|
Romania The Post-Stalin Era
After Stalin died in March 1953, Gheorghiu-Dej forged a
"New
Course" for Romania's economy. He slowed
industrialization,
increased consumer-goods production, closed Romania's
largest labor
camps, abandoned the Danube-Black Sea Canal project,
halted
rationing, and hiked workers' wages. Romania and the
Soviet Union
also dissolved the Sovroms.
Soon after Stalin's death, Gheorghiu-Dej also set
Romania on
its so-called "independent" course within the East bloc.
Gheorghiu-Dej identified with Stalinism, and the more
liberal
Soviet regime threatened to undermine his authority. In an
effort
to reinforce his position, Gheorghiu-Dej pledged
cooperation with
any state, regardless of political-economic system, as
long as it
recognized international equality and did not interfere in
other
nations' domestic affairs. This policy led to a tightening
of
Romania's bonds with China, which also advocated national
self-determination.
In 1954 Gheorghiu-Dej resigned as the party's general
secretary
but retained the premiership; a four-member collective
secretariat,
including Ceausescu, controlled the party for a year
before
Gheorghiu-Dej again took up the reins. Despite its new
policy of
international cooperation, Romania joined the Warsaw
Treaty
Organization (Warsaw Pact) in 1955, which entailed
subordinating
and integrating a portion of its military into the Soviet
military
machine. Romania later refused to allow Warsaw Pact
maneuvers on
its soil and limited its participation in military
maneuvers
elsewhere within the alliance.
In 1956 the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev,
denounced Stalin
in a secret speech before the Twentieth Congress of the
CPSU.
Gheorghiu-Dej and the PMR leadership were fully braced to
weather
de-Stalinization. Gheorghiu-Dej made Pauker, Luca, and
Georgescu
scapegoats for the Romanian communists' past excesses and
claimed
that the Romanian party had purged its Stalinist elements
even
before Stalin had died.
In October 1956, Poland's communist leaders refused to
succumb
to Soviet military threats to intervene in domestic
political
affairs and install a more obedient politburo. A few weeks
later,
the communist party in Hungary virtually disintegrated
during a
popular revolution. Poland's defiance and Hungary's
popular
uprising inspired Romanian students and workers to
demonstrate in
university and industrial towns calling for liberty,
better living
conditions, and an end to Soviet domination. Fearing the
Hungarian
uprising might incite his nation's own Hungarian
population to
revolt, Gheorghiu-Dej advocated swift Soviet intervention,
and the
Soviet Union reinforced its military presence in Romania,
particularly along the Hungarian border. Although
Romania's unrest
proved fragmentary and controllable, Hungary's was not, so
in
November Moscow mounted a bloody invasion of Hungary.
After the Revolution of 1956, Gheorghiu-Dej worked
closely with
Hungary's new leader, János Kádár. Although Romania
initially took
in Imre Nagy, the exiled former Hungarian premier, it
returned him
to Budapest for trial and execution. In turn, Kádár
renounced
Hungary's claims to Transylvania and denounced Hungarians
there who
had supported the revolution as chauvinists, nationalists,
and
irredentists. In Transylvania, for their part, the
Romanian
authorities merged Hungarian and Romanian universities at
Cluj and
consolidated middle schools. Romania's government also
took
measures to allay domestic discontent by reducing
investments in
heavy industry, boosting output of consumer goods,
decentralizing
economic management, hiking wages and incentives, and
instituting
elements of worker management. The authorities eliminated
compulsory deliveries for private farmers but
reaccelerated the
collectivization program in the mid-1950s, albeit less
brutally
than earlier. The government declared collectivization
complete in
1962, when collective and state farms controlled 77
percent of the
arable land.
Despite Gheorghiu-Dej's claim that he had purged the
Romanian
party of Stalinists, he remained susceptible to attack for
his
obvious complicity in the party's activities from 1944 to
1953. At
a plenary PMR meeting in March 1956, Miron Constantinescu
and Iosif
Chisinevschi, both Politburo members and deputy premiers,
criticized Gheorghiu-Dej. Constantinescu, who advocated a
Khrushchev-style liberalization, posed a particular threat
to
Gheorghiu-Dej because he enjoyed good connections with the
Moscow
leadership. The PMR purged Constantinescu and Chisinevschi
in 1957,
denouncing both as Stalinists and charging them with
complicity
with Pauker. Afterwards, Gheorghiu-Dej faced no serious
challenge
to his leadership. Ceausescu replaced Constantinescu as
head of PMR
cadres.
Data as of July 1989
|
