy reputation, headed the Union
of
Communist Youth and was a candidate member of the
Political
Executive Committee. Western observers coined the term
"dynastic
socialism" to describe the Romanian polity.
Another control mechanism perfected by Ceausescu was
"rotation," a policy applied after 1971 to bolster his
personal
power at the expense of political institutions. Rotation
shunted
officials between party and state bureaucracies and
between
national and local posts, thereby removing Ceausescu's
potential
rivals before they were able to develop their own power
bases.
Although rotation was clearly counterproductive to
administrative
efficiency and was particularly damaging to the economy,
Ceausescu
continued the policy with vigor. In one month in 1987, for
example,
he dismissed eighteen ministers from the Council of
Ministers--
about one-third of the government body established by the
Constitution to administer all national and local
agencies.
In the Stalinist tradition, Ceausescu exploited a
ruthlessly
efficient secret police, the Department of State Security
(Departmenatal Securitatii Statului--Securitate) and
intelligence
service to abort challenges to his authority. Relative to
the
country's population, these services were the largest in
Eastern
Europe. And they were perhaps the most effective, judging
by the
relatively few documented acts of public dissent in
Romania as
compared with other communist states. Ceausescu generously
funded
the secret services and gave them carte blanche to preempt
threats
to his regime. In direct violation of rights guaranteed by
the
Constitution, Securitate agents maintained surveillance on
private
citizens, monitoring their contacts with foreigners,
screening
their mail, tapping their telephones, breaking into their
homes and
offices, and arresting and interrogating those suspected
of
disloyalty to the regime. Prominent dissidents suffered
more severe
forms of harassment, including physical violence and
imprisonment.
In addition to the feared Securitate, Ceausescu
directly
controlled a force of some 20,000 special security troops,
whose
primary mission was to defend party installations and
communications facilities. Heavily indoctrinated in
Ceausescu's
version of Marxism, these soldiers, in effect, served as a
"palace
guard." Moreover, as chairman of the Defense Council from
its
inception in 1969, Ceausescu could rein in the regular
armed forces
and minimize the threat of a military coup. Further
diminishing the
military as a potential rival to his authority, Ceausescu
developed
a unique military doctrine that deprofessionalized the
regular
armed forces and stressed mass participation in a "War of
the
Entire People."
As Ceausescu consolidated his power, he was able to
pursue his
own agenda in economic and foreign policy. For the most
part, he
continued the classic Stalinist development strategy of
his
predecessor and mentor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. The goal
of that
strategy was economic autarky, which was to be attained
through the
socialization of assets, the rapid development of heavy
industry,
the transfer of underemployed rural labor to new
manufacturing jobs
in urban centers, and the development and exploitation of
the
nation's extensive natural resources.
Romania's progress along the path of "socialist
construction"
was acknowledged in 1965 when the country's name was
changed from
the Romanian People's Republic to the Socialist Republic
of
Romania. The nationalization of industrial, financial, and
transportation assets had been largely accomplished by
1950, and
some 90 percent of the farmland had been collectivized by
1962.
Whereas industry had produced only about one-third of
national
income on the eve of World War II, it accounted for almost
three-fifths in 1965. Industrial output had risen by 650
percent
since 1950. This dramatic growth had been achieved by
channeling
the lion's share of investment capital to heavy industry
while
neglecting light industry and agriculture.
Industrialization had
unleashed a massive migration from the countryside to the
cities,
creating the urban proletariat that, according to Marxist
theory,
was essential for attaining socialism and, ultimately,
communism.
During the first twelve years of Ceausescu's rule,
exceptionally high levels of capital accumulation and
investment
produced one of the most dynamic economic growth rates in
the
world. The metallurgical, machine-building, and
petrochemical
industries, which Ceausescu believed were essential for
securing
economic independence, showed the most dramatic
development.
Ceausescu mobilized the necessary human and material
resources to
undertake massive public works projects across the
country. He
resumed construction of the Danube-Black Sea Canal,
abandoned by
Gheorghiu-Dej in the mid-1950s. Finally opened to traffic
in 1984,
the canal was the costliest civil-engineering project in
Romanian
history. Meanwhile, agriculture continued to receive fewer
resources than its importance to the economy warranted.
The exodus
of peasants from the countryside to better-paying urban
jobs
continued unabated, leaving an aged and increasingly
poorly
qualified labor force to produce the nation's food.
After 1976 the economy began to falter as Romania
failed to
make the difficult transition from extensive to intensive
development. Although the highly centralized command
system had
served the country well in the bootstrap industrialization
effort,
it was poorly suited for managing an increasingly complex
and
diversified economy. The regime's Stalinist gigantomania
had
produced sprawling steel and petrochemical plants with
capacities
far exceeding domestic supplies of raw materials and
energy. To
repay the West for the technological and financial
assistance it
had provided in building the plants, Ceausescu had counted
on
increased export revenues. But even as the facilities were
being
built, world market prices for steel and refined oil
products
collapsed, making repayment of the loans difficult and
painful. A
combination of negative factors (a devastating earthquake
in 1977,
a prolonged and severe drought, high interest rates
charged by
Western creditors, and rising prices for imported crude
oil)
plunged Romania into a financial crisis.
During the 1980s, Romania's economic problems
multiplied. A
worsening labor shortage hindered growth, and worker
dissatisfaction reached unprecedented levels. A persistent
shortage
of consumer goods made monetary incentives increasingly
meaningless. Wage reforms penalizing individual workers
for the
failure of their factories to meet production targets
proved
counterproductive and in fact spurred the traditionally
docile
labor force to stage strikes and demonstrations. Largely
because of
labor's demoralization, Romania ranked last among the
European
members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(Comecon) in
per capita gross national product, and its agriculture
ranked
twentieth in Europe in terms of output per hectare.
During the 1980s, Ceausescu's top economic priority was
the
quickest possible repayment of the foreign debt. His
regime took
draconian measures to reduce imports and maximize export
earnings.
Food rationing was reimposed for the first time since the
early
postwar years, so that agricultural products could be
exported for
foreign currency. Electricity, heat, gasoline, and
numerous other
consumer products also were strictly rationed. The Western
media
began publishing reports of widespread malnutrition and
suffering
caused by these measures. But the regime's commitment to
its
policies remained unshaken, and in early 1989 Ceausescu
announced
that the debt burden had finally been eliminated. Blaming
"usurious" Western financial institutions, including the
International Monetary Fund
(IMF--see Glossary)
and the
World Bank (see Glossary),
for many of his country's economic
difficulties,
Ceausescu proposed, and the Grand National Assembly
enacted,
legislation banning any agency of the Romanian government
from
seeking or obtaining foreign credits.
Ceausescu's obsessive drive to retire the foreign debt
at
virtually any cost was consistent with a centuries-old
theme of
Romanian history--a longing for national independence and
economic
self-sufficiency. Located at the crossroads of Europe and
Asia, the
Romanian lands from earliest history were vulnerable to
marauding
tribes. Over the centuries, the region was dominated by
powerful
neighbors, including the Roman, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian,
and
Russian empires. These and other foreign powers plundered
the
natural wealth of the Romanian lands and held the native
population
in abject poverty. Although a Walachian prince, Michael
the Brave,
fought a war of national liberation against the Ottoman
Empire in
the late sixteenth century and, for a short time, united
the three
Romanian states of Walachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania,
it was not
until the late nineteenth century that an independent,
unified
Romania finally emerged. But for decades after gaining
independence, Romanians remained second-class citizens in
their own
country. Outside interests continued to control much of
the
nation's industry and agriculture, and non-Romanian ethnic
groups
dominated commerce.
Throughout the twentieth century, Romania's leaders
repeatedly
exploited the nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments that
the long
history of foreign domination had instilled in their
countrymen.
During the 1930s, these sentiments gave rise to the
violently anti-
Semitic and anticommunist Iron Guard, the largest fascist
movement
in the Balkans. The Guard promoted the establishment of a
pro-German military dictatorship led by General Ion
Antonescu, who
brought Romania into World War II on the side of the Axis
Powers.
But his dream of regaining the territories of Bukovina and
Bessarabia, annexed by the Soviet Union in the first year
of the
war, was not to be realized. Indeed, by joining Hitler's
forces and
attacking the Soviet Union, Antonescu sealed Romania's
tragic
postwar fate. Occupied by the victorious Red Army, Romania
in 1948
suffered a communist takeover and was forced to pay heavy
reparations to the Soviet Union.
During the first decade of communist rule, Romania
quietly
complied with Moscow's foreign policy requirements and
joined the
Soviet-dominated Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact)
and
Comecon. Bucharest curried favor with Moscow by strongly
endorsing
the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of
1956, hoping
to be rewarded with the removal of Soviet forces from
Romanian
territory. After Moscow withdrew its troops in 1958,
however,
Gheorghiu-Dej was emboldened to set an increasingly
independent
foreign policy. Tensions over Romania's economic
development
strategy and relationship to Comecon soon emerged.
Gheorghiu-Dej's
determination to industrialize his country outraged Soviet
leader
Nikita Khrushchev, who had intended to relegate Romania to
the role
of supplier of agricultural products and raw materials to
the
industrialized members of Comecon. To lessen dependence on
Comecon,
Gheorghiu-Dej established economic relations with
noncommunist
states and contracted with Western firms to build
industrial plants
in Romania. During the Sino-Soviet dispute, he supported
the
Chinese position on the equality of communist states and
audaciously offered to mediate the disagreement. And in
the famous
"April Declaration" of 1964, Gheorghiu-Dej asserted the
right of
all nations to develop policies in accordance with their
own
interests and domestic requirements.
Accepting the April Declaration as the guiding
principle of his
foreign policy, Ceausescu further distanced Romania from
the Soviet
bloc. He defied Moscow by establishing diplomatic
relations with
the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1967 and
by
maintaining relations with Israel after the June 1967 War.
He
denounced the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968 and
thereafter refused to permit Warsaw Pact military
maneuvers on
Romanian territory. And he brought Romania into such
international
organizations as the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade, the
IMF, and the World Bank. In the early 1970s, Romania
claimed the
status of a developing nation, thereby gaining trade
concessions
from the West and fostering relations with the Third
World.
Championing the "new economic order," Romania gained
observer
status at the conferences of the Nonaligned Movement.
The West enthusiastically welcomed Romania's emergence
as the
maverick of the Warsaw Pact and rewarded Ceausescu's
independent
course with the credits and technology needed to modernize
the
country's economy. Prominent Western political figures,
including
Richard Nixon and Charles de Gaulle, made symbolic trips
to
Bucharest and paid homage to Ceausescu as an international
statesman. When the United States granted
most-favored-nation
trading status in 1975, the noncommunist world accounted
for well
over half of Romania's foreign trade. To enhance his
growing
international status, Ceausescu made highly publicized
visits to
China, Western Europe, the United States, and numerous
Third World
nations. By 1976 he had visited more than thirty
less-developed
countries to promote Romanian exports and to secure new
sources of
raw materials. As a result of these efforts, in 1980
less-developed
countries accounted for one-quarter of Romania's foreign
trade.
In the late 1970s, with the onset of Romania's economic
difficulties, particularly its foreign-debt crisis,
relations with
the West began to deteriorate rapidly. Throughout the
following
decade, Ceausescu's trade policies and domestic programs
exhausted
the reserves of good will he had built through his
defiance of
Moscow. Accusing the West of economic imperialism, he
slashed
imports from the advanced capitalist countries, while
selling
Romanian goods on their markets at dumping prices.
It was the regime's human rights record, however, that
most
damaged relations with the West. As early as the
mid-1970s, the
United States, West Germany, and Israel protested
Romania's
increasingly restrictive emigration policies. The regime
attempted
to stem the outflow of productive citizens through various
forms of
intimidation. Applicants were routinely demoted to menial
jobs or
fired; some were called to active military duty or
assigned to
public works details; others were interrogated and
subjected to
surveillance by the Securitate. Concerned for the fate of
the large
number of ethnic Germans who wanted to leave Romania, West
German
chancellor Helmut Schmidt travelled to Bucharest and
negotiated a
program to purchase emigration papers for them. Over the
1978-88
period, West Germany "repatriated" some 11,000 persons
annually,
paying the equivalent of several thousand United States
dollars for
each exit visa.
Ceausescu's restrictive emigration policies seemingly
conflicted with another of his primary goals--assimilation
of
ethnic groups into a homogeneous, Romanianized population.
The
tactics used to achieve that goal grew progressively
harsher during
the 1980s and further tarnished Romania's international
image. The
regime's attempts to assimilate the Transylvanian
Hungarian
community--with nearly 2 million members, the largest
national
minority in non-Soviet Europe--were particularly
controversial and
inflamed relations with Budapest. The "Hymn to Romania"
propaganda
campaign, launched in 1976, glorified the historical
contributions
of ethnic Romanians in unifying and liberating the nation.
Hungarian and German place-names were Romanianized, and
history
books were revised to ignore key minority figures or to
portray
them as Romanians. Publishing in minority languages was
severely
curtailed, and television and radio broadcasts in
Hungarian and
German were suspended. Educational opportunities for
minority
students desiring instruction in their native languages
were
reduced, and Hungarians seeking employment in their
ancestral
communities encountered hiring discrimination that forced
them to
leave those communities and settle among ethnic Romanians.
Potentially the greatest threat to the Hungarian
community,
however, was Ceausescu's program to "systematize" the
countryside.
Conceived in the early 1970s--ostensibly to gain
productive
farmland by eliminating "nonviable"
villages--systematization
threatened to destroy half of the country's 13,000
villages,
including many ancient ethnic Hungarian and German
settlements.
Ceausescu's assimilation campaign forced large numbers
of
ethnic Hungarians to flee their homeland, triggering large
anti-Ceausescu demonstrations in Budapest. In retaliation,
Ceausescu closed the Hungarian consulate in Cluj-Napoca,
the
cultural center of the Hungarian community in
Transylvania. In
early 1989, Hungary filed an official complaint with the
United
Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, accusing
Romania of
gross violations of basic human rights. The Swedish
representative
to the commission cosponsored a resolution with five other
Western
nations calling for an investigation of Hungary's
allegations
against the Ceausescu regime. Earlier in the year,
Romania's
international reputation had been badly damaged by its
conduct at
the Vienna Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe.
Failing in its attempt to delete human rights provisions
from the
conference's final document, the Romanian delegation
declared it
was not bound by the agreement. This action was condemned
not only
by Western delegations but also by delegations from some
Warsaw
Pact states.
Treatment of ethnic minorities was only one of numerous
sources
of friction between Romania and the rest of the Warsaw
Pact during
the late 1980s. Despite his country's growing economic
vulnerability, Ceausescu continued to defy Soviet-backed
Comecon
initiatives to integrate further the economies of the
member
states. He rejected the efforts of President Mikhail
Gorbachev of
the Soviet Union to create supranational manufacturing
enterprises
and research and development centers, and he opposed
mutual
convertibility of the national currencies of the member
states.
Adamantly rejecting economic decentralization and
privatization,
Ceausescu became Comecon's most outspoken critic of
Gorbachev's
perestroika campaign. Despite Ceausescu's polemics,
however,
Romania's economy became increasingly dependent on the
Soviet
Union, which provided all the natural gas, more than half
the crude
oil, and much of the electricity, iron ore, coking coal,
and other
raw materials that Romania imported after the mid-1980s.
The
Romanians gained access to these materials by
participating in
numerous ventures to develop Soviet natural resources.
Moreover,
Moscow transferred an ever larger volume of manufacturing
technology and know-how to Romanian industry, including
state-of-the-art steel-casting and aircraft-manufacturing
technologies.
In the late 1980s, Romania's growing reliance on the
Soviet
Union as a source of raw materials and technology, as well
as a
market for noncompetitive manufactured goods, placed
Ceausescu in
a delicate position. Estranged from the West, Romania
could ill
afford to antagonize its most important trading partner.
Nevertheless, the defiant Ceausescu did not moderate his
criticism
of Gorbachev's dramatic reforms. Indeed, the Romanian
president had
cause for concern, as the peoples of Eastern Europe
responded to
Gorbachev's cues and demanded liberalization. From the
Baltic to
the Balkans, in 1989 hardline communist regimes gave way
to a new
generation of politicians willing to accommodate their
populations'
desires for democracy and market economies.
Ceausescu would not willingly yield to the forces of
historic
change sweeping Eastern Europe. His faith in the massive
control
structure so carefully erected over the previous quarter
century
remained unshaken. Indeed, the regime had stifled the
scattered
voices of dissent and had prevented the emergence of a
grass-roots
political movement analogous to Poland's Solidarity or
Czechoslovakia's Civic Forum. Following his November 1989
reelection for another five-year term as general secretary
of the
Romanian Communist Party, there appeared to be no serious
internal
threat to Ceausescu's continued totalitarian rule.
The agent who would galvanize the nation's discontent
and
hatred for the Ceausescu regime suddenly appeared in
December 1989,
in the person of László Tökés, a young Hungarian pastor in
Timisoara. Tökés had been persecuted for months by the
Securitate
for his sermons criticizing the lack of freedom in
Romania. When
his congregation physically intervened to prevent the
government
from evicting the popular pastor, hundreds of other
Timisoara
residents took to the streets to express their solidarity
with the
congregation. Inspired by the democratic changes that had
occurred
elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the swelling crowds defied
government
orders to disperse and began calling for the end of the
Ceausescu
regime.
Believing he could abort the Timisoara rebellion,
Ceausescu
ordered the use of deadly force. At a December 17 meeting
of the
Political Executive Committee, he furiously charged that
the
uprising had been instigated by Hungarian agents supported
by the
Soviet Union and the United States. Repeating his order to
fire on
the demonstrators, Ceausescu departed for a scheduled
three-day
visit to Tehran. During his absence, the protest in
Timisoara
exploded in violence. Although Minister of National
Defense Vasile
Milea had not obeyed the initial order to use deadly
force, by the
afternoon of December 17, Securitate forces opened fire,
killing
and wounding scores of demonstrators. But the rebellion
could not
be contained by intimidation, and the protestors' bravery
won
increasing numbers of soldiers to their side.
Word of the Timisoara uprising spread to the rest of
the
country, thanks in large part to foreign radio broadcasts.
When
Ceausescu returned from Iran on December 20, accounts of
heavy loss
of life in Timisoara had already incited protests in
Bucharest. At
a televised proregime rally the next day, Ceausescu
addressed a
large crowd of supporters assembled in front of the
Central
Committee headquarters building. As he spoke, a few brave
students
began unfurling anti-Ceausescu banners and chanting
revolutionary
slogans. Dumbfounded by the crowd's rumblings, the aged
ruler
yielded the microphone to his wife as the television
broadcast was
interrupted. The once unassailable Ceausescu regime
suddenly
appeared vulnerable. As the crowd sang "Romanians Awake,"
shots
rang out. The revolt had claimed its first martyrs in
Bucharest.
On the morning of December 22, Ceausescu again appeared
on the
balcony of the Central Committee headquarters and tried to
address
the crowds milling below. Seeing that the situation was
now out of
his control and that the army was joining the protesters,
Ceausescu
and his wife boarded a helicopter and fled the capital,
never to
return. They were captured several hours later at
Cîmpulung, about
100 kilometers northwest of Bucharest
(see
fig. 1). The
desperate
fugitives' attempts to bribe their captors failed, and for
three
days they were hauled about in an armored personnel
carrier.
Meanwhile, confused battles among various military and
Securitate
factions raged in the streets. Fighting was especially
heavy near
the Bucharest television station, which had become the
nerve center
of the revolt. The media's grossly exaggerated casualty
figures
(some reports indicated as many as 70,000 deaths; the
actual toll
was slightly more than 1,000 killed) convinced citizens
that
Romania faced a protracted, bloody civil war, the outcome
of which
could not be predicted. Against this ominous backdrop, a
hastily
convened military tribunal tried Nicolae and Elena
Ceausescu for
"crimes against the people" and sentenced them to death by
firing
squad. On Christmas Day, a jubilant Romania celebrated
news of the
Ceausescus' executions and sang long-banned traditional
carols.
In the tumultuous hours following the Ceausescus'
flight from
Bucharest, the power vacuum was filled by one Ion Iliescu,
a former
Central Committee secretary and deputy member of the
Political
Executive Committee who had fallen into disfavor with
Ceausescu.
Iliescu took charge of organizing a provisional ruling
group, which
called itself the National Salvation Front (NSF).
As the fighting subsided after Ceausescu's death, the
NSF
proceeded to garner public support through several astute
policy
decisions. Food exports were suspended, and warehouses of
prime
meats and other foodstuffs were opened to the
long-deprived
citizenry. Ceausescu's energy restrictions on households
were
lifted, whereas wasteful industrial users were subjected
to
mandatory conservation. The despised systematization
program was
halted. Abortions were legalized. And the feared
Securitate was
placed under military control.
Despite the early popular decisions taken by the NSF,
in mid-
January, thousands of protesters again took to the streets
of
Bucharest, demanding that Securitate criminals and
Ceausescu's
associates be brought to justice. President Iliescu and
his
designated prime minister, Petre Roman, placated the
crowds with
the promise (subsequently revoked) that the PCR would be
outlawed.
To defuse charges that the NSF had "stolen the revolution"
from the
people, a Provisional Council of National Unity was
formed,
ostensibly to give voice to a broader spectrum of
political views.
The council pledged that free and open elections would be
held in
April (subsequently postponed until May) and that the NSF
would not
participate. By late January, however, the NSF announced
that it
would form a party and would field a slate of candidates.
During the following weeks, the NSF consolidated its
control of
the political infrastructure it had inherited largely
intact from
the deposed regime. Supported by entrenched apparatchiks
in the
media, the postal service, municipal administrations,
police
departments, and industrial and farm managements, the NSF
was
assured of a landslide victory.
More than eighty political parties (many of them
single-issue
extremist groups) competed in the spring elections. The
NSF-
dominated media accorded these exotic groups the same
limited
coverage as the reemergent "historical" parties (the
National
Peasant Party, the National Liberal Party, and the Social
Democratic Party). The historical parties, which had been
banned
for some four decades, lacked the resources and political
savvy to
wage effective campaigns. The parties failed to harness
the public
frustration manifested in frequent spontaneous anti-NSF
rallies,
some of which involved tens of thousands of disgruntled
citizens.
The NSF ensured that the opposition parties would not be
able to
deliver their message to the voters. Opposition candidates
were
prevented from campaigning in the workplace; the postal
system
intercepted opposition literature; and NSF propagandists
in the
media grossly misrepresented the platforms and personal
backgrounds
of opposition candidates.
The May elections gave the NSF a resounding victory.
Presidential candidate Iliescu won more than 85 percent of
the
popular vote. NSF candidates for the new bicameral
legislature
collected 92 of 119 seats in the Senate and 263 of 396
seats in the
Assembly of Deputies. International observers generally
agreed that
despite some tampering and intimidation by the NSF, the
outcome of
the elections reflected the majority will. The abuses of
the
electoral process, however, had been committed long before
the
ballots were cast. The National Peasant Party alone
reported that
during the campaign police had stood by as thugs assaulted
party
members, killing at least two persons and sending 113
others to
hospitals.
The NSF campaign had successfully submerged the
communist roots
of its leadership while extolling Romanian nationhood and
the
Romanian Orthodox Church. The NSF had exploited
long-simmering
interethnic tensions to gain votes. In March these
tensions had led
to violence in the town of Tîrgu Mures, the capital of the
former
Hungarian Autonomous Region. The celebration of the
Hungarian
national holiday by the town's Hungarian residents enraged
a
radical Romanian nationalist organization known as Vatra
Românéasca
(Romanian Cradle). Reminiscent of the fascist Iron Guard,
Vatr
Românéasca orchestrated brutal assaults on innocent
Hungarians. For
hours, the police ignored the violence, which claimed
eight deaths
and more than 300 severe injuries. The NSF sided with Vatr
Românéasca in blaming the violence on Hungarian
revanchists. When
National Liberal and Social Democratic politicians
condemned the
attacks, Vatra Românéasca thugs ransacked the
headquarters of these
opposition parties.
The NSF's reaction to the clashes in Tîrgu Mures was an
ominous
sign that the Ceausescu policy of forced Romanianization
had
survived the "revolution." In subsequent months, the
number of
ethnic Hungarian refuges fleeing Transylvania reached
unprecedented
levels. But Hungarians were not the only ethnic group
seeking to
emigrate; reportedly, half of the approximately 200,000
ethnic
Germans residing in Romania at the beginning of 1990 had
already
departed by September, as had untold thousands of Gypsies.
Soon after his lopsided election victory, President
Iliescu
ordered the removal of several hundred anti-NSF
demonstrators who
had occupied Bucharest's Victory Square since April 22. On
June 13,
a force of about 1,500 police and military cadres moved
against the
peaceful demonstrators, arresting many of them. But as the
arrests
proceeded, the ranks of the protesters were replenished,
and
outraged mobs attacked the Bucharest police inspectorate,
the
Ministry of Interior, the television station, and the
offices of
the Romanian Intelligence Service (the successor of the
Securitate).
Perhaps recalling the army's role in deposing his
predecessor,
Iliescu did not rely on the military to contain the
demonstrations.
His national defense minister, Victor Stanculescu, had
made it
clear that he wanted to keep politics out of the army and
the army
out of politics. Iliescu appealed to the coal miners of
the Jiu
Valley to come to Bucharest, as they had done in January,
to
restore order and save the democratically elected
government from
"neofascist" elements. Within one day of his appeal, some
10,000
club-wielding miners arrived in Bucharest aboard 27
specially
commissioned railroad cars. During a two-day binge of
violence, the
vigilantes killed an estimated 21 persons and severely
injured 650
others. Immediately upon arriving in Bucharest, the miners
headed
for the offices of the two main opposition parties, which
they
ransacked. They also attacked the homes of opposition
party leaders
and assaulted anyone they suspected of being sympathetic
to the
opposition. Having dispersed the demonstrators, the miners
received
Iliescu's warm thanks and returned to the Jiu Valley.
The international community universally condemned the
Iliescu
government's use of violence to suppress dissent. The
European
Community postponed signing a trade and economic
cooperation
agreement with Romania. The United States government
withheld all
nonhumanitarian aid and boycotted the June 25 inauguration
of
President Iliescu. Bucharest somewhat rehabilitated its
international standing by supporting the boycott against
Iraq
following that country's invasion of Kuwait in August
1990. The
European Community heads of state, meeting in Rome in
December
1990, voted to extend emergency food and medical aid to
Romania and
to consider compensating Bucharest for the economic
hardship caused
by its support of sanctions against Iraq. The United
States
government supported this assistance but continued to
withhold
most-favored-nation trading status in light of Bucharest's
unsatisfactory pace of democratization and suspect human
rights
record.
The international community and many Romanian citizens
believed
that the chief perpetrator of human rights abuses during
the
Ceausescu era, the infamous Securitate, continued to
operate, even
though it officially had been disbanded in early 1990. In
February,
some 3,000 army officers, cadets, and conscripts
demonstrated in
Bucharest to protest the presence of more than 6,000
Securitate
officers in their midst. But the government responded to
such
protests with only token prosecution of former Securitate
agents
known to have committed crimes before and during the
revolt. As of
late December 1990, no independent commissions had
investigated
securitate abuses. Moreover, the NSF had
established the
Romanian Intelligence Service, which employed many former
Securitate members. And following the June demonstrations,
when
Iliescu found he could not rely on the army to rescue his
government, a gendarmerie reminiscent of Ceausescu's
Patriotic
Guards was created.
The NSF's unwillingness to purge former Securitate
agents and
other close associates of Ceausescu confirmed many
Romanians'
suspicions that their revolution had been highjacked by a
neocommunist cabal. By October, the growing perception
that the NSF
had exploited the spontaneous uprising in Timisoara to
disguise a
palace coup gave rise to an umbrella opposition group
demanding the
government's resignation. Known as Civic Alliance, the
loose
coalition of intellectuals, monarchists, labor activists,
and
various other interest groups claimed a membership of
nearly one
million. In mid-November, Civic Alliance organized the
largest
nationwide demonstrations since Ceausescu's overthrow.
Some 100,000
persons in Bucharest and tens of thousands in Brasov
marched to
protest the continued presence of communists in the
government and
to express outrage over sharp price increases for consumer
goods.
The demonstrations forced the government to postpone the
second
phase of its price-adjustment program (initiated largely
to satisfy
IMF requirements for economic assistance).
Despite the government's concessions on price hikes,
however,
Civic Alliance, student groups, and labor union leaders
continued
to organize antigovernment demonstrations and strikes
throughout
the country. Teamsters, airline workers, teachers, medical
personnel, and factory workers joined student-led
protests, which
became increasingly disruptive. Civic Alliance and the
major
opposition parties in parliament called for a government
of
national unity, new elections, and a referendum on the
country's
future form of government. Some members of Civic Alliance
called
for the restoration of King Michael to the that throne he
had been
forced to abdicate in 1947. Living in exile near Geneva,
Michael
declared himself willing and able to serve Romania as a
stabilizing
force during its transition to democracy.
The political ferment threatening to bring down the
Iliescu
government in late 1990 was fired by Romania's unmitigated
economic
misery and a pervasive sense that life would only get
worse. The
NSF government had inherited a decrepit economy struggling
with an
obsolete capital stock, underdeveloped transport system,
severe
energy and raw materials shortages, demoralized labor
force,
declining exports, and a desperate need for Western
financial and
technical assistance.
The economic decline accelerated during 1990, and as
winter
approached, Romanians faced many of the same hardships
they had
known during the worst years of the Ceausescu regime.
Preliminary
estimates indicated a decrease in GNP of between 15
percent and 20
percent, a 20-percent decline in labor productivity, and a
43-
percent reduction in exports. Declining fuel and
electricity
production was particularly worrisome because of
reductions in
Soviet deliveries and the shortage of hard currency needed
to
purchase energy elsewhere. Furthermore, Romania's support
of United
Nations sanctions against Baghdad during the Persian Gulf
crisis
cut off that important source of crude oil. Before the
sanctions
were imposed, Iraq had been delivering oil to repay its
US$ 1.5
billion debt to Bucharest.
The NSF's early attempts to win support by raising
personal
consumption levels resulted in the rapid depletion of
inventories
and generated a large trade deficit. Its decision to raise
wages
and shorten the work week caused severe inflation and
lowered labor
discipline. The rise in personal incomes badly outstripped
the
availability of consumer goods, so that anything of
potential
barter or resale value was instantly bought up as soon as
it
appeared on the store shelves.
The government addressed Romania's daunting economic
problems
with a tentative and ineffective reform program, fearing
that
citizens would not tolerate the sacrifices that a
"shock-therapy"
approach would require. Peasants on cooperative and state
farms
were granted slightly larger plots, and prices at farmers'
markets
were officially decontrolled. To encourage creation of
small
businesses, especially in the service sector, private
individuals
were given the legal right to employ as many as twenty
persons. In
addition, an agency was set up to administer the
privatization of
state assets.
As Romania's economic deterioration accelerated, Prime
Minister
Roman assumed greater personal control of reform efforts.
In
October he addressed a special session of parliament and
requested
exceptional powers to implement a more radical reform
program. In
addition to the aforementioned price hikes on various
consumer
goods and services, which were supposed to be cushioned by
compensatory payments to the nonworking population,
Roman's plan
called for replacing the leu (for value of the
leu--see Glossary)
in 1991 with a new monetary unit at the rate of ten to one
to
absorb some of the surplus lei in circulation. The new
currency
gradually would be made convertible, thereby attracting
foreign
investment. Roman indicated that the government would also
remove
surplus money from circulation by allowing private
citizens to buy
land, state-owned housing, and stocks and bonds.
In late 1990, Roman's reform program appeared to have
almost no
chance of succeeding. Public outrage had thwarted the
attempt to
establish more realistic prices. The government had failed
to
overcome bureaucratic inertia on the part of anti-reform
officials
and managers fearful of losing their special privileges.
More
importantly, the government's loss of legitimacy with the
people
and the threat of a potentially violent "second
revolution" left
Romania's future course in grave doubt.
December 26, 1990
Ronald D. Bachman
Data as of July 1989
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