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Romania Petru Groza's Premiership
Groza's appointment amounted to a de facto Communist
takeover.
Groza named Communists to head the army and the ministries
of
interior, justice, propaganda, and economic affairs. The
government
included no legitimate members of the National Peasant
Party or
National Liberal Party; rather, the Communists drafted
opportunistic dissidents from these parties, heralded them
as the
parties' legitimate representatives, and ignored or
harassed
genuine party leaders. On March 9, 1945, Groza announced
that
Romania had regained sovereignty over northern
Transylvania, and in
May and June the government prosecuted and executed Ion
Antonescu,
Mihai Antonescu, and two generals as war criminals.
At the Potsdam Conference in July and August 1945, the
United
States delegation protested that the Soviet Union was
improperly
implementing the Yalta declarations in Romania and called
for
elections to choose a new government. The Soviet Union,
however,
refused even to discuss the question, labeling it
interference in
Romania's internal affairs. The Soviet Union instead
called for the
United States, Britain, and France to recognize Groza's
government
immediately, but they refused. The Potsdam agreement on
Southeastern Europe provided for a council of foreign
ministers to
negotiate a peace treaty to be concluded with a
recognized,
democratic Romanian government. The agreement prompted
King Michael
to call for Groza to resign because his government was
neither
recognized nor democratic. When Groza refused to step
down, the
king retaliated by retiring to his summer home and
withholding his
signature from all legislative acts or government decrees.
In October 1945, Romania's Communist Party held its
first
annual conference, at which the two factions settled on a
joint
leadership. Though the Soviet Union favored the
Muscovites, Stalin
backed Gheorghiu-Dej's appointment as party secretary.
Pauker,
Luca, and Georgescu emerged as the party's other dominant
leaders.
The party's rolls swelled to 717,490 members by mid-1946,
and
membership exceeded 800,000 by 1947.
At a December 1945 meeting of foreign ministers in
Moscow, the
United States denounced Romania's regime as authoritarian
and
nonrepresentative and called for Groza to name legitimate
members
of the opposition parties to cabinet posts. Stalin agreed
to make
limited concessions, but the West received no guarantees.
Groza
named one National Peasant and one National Liberal
minister, but
he denied them portfolios and FND ministers hopelessly
outnumbered
them in the cabinet. Assured by Groza's oral promises that
his
government would improve its human- and political-rights
record and
schedule elections, the United States and Britain granted
Romania
diplomatic recognition in February 1946, before elections
took
place.
The Communists did all in their power to fabricate an
election
rout. Communist-controlled unions impeded distribution of
opposition-party newspapers, and Communist hatchet men
attacked
opposition political workers at campaign gatherings. In
March the
Communists engineered a split in the Social Democratic
Party and
began discrediting prominent figures in the National
Peasant and
National Liberal Parties, labeling them reactionary,
profascist,
and anti-Soviet and charging them with undermining
Romania's
economy and national unity. On November 19, 1946,
Romanians cast
ballots in an obviously rigged election. Groza's
government claimed
the support of almost 90 percent of the voters. The
Communists,
Social Democrats, and other leftist parties claimed 379 of
the
assembly's 414 seats; the National Peasant Party took 32;
the
National Liberals, 3. Minority-party legislators soon
abandoned the
new parliament or faced a ban on their participation. The
regime
turned a deaf ear to United States and British objections
and
protested against their "meddling" in Romania's internal
affairs.
During its first weeks in power, Groza's government
undertook
an extensive land reform that limited private holdings to
50
hectares, expropriated 1.1 million hectares, and
distributed most
of the land to about 800,000 peasants. In May 1945,
Romania and the
Soviet Union signed a long-term economic agreement that
provided
for the creation of joint-stock companies, or Sovroms,
through
which the Soviet Union controlled Romania's major sources
of
income, including the oil and uranium industries. The
Sovroms were
tax exempt and Soviets held key management posts.
Allied aerial bombardment and ground fighting during
the war
had inflicted serious damage to Romania's productive
capacity,
particularly to the most developed sector--oil production
and
refining. Furthermore, the excessive post-war reparations
to the
Soviet Union and Soviet exploitation of the Sovroms
overburdened
the country's economy. In 1946 Romanian industries
produced less
than half of their prewar output, inflation and drought
exacted a
heavy toll, and for the first time in 100 years Moldavia
suffered
a famine. By mid-1947 Romania faced economic chaos.
Foreign aid,
including United States relief, helped feed the
population. The
government printed money to repay the public debt, bought
up the
nation's cereal crop, confiscated store and factory
inventories,
and laid off workers. Romania, like the other East
European
countries under Soviet domination, refused to participate
in the
Marshall Plan for the economic reconstruction of Europe,
complaining that it would constitute interference in
internal
affairs.
In February 1947, the Allies and Romania signed the
final peace
treaty in Paris. The treaty, which did not include Romania
as a
co-belligerent country, reset Romania's boundaries.
Transylvania,
with its Hungarian enclaves, returned to Romania;
Bessarabia and
northern Bukovina, with their Romanian majorities, again
fell to
the Soviet Union; and Bulgaria kept southern Dobruja. The
treaty
bound Romania to honor human and political rights,
including
freedom of speech, worship, and assembly, but from the
first, the
Romanian government treated these commitments as dead
letters. The
treaty also set a ceiling on the size of Romania's
military and
called for withdrawal of all Soviet troops except those
needed to
maintain communication links with the Soviet forces then
occupying
Austria.
Data as of July 1989
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