Romanian forces that continued the war were committed in support of the Soviet army in Transylvania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Those engaged on the Moldavian front were disarmed, and control over the greater part of the country was maintained by the Soviets. Among the occupation troops stationed in Romania was the communist-indoctrinated "Tudor Vladimirescu" division, a force composed of captured Romanian prisoners that had been organized after the German-Romanian defeat at Stalingrad. In addition, the Soviets were given the chairmanship of the Allied Control Commission, the joint body that was established to administer the occupied country.
The several conferences held by the Allied powers concerning postwar arrangements and the understandings that resulted from bilateral discussion among individual leaders indicated that the Soviet Union was to become the dominant military and political power in the Balkans. As a result, the Soviets, from the outset of their period of occupation, acted determinedly to consolidate their position within Romania and to influence the development of a permanent postwar governmental system designed along communist lines.
Although Romania had surrendered in August 1944, it took several months to create a government stable enough to carry out essential programs. The first postwar coalition regimes included relatively few Communists who ostensibly cooperated with the revived traditional political parties. Despite their small numbers, however, they vigorously engaged in disruptive antigovernment tactics to prevent the stabilization of political authority along democratic lines. This course of action was dictated by the general weakness of the Communists who had surfaced after the war and was handicapped by the absence of partisan or resistance organizations, which could have been used as a basis for expanding political control.
Lacking popular support, the Communist Party set about creating mass organizations, labor unions, and front organizations through which they could increase their power. Among the leaders in these activities were Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, an early Communist who had been imprisoned during the war, and Ana Pauker, who had spent the war years in Moscow before returning to Romania after the entry of Soviet forces. By the fall of 1944 the Communists had been successful in grouping a leftist-oriented agrarian party called the Plowman's Front, splinter elements of the Social Democratic Party, various labor unions, and several social welfare organizations into the National Democratic Front. The front became the principal instrument through which the party worked to achieve political dominance.
The National Democratic Front received recognition in the December 1944 government of General Nicolae Radescu and, although given a number of important posts, was generally held to a role subordinate to that of the National Peasant, the Liberal, and the Social Democratic parties. In late January 1945 after a visit to Moscow by Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej, the leftist leadership within the government initiated a virulent campaign of disorder, agitation, and denunciation against Radescu and called for the replacement of his regime with one to be formed by the National Democratic Front.
The anti-Radescu campaign was prolonged and intensified by the Communists who, through their control of the printer's union, were able to silence the opposition press and thus enhance their own propaganda. In February 1945, during a staged demonstration, the Communists provoked an incident in which several participants were killed. Demands were made for Radescu's arrest, and he was forced to seek asylum within a foreign mission. Using this latest incident as a pretext, Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs Andrei Vyshinsky, who arrived from Moscow within two days of the event, forced King Michael to accept a National Democratic Front government to be headed by Petru Groza, the leader of the Plowman's Front and longtime communist sympathizer.
The government installed by Groza on March 6, 1945, was dominated by Communists and fellow travelers and represented an effective seizure of power by relatively peaceful means. Although a few dissident former members of the Liberal and National Peasant parties were given posts to maintain the facade of representative government, no leaders or representative members of the historic political parties were included.
After recognition by the Soviet Union in August 1945 and by the United States and Great Britain in February 1946, the Groza government held rigged elections for the Grand National Assembly and emerged with 379 of the 414 seats. Having thus achieved legislative as well as executive control, the Communists proceeded methodically during the following year to eliminate all political opposition. National Peasant and Liberal leaders were arrested and tried, and these two major parties were outlawed in June 1947. This action was followed in the spring of 1948 by the fusion of the Social Democrats with the Communists into a new party called the Romanian Workers' Party, which the Communists controlled. As a final step the National Democratic Front was reorganized into the People's Democratic Front, which then included the Romanian Workers' Party, the Plowman's Front, and two new puppet organizations—the National Popular Party and the Hungarian People's Union.
By the end of 1947 the only remaining link with the prewar system was the monarchy. King Michael, in addition to being a popular ruler, represented a national symbol around whom anticommunist opposition could rally and, as such, was an unacceptable threat to the embryonic communist dictatorship. Accordingly, in a meeting in December requested by Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej, King Michael was forced to abdicate under the threat of civil war. On the same day the government announced the creation of the Romanian People's Republic. This action represented the last step in the seizure of power and placed Romania under complete communist control.