THE COMMUNIST STATE

Having seized effective control of the government, the Communists embarked on a program of organizing the state along totalitarian lines. As the first step toward consolidating their position, the Communists initiated extensive purges and liquidation of anticommunist elements in preparation for the holding of new parliamentary elections. The carefully controlled elections held in March 1948 overwhelmingly favored the single list of candidates put forward by the People's Democratic Front, which received 405 of the 414 seats. The new National Assembly met the following month, adopted a constitution modeled after that of the Soviet Union, and formalized the establishment of the Romanian People's Republic.

Over the next five years the country rapidly assumed the characteristics of a satellite state of the Soviet Union. The Allied Control Commission was withdrawn by mutual consent, and the Soviets were given the right to retain occupation troops in the country beyond the 1947 peace treaty date on the basis of an alleged need to protect the lines of communication with other Soviet forces being maintained in Austria. Under these favorable conditions and with close party supervision, locally appointed people's councils had little difficulty in administratively organizing the local governments in accordance with the Soviet system.

Soviet-style instruments of control also appeared in a broad pattern in all major fields and included the collectivization of agriculture, the nationalization of industry, the centralization of control of the national economy on a planned basis, and the creation of militia and police forces whose function was to maintain the authority of the communist regime and to eliminate all actual or potential opposition to its policies.

The 1951-53 show trials and political purges within the communist ranks, which were spearheaded from Moscow, served more to strengthen than to weaken Romanian leadership in the party. Although Gheorghiu-Dej, a native leader, had headed the party as its general secretary since 1945, his influence and that of other Romanian Communists in government affairs was limited. The Moscow-trained element led by Pauker, which followed the Soviet forces into Romania, had become dominant in the party organization, largely because it enjoyed both the support and confidence of the Soviets. This group, considered essentially foreign within the Romanian communist movement, firmly controlled the party apparatus, including the secret police, the key posts that dealt with foreign affairs, and the domestic economy.

This maldistribution of power within the ruling group led to factional disputes and internal bickerings, which were brought to the surface and finally solved by the purging of Pauker and the remainder of the Muscovite group in 1952. After the purges Gheorghiu-Dej and his close collaborators assumed full and undivided authority within the party. The party was successful in maintaining a high degree of homogeneity in its leadership, and the resultant stability within its ranks enabled it to adopt, and later carry out, policies that favored Romanian over international interests in communist affairs.

After the purges Gheorghiu-Dej assumed the premiership and, as the government and party machinery were now in Romanian hands, the nationalistic character of the communist government began to appear. In the early stages emphasis was placed on disengaging the country from many of the tight Soviet controls that still existed. As an initial move the Romanians in 1954 successfully negotiated the dissolution of the onerous joint Soviet-Romanian industrial concerns that had been used by the Soviets to drain the Romanian economy during the postwar years. This was followed in 1958 by obtaining Soviet agreement to the withdrawal of all occupation forces from Romanian territory. At the same time efforts to stimulate and improve the economy led to the establishment of limited economic relations with several Western and noncommunist bloc countries (see ch. 14).

Despite the nationalistic shift in Romanian external policy during this period, the Romanians were careful to indicate to Moscow that, although they wished to conduct their affairs with a minimum of Soviet interference, they had no intention either of abandoning their adherence to the Soviet bloc or of diminishing their efforts toward the achievement of all basic communist aims in the country. The manner and form of internal control in Romania remained repressive and essentially Stalinist; only minor liberalizing changes took place over the next several years.

After the death of Stalin in 1953 Gheorghiu-Dej supported the new form of collective leadership, which separated government and party functions. Following the Soviet pattern he gave up his party post but reclaimed it two years later, coincidentally with the emergence of Nikita Khrushchev as the leading figure in the Soviet hierarchy. Also, Romania further demonstrated its allegiance to the communist cause by formally endorsing the drastic action taken by the Soviets in suppressing the Hungarian revolt against the communist regime in 1956.

The next step in the pursuit of national goals was taken in the economic field and consisted of measures that sought to lessen Romania's economic dependence on the Soviet Union and the more developed East European countries. These goals were embodied in the country's Five-Year Plan (1960-65), which called for the accelerated creation of an expanded industrial base supported by its own natural resources and technical assistance from the more advanced noncommunist countries. This ambitious program was vigorously pursued beginning in 1960 and, by 1962, had come into sharp conflict with Premier Khrushchev's announced plans of revitalizing the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and transforming it into a unified system that would integrate the economies of all Eastern European member nations (see ch. 14).