Romania Government and Politics
President Nicolae Ceausescu
THE PROMULGATION of the Constitution of 1965, in which
Romania
officially proclaimed its status as a socialist republic,
was a
milestone on its path toward communism. The country had
set out on
that path in 1945 when the Soviet Union pressured King
Michael to
appoint communists to key government positions, where they
provided
the power base for a complete communist takeover and the
abolition
of the monarchy in December 1947. The political system
installed in
April 1948, when the Romanian People's Republic was
created, was a
replica of the Soviet model. The system's goal was to
create the
conditions for the transition from capitalism through
socialism (see Glossary)
to communism.
The formal structure of the government established by
the
Constitution of 1965 was changed in a significant way by a
1974
amendment that established the office of president of the
republic.
The occupant of that office was to act as the head of
state in both
domestic and international affairs. The first president of
the
republic, Nicolae Ceausescu, still held the office in
mid-1989 and
acted as head of state, head of the Romanian Communist
Party
(Partidul Comunist Romān--
PCR, see Glossary),
and commander
of the armed forces. His wife, Elena Ceausescu, had risen
to the
second most powerful position in the hierarchy, and close
family
members held key posts throughout the party and state
bureaucracies. The pervasive presence of the Ceausescus
was the
distinctive feature of Romania's power structure.
Romania's political system was one of the most
centralized and
bureaucratized in the world. At the end of the 1980s, the
Council
of Ministers had more than sixty members and was larger
than the
council of any other European communist government except
the
Soviet Union. Joint party-state organizations not
envisioned by the
Constitution emerged and proliferated. The organizations
functioned
as a mechanism by which the PCR and the Ceausescus
controlled all
government activity and preempted threats to their rule.
Despite Ceausescu's tight control of the organs of
power and
the effectiveness of the secret police, more properly the
Department of State Security (Departmentamentul Securitii
Statului--Securitate), in repressing dissent, sporadic
political
opposition to the regime surfaced in the 1980s. The
Western media
published letters written by prominent retired communist
officials
accusing Ceausescu of violating international human rights
agreements, mismanaging the economy, and alienating
Romania's
allies.
Although Romania remained in Soviet-dominated military
and
economic alliances, PCR leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and
his
successor, Ceausescu, pursued a defiantly independent
foreign
policy. During the 1958-75 period, they successfully
cultivated
contacts with the West, gaining most-favored-nation
trading status
from the United States and membership in the International
Monetary
Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade,
and other international organizations. Romania condemned
the
Soviet-led Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact)
invasion of
Czechoslovakia and was the only member of the pact to
maintain
diplomatic relations with Israel following the June 1967
War. After
1975, however, Romania became increasingly isolated from
the West,
on which Ceausescu heaped much of the blame for his
country's
economic dilemma. In the 1980s, international outcries
against
human rights abuses further isolated the Stalinist
Romanian regime
from both the West and the East. Relations with Hungary
were
particularly tense, as thousands of ethnic Hungarians fled
across
the border. At the close of the decade, Ceausescu's regime
was
badly out of step with the reform movements sweeping the
Soviet
Union, Poland, and Hungary.
Data as of July 1989
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