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Romania Armistice Negotiations and Soviet Occupation
By mid-1943 the leaders of Romania's semi-legal
political
opposition were in secret contact with the Western Allies
and
attempting to negotiate the country's surrender to
Anglo-American
forces in order to avoid Soviet occupation. Mihai
Antonescu,
Romania's foreign minister, also contacted the Allies at
about the
same time. Western diplomats, however, refused to
negotiate a
separate peace without Soviet participation, and the
Soviet Union
delayed an armistice until the Red Army had crossed into
the
country in April 1944.
In June 1943 the National Peasants, National Liberals,
Communists, and Social Democrats, responding to a
Communist Party
proposal, formed the Blocul National Democrat (National
Democratic
Bloc--BND), whose aim was to extricate Romania from the
Nazi war
effort. On August 23 King Michael, a number of army
officers, and
armed Communist-led civilians supported by the BND locked
Ion
Antonescu into a safe and seized control of the
government. The
king then restored the 1923 constitution and issued a
cease-fire
just as the Red Army was penetrating the Moldavian front.
The coup
speeded the Red Army's advance, and the Soviet Union later
awarded
Michael the Order of Victory for his personal courage in
overthrowing Antonescu and putting an end to Romania's war
against
the Allies. Western historians uniformly point out that
the
Communists played only a supporting role in the coup;
postwar
Romanian historians, however, ascribe to the Communists
the
decisive role in Antonescu's overthrow.
Michael named General Constantin Sanatescu to head the
new
government, which was dominated by the National Peasant
Party and
National Liberal Party. Sanatescu appointed Lucretiu
Patrascanu, a
Communist Party Central Committee member, minister of
justice.
Patrascanu thus became the first Romanian communist to
hold high
government office.
The Red Army occupied Bucharest on August 31, 1944. In
Moscow
on September 12, Romania and the Soviet Union signed an
armistice
on terms Moscow virtually dictated. Romania agreed to pay
reparations, repeal anti-Jewish laws, ban fascist groups,
and
retrocede Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the Soviet
Union.
Representatives of the Soviet Union, the United States,
and Britain
established an Allied Control Commission in Bucharest, but
the
Soviet military command exercised predominant authority.
By the
time hostilities between Romania and the Soviet Union
ended,
Romania's military losses had totaled about 110,000 killed
and
180,000 missing or captured; the Red Army also transported
about
130,000 Romanian soldiers to the Soviet Union, where many
perished
in prison camps. After its surrender, Romania committed
about
fifteen divisions to the Allied cause under Soviet
command. Before
the end of hostilities against Germany, about 120,000
Romanian
troops perished helping the Red Army liberate
Czechoslovakia and
Hungary.
The armistice obligated Romania to pay the Soviet Union
US$300
million in reparations. Moscow, however, valued the goods
transferred as reparations at low 1938 prices, which
enabled the
Soviet Union to squeeze two to three times more goods from
Romania
than it would have been entitled to at 1944 prices. The
Soviet
Union also reappropriated property that the Romanians had
confiscated during the war, requisitioned food and other
goods to
supply the Red Army during transit and occupation of the
country,
and expropriated all German assets in the country.
Estimates of the
total booty reach the equivalent of US$2 billion.
Data as of July 1989
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