CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY SENIOR RESEARCH STAFF ON INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM, COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE: POST-STALIN DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SATELLITES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01445R000100100001-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 57
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 28, 1958
• Content Type: REPORT

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Senior Research Staff on International Communism
N?
COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE
Post-Stalin Developments in the Satellites
CIA/SRS-7
PART II/D
28 August 1958
279
J03 NO1
LOX NO1
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FOLDER NO. TOTAL GO,CS HEREIN
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This material contains information affecting
the National Defense of the United States
within the meaning of the espionage laws,
Title 18, USC, Sees. 793 and 794, the trans-
mission or revelation of which in any manner
to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
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COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE:
Post-Stalin Developments in the Satellites
CIA/SRS-7
PART II/D RUMANIA
This is a speculative study which
has been discussed with US Gov-
ernment intelligence officers but
has not been formally coordinated.
It is based on information avail-
able to SRS as of 1 August 1958.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Part II/D - RUMANIA
1
Conditions at the Beginning of 1956
1
The Impact of the Polish and Hungarian
October on Rumania
10
Unrest Combatted by Economic Concessions
13
The July 1957 Purge
18
Attitude of the Intellectuals
24
Anti-Subversion Penalties Stiffened
25
Land Socialization
27
Survival of Limited Artistic Freedom
27
Hard Political Line Reaffirmed
28
Economic Situation at the Turn of the Year 1958
29
Review of Rumanian Developments Since the
Twentieth Congress
33
The Situation in Rumania in the Spring of 1958
40
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FOREWORD
This report on Rumania is the fifth installment
of a series of studies being produced by the Senior
Research Staff under the general title Communism in
Eastern Europe: Post-Stalin Developments in the Satel-
lites (CIA/SRS-7, CONFIDENTIAL). The four previous
installments, labelled Part I, Part II/A, Part II/B, and
Part II/C, have dealt respectively with general trends in
the satellites and with Poland, Hungary and East Germany.
Developments in the other satellites will be considered in
future reports, and the series will be concluded with an
appraisal of conditions and prospective trends in Eastern
Europe as a whole.
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PART II/D
RUMANIA
Conditions at the Beginning of 1956
1. Economic conditions in Rumania at the begin-
ning of 1956 were, although far from good, better than they
had been at any time since the "liberation" of the country by
the Red Army in 1944. Thanks to exceptionally favorable
weather in 1955, agricultural production had for the first
time equalled prewar figures, The relaxation, under the
post-Stalin New Course, of the frenzied pace of industrializa-
tion had also contributed to the moderate improvement in the
exceedingly hard living conditions of prior years, and had
permitted a general price reduction in December 1955. Pos-
sibly too, the transfer to Rumania in 1954 and 195.5 of the
Soviet shares in Rumanian enterprises, (Sovroms) on favor-
able terms, " was the outward sign that the period of exploita-
tion of her economy had come to an end, and that the country
had been relieved of a heavy tribute.
Z. However, the Rumanian people were not al-
lowed to labor long under the illusion that this was all sheer
profit. The Second Party Congress in December 1955 - origi-
nally called for 1953 but postponed by-the Party boss, Gheor-
ghiu-Dej in the hope of an improvement in the situation, which
finally came in the fall of 1955 was privileged to hear, be-
sides a long list of Communist successes, an outline of the
next Five Year Plan. The new plan called for higher rates
of increase in industrial production than in the preceding years,
although they did remain lower than during the Stalin era. The
goal in agriculture was virtually to double the amount of land
in the socialist sector by 1956, which was to grow from Z6. 5
to 50%.
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3o Brilliant as had been, according to Gheorghiu-
Dej, the successes of the Communist regime, especially
since the restoration of Party unity in 1952 when the Ana
Pauker faction had been evicted, and great as was the love
of the Rumanian people for Communism, he was not entirely
satisfied with the situation. Dangerous internal "enemy"
forces, he warned, still existed: the kulaks, the "most
numerous capitalist" class, also private tradesmen in cer-
tain. sectors of the distribution of f oods, and the owners of
small unnationalized. enterprises. As long as these still
existed, "class struggle remains the law" proclaimed
Gheorghiu-Dej. Naturally, the brunt of the struggle against
those subversive elements had to be borne by the Communist
Party, the Rumanian Workers' Party (Partidul Muncitoresc
Romin, PMR). Here too, Gheorghiu-Dej admitted, there
was room for improvement, although two major purges had
brought down membership from 920, 000 in 19482 to 720, 000
in 1950, and 595, 000 in 1955, and had improved the Party's
social composition and internal discipline. The percentage
of workers, he claimed, had increased from 37% in 1951 to
42. 6% in December 1955, but was still far from the 60a%o
target set in 1950, which was to be achieved by recruiting
80% of new members among the workers. Actually only 48%
of the new recruits had been workers.
4. The obvious difficulties encountered in finding
some 100, 000 Communist workers needed to bring the Party's
social composition u:p to the desired level, an aim which was
vigorously reaffirmed, did not however deter the Congress
1
The "most numerous class, " the kulaks, were estimated to
make up about 2% of the peasantry, that is less than 1% of
the population,
2Ana Pauker is authority for the statement that the Party had
about 1, 000 members in 1944.
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from adopting a revised Party statute, which made the rules
for admission more stringent than heretofore. This incon-
gruity can only be explained by the even greater importance
attached by Gheorghiu-Dej to Party reliability; an explana-
tion supported by the adoption of a number of provisions
intended to stiffen Party discipline, among them being the
creation of regional, raion, and two revision commissions
for closer supervision of Party work.
5. The ostensible cause of the slackening of
Party discipline was to be found, according to Joseph Chis-
inevschi, the chief Party ideologist, in the general mis-
interpretation of the "Geneva spirit," to the effect that from
now on, the class struggle would slacken and the conversion
of capitalism into socialism would proceed peacefully. Natur-
ally, Gheorghiu-Dej called for increased efforts to improve
the ideological level of Party training in order to correct
such mistakes.
6. The Congress brought out some interesting
figures on the strength of the Party apparatus: there were
29, 393 basic units, staffed by 76, 000 Party employees,
and 370 town, raion, and regional committees, led by 11, 000
Party cadres. In the absence of an announcement that the
goal set in 1953 to constitute a Party activ (elite) of 80, 000
to 100, 000 members had been achieved, it follows that the
number of hard core Communists in Rumania at the begin-
ning of 1956 was below 167, 000, that is slightly below 1%
of the population. However, in the absence of any outstand-
ing rival for the Party leadership, they seemed, by compar-
ison with other satellite Communist parties, to constitute a
fairly cohesive "monolith" bonded by self-interest and there-
fore an adequate support for Gheorghiu-Dej's rule. And as
long as there were no'; prominient t revisionists" among the
Party members, as in Poland and Hungary, to break the ice,
the Security troops, who could always count on Soviet back-
ing, were adequate to discourage any manifestation of
popular discontent.
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7. Under the circumstances, the stir created by
the 20th Congress and Khrushchev?s indictment of Stalin
could only be most unwelcome to the Rumanian Communist
leaders who certainly much preferred to let sleeping dogs
lie, Unlike Khrushchev, Gheorghiu-Dej had no dangerous
Stalinist rivals to combat. Moreover, the 2nd Rumanian
Party Congress, anticipating the 20th Soviet Congress, had
only two months earlier voiced most of the standard slogans
on Party unity, collective leadership, Party democracy, and
so forth.
8. Gheorghiu-Dej therefore took his time to make
his official report to the Central Committee on the 20th Con-
gress, at which he had represented the PMR, and his report,
delivered on March 23, 1956, was not published until the 29th
and then only in abridged form. The Rumanian public, at any
rate, was told no more about Khrushchev's indictment of
Stalin than that his "departure from the Marxist-Leninist
concept of the role of personality" had. had a "negative in-
fluence. " This had made possible "the hostile provocative
activity of Beria and his accomplices, " who had extermin-
ated "innocent people, honest cadres of the Party. "
9. Five times more space was devoted in the
published version of the report to Stalin?s virtues, importance,
popularity, and works, than to his shortcomings. Moreover,
Gheorghiu-Dej implied the matter was chiefly of academic
interest to Rumanians, since he could point with pride to the
fact that the Rumanian Central Committee had condemned
the "cult of the individual" as early as 1952 - that is while
Stalin was still alive. This circumstance may explain why
the Committee?s attitude was only made public in 1953.
10. The evil had persisted, however. The best
remedy - for others - was according to Gheorghiu-Dej,
self-criticism, a salutary practice which, together with the
proper combination of Party democracy and democratic cen-
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tralism, he urged his fellow members to follow in the lower
level Party meetings which were to be held to "popularize"
these as well as the other epochal teachings of the 20th Con-
gress on peaceful coexistence, different roads to socialism,
possibility of seizure of power by parliamentary means, and
so forth.
11. In practice, however, these meetings, as
reported in the local press, appear to have been devoted
mainly to exchanges of recriminations between local Party
bosses and envious rivals, the latter usually complaining
that the former decided everything without consulting any-
body, and the former retorting that decisions had to be made
and they could not help it if nobody attended the meetings
called to discuss them. Other favorite subjects of complaint
were suppression of criticism and violations of socialist
legality. Judging by the newspaper accounts, the general
effect of the 20th Congress seems to have been a squaring
of accounts and a temporary revival of Party "democracy"
at the local level.
12. There were, however, significant exceptions,
symptomatic of popular hostility to the regime and its methods.
In a meeting of the Party Council of Constanta, the country's
largest seaport, one of its members - allegedly a former
protege of Ana Pauker - had, according to the local paper
Dobrogea Noua of 29 June 1956, "attacked the Party line,
slandered and defamed the Party, with the evil intent of
weakening the Party's authority and its collective leadership.
What lent significance to this attack was the fact that, accord-
ing to the paper, neither the City nor the Regional Party Com-
mittees had manifested any signs of disapproval of the "anti-
Party and provocative attitude." of the rebel until the next
meeting, which, it was implied, had only been called under
prodding from above to exclude him from the Party.
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13. The report of the Writers' Union1 on the case
of Alexandru Jar et al. revealed the existence in intellectual
circles of a strong demand for liberalization, a "revisionist"
trend as it was to be called later. The report summarized
Jar's address at a :Bucharest Party meeting as follows:
Saying he had led a double life, Jar shame-
lessly attributed these traits to all Party members,
all Communists. He falsely alleged that the Party
educates Communists in a spirit of cowardice . . .
Jar shamelessly made the slanderous remark that
Party members are thinking less and less . . He
opposed the Party injunction that liberalism toward
manifestations of bourgeois ideology must be com-
batted. Jar demanded that there be an end to the
struggle against liberalism. Slandering our intel-
ligentsia which is sincerely attached to the Party
. . . Jar warned that combatting liberalism would
endanger the alliance of the working class and the
intelligentsia . . . Jar presented the literary situa-
tion in a bad light and alleged that in the period
when the building of Socialism started . . . literary
creation reached a disastrous point . . .
14. The report stated that Jar had made the same
slanderous attacks in a recent interview published in Gazeta
Literara and had uttered the "brazen lie" that certain writ-
ers were repressed by the police. Other writers, the report
complained with specific reference to Mihail Davidoglu and
to Jon Vitner, "not only failed to combat Jar's attacks, but
/Vitne7 even stated that he shared a number of Jar's slan-
derous opinions. "
1Text in Scinteia, June 1, 1956.
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15. The report then proceeded to criticize the
Writers' Union's own organ, the Gazeta Literara, for pub-
lishing Jar's interview as well as other articles which "spread
confusion" and for failing to combat manifestations of "bour-
geois ideology. " Two editors of the periodical, Paul Georg-
escu and Veronica Porumbacu, both Communist literary lights,
were charged with failure to fulfill their duties. On the strength
of the report, the meeting of the Writers' Union expelled Jar
from the Party and passed a vote of censure on Vitner and
Davidoglu.
16. The situation in academic circles in Jasi, the
former capital of Moldavia and an old intellectual center, seems
to have also been sufficiently unsatisfactory to call for the dis-
patch to that city of Josif Chisinevschi, generally considered
the Party's leading Stalinist. Under his expert guidance, a
conference was organized at which a number of Party members
and intellectuals castigated the failure of many of their col-
leagues, scientists, artists, and writers, to combat "certain
manifestations which were alien to Communist ideology" not-
ably the "incorrect statements" of Academi1ian Victor Eftimiu,
and of Professors Caraman and Davidsohn. The failure of the
editors of the local literary magazine, Iasul Literar, to dis-
criminate between justifiable criticism and slander of deserv-
ing Party activists and between bourgeois objectivism and
socialist realism was also declared to have been exceedingly
reprehensible. Finally, the report stressed the great need
of improved political work among students, an aspect of edu-
cation which had been sadly neglected by the teaching staff,
the Party organization, and poorly attended to by the inefficient
Union of Working Youth (UTM).
17. Any lingering illusions as to Gheor-ghiu-Dej's
intentions with regard to de-Stalinization in Rumania were dis -
pelled by the report, published in.Scinteia of May 23, 1956, an
a meeting of Party leaders, at which the Party line, fore-
1
Text of the report on the conference proceedings in Flacara
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shadowed by him in his report of March 23, was spelt out.
The "Pauker clique" was identified as the scapegoat for the
"infringements of Socialist legality, " and "violations of Len-
inist norms of Party life" which could not be denied. These
"deviationists, " it was asserted, had played a "great role"
in spreading the "cult of personality, " but as they had al.-
ready been purged in 1952, no government "upheaval" was
necessary now. The only mistake the Party leadership was
willing to admit was its neglect to make public the criticism
of the cult of personality, formulated as far back as 1952 in
the higher Party Councils. That failure, it claimed, explained
the survival of some manifestations of the obnoxious cult, all
traces of which must be uprooted "in the light of the documents
of the 20th Congress. " Obviously, the naming of Rumanian
towns and streets after Stalin or the adornment of public places
with his effigy were not considered traceable to the cult of
personality, for there was no change in the situation.
18. In short, the Rumanian Party leaders took the
line that far from being themselves guilty of excesses, they
had fought them even during Stalin's lifetime and cracked down
on the few black sheep in their midst. It was the guilt, not the
innocence, of their "victims" which now stood affirmed, and
there was no one to rehabilitate - at least no living victim.
It was true, they conceded, that they had kept their light under
a bushel, but the need for discretion during Stalin's lifetime,
they implied, had handicapped them in their endeavors to stamp
out Stalinism at the lower levels before it could spread. Who
could blame them under the circumstances?
19. It may be doubted that this story was believed
by many people in Rumania, but there was no rival leader
with sufficient popularity to challenge it with any chance of
success, least of all.Ana Pauker, otherwise probably the
best fitted to do so. The story, unchallenged, served its pur-
pose perfectly. It enabled Gheorghiu-Dej to pose as a faithful
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observer of the Party line while avoiding at the same time any
debilitating self-criticism and continuing to employ substan-
tially the same methods of government as before.
20. The outward symptoms of the "thaw" in Rumania
were consequently very mild. The president of the Bucharest
Military Tribunal, responsible for a number of political sen-
tences, was reported removed in April. The Ministry of the
Interior announced on June 7 that its personnel was being re-
duced in order to simplify and reduce the State apparatus,
which meant that secret police activities would be curtailed
somewhat. It was said that the Securitate and the Police force
were reduced by 12, 000 men, but that this hardly weakened
the force, as it was naturally the inefficient and unreliable
members who were dismissed. In June also, some of the im-
prisoned Social Democratic leaders whose release had been
requested by the British Labor Party, were set free, and the
offer to return the confiscated property of members of the
German and Hungarian minorities who accepted repatriation
may also have been in some way connected with "liberaliza-
tion. 11
21. An improvement in the situation of workers
was effected by a decree of July 24, which eliminated the pro-
visions of the labor code under which a worker could be trans-
ferred to another locality against his will, without separation
pay or guaranteed housing, and which also granted the workers
some minor financial benefits. The lot of the,peasants was
also somewhat improved, inasmuch as by resolution of the
Central Committee of July 17, 1956, collective farm mem-
bers were promised some advantages, while individual farm-
ers received assurances of continued support. On the same
occasion the Party boasted of its success in increasing the
"Socialist sector" of agriculture, the number of households
belonging to collective farms or farm associations having
increased by one-third, from 390, 000 to 577, 000, in the first
half of 1956.
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22. The regime's persistence in.carrying on the
campaign to "persuade" peasants to join collectives - in the
face of the official admission that the Socialist sector, al-
though it contained 29.3% of the arable area of the country,
contributed only 24% of the marketable produce - was perhaps
the most striking evidence of the regime's doctrinaire ortho-
doxy. Apparently not yet satisfied with the rate of growth of
the Socialist sector, the government set the seal of its ap-
proval on a new and unorthodox type of collective farm which
was stated to have developed spontaneously and could be ex-
pected to prove more attractive. The novel features were
that the peasants who joined retained, title to their land, were
entitled to an annual rental in addition to pay for labor per-
formed, and werei compensated for,the cattle and machinery
they contributed. The main thing was apparently to get the
peasants to join any kind of association. From there on, all
roads lead to full socialization.
23. The proceedings of the Congress of Rumanian
Writers (June 18-23) and of the Congress of the Union of
Working Youth during the following week plainly confirmed
the intention of the government to repress velleities of great-
er intellectual or political freedom wherever they manifested
themselves. The writers were unequivocally reminded that
"socialist realism" was the only permitted. form of art, and
the students, among whom the Party Central Committee had
found serious shortcomings such as "lack of patriotism,
mystic prejudice, . . . and manifestations of moral decay"
due to inadequate political indoctrination, were endowed with
a new and inclusive Students' Association, remaining however
within the framework of the Union of Working Youth.
The Impact of the Polish and Hungarian October on Rumania
24. It goes without saying that the news of the
October events in neighboring Poland and Hungary, although
Rominia Libera, September 25, 1956.
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heavily censored, caused considerable excitement in Rumania,
particularly among workers and students. In countries where,
as in Rumania, "the thaw" had been exceedingly mild, little
reliable information is obtainable, but some instances of un-
rest are undeniable and these justify the conclusion that there
were others of which no news leaked out. For example, the
workers of the Grivita Rosie Railroad shops in Bucharest, a.
Communist stronghold under the old regime, held a protest
meeting on October 26 in which they declared their willingness
to help the Hungarian workers if their resistance were "truly
socialist, " and demanded for themselves higher wages and
trade unions with sufficient freedom to struggle for the improve-
ment of the workers' situation.
25. Students at the Bucharest University held meet-
ings in which speakers protested against the courses in
Marxism-Leninism and obligatory Russian classes. In the
Transylvanian city of Cluj over a hundred students, mostly
of the Hungarian language university, were arrested, either
as the result of, or to forestall, overt demonstrations. The
reports of a strong current of sympathy for the anti-Soviet
movements abroad and of considerable unrest in Rumania,
sent by Welles Hangen, New York Times correspondent in
Bucharest, and other reports appearing in French and British
newspapers, were indignantly denied by the Rumanian press,
but against these denials can be set the following facts:
A group of important Rumanian officials re-
turned from a visit to Belgrade on October 28, two
days earlier than expected, and President Groza,
who was convalescing at his country home, was
likewise called back to the capital;
1For example in Scinteia of November 17, and Rominia
Libera of November 21, 1956.
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On October 30, substantial increases in min-
imum wage rates, family allowances, and pensions
were granted by decree;
First Deputy Premier Miron Constantine scu,
shortly to be appointed Minister of Education, in an
otherwise comminatory speech at Cluj on November
5, promised. that the government would give, atten-
tion to the problems of overloading of the university
curricula, compulsory attendance in the case of
"certain subjects, " norms of the teaching staff, and
the improvement of students' living conditions;
Khrushchev himself told a Moscow youth meet-
ing on November 8 that the Rumanian Communists-,
had at some unspecified time, noted "an unhealthy
state of mind among some of the youth in the educa-
tional institutes" and had decided "to speak frankly
with the students and with some of their parents. "
On another occasion workers had said to the students
of an institute: "If you do not like our order, which
was acquired without blood, then please go and work,
and in your place others will come to study."'
The Minister of Education and his two deputies
were replaced, the ministerial post being taken by
Miron Constantinescu, 2 considered at the time one
of the top ranking Communist leaders.
In Cluj, the streets were patrolled by military
forces during the critical days of the Hungarian up-
rising.
1The same threat was used by Minister of State Marosan to
intimidate the Hungarian students in the event of the first
anniversary of the October Revolution.
2Rominia Libera, November 18, 1956.
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26. There appears to be therefore sufficient cir-
cumstantial evidence to justify the conclusion that in Rumania
too feelings ran high in October and November 1956, but that
the regime managed by timely concessions and a show of force
at critical points to head off violent outbursts, long enough to
allow the irresistible onslaught of the Russian tanks on the
Budapest rebels on November 4 to produce its sobering effect.
Unrest Combatted by Economic Concessions
Z7. Neverthtless, the regime must have had good
reasons to consider the popular mood sufficiently dangerous
to call for still further conciliatory measures. It may not
have been a simple coincidence that these were preceded by
a conference in Budapest between Gheorghiu-Dej, Premier
Chivu Stoica and Janos Kadar. The communique" issued on
November 24 announced the two governments' complete agree-
ment on foreign and domestic policy cemented by a Rumanian
loan to Hungary of 60 million rubles. As it turned out, this
noble gesture was not to cost Rumania very much, for
Premier Stoica left Budapest ahead of the rest of the delega-
tion, picked up a group of leading economists in Bucharest,
and hurried to Moscow to follow the Hungarian example and
apply for substantial financial and economic assistance.
28. A joint declaration, issued in Moscow on
December 3, 1956, stressed the "full accord in the evalua-
tion of the present international situation" - presumably con-
sidered disquieting for the Communist bloc - and announced
that "because of this year's poor grain crop in Rumania" the
USSR had agreed to lend her 450, 000 tons of wheat and 60, 000
tons of fodder. The USSR also agreed to postpone payment of
the 1957-1959 instalments on Rumania's earlier debts and to
supply Rumania with iron ore, coke, and other goods in ex-
change for unspecified items, and to provide technical aid
and plans for new chemical and oil installations in exchange
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for a claim on their output. The declaration also confirmed
that the Soviet troops would remain in Rumania.
29. Fortified by these assurances of economic aid
from the USSR, Gheorghiu-Dej was now in a position to follow
the general Orbit pattern of attempting further to reduce the
causes of discontent by :another round of economic benefits,
the 19.53 and October 1956 rounds having obviously proved
inadequate and political concessions being ruled out after the
events of October. The new program, embodying drastic
revisions of the economic plan, was contained in a lengthy
report submitted by Gheorghiu-Dej to a Central Committee
Plenum which met from December 27-29.
30. The proposed revisions chiefly affected the
investments in heavy industry, the unsatisfactory wage struc-
ture, the "excessive centralization" in the management of the
economy, and the compulsory delivery system. Gheorghiu-
Dej admitted frankly that the regime had failed to raise living
standards to the extent promised, heavy industry having pros-
pered at the expense of agriculture and consumer goods, as a
result partly of poor planning and partly of the bad harvest of
1956. He proposed that the Second Five Year Plan be revised
and funds channeled from heavy industry into consumption, as.
the implementation of all the planned investments "would
demand efforts in the economy which would hinder implementa-
tion of the provisions for raising the workers' living standards.
"Therefore we propose that some provisions in
the directives be reexamined so as to reduce state
investments in the period of 1956-1960. . . The
volume of investment must assure the continued.
development of Socialist industry, but at a slower
pace corresponding to the real resources and possi-
bilities of the economy . . . We must guide our
efforts toward the massive development of agricul-
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tural production, light and food industries and
housing construction, to which the raising of the
workers' living standards is now directly linked.
31. Although minimum wages, pensions, and family
allowances had only recently been raised, Gheorghiu-Dej
admitted that "for a large part of the workers, earnings are
at an unsatisfactory level. " The level of the wage scale was
too low, he said, and "had ceased to be the decisive element
in the income of the workers, " thus reducing the workers'
interest in increased productivity, but he also found fault with
wage differentials and the bonus system and other forms of
incentive. The result of the proposed wage reform, and
revision of norms, Gheorghiu-Dej asserted, would be that
"the average wage scale for the entire economy will rise by
an average of 36%. The net increase in average LactuaF/
income will be about 15% . . . "
32. Gheorghiu-Dej also outlined :the plans for
industrial decentralization, a modest forerunner of the reform
Khrushchev was to put through in the USSR some months later.
The managements of Socialist enterprises were to have "wider
possibilities and rights in compiling economic plans and in
distributing some of the income. " The number of "plan
indicators" was to be considerably reduced, the distribution
of 2, 500 products was to be transferred from the jurisdiction
of Ministries to that of enterprises, and "the planning and
management of the wage fund" was to an increased extent to
be made "the direct responsibility of ministries and enter-
prises, " the State Plan setting only the total wage fund avail-
able to each ministry. Enterprises of local importance -
consumer goods, construction, and service enterprises - were
to be placed under the jurisdiction of the local people's coun-
cils.
33. The increase in peasant income was to be
achieved by the abandonment of the compulsory quota system,
which, Gheorghiu-Dej recognized, had in recent years begun
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"to make the development of agriculture difficult. " Compul-
sory delivery quotas were to be retained only for meat and
wool produced by individual farmers. "The replacement of
the compulsory quota, system with contracting and procure-
ment, " Gheorghiu-Dej emphasized, "must be accompanied
by an increase in the quantities of industrial goods for the
villages. " Needless to say, Gheorghiu-Dej's proposals were
adopted unanimously.
34. The 1957 budget, submitted to the National
Assembly in March, revealed that the improvement of the
standard of living was to be achieved by a reduction in de-
fense outlays, (to 8. 2% of total expenditures) an 8% reduction
in total outlays for development of the national economy
among them, capital investments were 29. 2% lower - but an
11% increase in agricultural outlays and substantial increases
in allocations for social and cultural purposes.
35. Somewhat puzzling at first sight was the fact
that the allocations for the consumers' goods industry were
cut more sharply than those for producers' goods industry,
but it was explained that it had been thought preferable to im-
port consumers' goods from abroad where they were better
and cheaper with the receipts from the export of a larger
amount of agricultural products. What was not admitted was
the fact that this meant the return by the Communists to the
practice they had so violently denounced when followed by
their capitalist predecessors.
36. Any illusions as to political liberalization that
might have persisted after the Hungarian repression, were
dispelled by the conference called by the Moscow leaders in
Budapest from January 3-6, 1957, which was attended by
most of the satellite chieftains. 1 The Conference served.
1
The failure to invite.Gomulka was easy to explain, but not the
failure to invite Ulbricht or Hoxha. Whatever the reasons, the
GDR and Albania subsequently approved the Budapest commun-
iqu6.
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notice. on the malcontents that the USSR would not be deterred
by adverse criticism from crushing any revolt. It defiantly
reaffirmed the correctness of Soviet policy in Hungary, and
called for increased cohesion of the socialist camp as well
as for vigilance against the West. These and similar themes
formed the Leitmotivs of the Rumanian leaders' campaign
speeches preceding the National Assembly elections on Febru-
ary 3, 1957.
37. Prime Minister Chivu Stoica, in his outline of
the government program to the National Assembly on March
19, confirmed the regime's good intentions with respect to
the material interests of the population, announced by Gheor-
ghiu-Dej, and gave some details on the impending decentral-
ization of the economy. This was to be attained by a reduc-
tion in the number of Ministries through mergers and a
broadening of the jurisdiction of the people's councils. The
latter were indeed given, by a law of March 22, the manage-
ment of some 4, 000 industrial plants of local importance,
and responsibility for public utilities, and smaller building
enterprises, as well as greater authority in the fields of
public health, education and culture; but with regard to the
major industries, decentralization implied no weakening of
central control. All it did was to "centralize" the decision-
making power of the overburdened Council of Ministers.
"Fewer in number, but with increased authority, the Minis-
tries will be able to solve independently the problems arising
in their fields and . . . to improve the standard of work of
the state apparatus, " explained the Minister introducing the
bill.
38. There was good news too in the field of foreign
relations: Rumania and the USSR signed on April 15 a status
of forces agreement which contained the written assurance
that the temporary stationing of Soviet troops in Rumania in
no way affected Rumanian sovereignty..
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39. The visit of Gheorghiu-Dej to Sofia at the begin
ning of April 1957 provided an opportunity to reaffirm the
strict orthodoxy of the Rumanian and Bulgarian Communist
Parties. In their final declaration, they asserted that Com-,
muhism was indissolubly linked with proletarian international-
ism and was an implacable foe of nationalism and the "nation-,
al Communism" propagated by the "imperialists." The two
leaders promised "the utmost strengthening of the ideological
vigilance of the Communist and Workers' parties, an intransi-
gent fight against opportunism and reformism, against any
attempt at revising revolutionary Marxism, against national-
ism and other influences of bourgeois ideology in their ranks. "
The July 1957 Purge
40. Gheorghiu-Dej's. condemnation of opportunism,
among other sins, did not, of course, prevent him-from tak-
ing advantage of the favorable opportunity presented by the
Moscow purge of the "sectarians and dogmatists, " the "anti-
Party" group of Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, and Shepilov,
announced on July 3, 1957, to get rid of his most prominent
and troublesome colleagues and possible rivals. On the fol-
lowing day, the Rumanian press carried a communique` of the
Central Committee of the Rumanian Workers' Party, stating
that a plenary meeting had "liberated Josif Chisinevschi from
membership in the Political Bureau and from his position as
Secretary of the Central Committee, and Miron Constantinesc.u
from membership in the Political Bureau. "
41. The Central Committee resolution, the full text
of which was published on July 9, contained three sections:
a review of the "accountability report" delivered by Gheorghiu-
Dej on the subject of Party developments "in the light of the
teachings of the 20th CPSU Congress"; a list of the principal
tasks facing the Party; and the indictment of Chisinevschi and
Constantine scu.
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42. The two men were accused in the first place
11 of "fractionist activities, " of: "suppressing all criticism, "
of "mocking and humiliating Party members who dared to
have their own ideas, " of "disseminating the cult of person-
ality . and especially the glorification of Ana Pauker,
of "a dogmatic attitude in basic problems of Party work,
and "of having exerted pressure" to make the Party "stage
trials" of "many basic cadres.
43.. In the second place, Chisinevschi and Constan-
tinescu were accused of
''. . having aimed at giving the discussions within
our Party of the documents of the 20th Congress an
orientation which was opposite to that established by
the Central Committee's Plenum of March 1956,
which would . . . have weakened the Party's unity
. and would have given free reign to petit bour-
geois nationalism, would have undermined the policy
of the Party and of the state. In this respect the
events in Hungary are full of lessons ... . At the
same time they aimed their attacks against the state
security organs. If the Party's leadership had not
rejected their attacks, they would have resulted in
the paralyzing of these organs whose. task is to fight
against. the enemies of the people's democratic
regime . . The Plenum deems that the position of
Comrades Josif Chisinevschi and Miron Constantin-
escu led to liberalism as regards the basic require-
ments of the activity of a Marxist-Leninist Party. "
44. It was true, the resolution concluded, that "in
front of the Plenum they admitted their grave violations, but
they did not make a profound analysis of these mistakes and
violations, did not point out their causes and roots.''
45. At first sight, it would appear that Gheorghiu-
Dej had performed the remarkable feat of satisfying both the
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Stalinists and the liberals, for Chisinevschi and Constan.tin-
escu were being punished for right-wing as well as left-wing
deviations. However, if the charges are examined more
closely, it becomes evident that the charges of "Stalinis:m'Y
all refer to the pre-March 1956 period, and that even these
seem of dubious validity. The main accusation was support
for the Ana Pauker group, but the fact that Gheorghiu-Dej
represented her in March 1956 as the Rumanian incarnation
of Stalin is no proof of its justification. In fact, the Pauker
group had been indicted in 1952 mainly for having opened the
Party gates too freely to bourgeois elements, for having
opposed forced collectivization and favored a policy of econom-
ic assistance to private farmers, and of diverting capital in-
vestment to agriculture and small industry, a policy which
Gheorghiu-Dej was to adopt himself barely a year later - under
the "New Course" following upon the death of Stalin, it is true.
46. This leaves as the only "Stalinist" count the
charge of having pressed for trials of Party members. How-
ever, no concrete evidence is adduced, and indeed demands
for trials of Party members are.not necessarily proof of
Stalinian paranoia. They may prove the exact opposite.
47. On the other hand, the resolution claimed that
Chisinevschi had been severely criticized by the Party for
"petit bourgeois reformist conceptions" as far back as in
1954, and all the charges brought against Chisinevschi and
Constantinescu for post-March 1956 activities are of having
supported "liberal" measures.
48. The impression, widely held after the brief
3 July announcement of the demotion of the two men, that the
episode signified a blow at "Stalinism" seems, ,therefore, in
the light of the full text of the Plenum resolution, to have been
mistaken. The error. was undoubtedly due to the fact that the
Moscow purge was over-hastily thus interpreted - presumably
on account of Molotov's inclusion - and that Chisinevschi, at
any rate, was generally considered a "Stalinist. "
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49. The conclusion one may draw is that Chisin-
evschi's reputation was either unfounded, or else that he had,
like Schirdewan in the GDR, had a change of heart in 1956.
Actually, it makes no difference in this case whether Chisin-
evschi was or was not a "Stalinist." The chief mistake for
which he and Constantinescu - were ostensibly ousted from
the Political Bureau was "liberalism" consequently their
removal could only signify, if anything,. a hardening of the
Party line. The real reason for their removal was undoubted-
ly resentment of their frequent criticisms of the policies and
decisions of Gheorghiu-Dej.
5.0. It seems reasonable to assume that, no more
than Khrushchev or Ulbricht, would Gheorghiu-Dej have
brought the split in the Party leadership into the open unless
there had.been a serious danger that his opponents, if un-
checked, would have been able gradually to win over suffi-
cient Politburo and Central Committee members to their
program to threaten his leadership. That Chisinevschi and
Constantinescu were not merely congenital carpers but had
a definite program was admitted by the July 3 Plenum resolu-
tion which said, inter alia, that
1 1 . . . utilizing anti-Party fractionalist group methods
they carried out discussions outside the Party organ
to which they belonged with the aim of establishing a
common platform. They tried also outside the Party
organ, to make other members of the Political Bureau
join their anti-Party stand and incited certain comrades
against others . " .
But the "danger of fractionism" had fortunately been averted
by the Plenum's timely action.
51. The Resolution also admitted that
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. . during these discussions [of the 20th Congress
decisioj' and especially during the events in Hungary
there were certain isolated manifestations of confusion
and hesitation, influences of the demagogy of wavering
and anti-Party elements which reared their heads in
Hungary and in other places, as well as influences. of
imperialist propaganda.
52. The patent falsehood of the furither assertion
that "the Party organs and organizations, all Party members,
combatted and firmly rejected these unhealthy manifestations"
is sufficiently proved by the subsequent condemnation of Chis-
inevschi and Constantinescu's attitude precisely during the
post-March 1956 period.
53. The conflict between the two men and Gheorghiu-
Dej's group on ideological grounds was undoubtedly strongly
exacerbated by personal animosities. Chisinevschi and Con-
stantinescu, a Ph. D. , were the only two intellectuals in the
Politburo and they had undoubtedly flaunted their superiority
somewhat too freely, especially Constantinescu, as betrayed
by the complaint in the Resolution that "he showed petit bour-
geois haughtiness, conceit, and arrogance, " and that both had
"mocked and humiliated Party members who dared to have
their own ideas. " Needless to say, Constantinescu was re
lieved shortly after the Plenum of his duties as First Deputy
Premier and Minister of Education. Why he, the alleged
liberal, had been entrusted with the task of curbing student
unrest only seven months earlier remains an enigma.
54. Another section of July 3 Plenum Resolution
was devoted to the usual self-laudatory review of recent :Party
achievements. It noted with satisfaction that the industrial,
production plan had been overfulfilled by 5% in 1956 and 7% in
the first quarter of 1957; that the "experimental application of
the improved wages and norm-fixing methods resulted in a
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broad activation of the workers, engineers, technicians, and
employees of enterprises"; that the abolition of compulsory
deliveries of agricultural products had had very good effects
on peasant morale and had greatly consolidated the worker-
peasant alliance; that the socialist sector in agriculture now
comprised about 41% of the country's agricultural land; and that
the intellectuals were "carrying out fruitful activity in the field
of science, art, and culture and . . . supporting with confidence
the policy of the Party and government. "
55. The Party's correct line was proved, according
to the Resolution, by the fact that it had "taken up positions
against the cult of personality" and "demonstrated /its7 capacity
to master and creatively apply Marxism-Leninism in accordance
with concrete conditions in our country. " It had also "taken a
determined stand . . against the attempts aimed at revising
and distorting /The Marxist-Leninist teachings" presumably
by Chisinevschi and Constantinescu in the first place.
56. The last section of the Resolution was devoted
to the enumeration of the principal tasks facing the Party.
They remained very much the same as before: the strengthen-
ing of the Party's unity and iron discipline and of the Party's
ties with the masses; the development of socialist democracy
by widening the jurisdiction of the people's councils and of the
economic units, but also by "consolidating the organs of the
state apparatus which have the task of defending the revolu-
tionary achievements of the people, the security of the state,
the property of society and of the citizens" - in other words,
by strengthening the police; improvement of the "activity of
the organs. of justice, because many of them are showing im-
permissible lenience toward thieves, embezzlers, speculators,
and hooligans"; development of the economy and raising of the
working people's living standards, chiefly by increasing pro-
ductivity and reducing production costs which.were unfortunate-
ly not decreasing, as well as by "convincing the working peasants
to take the road to socialism"; raising the level of ideological
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work, by helping, among other things, "tactfully and patient-
ly the old school intellectuals to be guided in their creative
work by the ideas of Marxism-Leninismrr., and last but not
least, "strengthening the unity of the Socialist camp led by
the Soviet Union.
Attitude of the Intellectuals
57. The admonition to help the "old school intellec-
tuals" to see the light was translated into practice by Scinteia,
the official Party organ, in an article published on August 2,
1957. It listed a number of publications which had conspicuous-
ly failed in their duty to "take a stand against manifestations of
bourgeois ideology in their fields. " These included Cercetari'
Filozofice, Probleme Economice, Teatrul, Film, and also
Contemporanul, the latter being the social and cultural mouth-
piece of the regime, which Scinteia accused of having published
"various bourgeois theories without combatting them with suf-
ficient arguments . . . It is necessary to show the intelligentsia,
the broad public and especially the youth, how false and anti-
scientific all these theories are . . . But attention to this im-
portant task has weakened lately
58. Rumanian artists and intellectuals were thus
notified that the light thaw which has been allowed to prevail
in the intellectual field in most of the Orbit after the 20th Con-
gress was over in Rumania too. The reason became clear a
few weeks later when Khrushchev's three speeches on the lim-
its of intellectual freedom were published. The regime, how -
ever, must have had good reasons for not considering the bat-
tle for the mind of the intellectuals already won, especially
where the demand for intellectual freedom combined with
nationalism to form a particularly explosive mixture. At any
rate, the Party deemed it expedient to stage a spectacular
Regional Committee meeting in Cluj, the seat of the Hungarian
University, which, except for the survival of the victim, was
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strongly reminiscent of the show trials of the Stalin era. As
related in full detail in Scinteia (October 16 and 17, 1957), the
highlight of the meeting was.a confession to, and abjuration of,
the errors of nationalism and. chauvinism, by a member of the
Hungarian minority, Professor Lajos Jordaky. He confessed
that although his thoughts had for more than ten years been
poisoned by nationalism and he had decided to rid himself of
the poison, the same error reappeared during the Hungarian
Counterrevolution when he had sympathized with Nagy and the
Petbfi Club members. It was not until January 1957, that he
realized that the apparent revolt was actually a counterrevolu-
tion. Having then discovered within himself the roots of na-
tionalism, he was "determined to extirpate them.
59. Why he had waited ten months to make this
important announcement, or why he was making it at all,
Jordaky failed to explain. But one may surmise that it was
the result of a bargain with the Security Police, which hoped
thus to warn other nationalists. Actually the incident served
more to focus attention on the fact that in the Hungarian min-
ority in Rumania, nationalism, that is anti-Rumanian as well
as anti-Russian sentiment, continued to flourish, seemingly
unaffected by proletarian internationalism.
Anti-Subversion Penalties Stiffened
60. Those whose errors had passed from the stage
of thought to that of action were not to be let off with mere
self-criticism. A decree published in the official gazette of
September 30, 1957, raised the penalty for "propagandizing,
agitation, or any other activity to change the social order"
from a minimum of six months and a maximum of three years
in jail, to from three to ten years, and the maximum penalty
for "taking part in international or foreign or ganizations aimed
at overthrowing the democratic government, " from five to
twenty-five years.
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61. The same decree also reintroduced the death
penalty for offenses "committed to the detriment of public
property or the national economy, " such as embezzlement or
theft of public property, when they were "of a particularly
grave nature. " Punishment for "speculation" - any unauthor-
ized private trading had already been made more severe by
a decree of July 16, 1957. The practice must have spread
considerably, since, in the spring, taxes levied on small
private traders, chiefly in food, and rents for stalls in the
free markets in which peasants sold produce, had been raised
to prohibitive heights. The immediate result of the stiffer
penalties and intensified police activity was naturally a scarcity
of a number of products, such as meat and edible oil.
62. The July decree also considerably increased
the penalties for begging and vagrancy, for prostitution and
hooliganism - the latter offense so broadly defined that it gave
the police almost unlimited powers to make arrests, while
scrupulously observing socialist legality.
63. Finally, the decree provided for the establish-
ment of an allegedly new system of Corrective Labor Colonies,
run by the Security Police, in which convicted offenders were
to serve their sentences, running from six months to five years.
Since the difficulty experienced by the government in recruiting
sufficient labor for its ambitious reed-processing project: in the
Danube Delta marshes was well known, it was generally believed
that the new decree's real purpose was to revive and legalize the
methods which had once served to provide slave labor for the
notorious Danube-Black Sea Canal project, abandoned after
Stalin's death.
64. In the educational field, new rules governing
entrance requirements to institutions of higher learning were
announced on July 31, 1957. The most interesting provisions
were the exemption of workers' children from the requirement
to pass entrance examinations and the possibly related fact that
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the list of subjects of which applicants were expected to have
some knowledge no longer included the Russian language.
Land Socialization
65. On October 20, 1957, the press was able to
announce triumphantly that Constanta region had become the
first entirely collectivized region in Rumania. While there
is no evidence that direct political or administrative pressure
was used in this or other regions, indirect administrative and
economic pressure must have been particularly strong to ex-
plain the conversion of so many peasants in so short a time.
At the beginning of 1956, only 41, 000 of the 115, 000 peasant
families of the Constanta region had been members of collec-
tive farms or of the much less "progressive" agricultural
associations On July 4, 1957, Scinteia announced that com-
plete "cooperativization" had been achieved, 55% of the peasant
families being members of cooperatives, and 45% of agricul-
tural associations. Three and a half months later, the latter,
52, 000 strong, had allegedly changed their minds voluntarily
and switched to collectivization. The paper conceded that the
volume of propaganda had been tremendously stepped up, but
it failed to list any new arguments which might have explained
the sudden conversion of so many peasants.
Survival of Limited Artistic Freedom
66. In one field only was there no serious attempt
by the regime to backtrack, namely the plastic arts. Exhibi-
tions of paintings by hitherto banned pre-Communist artists
and of contemporary painters whose works did not strictly
conform to the standards of "socialist realism, " continued to
be permitted, with only an occasional warning growl from the
Party press. The regime presumably calculated that it need-
ed some factual proof of its professed "anti-sectarianism"
and that the portrait of a pretty girl or a spring landscape was
the evidence of liberalism least likely to endanger its political
power.
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Hard Political Line Reaffirmed
67. In a speech to Party members in Bucharest,
strongly endorsing the Moscow Declaration and Manifesto. of
November 22, 1957, Gheorghiu-Dej made it clear once more
that in all important matters, such as "revising the Party's
political line, undermining the unity of Party ranks and dim-
inishing the Party leadership . . . undermining Socialist
democracy" he would brook no "liberalism" and "capitulation
to alien ideology. "1 It was therefore not surprising that the
amnesty proclaimed on December 29 exclusively benefited
common criminals.
68. The absence of any rumors of further dissidence
within the Party seemed to prove that Gheorghiu-Dej's threat
had been effective and that dissenters, if there were any left,
had been successfully cowed. When therefore the Party Cen-
tral Committee Plenum met June 9-13, 1958, it seemed to be
a routine affair, an opinion hardly shaken by the mention. in
the final communique' of June 14, of a decision to strengthen
Party discipline, unity and composition, and stressing the
necessity to combat revisionism and bourgeois ideology. All
the greater was the surprise caused by the June 27 Scinteia
editorial, which revealed the Plenum's demand "that Party
organizations unfold a merciless struggle against any anti-
Party manifestations, which certain dissolving, anarchic,
and career-seeking elements which have infiltrated into the
Party would try to attempt, " and that consequently, the Plenum
had "unanimously condemned the anti-Party deeds of certain
Party members and adopted statutory sanctions against them."
69. Four alternate members of the Central Com-
mittee, the most prominent among whom were Constantin
Doncea and Iacob Cotoveanu, were expelled from that body
as well as from the Party, and it was implied that four more
1Radio Bucharest, 17 December 1957.
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Party members, who were severely criticized, lost their
memberships. Although all of them were accused of personal
shortcomings, such as "anti-Party, dissolving activities, "
"unscrupulous career-seeking, " "opportunism, " and "personal
ambitions, " the preceding condemnation of revisionism and
bourgeois ideology as well as other indications makes it
obvious that the latter were the real reasons for their fall
from grace. At first sight it might seem that, considering
the official condemnation of revisionism, this heresy would
hardly commend itself to an ambitious careerist. But history
shows that even in the Communist Party, a man may advance
his fortunes by winning the sympathies of the rank and file.
70. To console those who might have deplored the
loss of Party members, Scinteia announced that the number
of PMR members and candidates had increased since Decem=
ber 1955 from 595, 000 to 720, 000 and the percentage of mem-
bers who were workers in industry and agriculture from 62 to
69%. The paper also confirmed the solidity of Gheorghiu-Dej's
position by being careful to mention, when extolling the merits
of the Politburo, that it was "headed by Comrade Gheorghiu-
Dej. "
Economic Situation at the Turn of the Year 1958
71. Fortunately, for the regime as well as for the
people, the weather had been extremely favorable for agricul-
ture in 1957. The grain harvest reaching a record 11.5 million
tons, exceeding the previous best harvest (1955) by over 15%.
Nevertheless expenditures budgetted for agriculture in 1958
rose from 4 billion lei in 1957 to 5. 3 billion. Social and cul-
tural expenditures were nearly 50% higher than in 1956, while
industrial expenditures were 15% lower. On the other hand,
publication of the 1957 State Plan report revealed that social-
ist orthodoxy was being respected, inasmuch as the increase
over 1956 in the production of means of production had been
11%, as against 5. 1% for consumer goods. The report also
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stated that the revision of the wage and norm system had been
completed, and that "the average nominal wages of the salary
earners rose by approximately 10%, " thereby tacitly admitting
that their real wages had not improved. As the report also
claimed that the 1957 production plan had been overfulfilled by
6. 7%, exceeding the 1956 figure l y 8. 5%6, and that labor pro-
ductivity had increased by 8. 3%, the workers could have justi-
fiably expected a corresponding increase in real wages, on the
strength of the constant assurances by the regime that wage
raises were tied to increases in productivity. But although
there has been no subsequent mention of wage raises or of
price reductions, there have been no reports of unusual un-
rest among workers.
72. On the other hand, the intensified collectiviza-
tion drive appears to have provoked peasant resistance, at
least in some parts of the country. There certainly was trouble
calling for the presence of troops in villages around Focsani
in the beginning of 1958, and the closing to diplomats of the
entire area between Focsani and Galati seems to support the
rumors of more widespread unrest in other areas less fre-
quented by foreigners, chiefly in Northern Moldavia and in
Constanta region around Tulcea. Although Gheorghiu-Dej, in
his exhaustive report to the Agricultural Conference which met
in Constanta on April 4-5, 1958, reiterated the Party's and the
government's decision to punish severely anybody in authority
who disregarded standing orders to refrain from any attempt
at coercion, he himself admitted that violations had occurred
"recently in some parts of the country. Some overzealous
officials had, he said, used "pressure methods" instead of
"political persuasion work. " Resistance to these on the part
of the victims would have been only natural, and even legiti-
mate from Gheorghiu-Dej's own point of view. He could, how-
ever, hardly be expected to say so, for official approval. of;.
revolts against abuses of the regime might set a dangerous
precedent.
IRadio Bucharest, February 25, 1958.
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73. It would, of course, be impossible to tell to
what extent "pressure methods" were responsible for the -
at first sight impressive - gains in the socialization of agri-
culture reported by Gheorghiu-Dej to the conference. Since
the Second Party Congress in December 1955, which had de-
cided that by 1960 the socialist sector of agriculture had to
become "preponderant, " and up to March 1, 1958, the number
of peasant families members of collective farms or of agri-
cultural associations had jumped from 386, 853 to 1, 528, 578,
and the socialized area from 1, 334, 764 to 3, 830, 376 hec-
tares. In other words, three times as many peasants had
joined in the last two years as in the seven preceding years,
bringing the number up to 45% of the total peasant population,
and the "socialist cooperatist sector" to 37% of the country's
agricultural area. State farms accounted for an additional
15.4% making the grand total of socialized land 52.4%.
74. Upon closer examination, the regime's success
appears much less impressive. Gheorghiu-Dej, for the first
time, revealed the breakdown of the r'socialist- cooperatist
sector, " showing that of its 1, 528, 578 members, only 398, 246,
that is roughly one quarter, belonged to the collective sector;
the others belonged to "agricultural associations r' or "produc-
tion cooperatives, " in which the peasants retain the owner-
ship of their land and cattle, but pool the land to be worked as
a unit, in theory at any rate. In practice, although the bene-
fits of working large fields by machines supplied by the State
Machine Stations seem obvious, many association members,
at least those who owned the necessary equipment, appear to
have carried on just as before. This was frankly conceded
by the newspaper Dobrogea Noua of August 11, 1956, under
the revealing caption: "On Paper, yes, in Practice, no. if
The paper asserted that in many agricultural associations,
the strips of land were formally pooled to satisfy the statu-
tory requirements, after which everybody farmed his portion
of the land as he thought fit, but benefitted "unreservedly
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from the advantages granted by the state to agricultural asso-
ciations. " Although much less frankly, Gheorghiu=Dej him-
self admitted that in too many associations farming was still
carried out on the old individual basis.
75. Actually, considering the numerous financial
and other advantages enjoyed by "socialist-cooperatist" peasants
and the difficulty of feeding draught animals on small farms in
hot and dry climates, one should have expected many more
peasants to have joined the associations than actually did, Their
reluctance is probably to be explained by the inability of the gov--
ernment tractor pool - 20, 700 reckoned in conventional 15 HP
units 1 - to cope even with its present tasks, and only a very
definite material advantage could offset peasant suspicion of
agricultural associations. However far these organizations
may be from real socialist agriculture and however easy it
may be to evade their modest requirements, the peasants know
from Gheorghiu-Dej himself that in the eyes of the regime the
agricultural associations are merely the first step toward the
"higher" forms of socialist agriculture. The step may be only
a short one, but for the peasant, it is a step in the wrong direc-
tion. This explains why in spite of "pressure methods" and the
material inducements offered by the government, 55% of the
peasant population is still holding out.
76. A further proof that pressure, both direct and
indirect, is used, in spite of official disapproval - alleged at
any rate - may be found in the fact mentioned by Gheorghiu-
Dej, that agricultural socialization figures showed tremendous
differences, all the way from 10% to 100%, even in neighboring
raions under practically identical conditions. Gheorghiu-Dej
attributed these discrepancies to the different levels of explan-
1Less than half the tractor power per acre of the USSR.
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atory and persuasive work by the Party officials. Neverthe-
less, as the arguments in favor should be pretty generally
known by now, it seems much more likely that the uneven-
ness of progress is chiefly due to.the varying amount of pres-
sure applied by the local potentates, ranging from the use of
naked force admitted by Gheorghiu-Dej - but with no mention
of having cracked down on the offenders - to the use of "special,
but not very obvious, economic measures, " as a Hungarian
writer on farm collectivization put it. 1
77. The lack, in practice, of the vital inducement
of higher yields, which large scale socialized farming should
in theory certainly provide, was indirectly confirmed by
Gheorghiu-Dej himself. All he could say to bolster his claims
in favor of socialized agriculture was that 40% of the collective
farms had obtained yields some 20% higher than the national
average, which was not saying very much for this privileged
group, but he gave no figures for the much larger group of
agricultural associations, although the figures were certainly
available to him.
Review of Rumanian Developments Since the Twentieth Con-
gress
78. The history of Rumania in the two years which
followed upon Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin contrasts
sharply with that of her satellite neighbors, Poland and Hun-
gary. It was as uneventful as theirs was dramatic. How is
that to be explained, since Rumanians are certainly every bit
as opposed to Communism as Poles or Hungarians, and after
a long history of invasions, pillage and dismemberment at
the hands of the Russians, have as good reasons as the Poles,
and better reasons than the Hungarians, to fear and to dislike
their powerful and brutal neighbors? The historical and
INepszabadsag, May 8, 1958.
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national factors which might have a bearing on the subject
will be dealt with more fully in a later chapter, but some of
them may be briefly mentioned here.
79. Although the history of Rumania is there to
prove that Rumanians are quite as nationalistic and independ
ence loving as any of their neighbors - or, for that matter,
as Africans or Asians - their success in maintaining their
Latin character while most of their neighbors were slavicized,
their final liberation from Ottoman power and .later from Russian
hegemony, have produced a curious mixture of fatalism and
canniness in the Rumanian character. However black things
may seem to look at one .time, Rumanians console themselves
with the saying: Rumanians will never be destroyed. This,
serves as good justification to avoid fighting unless and until
the odds look favorable. Educated Rumanians also like to
think that as members of a Latin, or, at least, a 1Latinized
race, they are, in the words of Orville Prescott, endowed
with "a Latin realism about the harsh necessities of life" and,
therefore, are politically more rational than Slavs or Hungar-
ians, while among the lower classes, Haiduk-style warfare,
by no means extinct in the Balkans, has long been a lost art.
80. As a result of earlier disappointments, public
opinion in Rumania was also more skeptical than in Hungary
as to the chances of assistance from the West in case of con-
flict with the USSR. Hungary, unlike Rumania, had not had
in 1939 an allied guarantee which was not lived up to, nor had
she suffered another bitter disillusionment in 1944. Further-
more, as a result of geography, the feeling of being hopeless
ly isolated from the West is much stronger in-Rumania than
in Poland or Hungary, not to mention Yugoslavia. On the other
hand, an ingrained distrust of their Russian neighbors, whether
1New York Times, June 23, 1958.
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Tsarist or Communist, precludes any illusions in Rumania
as to the Russians' willingness to loosen their grip on any
territory they had grabbed, unless obliged to bow to superior
force, which the West seemed most unlikely to supply.
81. Among the differences between Rumania and
the two other satellites may also be mentioned the fact that
the conflict between Church and Party did not exist there.
Unlike the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church is completely
subservient to the regime.
82. Finally, Rumanians are respectful of consti-
tuted authority and, compared to many other nations, easy to
govern. Lacking the conspiratorial and revolutionary tradi-
tions which the Poles had developed under the Russians and
Germans, and the Hungarians under the Austrians, the great
majority of Rumanians - the exception being the Transylvanians
.ar.e much more prone to circumvent than to challenge the
powers that be.
83. There were also important differences in the
political factors influencing events in Eastern Europe in 1956.
By the time of the Twentieth Congress, the "thaw" had been
allowed to proceed very far in Poland under the dying Bierut.
In Hungary, the Nagy interlude had given the liberal opposition,
both within the Party and among the intellectuals, the oppor-
tunity to gather strength and popularity. In Rumania, there
was no equivalent to Gomulka or Nagy and Gheorghiu-Dej
never allowed the reins to slacken. There were in March
1956 no cracks in the dam through which, after Khrushchev
had exposed Stalin's lies and crimes, the-rising tides of Tito-
ism and anti-Stalinism could have poured and carried it away.
84. Gheorghiu-Dej undoubtedly belonged to the
school of dictators who always have believed that "total dic-
tatorship cannot become partial dictatorship" and that
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"freedom is not a commodity capable of being rationed" as
C. L. Sulzberger put it. 1 Nevertheless dictatorship did not
necessarily imply for him the monstrous excesses of which..,
Stalin had been guilty and which, like all excesses, did more
harm than good to the Party and the cause. As a matter of
fact, Gheorghiu-Dej seems to have been somewhat less.ruth-
less and cruel than most of his colleagues in the other satel-
lites, as exemplified by the leniency shown to the "deviators"
Ana Pauker, Luca, and Georgescu, ousted in 1952 - while,
Slansky and ten associates were being executed in Czecho-
slovakia. This leniency did not, however, extend to Patras-
canu, executed in 1954. It must be admitted, however, that
from his point of view Gheorghiu-Dej was right not to spare
Patrascanu. Unlike Slansky, Patrascanu was indeed a na-
tional Communist. If alive in 1956, it is very likely that he
would have played the same part in Rumania as Gomulka and
Nagy in their countries. After his death, national Commu-
nist or liberal members of the Rumanian Workers' Party had
no courageous, able, and popular leader around whom to. rally
and to form a cohesive group which might have been able to
gain a majority in the Central Committee. Gheorghiu-Dej
certainly proved himself to be endowed with considerable
prudence and acumen in his handling of the Pauker-Luca-
Georgescu deviation. The accusations against them were
left so vague and contradictory that he could, after Stalin's
death, make out that Ana Pauker and Luca had been the prime
exponents of the detestable "cult of the individual. " This
offered a number of advantages. By blaming others, he thus
inferentially not only exonerated himself, but emerged as a
forerunner of Khrushchev in the fight against Stalinism. More-
over, by dubbing them accomplices, not victims of Stalinism,
he was relieved of the painful necessity to sap his own author-
ity by rehabilitations, as Rakosi for example was forced to do.
1New York Times, May 14, 1958.
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85, Other factors which may help to explain the
comparative quiet which prevailed in Rumania in 1956 are the
economic situation and Gheorghiu-Dej"s personal standing.
86. The 1955 harvest had been very good and al-
though the 1956 harvest was much less so, the food supply was
still adequate in November, at which time Gheorghiu-Dej fore-
stalled a shortage by obtaining a large amount of grain on
credit from the USSR. Economic conditions in Rumania, al-
though still very bad, seem to have been slightly on the upgrade
in 1956, which was not the case in Poland for instance.
87. Personally, Gheorghiu-Dej does not appear to
have aroused the violent animosity inspired by such colleagues
as Chervenkov, Rakosi, and Ulbricht. In Rumania, the targets
of popular hostility were Ana Pauker and Chisinevschi when
they were in power, and today, it appears to be directed more
against Chivu Stoica than against Gheorghiu-Dej. With regard
to the two former, Gheorghiu-Dej may have profited from the
popular belief that had it not been for him, a man of pure
Rumanian stock and who had never left the country, Ana Pauker
and Chisinevschi, the Moscow-trained Stalinists of Jewish
blood, 1 would have made life even harder for the people. How
it has happened that Chivu Stoica, an obvious second fiddle, is
now made the scapegoat for the unpopular measures of the re-
gime is hard to explain, unless it be simply a matter of person-
ality.
88. That Chisinevschi and Constantinescu should
have failed in their attempts, if the July 3, 1957, Plenum
Rumanians, like most other Eastern Europeans, generally
assume, if only tacitly, that a Jew cannot help resenting dis-
criminations or persecutions from which Jews have suffered
in their country and will instinctively seize the opportunity,
when in power, to avenge his brethern,
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Resolution is to be believed, to give the Party discussion of
the Twentieth Congress decisions "an orientation which was
opposite to that established by the March 1956 Plenum, " -
presumably to engage in no significant liberalization - is not
surprising. Chisinevschi as a Jew could hardly lead a nation-
alist movement, and Constantinescu was apparently too arro-
gant and caustic to be a popular leader. If they did indeed
try to achieve a liberalization of the Party line, they failed
to secure a sufficiently large following and it was therefore
easy for Gheorghiu-Dej, in full control of the Political Bureau
and of the Central Committee composed of spineless medi-
ocrities, to deal with the non-Party opponents, chiefly intel-
lectuals and students, who demanded greater freedom. He
had prudently refrained from any far-reaching weakening of
the security apparatus. There was apparently only a slight
reduction in forces after the Twentieth Congress, and even
that did not survive the October events in Poland and Hungary.
On the other hand, the spirit of the times appears to have man-
ifested itself in Rumania to the extent of a slight increase in
the freedom of artistic and literary expression and of a moder-
ate abatement of police terrorism. Khrushchev had made it
plain that indiscriminate arrests, tortures, and executions
were no longer approved in Moscow. Repression could still
be severe, but it should be just, at any rate, according to the
Communist idea of justice, and to that extent Gheorghiu?-Dej
was willing to conform.
89. How wise Gheorghiu-Dej hadbeen never to give
the opposition a chance to "jell, " to have taken the Twentieth
Congress resolutions, notably the resolution dealing with dif-
ferent roads to socialism, with a large grain of salt, and not
to have allowed his authority to be weakened by criticism -
still less by self-criticism - was amply demonstrated by the
difference between developments in Rumania and in Poland
and Hungary in the fall of 1956. The July 3, 1957, Central
Committee Resolution frankly admitted that if it had not been
for the fact that the leadership had not allowed the Party's
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unity to be compromised, had not "given free rein to petit
bourgeois demands," and had not allowed the security organs
to be "Paralyzed, " events in Rumania might well have dupli-
cated those in Hungary. Even allowing for a desire to blacken
its opponents, this was certainly a remarkable admission of
its unpopularity on the part of a Communist Party.
90. A factor which, for obvious reasons, the Resol-
ution did not mention, but which paradoxically played a part in
preventing an uprising in Rumania in the fall of 1956, was pre-
cisely the Hungarian uprising. It.was true the Hungarians set
a tempting example and undoubtedly did encourage the mani-
festations of unrest in Rumania. But even in Cluj, where ow-
ing to the large Magyar minority, the impact of the Hungarian
Revolution was greatest, the antagonism between Rumanians
and Hungarians effectively paralyzed the student body. To be
successful, any anti-regime movement had to be undertaken
jointly, but however illogically, the belief gained ground
among Rumanians that the victory of the Hungarian revolution-
aries might very well entail the loss of Transylvania to Hun-
gary. In part, the belief was founded on the recent experience
of a group of Rumanian students from Cluj who had been invited
by the Budapest University Student Council to be their guests
during July and August 1956. Their stay was short, for dis-
satisfaction with the treatment they received from their hosts
led to complaints which provoked a violent quarrel, in the
course of which Hungarian students boasted they would soon
liberate Transylvania from Rumanian rule, with the help of
the Hungarian students in Cluj. Naturally enough, the out-
break of the Hungarian Revolution two months later seemed to
confirm the existence of a well laid plan, especially as Hun-
garian "revisionist" statements made at the time by Hungarian
rebels could be construed as applying to revision of the Trianon
frontiers, and not of Communism only. Under these conditions
collaboration between the students was impossible. Not only
was the incipient movement of revolt among the Hungarian
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students in Cluj easily suppressed by the authorities, but
suspiciousness of ultimate Hungarian aims which had rapidly
spread in the rest of the country played its part in dampening
Rumanian inclinations to rebel.
91. Nevertheless, and in spite of the firm policy
he had bragged about, Gheorghiu-Dej must still have had good
cause for alarm. His prompt steps to obtain Soviet economic
assistance, to raise minimum wages and pensions, to increase
the share of the consumer goods industry, and to abolish com-
pulsory farm deliveries, can hardly have been a simple coin-
cidence. But there was of course no question of political con-
cessions to the people, and as far as the Party was concerned,
the Plenum Resolution of July 1957 besides removing
Gheorghiu-Dej's chief opponents and critics - strongly con-
demned revisionism, but never mentioned dogmatism or sec-
tarianism. No better illustration of the gradual rehabilitation
of neo-Stalinism - defined as harsh one-man rule, but without
indiscriminate physical liquidation or torture - could have been
given than the reappearance in the Rumanian May 1957 celebra-
tions of small portraits of Stalin. On that occasion, they were
carried in the parade at a respectful distance behind those of
Marx, Engels and Lenin, but on August 23, 1957, Stalin's pic-
ture once again ranked as high as theirs. The only difference
between the pictures some diplomats claimed to have noticed
was a layer of ingrained dust which it apparently had not been
possible to remove.
The Situation in Rumania in the Spring of 1958
92. On the surface everything seems quiet in
Rumania, but this calm does not indicate that the Rumanian
people are reconciled to Communism. In spite of recent very
modest improvements, the workers share with the other city
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dwellers the hardships of low incomes, high prices, 1 and
appalling housing conditions, and view with probably justi-
fied alarm the impending revision of work norms. The
peasants, although pleased by the abolition of forced deliver-
ies, strongly resent the heavy pressure, which, whether by
incessant propaganda or by more concrete means, has been
brought to bear upon them to make them join the socialized
sector of agriculture. It is true most of them get away with
membership in an agricultural association, and often only
nominal membership at that, but it would take an unusually
naive peasant not to realize that this is only a preparatory
step toward something much worse. They know that only by
ridding the country of Communism can they ever feel safe.
93. The. great majority of Rumanian intellectuals
have remained faithful to their "idealistic" training and con-
victions. Forced to earn their bread, many writers "escape
into the past . . . toward the historic void, " as the Rumanian
Writers' Union Committ e complained in its report on the
February 1958 session.
"We find _/He Committee continued that in recent
years fewer novels were written about the collectiv-
ization of agriculture, the great national building
projects, and the life of workers in factories, al-
though the number of such novels should have in-
creased . . . There exists an extremely dangerous
tendency in poetry to slide toward minor themes,
1
The New York Times correspondent, reporting from Buch-
arest, stated that a Bucharest saleswoman would have to work
two weeks to earn the price of a cheap pair of shoes, and a
month for a sweater. (New York Times, February 27, 1958).
2Scinteia, March 5, 1958.
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toward apolitical and timeless poetry .. .. The
main danger is the influence of bourgeois. ideology
which on the practical side leads toward the under-
estimation of our achievements, toward evasionism,
petty bourgeois criticism, and negativism, and on
the theoretical side toward the revision of the Lenin-
ist principle of Party-mindedness. "
94. The hopes of the regime that a new generation
of Communist-trained intellectuals would soon be available to
fill the places of their incorrigible elders seem doomed to be
disappointed. The Rumanian youth has shown itself fully as
refractory to Communist indoctrination as Polish or Hungar-
ian youth. Scinteia Tineretului, the Party youth organ, ad-
mits the continued existence, among students, in spite of the
Politburo decision of June 19:56, of "serious shortcomings
. . . in the field of political education, it of "political and
ideological confusion.. . . The bad influence of cosmopoli-
tanism, chauvinist nationalism, and mysticism can still be
felt. Certain students manifest political passiveness.
95. Conditions among high school pupils are no
better. Here the Bucharest branch of the Union of Working
Youth (UTM) found "serious weakness in Ltheir/ political
education. " Even "many UTM members do not know . .
the elementary problems concerning the policy of our Party
and state . . . Influences of bourgeois ideology, mysticism,
and obscurantism become manifest among some pupils. "
As for the claim to "unshakable unity of the Party" and its
immunity to "revisionist diversion" of the kind which had
"smoothed the way for the counterrevolution . .. in Hungary,
which, the 27 June 1958 Scinteia editorial boasted, had been
1
Scinteia Tineretului? April 3, 1958
2Ibid.
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achieved by the "elimination of the anti-Party group /_Chisin-
evschi. and Constantine sc" it was given the lie by the editor-
ial itself. A few paragraphs further down, it announced the
ouster of eight party members for precisely these activities.
Although not belonging to the top leadership, most of them had
held important posts and all were old time Party members.
The significance of the episode lies in the fact that they were
not accused of open opposition to the Party line; rather they
appear to have been, among other things, the sort of members,
berated in the editorial, "who are satisfied with declaring
their agreement with the Party's decisions but forget about
them next day . . . " It is permissible to conclude from
spec~fic charges, such as that of "having become the mouth-
piece and instruments of the enemies of the policy of the Party,
or of having been guilty of "opportunist manifestations incom-
patible with the Party line, " that not only did they "forget"
the Party decisions, but they flouted and criticized them in
their own fiefs, although not daring to oppose them in full
dress meetings. It is safe to assume that the victims of the
June 1958 purge, far from being the only guilty members,
were actually typical of the majority of the Party membership
and were only either more imprudent than their fellows, or
simply unlucky in being chosen as scapegoats. The lesson
may make the lucky ones more careful in future, but can hard-
ly be expected to make them change their minds or feelings.
96. With surprising candor, the editorial further
revealed that the sanctions were not the consequence of recent-
ly discovered misdeeds or of changes of attitude on the part
of the eight miscreants, but were being applied largely for
their failure to help the Party to "unmask certain alien and
hostile elements" or for "failure to take a stand in the face
of damaging manifestations of certain anti-Party elements;"
in the context, this can only refer to Chisinevschi and Con-
stantinescu, demoted in June 1957. That raises the question
why no steps were taken immediately to curb their nefarious
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activities, which instead were allowed to continue for a full
year? It is difficult to explain the regime's inactivity other-
wise than by the assumption that the attitude for which the.
Doncea group was expelled wasp so general, that it has become
"accepted" as unavoidable by the top leadership itself -
provided most of the leaders did not even secretly sympathize
with it. But unfortunately for Gheorghiu-Dej, the evolution in
Moscow was in the opposite direction and by June 1958 he was
forced to line up with Kadar and Gomulka and to give fresh
proofs of his loyalty. The corollary of the mystic belief of
Rumanians in their indestructibility is, be sides a feeling of
superiority as Latins over the Slavs whom they had been, able
to absorb, a tendency to make rather light of foreign occupa-
tion, on the theory that this is just another transient phase
which, however unpleasant, will do no lasting damage to the
nation. Consequently to fight against hopeless odds would be
not only foolish, but injurious to the national interest. Better
bend, Rumanians believe, and live to see another day than
stiffen and be broken by overwhelming force. A favorable
opportunity is bound to present itself sooner or later, and the.
more one beguiles one's enemy in the meantime, the better
one's position when the time comes to rise against him.
97. Moscow correctly realized that the chances of
a Rumanian uprising under present world conditions were
exceedingly small and that the presence of Russian occupa-
tion troops was therefore unnecessary. Remote control was
quite as effective. On the other hand, troop withdrawal was
good propaganda - in the neutral and fellow travelling world,
not in Rumania, where it could make little difference, for,
if necessary, Russian tanks can be back in Bucharest in a
few hours, and bombers in a few minutes. Indeed, it is sur-
prising that the Kremlin waited till May 26, 1958, to make
the move. The probable explanation is that until recently,
the Russian policy was to negotiate with the West on, the basis
of quid pro quos. As the unilateral abandonment of atomic
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tests shows, this policy has now been changed. But, that the
Russians do not feel absolutely sure of the Rumanians seems
to be proved by the fact that the Rumanian army is, besides
the Hungarian, the only satellite force which has not been
equipped with the newer Soviet T-54 tanks.
98. Their peculiar attitude toward foreign occupa-
tiang and its ideological corollaries undoubtedly explain why,
with few exceptions, Rumanians, including leading Party
members, give the impression of not taking Soviet Commu-
nism seriously. In the words of a British correspondent,
speaking about a group of young engineers; "Like most
Rumanians, they wore the trappings of Communism lightly.
This may explain the absence in Rumania of anything compar-
able to. the shock produced among Communists in most other
satellites by Khrushchev`s revelations of Stalin's mistakes
and crimes. Those who have no illusions cannot be disillu-
sioned,
99. As they had already shown after the First
World War, when they adopted for the sake of political advan-
tage the forms but not the spirit of parliamentary democracy
for which they were not yet ready, Rumanians are adept at
mimicry. It is largely to this talent that they ascribe the
fact that alone of all the Eastern European states, the Ruman-
ian Principalities managed to escape annexation by one of the
great neighboring Powers ever since their foundation seven
centuries ago.
100. A public spectacle like the state funeral in
January 1958 of the Chief of State, with all the pomp of the
Orthodox Church, in a deeply religious atmosphere, and with
an attendance of a million people, is hardly conceivable in a
country whose rulers were all convinced Marxists. It would
1London Times, May 28, 1958.
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seem as if the funeral provided all Bucharest, rulers and
ruled alike, with a welcome pretext to resume their natural
color for a day.
101. There are indeed people in Rumania who be-
lieve Gheorghiu-Dej has national Communist inclinations.
The theory seems to be bolstered by the somewhat independ-
ent line taken at times by Rumania in her relations with Yugo-
slavia and the US.
102. Rumania's attitude toward Yugoslavia, ever
since this country's reconciliation with the USSR in 1955, was
friendlier than that of the other Bloc countries, except Poland,
during the period of renewed tension between Moscow and Bel-
grade which followed. In the words of the Yugoslav journal
Politika (December 29, 1957), "Rumanian- Yugoslav friend-
ship has been considerably strengthened during the past two
years and the relations between the two countries have been
exceptionally fruitful. " . Lately, on the occasion of the furor
provoked by the publication in. April 1958 of the Yugoslav
Party program draft, Rumania was the last to criticize Yugo-
slavia, and when she did so, the Scinteia article of May 18
was comparatively mild and free from abuse. It ended with
the assurance that the Rumanian Workers' Party would
"continue to spare no efforts to strengthen the unity of the
Communists . . . " and declared that it was "necessary that
Yugoslavia should also make such efforts. " It was only after
Khrushchev's violent diatribe against the League of Yugoslav
Communists at the Seventh Bulgarian Congress in June 1.958
that Rumanian statements on the subject became sharper.
103. In its relations with the West, and more
especially with the US, the Rumanian government has also
distinguished itself among the satellites by its, efforts, inter-.
rupted only for about a year after the Hungarian Revolution,
to establish more cordial relations, chiefly in the fields of
commercial and cultural exchanges and. of tourism.
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104. While it is certainly true that this friendlier
attitude toward Yugoslavia - the only neighbor with whom
Rumania has never been at war - and a deep longing for cordial
relations with the Western Powers do indeed correspond to the
authentic traditions and feelings of the Rumanian people not
excepting the Communist leaders themselves, it is very doubt-
ful that they constitute manifestations of independence from
Moscow. If Moscow had considered the relative mildness of
Rumanian criticism of Yugoslavia as a dangerous symptom
of independence,: some thinly veiled warnings would at the very
least certainly have been carried by Pravda or the Moscow
Radio. There have been none, whereas Moscow's broadcasts
to Poland have repeatedly included comments on Yugoslav
"errors, " written especially for Polish consumption. On the
other, hand, the Rumanian government immediately changed
its tone when the Soviet break with Tito became serious.
105. The reason Khrushchev tolerated Bucharest's
friendly relations with Belgrade may simply have been that
so long as the Soviet -Yugoslav breach was not complete, it
suited him to have a reliable agent on good terms with the
potential troublemaker. At the same time, this tolerance
served to bolster the myth of satellite independence, at no
great risk to the USSR. As. for the advances of the Rumanian
regime to the US, they are certainly honest but they seem to
aim chiefly at establishing an atmosphere in which the US
might be willing to make unreciprocated concessions advan-
tageous to Rumania. Even if Moscow is aware of these
Rumanian pourparlers, there is no particular reason why it
should object, especially if these unpublicized conversations
are carried on to the accompaniment of violent diatribes
against the US in the Party press.
106. Whatever the correct explanation of Bucharest's
foreign political divergences from the. strict Moscow pattern,
it can be taken for granted, in the absence of corroborative
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evidence of greater moment, that they are, if not encouraged,
at least not disapproved by the Kremlin, which must consider
them within the bounds of permissible "national peculiarities. "
Particularly in the matter of relations with Yugoslavia, the
more obvious instance of divergence, there can be no doubt
as to which of the two countries' - the USSR or Yugoslavia -
friendship would be more valuable to Gheorghiu-Dej. That
would leave only one possible motive - national pride. But
why should pride manifest itself so late, and why in connec-
tion with an issue of so little importance to Rumanians?
107. The fact that the Rumanian regime's different
attitude toward some foreign countries can hardly be con-
sidered a sign of national Communist tendencies, is, however,
in itself no proof that Gheorghiu-Dej is not a national Com-
munist at heart. For, if he were so inclined, he would hardly
give himself away prematurely by manifestations of insurior-
dination under the present inauspicious circumstances. East-
ern European leaders, men of much higher character than
Gheorghiu-Dej and his associates, have often in the past
played a double game to escape annihilation in times of tur-
moil, while biding their time. Salus patriae suprema lex.
108. It is, indeed, only reasonable to assume that
Gheorghiu-Dej, like anybody else in his place, would rather
occupy a position of independence like that of Tito than be at
the Kremlin's beck and call, but he certainly would rather be
a Soviet pro-consul in Bucharest than a refugee in a Yugo-
slav Embassy. In order therefore to risk displeasing Moscow
in any way, Gheorghiu-Dej would have to be convinced that he
could, if not defy the Russians, like Tito, at least, like
Gomulka, maintain himself in power without Soviet backing.
109. But the Communist Party machine in Rumania
is not strong enough and the regime is too unpopular to be
able to maintain itself unaided. The only way it could gain
some measure of popularity would be by defying the Russians.
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But that would mean, as the Hungarian experience has proved,
Russian armed intervention, which, as Khrushchev has made
clear during his April 1958 visit to Hungary, Moscow would
repeat, in spite of all propaganda drawbacks. Moscow knows
perfectly well that far from being, as in the case of Poland,
forced by the overriding raison d'etat to side with Russia out
of fear of Germany, Rumania, through raison d'etat - fear of
Russia and the loss of Bessarabia - would inevitably be drawn
into the arms of the West. Even less than a neutral Hungary,
is Moscow likely to tolerate a neutral Rumania, whose neutral-
ity could never be sincere.
110. There would therefore be no way out of the
dilemma for Gheorghiu-Dej, any more than there was for Nagy.
His only chance of being accepted by the people, would be to
ass'ert his independence from Moscow. But if he did, he would
be crushed. Nagy could at least entertain the illusion that
Moscow might not dare break its pledges of non-intervention
and non-aggression, and, as Khrushchev has admitted, Mos-
cow did have serious misgivings on that score. Ghe:orghiu-
Dej can have no illusions. Forewarned is forearmed.
111. Neither does there appear to be anyone in the
Rumanian-Communist Party who might wrest the leadership
from Gheorghiu-Dej, and as precedents show, the initiative
for revisionism, for a "liberal" revolt against the leadership
must come from the Party ranks themselves. The masses
are powerless. Moreover, a would-be national Communist
in Rumania could'not but be discouraged by the fact that few
of the reforms achieved by successful national Communist
movements in neighboring countries are either of interest
to Rumanians or have endured. In Rumania, there is no con-
flict between the Church of the great majority of the people
and the regime, nor has there been any interest shown in
challenging the Soviet brand of Marxism-Leninism on ideolog-
ical grounds as Tito has done. Other achievements, such as
workers' councils, or freedom of the press, have not survived
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very long in Poland. Finally, the sharpest thorn in the flesh
of captive nations, the Soviet garrisons, has already been
removed in Rumania. It may be true that their removal
beyond the Pruth makes little practical difference as far as
Soviet control is concerned, but.their presence on the other
side of the border can hardly be protested as an insult to
national pride.
112. That leaves for Rumania but few, points of prac-
tical significance among those included in her neighbors'
national roads to socialism. The most important is forced
socialization of agriculture. However, so long as the govern-
ment is content with membership in simple agricultural asso-
ciations, even this problem is probably not too explosive,
especially since the abolition of forced deliveries in Rumania,
a most unpopular requirement still in force in Poland. In any
case the peasants are too dispersed to be much of a threat to
any regime, and it may be taken for granted that the defenders
of individual farming find little support eden among the more
humane and decent of the Party members. Owing chiefly to
Rumanian climatic and demographic conditions, some s.olu -
tion to the problem of dwarf holdings was even more urgent
than in the other satellites, and nothing much can be said
against the agricultural association solution, even if the
majority of the peasants do prefer to be left alone and would
rather be free than prosperous.
113. The remaining possible advantages of national
Communism are greater personal freedom and greater scope
for craftsmen and small business activity. But national Com-
munism does not per se guarantee greater personal freedom,
and it is less risky t:o expand small business by black market
operations and bribery of officials than by provoking the Rus-
sians.
114. It seems therefore that after witnessing the
Hungarian tragedy, the gradual erosion of the Polish road to
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socialism and of Polish "sovereignty", the rather dubious
practical benefits of Titoism, and the decreasing chances of
Western assistance - paralleled by a stiffening of the Soviet
attitude - the more liberal members of the Rumanian Com-
munist Party would have to be unusually mercurial or foolish
to start any trouble. As for the non-Party members, the
people, their attitude is sufficiently characterized by their
use of the words "we" and "they" when referring to themselves
or the Communists. But they are most unlikely to fight against
overwhelming odds for the sake of replacing Khrushchevism
with Gomulkaism, Nagyism, or Titoism, for they hate Com-
munism and Russian domination in any form or degree. Only
when their chances to get rid of them in every shape are
reasonably favorable will they make the attempt. It may take
a long time, but history has taught them patience and confidence
in their powers of survival.
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