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Romania Membership
At the close of World War II the Communist Party had
fewer than
1,000 members. Three years later, at the official congress
that
sanctioned the merger with the Social Democratic Party, it
reported
more than 1 million members. This rapid growth was the
outcome of
an intensive propaganda campaign and membership drive that
employed
political and economic pressures. Subsequently, a purge of
socalled hostile and nominal members during the early 1950s
resulted
in the expulsion of approximately 465,000 persons.
During the early years of full Communist control, the
party
considered itself the vanguard of the working class and
made a
sustained effort to recruit workers. By the end of 1950,
the party
reported that 64 percent of leading party positions and 40
percent
of higher government posts were filled by members of the
working
class. Efforts to recruit workers into the party, however,
consistently fell short of goals.
By 1965, when the name Romanian Communist Party was
officially
adopted, membership had reached 1,450,000--about 8 percent
of the
country's population. Membership composition at that time
was 44
percent workers, 34 percent peasants, 10 per cent
intelligentsia,
and 12 percent other categories.
After his accession to power in 1965, Ceausescu sought
to
increase the party's influence, broaden the base of
popular
support, and bring in new members. His efforts to increase
PCR
membership were extremely effective. By February 1971, the
party
claimed 2.1 million members. The Twelfth Party Congress in
1979
estimated membership at 3 million, and by March 1988, the
PCR had
grown to some 3.7 million members--more than twice as many
as in
1965, when Ceausescu came to power. Thus, in the late
1980s, some
23 percent of Romania's adult population and 33 percent of
its
working population belonged to the PCR.
At the Thirteenth Party Congress in November 1984, it
was
announced that the nationality composition of the PCR was
90
percent Romanian, 7 percent Hungarian (a drop of more than
2
percent since the Twelfth Party Congress), less than 1
percent
German, and the remainder other nationalities.
As of 1988, workers made up about 55 percent of the
party
membership, peasants 15 percent, and intellectuals and
other groups
30 percent (see
table 10, Appendix). Because of the PCR's
special
effort to recruit members from industry, construction, and
transportation, by late 1981 some 45.7 percent of workers
in these
sectors belonged to the party. In 1980 roughly 524,000 PCR
members
worked in agriculture. Figures on the educational level of
the
membership in 1980 indicated that 11 percent held college
diplomas,
15 percent had diplomas from other institutions of higher
learning,
and 26 percent had received technical or professional
training.
In the 1980s, statistics on the age composition of the
party
were no longer published. The official comment on the
subject was
that the party had a "proper" age composition. Outside
observers,
however, believed that the average age of the membership
had risen
dramatically. The share of pensioners and housewives
increased from
6.6 percent in 1965 to 9 percent in 1988.
Women traditionally were underrepresented in the PCR.
In late
1980, they accounted for only 28.7 percent of the party's
members,
prompting Ceausescu to call for increasing their
representation to
about 35 percent.
A document on the selection and training of party
cadres
adopted by a Central Committee plenum in April 1988
provided
information on the backgrounds of individuals staffing the
political apparatus. According to that document, workers,
foremen,
and technicians supplied 79.8 percent of the cadres of the
PCR
apparatus, 80.1 percent of the apparatus of the Union of
Communist
Youth (Uniunea Tineretului Comunist,
UTC--see Glossary),
and 88.7
percent of the trade union apparatus. By late 1987, the
proportion
of women in the party apparatus had risen to 27.8 percent
from only
16.8 percent in 1983. More than 67 percent of activists in
the
state apparatus and 59.4 percent in the trade unions were
under
forty-five years of age. The document also asserted that
95.7
percent of PCR Central Committee activists and 90.7
percent of
activists in judet, municipal, and town party
committees
were graduates of, or were attending, state institutions
of higher
education.
Data as of July 1989
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