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Romania Dynastic Socialism and the Economic Downturn
The Eleventh Party Congress in 1974 signaled the
beginning of
a regime based on "dynastic socialism." Ceausescu placed
members
of his immediate family--including his wife, three
brothers, a son,
and a brother-in-law--in control of defense, internal
affairs,
planning, science and technology, youth, and party cadres.
Hagiographers began portraying Ceausescu as the greatest
genius of
the age and Elena as a world-renowned thinker.
Having assumed a cloak of infallibility, Ceausescu was
unchecked by debate on his economic initiatives. He
launched
monumental, high-risk ventures, including huge steel and
petrochemical plants, and restarted work on the
Danube-Black Sea
Canal. The government boosted investment and redeployed
laborers
from agriculture to industry. Central economic controls
tightened,
and imports of foreign technology skyrocketed.
In 1971 Romania joined the General Agreement on Tariffs
and
Trade, and in 1972 it became the first Comecon country to
join the
International Monetary Fund
(IMF--see Glossary)
and
World Bank (see Glossary),
which broadened its access to hard-currency
credit
markets. Romania also supplied doctored statistics to the
UN,
thereby gaining the status of an undeveloped country, and,
after
1973, receiving preferential treatment in trade with
developed
countries.
Halfway through the Sixth Five-Year Plan (1976-80), the
economy
faltered. All manpower reserves had been tapped; shortages
of
consumer goods sapped worker enthusiasm; and low labor
productivity
dulled the effectiveness of relatively modern industrial
facilities. After decades of growth, oil output began to
decline;
the downturn forced Romania to import oil at prices too
high to
allow its huge new petrochemical plants to operate
profitably.
Coal, electricity, and natural-gas production also fell
short of
plan targets, creating chaos throughout the economy. A
devastating
earthquake, drought, higher world interest rates, soft
foreign
demand for Romanian goods, and higher prices for petroleum
imports
pushed Romania into a balance-of-payments crisis. In 1981
Romania
followed Poland in becoming the second Comecon country to
request
rescheduling of its hard-currency debts, notifying bankers
in a
telex from Bucharest that it would make no payments on its
arrears
or on the next year's obligations without a rescheduling
agreement.
Ceausescu imposed a crash program to pay off the
foreign debt.
The government cut imports, slashed domestic electricity
usage,
enacted stiff penalties against hoarding, and squeezed its
farms,
factories, and refineries for exports. Ceausescu's
debt-reduction
policies caused average Romanians terrible hardship. The
regime's
demand for foodstuff exports resulted in severe shortages
of bread,
meat, fruits, and vegetables--Ceausescu even touted a
"scientific"
diet designed to benefit the populace through reduced meat
consumption. The authorities limited families to one
forty-watt
bulb per apartment, set temperature restrictions for
apartments,
and enforced these restrictions through control squads.
Slowly,
however, Romania chipped away at its debt
(see Retirement of the Foreign Debt
, ch. 3).
Romania's foreign policy in the 1970s and early 1980s
consisted
of propagating its message of autonomy and noninterference
and
explicitly rejecting the "Brezhnev Doctrine," named after
Soviet
leader Leonid Brezhnev, who asserted the Soviet Union's
right to
intervene in satellite countries if it perceived a threat
to
communist control or fulfillment of Warsaw Pact
commitments. In
1972 Romania redirected its military defenses to counter
possible
aggression by the Warsaw Pact countries, especially the
Soviet
Union. Romania continued to express resentment for the
loss of
Bessarabia, condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
in 1979,
and ignored the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles
Olympic
Games. Soviet leaders used proxy countries, especially
Hungary, to
criticize Romania's foreign and domestic policies,
especially its
nationalism. Romania's intensified persecution of
Transylvania's
Hungarians further aggravated relations with Hungary, and
Ceausescu's bleak human rights record eroded much of the
credibility Romania had won in the late 1960s through its
defiance
of Moscow.
Despite the population's extreme privation, at the
Thirteenth
Party Congress in November 1984 the PCR leadership again
emphasized
order, discipline, political and cultural centralism,
central
planning, and Ceausescu's cult of personality. By then the
cult had
gained epic dimensions. Ceausescu had assumed the status
of Stephen
the Great's spiritual descendant and protector of Western
civilization. In the severe winter of 1984-85, however,
Bucharest's
unlit streets were covered with deep, rutty ice and
carried only a
few trucks and buses. The authorities banned automobile
traffic,
imposed military discipline on workers in the energy
field, and
shut off heat and hot water, even in hotels and foreign
embassies.
Shoppers queued before food stores, and restaurant patrons
huddled
in heavy coats to sip lukewarm coffee and chew fatty cold
cuts.
Although the Romanian people endured these hardships with
traditional stoicism, a pall of hopelessness had descended
on the
country, and official proclamations of Romania's
achievements
during the "golden age of Ceausescu" had a hollow ring.
* * *
Still the most comprehensive history of Romania is R.W.
SetonWatson 's History of the Roumanians, which provides
detailed
descriptions of the international forces shaping Romania's
development to the end of World War I. Poignant details
enhance
Robert Lee Wolff's The Balkans in Our Time,
concentrating on
Romania's history, especially from unification to the late
1940s;
René Ristelhueber's A History of the Balkan Peoples
also
scans the main points in Romania's contribution to Balkan
history.
The Romanian-Hungarian conflict over Transylvania has
spawned
numerous studies, including Keith Hitchins's clearly
written The
Rumanian National Movement in Transylvania and, from a
Romanian
point of view, Stefan Pascu's A History of
Transylvania.
Much of Vasile Pârvan's classic Dacia is now dated,
but
Dumitru Berciu's Romania describes the pre-Roman
culture of
the region. Ghita Ionescu's Communism in Rumania
details the
communist takeover in Romania. William E. Crowther's
The
Political Economy of Romanian Socialism and Michael
Shafir's
Romania: Politics, Economics, and Society track
postwar
Romanian economic policy, Gheorghiu-Dej's defiance of
Khrushchev,
and Ceausescu's rise to power. Trond Gilberg's article
"Romania's
Growing Difficulties" depicts Ceausescu's cult of
personality and
the human cost of Romania's economic policies of the 1970s
and
1980s. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of July 1989
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