No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Rumanian Communist Leadership
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
Extract
The clash of Eastern and Western influences, which was of particular significance in the history of the Rumanian people, could not fail to leave its imprint also on the Rumanian Socialist movement. Socialism was first introduced into Rumania in 1874 by some Rumanian intellectuals who had fled from Bessarabia, a province of Tsarist Russia. Marxian ideas, in their more extreme form, were brought to Rumania in 1875 and following years by Nathan Katz (Dobrogeanu-Gherea) and other Russian political refugees who had established themselves in Iaşi, the capital of Moldavia. But the political maximalism and the internationalist orientation of these refugees soon met the opposition of the more moderate and nationally inclined Rumanian intellectuals, who had been educated at Western universities and were influenced by the reformist ideas of the Social Democratic movement in the West.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1961
References
1 See Seton-Watson, R. W.,A History of the Roumanians (Cambridge, England, 1934)Google Scholar; see also Wilkinson, William,An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia(London, 1820);Google Scholar also Iorga, Nicolae,A History of Roumania, trans, from the 2nd enl. ed. by McCabe, Joseph (London, 1925).Google Scholar
2 Concerning the beginnings of the Socialist and labor movements in Rumania see Ghiulea, N, “Labour Organizations in Roumania,” International Labour Review, IX, No. 1 (January, 1924), 31–49.Google Scholar See also Roberts, Henry L.,Rumania (New Haven, 1951), pp. 243–4.Google Scholar
3 SeeThe Roumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, Special Report, Radio Free Europe, Munich, Germany, May, 1960, p. 1.
4 According to preliminary official figures of the 1930 census there were 1,387,719 Mag-yars in Rumania, or 7.67 per cent of the total population; 722,000 (4 per cent) Germans; 984,213 (5.2 per cent) Jewish minorities; 550,000 (3.05 per cent) Ruthenians; 184,000 (1.7 per cent) Bulgars; and 230,000 others (1.3 per cent) including Russians. Quoted by Roucek, J. S.,Contemporary Raumania and Her Problems (Stanford, 1932), p. 188.Google Scholar
5 See Eliade, Pompiliu,De I'influence francaise sur I'esprit public en Roumanie (Paris,1898).Google Scholar
6 See Resolution of V. World Congress of the Comintern on National Questions in Central Europe and the Balkans in Thesen und Resolutionen des V. Weltkongress der Kommunistischen Internationale (Hamburg, 1924), pp. 124–33.
7 The Rumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, op. cit.,p .3
8 For a comparison of Stalin's struggle against the intellectuals and ”doctrinaires” in the Jugoslav Communist Party at that time see Tomasic, D. A.,National Communism and Soviet Strategy (Washington, D.C., 1957), pp. 21 ff.Google Scholar
9 The biographical materials used in this paper have been collected by the Rumanian research and evaluation unit of Radio Free Europe, Munich, Germany, according to a plan developed by the author while he served as Chief of Evaluation and Research in that institution. The biographical sketches of the present top leaders of the Communist Party of Rumania have been published in the special report The Rumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, op. cit., pp. 15-47. See also the paper An Analysis of the Elections at the Third Rumanian Party Congress, Radio Free Europe, Munich, Germany, July, 1960, pp. 23–25.
10 There was a long tradition of unrest and strikes among the railway workers in Rumania dating from the beginning of the labor movement in that country.
11 Sovietization of Rumania was foreshadowed in October, 1944, in an agreement between Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and Stalin, according to which the Soviet Union was “to have ninety percent predominance in Rumania …” Churchill, Winston S,Triumph and Tragedy (Boston, 1953), pp. 227–28.Google Scholar
12 Gheorghiu-Dej's maneuvering and techniques in consolidating his personal power have been very similar to the tactics used by Stalin in his own rise to the undisputed leadership of the Bolshevik Party.
13 It was Lenin who had conceived the top party leadership as a closely integrated group of “a dozen” like-minded people.
14 The Rumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, op. cit., pp. 15–18, 25–31, 35–38. See also “Biographical Sketches of Leading Communists,” in Romania ed. Fischer-Galati, Stephen (New York, 1957), pp. 344–50.Google Scholar
15 A “party instructor” is an expert in party organization as well as party supervision, whose function is to check on the work of party cadres in an institution or an area.
16 The Rumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, op. cit., pp. 23-25; An Analysis of the Elections at the Third Rumanian Party Congress, op. cit., pp. 23–25.
17 Concerning Kremlin agents in the top leadership of the Communist Party of Czecho-slovakia see Tomasic, D. A.,Communist Leadership and Nationalism in Czechoslovakia(Washington, D.C.: Institute of Ethnic Studies, Georgetown University, 1960).Google Scholar
18 The Rumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, op. cit., pp. 18 ff. See also “Biographical Sketches of Leading Communists,” op. cit., pp. 344 ff.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Concerning such an “outer ring” in the Czechoslovak Communist Party see D. A. Tomasic,Communist Leadership and Nationalism in Czechoslovakia, op. tit.
23 The Rumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, op. cit., p p. 31–33, 39–42, 43–46. See also“Biograph ica l Sketches of Lead i ng Commun i s t s ,“ op. cit.
24 Ibid.
25 There are at present about 1,500,000 Magyars in Rumania comprising about 8.6 percent of the total population. Cf.Romania ed. Stephen Fischer-Galati, op. cit., p. 54.
26 In the party and government changes in March, 1961, I on Fazekas was removed from the Secretariat and was appo i n t ed Minis ter of Food Indus try .
27 The Rumanian Workers' Party on the Eve of Its Third Congress, op. cit., pp. 31 ff.
28 Concerning the failure of such attempts by the Soviet Union to interfere in the top leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia see D. A. Tomasic,National Communism and Soviet Strategy, op. cit., pp. 115 ff.
29 An Analysis of the Elections at the Third Rumanian Parly Congress, op. cit., p. 8.
30 Ibid.,Appendix II, pp. 12–18.
31 Concerning the versatility of the leading party functionaries in the Soviet Union, particularly in the Ukrainian Republic, see Armstrong, John A.,The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite: A Case Study of the Ukrainian Apparatus (New York, 1959).Google Scholar
32 An Analysis of the Elections at the Third Rumanian Party Congress, Appendix II,op. cit.
33 Compare the participation of industrial managers versus party officials in the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, in Granick, David ,The Red Executive (New York, 1960), p p. 312-14.Google Scholar
34 An Analysis of the Elections at the Third Rumanian Party Congress, Appendix II, op. cit.
35 Ionescu, Cf. G., “The Pattern of Power,” inCaptive Rumania ed. Cretzianu, Alexandre (New York, 1956), pp. 390–407.Google Scholar
36 On middle and lower levels of the party hierarchy this isolation might be achieved through a system of temporary tenure in the leading party position in an area. Concerning nich a system in the Soviet Union, particularly in the Ukrainian Republic, see John A. Armstrong,The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite, op. cit.