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Romania Development of the Romanian Armed Forces after World War II
The Soviet occupation of Romania made the Red Army the
predominant external influence on the development of the
Romanian
armed forces after 1945, especially after the communists
seized
power in 1947. After the war, obviously pro-German
elements were
purged from Romania's armed forces under Red Army
supervision.
Meanwhile, a second division of former Romanian prisoners
of war
that was organized and indoctrinated in the Soviet Union
entered in
late 1945 to join the Tudor Vladimirescu First Volunteer
Division
as the nucleus of the new Romanian Army under Soviet
control. Once
the communist regime took power, fully 30 percent of the
Romanian
officers and noncommissioned officers were purged from the
ranks.
They represented Romania's most experienced soldiers and
the
greatest source of opposition to the increasing
Sovietization of
the Romanian Army. The Romanian military establishment was
reorganized according to the Soviet model. Soviet officers
served
as advisers to Romanian units down to the regimental
level, and
large numbers of Romanian officers went to the Soviet
Union to
receive education and training.
Emil Bodnaras, a member of the PCR Politburo who was in
exile
in Moscow during the war and had returned to Romania with
the Red
Army in 1944, became the first postwar minister of
national defense
in 1947. In many cases, trusted party functionaries were
simply
assigned appropriate military ranks and appointed to
crucial posts
in the armed forces. Political loyalty to the PCR served
as a more
important selection criterion than did professional
military
competence or experience. The party closely monitored the
political
attitudes of officers who were not members of the PCR.
When the PCR was firmly in control of the country and
Romania
securely within the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union was
willing to
withdraw its occupation forces, which happened in May
1958. By the
mid-1960s, however, the Ceausescu regime had begun to
de-Sovietize
the armed forces, to reemphasize Romanian military
traditions, and
to carve out an autonomous position within the
Soviet-dominated
Warsaw Pact. The Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of
Czechoslovakia
on August 20, 1968, was the watershed event in postwar
Romanian
military development.
Data as of July 1989
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