ABSTRACT
Although Mihai’s coup against Marshall Antonescu meant a break with the Axis and rapid clearance of the country of German troops (avoiding the horror of war on a front that would have advanced inexorably across Romanian territory) it accelerated the onset of Soviet domination which was hardly moderated in its severity by subsequent commitment to the allied cause for the remainder of the war. Despite the insensitivity of the Churchill-Stalin ‘percentages agreement’ – accepting, in advance of a peace treaty, renewed Soviet control of Bessarabia and northern Bucovina as well as an overwhelming interest over the whole of Romania at the end of the Second World War – it was probably inevitable that Romania would be consigned to an enlarged Soviet sphere of influence in the heart of Europe. The surprise arose through Stalin’s decision – whether premeditated or pragmatic – to separate the Soviet sphere by the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’ and impose the whole edifice of Soviet autarky (elaborated in the 1930s for ‘socialism in one country’) on the entire tier of satellite states. So in defiance of understandings that revolution would not be precipitated Soviet mastery over Romania gave Moscow the opportunity of advancing the fortunes of an initially-insignificant communist party that was eventually brought to power through a rigged election in 1948 that was followed rapidly by Mihai’s abdication. Although there was a precedent for state control of the economy – through nationalisation, the launch of the first Five Year Plan and the collectivisation of agriculture – nothing could have prepared the Romanian people for the highly oppressive dictatorship imposed by Stalin behind a facade of native leadership under Gh.Gheorghiu-Dej as civil society was systematically destroyed and replaced by a totalitarian system relying on expropriation, forced labour and terror in the context of a coordinated bloc subject initially to Stalin’s personal interventions and increasingly, after his death, through the complementary institutions of Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. This chapter looks at the salient features of the state system that saw the Romanian government maximising its scope for autonomy but always with a preference for independent economic initiatives rather than social and political reform. This was probably well-judged in the 1960s and 1970s but it became apparent by the 1980s that the leadership was exploiting Moscow’s coercive umbrella of communist totalitarianism to run the country as a uniquely idiosyncratic family business. The Soviet reforms of the Gorbachev era were highly unwelcome and the country was
becoming increasingly isolated when both the Securitate and the armed forces refused to support the régime in the face of public defiance in December 1989.
