TOTALITARIANISM IN ROMANIA

VI. THE STALINIST PATTERN

The investigation of the Romanian communism puts almost impassable obstacles in the researchers' way as the available information is poor, fragmentary and often misinterpreted. And unlike other ex-socialist countries - prominent witnesses of policy are only now publishing their memoirs or opinions about the events they have lived through. Official statistics have to be taken into consideration only under strict caution and this is even more as far as Marxist historiography is concerned. None of the epochs had only bad sides, even the migration has brought positive things. The functions of the social body can be slowed down, perverted but never totally blocked regardless of the political regime.

• ECONOMY

  • Marxism-Leninism was considered from the very beginning an instrument for modernising the society, capable of building a new one devoid of the flaws of the old one. The principles of the economic Stalinism were proclaimed by the Romanian Communist Party at the National Conference in October 1945. They couldn't be put into practice until the fall of the monarchy and the full power was taken. After the removal of these obstacles the speed the policy could be applied accelerated:
    
    
  • In June 1948, 1060 industrial and mining enterprises - representing 90 per cent of the country's output - as well as the insurance companies and banks were nationalized.
    
    
  • In 1948 health institutions, the film houses and cinemas were nationalized.
    
    
  • In 1949 pharmacies, laboratories and chemical enterprises followed them into being nationalized.
    
    
  • In 1950 part of the housing resources was nationalized.
    
    
  • By the end of the 50's private consulting rooms, restaurants, taxis and shops had become state property.
    
    
  • In 1948 the first annual economic plan was made up, in 1949 the second, followed in 1950 by the first five-year plan (1951-1955).
    
    
  • 1949 was the year when the Romanian Communist Party started collectivising agriculture, an action which needed 13 years for completion. The period 1949 - 1953 was extremely harsh for peasantry, about 80,000 rebellious peasants were arrested by the communist authorities. The number, as was admitted by the party after the completion of the collectivization , must actually have been much bigger. Apart from this direct repression, the regime also used indirect pressure in order to convince the villagers to join agricultural associations or collective farms: compulsory fixed quotas were established in 1951 representing from 20% to 60% of the peasants' products - and were paid for at very low prices fixed by the state.
    
    
  • The application of such economic measures slowed down in 1956 due to fear a rebellion similar to that in Poland or Hungary should break out. The planned growth rate for industry decreased from 10 - 12% in 1956 to 3.8% in 1957 and the compulsory quotas for corn, potatoes, sunflower and milk were abolished.
    
    
  • The new course, a period of stabilization and consolidation for the party, lasted only until 1958, when the Stalinist economic pattern was again put into practice with even more fervour, both in agriculture and industry.
    
    
  • The plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in November 1958 declared the country ready for a general effort of socialist modernizing with a view to develop machine-developing industry and siderurgy.
    
    
  • By its decisions the plenary session also represented an answer to Russia's plans for integration and economic division among the satellite countries and the beginning of the conflict with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
    
    
  • The building of the integrated iron and steel works in Galati became a symbol of returning to the policy of forced industrialization foreseen by the plenary session. According to the previsions of the six-year plan (1960-1965) 78% of all investments were to be made in the energy (32%), metal-working (23%) and chemical (23%) industries.
    
    
  • As a result of such a policy the figures point to some economic progress as compared to 1938, especially with regard to the industrial branches in group A (chemical, metal-working, machine-building).
    
    
  • However, the food industry hardly made progress, like most of the branches in group B. The growth rate of industry overall was at first 15.1% (1950-1955), decreasing then to 9.7% (1955-1958) and stabilising between 1958 and 1965 at 13-14 per cent.
    
    
  • This rapid pace was reached, first of all, by imposing a very high accumulation rate from the national income, respectively 17.6 per cent (1951-1955), 16 per cent (1956-1960) and 24 per cent (1961-1965).
    
    
  • In comparison with 1954-1957, when the investments in agriculture were limited to only 12 % out of the total amount of the investments, they increased in the period 1958-1961 to 17.8%. In spite of all this production per hectare as well as total production kept on being disappointing.
    
    
  • The dynamics of urban population pointed to an increase from 23.4 per cent (1948) to 39.1 per cent (1966).
    
    
  • The part of industry out of the total social product increased from 39 per cent in 1938 to 46.6 per cent in 1950 and 57.3 per cent in 1965.
    
    
  • The national income per capita followed a similar curve rising from 180 $ (1950) to 653 $ (1965). On paper and figures the economic progress is indisputable, but it doesn't express the suffering and the price at which it was achieved. On the other hand, the situation didn't always present itself as prosperous; in spite of the obvious progress, from the point of view of purchasing power, a worker's income in 1938 was 1.9 times higher than that of the worker in 1963. Theoretically, the population consumed more meat, sugar, milk, cooking oil, butter than in 1938, but all these products could be bought by ration cards for a long time as they were provided in small amounts.

 

• POLITICAL STALINISM
  

  • The dictatorship of the proletariat, the monopoly of power held by a unique party restricted civil rights.
    
    
  • The continuous "sharpening" of the class struggle, the liquidation of the old political and cultural elite by police terror as well as the liquidation of any kind of opposition, even the one inside the party, on behalf of building a new man and a new society, had been put into practice even before 1948
    
    
  • The leaders of Antonescu's regime were arrested and executed between 1944 and 1946.
    
    
  • Later it was the tsaranist's turn (tsaranist = member of the Romanian agrarian party ; in Romanian tsaranist means something done for peasants, for their interest ), for most of them were arrested in 1947.
    
    
  • In the same period a few attempts of military resistance organized by ex - or still active officers were also defeated.
    
    
  • In 1948 the liberal and social-democrat leaders were arrested as they had proved resistant towards union with the communists.
    
    
  • The repression of different churches was extremely violent; the Orthodox church was completely enslaved to the state by appointing as patriarch a communist sympathizer and, later on, by nationalizing its properties and the removal of all 'undesirable elements' out of the ranks of the priesthood. The Orthodox priests, as a matter of fact, would form one of the most numerous categories of political prisoners. The other churches and denominations had a similar fate, sometimes even more tragic. The concordat with the Vatican in 1927 was abolished in 1948 which allowed the state to reduce the number of Catholic bishoprics to two. The last two bishops were also arrested.
    
    
  • The spiritual leaders of the Jewish congregation also ended up in prison or exile and were replaced by docile elements in 1948.
    
    
  • Repression became even more violent after 1948, a year when the Security (the political police department ) came into being. It took Soviet agents on staff who became Romanian generals. The peasantry had to suffer because of its opposition towards collectivization but the red terror hit the members of the Communist Party as well.
    
    
  • Between 1949 and 1953 an indeterminate number of political prisoners, at least tens of thousands, toiled to death on the construction site of the Danube-Black Sea Canal.
    
    
  • After 1950 the party encouraged, for a few years in some prisons, the method of re-educating by violence, made famous especially owing to the experiment in Pitesti.
    
    
  • The repression, which in this period took the most violent forms all over Stalin's satellites in Europe, somewhat weakened after the death of Stalin in 1953.
    
    
  • Between 1956 and 1959, for fear of the Polish and Hungarian example, it struck again, first of all against the intellectuals and the students.
    
    
  • We cannot establish, even approximately, the number of people arrested between 1944 and 1964 when political prisons were ended, but this number must have been at least half a million. If we add to this number the kulaks, of whom many Swabians deported to Baragan (a very dry plain in the south of Romania), as well as the militarized labour detachments where young people of "unhealthy" origin were sent to expiate their social sins - the number of victims of repression must have been much bigger. This efficient terror to a great extent accounts for the powerlessness in organizing an active resistance, although isolated groups of partisans continued to struggle in the mountains until 1956.
    
    
  • At the same time with the destruction of the old leading class and of any kind of opposition, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's Stalinist regime started, as soon as the monarchy was removed, (on 30th December 1947) to build the new structures of "the people's democracy".
    
    
  • In 1948 the first constitution was adopted, then in 1950 the second one after "receiving 8,000 proposals from the workers". Both of them were copied from Stalin's constitution (1936).
    
    
  • The parliamentary elections organized in 1948, 1957, 1961, 1965 were won as follows : the first one with "only" 92 %, the other ones with percentages nearer to perfection : 99.15% (1957), 99.78% (1961), 99.96% (1965), 99.97% (1969), 99.96% (1975), 99.99% (1980).
    
    
  • To all appearances political life had a relative stability dominated by a totalitarian party whose ranks increased from 720,000 in 1950 to 834,000 in 1960 and 1,450,000 in 1965.
    
    
  • Inside the leading class, some tens of activists held all influence - revolt and a fight for power lasted continuously between 1948 and 1957. Only by getting rid of rivals and the danger of Hrusciov's destalinization and surrounding himself by a group of new "barons" did Dej see his authority consolidated and full control gained. He succeeded in removing his possible rivals, supporters of Hrusciov, from the leadership of the party.

 

• CULTURAL STALINISM
  

  • The third element of the Stalinist pattern, cultural Stalinism, led to a radical reorganization of the value system and cultural institutions on which it is based.
    
    
  • The Communist Party fixed, like all the east-European communist parties had the ambitious purpose of building a "new man"
    
    
  • As "light comes from the east" the pattern to be imitated could not be other than the Soviet one. The building of the Romanian "homo sovieticus" could not be achieved without destroying and re-writing traditional national values : therefore there was a need of a massive infusion of Marxist-Leninist values as well as an active campaign of Russianization.
    
    
  • Like political or economic Stalinism, cultural Stalinism had to be imposed by force. The connections intellectuals had with the West were interrupted. The Romanian Academy was dissolved in June 1948 and replaced by a new one, formed in the majority of obedient academicians appointed by the party, many of them with doubtful scientific merits.
    
    
  • In 1948 the new law of education appeared, casting aside all non-collaborating teaching staff, and reorganizing both secondary and higher education according to the Soviet pattern.
    
    
  • Also in the summer of 1948 all the old research institutions were dissolved, and replaced with new ones, controlled by the Academy of the Romanian People's Republic.
    
    
  • The purging of the intellectuals was not limited to its administrative aspect. A big number of men of science, art and culture went to prison where some of them died (Gheorghe Bratianu, Ioan Lupas, Artur Golopentia, Mircea Vulcanescu and others were released after many years (ioan Petrovici, Constantin C. Giurescu, nechifor Crainic). Great names which had made Romanian science famous, were completely marginalized, ending their lives in isolation and misery. (Constantin Radulescu-Motru, Simion Mehedinti, Dimitrie Gusti, Lucian Blaga). Another category of "ex-intellectuals' was represented by the "exonerated' ones, either immediately (Mihail Sadoveanu) or after a period of purification and reconversion (Tudor Arghezi, george Calinescu, Tudor Vianu, many representative of the technical intelligentsia).
    
    
  • The number of the authors and titles under censorship increased continuously: in July 1946 2,000 titles of books and magazines were prohibited and later on in the spring of 1948 over 8,000 titles were put into a volume of 522 pages entitled "Prohibited publications".
    
    
  • The 1950's , the years of full cultural Stalinism must be considered an extremely painful period for the Romanian spirituality.
    
    
  • However, an objective researcher must also notice some significant elements in the development of cultural life in the Stalinist period of Dej's rule:
    
    
    • Theoretically at least, illiteracy disappeared
      
      
    • Exact sciences could develop. These were less dangerous than the social ones
      
      
    • The number of theatres, philharmonic orchestras and museums increased
      
      
    • The number of students increased
      

     

  The question arises if the number can replace the quality, if liquidation of illiteracy is valuable when you cannot read anything except the word of the party.