The regime also sought to gain increased domestic support by emphasizing the country's historical traditions, by calling for "Romanian solutions to Romanian problems," and by cautiously exploiting the population's latent anti-Soviet sentiments. In August 1954, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the country's liberation from Nazi forces, Gheorghiu-Dej asserted that the primary credit for driving out the occupiers belonged to Romanian Communists rather than to the Soviet army, a view that was subsequently condemned by the Soviets and supported by the Communist Chinese.
Although the Gheorghiu-Dej regime formally supported the Soviet action in suppressing the 1956 Hungarian revolt, the Romanian leaders attempted to exploit the situation in order to obtain additional concessions from the Soviets and to gain recognition of the legitimacy of the so-called Romanian road to socialism. At that time, one of their primary aims was the removal of Soviet occupation forces that had remained in the country throughout the post-World War II period. Although the regime was not successful in obtaining formal Soviet recognition of a Romanian variant of communism, an agreement was reached placing a time limit on the presence of the Soviet troops, the forces finally being withdrawn in 1958.
Important problems were posed to the Gheorghiu-Dej regime by the reactivation of COMECON and the Soviet intentions to integrate the economies of the member states. Initially established in 1949 as the Soviet counterpart to the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), COMECON was largely dormant until 1955, when Khrushchev decided to revitalize the organization as an instrument of Soviet economic policy in Eastern Europe. COMECON plans called for the subordination of national economic plans to an overall planning body that would determine economic development for the member states as a whole. Romania was to be assigned the role of a supplier of raw materials and agricultural produce for the more industrially developed members (see ch. 2).
Gheorghiu-Dej rejected such a subservient role for Romania and proceeded with his own plans for the country's industrial development, asserting the right of each COMECON member state to develop its own economy in accord with national needs and interests, a position that was, in turn, rejected by the Soviets. As a reaction to Soviet pressures and the need to lessen Romanian dependence on COMECON, the regime initiated a gradual and cautious expansion of economic relations with noncommunist states.
In 1957 Ion Gheorghe Maurer became minister of foreign affairs and, under the direction of Gheorghiu-Dej, initiated programs that emphasized the national character of Romanian foreign policy. Included in these programs were plans for the attainment of self-sufficiency in the machine-tool industry and in the production of iron and steel. At the same time, additional steps were taken to increase trade with Western Europe and the United States.
The conflict with the Soviet Union became more acute in 1962 when Gheorghiu-Dej again rejected the COMECON plan for Romania and, later in the year, announced that a contract for the construction of a large steel mill at Galati had been concluded with a British-French consortium. Romanian statements in support of Albania further antagonized the Soviet leaders. During 1963 and 1964 Romanian-Soviet relations continued to deteriorate as the Gheorghiu-Dej regime sought to exploit the Sino-Soviet dispute and moved closer to the Communist Chinese position on the equality of communist states and the rejection of the leading role of the Soviet party. In November 1963 Maurer declared the readiness of Romania to mediate the Sino-Soviet dispute, a suggestion that Moscow considered arrogant and anti-Soviet.
A statement issued by the party Central Committee in April 1964 declared the right of Romania and all other nations to develop national policies in the light of their own interests and domestic requirements. During the remainder of that year the volume of economic and cultural contacts with Western nations increased significantly. The increased role of the United States in the Vietnam hostilities, however, served to curb the Gheorghiu-Dej regime's efforts to improve relations with the United States, and the sudden death of Gheorghiu-Dej in March 1965 raised questions as to the future direction of Romanian foreign policy.
Under Gheorghiu-Dej's successor, Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania's foreign policy continued to diverge from that of the Soviet Union and the other members of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact. Increasingly assertive of national interests, the Ceausescu regime antagonized the Soviet Union by its establishment of diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1967 and by its refusal to follow the Soviet lead in breaking relations with Israel in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
The invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led forces of the Warsaw Pact in August 1968 posed a particular threat to Romania. Observers of Eastern European political affairs saw the invasion as a severe blow to the basic assumptions of Romanian foreign policy, which included the belief that the Soviet Union would not intervene militarily against another member of the Warsaw Pact as long as the system of communist party rule was firmly maintained and membership in the pact was continued.
From the outset of the Czechoslovak crisis the Ceausescu regime asserted that the only basis for relations between states was respect for national independence and sovereignty and a policy of noninterference in another state's internal affairs. The actual invasion, however, marked a reversal for Romanian foreign policy and, although the initial response was one of condemnation and defiance, Romania was put on the defensive.