Admission to the academy programs is carefully controlled by the party. Courses in the first department last for four years, and candidates are selected from among the activists in the county and city party committees and the central PCR bodies and from loyal party workers in the mass organizations. Political activists in the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the State Security Council are also eligible for training in the first department.

PCR regulations stipulate that candidates for training in the first department must have worked for at least three years in production and have had at least three years' experience in mass organizations. In addition, the candidate must have completed at least a five-month course in one of the lower level party schools, have a high school diploma or its equivalent, and be thirty-five years of age or younger.

Courses in the second department last for two years. Requirements for admission into this department include extensive experience in organization and management related to industry and labor, at least eight years of service, membership in the PCR, graduation from a higher education institute, and an age of forty years or younger.

In addition to the broad program of the academy, the PCR also maintains other ideological training institutions. These include the Institute of Historical and Social-Political Studies in Bucharest, which functions under the direct supervision of the Central Committee, and lower level training programs that operate under the county party committees.

During 1971 the PCR placed increased emphasis on both the political and general education of all party workers, and the Central Committee decreed that only those who can keep up to date in their fields of activity would be promoted. As a followup to the decree, the Central Committee initiated a series of twenty- to thirty-day training programs and required some 15,000 persons from party, state, and mass organizations to attend the sessions. The order included a warning that those who did not successfully complete the courses would lose their jobs.

Observers of Romanian politics stated that the decision to require this additional training of state and party workers stemmed from the fact that the majority of personnel on both the central and local levels had been named to their positions on the basis of faithful party activity rather than their professional qualifications. The stipulation that those who do not successfully complete the courses would lose their jobs enables the party to replace those who are not qualified to fill their positions.

The study programs, designed to include practical work, discussion of specific problems, and field trips, cover a number of subjects including "the basic Marxist-Leninist sciences of management and organization," automatic data processing, the utilization of electronic calculators, methods of socioeconomic analysis, and the projection of plans, as well as a number of special subjects related to the various fields of activity of the participants. To facilitate the training of larger numbers, branches of the Stefan Gheorghiu Party Academy's Center for the Education and Training of Party and Mass Organization Cadres were set up in Bucharest and in seven counties.

Mass Organizations

The PCR has fostered the development of a large number of mass organizations that function as its auxiliaries. Comprised of members of an interest group or a profession whose welfare they purport to serve, the mass organizations provide channels for the transmission of policy and doctrine from the party to the general population. PCR leaders have described the duties of mass organizations as the mobilization of the working people for the fulfillment of party policies and the provision for their participation in the economic, political, and cultural life of the country. Leaders of the mass organizations are always reliable PCR members.

Citizens are constitutionally guaranteed the right to join together in organizations. At the same time, the Constitution defines the leading role of the party in relation to the mass organizations, asserting that through such organizations the PCR "achieves an organized link with the working class, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, and the other categories of working people" and mobilizes them in "the struggle for the completion of the building of socialism."