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| “ | We want to ensure a multilateral development of society, the thriving of all sides of social life, economy, science and culture, the improvement of management, the moulding of the new man and the promotion of socialist ethics and equity. | „ |
| ~ Nicolae Ceaușescu |
The Communist Party of Romania, also known as the Romanian Communist Party, was a Communist political party that served as the ruling party of Romania during the Cold War.
History edit
Founded in 1921, the Communist Party of Romania was a successor to the pro-Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania. It gave ideological endorsement to a communist revolution that would replace the social system of the Kingdom of Romania.
After being outlawed in 1924, the PCR remained a minor and illegal grouping for much of the interwar period, and submitted to direct Comintern control. During the 1920s and 1930s, most of its activists were imprisoned or took refuge in the Soviet Union, which led to the creation of competing factions which at times came in open conflict. This did not prevent the party from participating in the political life of the country through various front organizations, most notably the Peasant Workers' Bloc.
The Communist Party emerged as a powerful actor on the Romanian political scene in August 1944, when it became involved in the royal coup that toppled the pro-Nazi government of Ion Antonescu. With support from Soviet occupational forces, the PCR was able to pressure King Michael I into abdicating, and establish the Romanian People's Republic in December 1947.
The party was known as the Romanian Workers' Party until being officially renamed by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who had just been elected secretary general. From 1953 until 1989, it was for all intents and purposes the only legally permitted party in the country.
The PCR was a communist party, organised on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist theoretician Vladimir Lenin which entails democratic and open discussion on policy on the condition of unity in upholding the agreed upon policies. The highest body within the PCR was the Party Congress, which, beginning in 1969, convened every five years. When the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo. The party leader held the office of General Secretary and after 1945 held significant influence over the government; between 1974 and 1989 the General Secretary also held the office of President of Romania.
Ideologically, the PCR was committed to Marxism–Leninism, a fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theorist Karl Marx, and Lenin, was introduced in 1929 by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so through much of its existence. In 1947, the Communist Party absorbed the Romanian Social Democratic Party, while attracting various new members.
In the early 1950s, the group around Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, with support from Stalin, defeated all the other factions and achieved full control over the party and country. After 1953, the Party gradually theorized a "national path" to Communism. At the same time, however, the party delayed the time to join its Warsaw Pact brethren in de-Stalinization.
The PCR's nationalist and national communist stance was continued under the leadership of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Following an episode of liberalization in the late 1960s, Ceaușescu again adopted a hard line, and imposed the "July Theses", re-Stalinizing the party's rule by intensifying the spreading of communist ideology in Romanian society and at the same time consolidating his grip on power whilst using the Party's authority to brew a persuasive personality cult.
Over the years, the PCR massively increased in size, becoming entirely submitted to Ceaușescu's will. From the 1960s onward, it had a reputation for being far more independent of the Soviet Union than its brethren in the Warsaw Pact. However, at the same time it became the most hardline party in the Eastern Bloc, harming its relationship with even the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
While some elements of the PCR were receptive to Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, Ceaușescu himself wanted nothing to do with glasnost or perestroika. As a result, the PCR remained an obstinate bastion of hardline Communism. Gorbachev's distaste for Ceaușescu was well known; he even went as far as to call Ceaușescu "the Romanian führer." In Gorbachev's mind, Ceaușescu was part of a "Gang of Four" inflexibly hardline leaders unwilling to make the reforms he felt necessary to save Communism, along with Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák, Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov and East Germany's Erich Honecker.
Ceaușescu and the party were overthrown in the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, begun as a popular rebellion in Timișoara and eventually bringing to power the National Salvation Front, comprising a large number of moderate former PCR members who supported Gorbachev's vision. Having fled the PCR's headquarters under pressure from demonstrators, Ceauşescu and his wife were captured, tried, and executed by the new authorities in Târgoviște.
Human rights abuses edit
The Communist regime in Romania was known for its violations of human rights, which included invasion of privacy by the secret police (the Securitate), censorship and relocation.
During the Ceaușescu era, there was a secret ongoing "trade" between Romania on one side and Israel and West Germany on the other side, under which Israel and West Germany paid money to Romania to allow Romanian citizens with certified Jewish or German ancestry to emigrate to Israel and West Germany, respectively.
During the 1980's, living standards in Romania were considered some of Europe's lowest, and as early as 1981, there were clear signs of public discontent, such as riots and an angry mob throwing rocks at Ceaușescu's helicopter while it made a flight to Transylvania that October. Ceaușescu desired to repay Western loans, and thus enacted a harsh austerity policy, including rationing of food, gas, heating and electricity. People in cities had to turn to natural gas containers ("butelii") or charcoal stoves, even though they were connected to the gas mains.
Control over society became stricter and stricter, with an East German-style phone bugging system installed, and with Securitate recruiting more agents, extending censorship and keeping tabs and records on a large segment of the population. By 1989, according to CNSAS (the Council for Studies of the Archives of the Former Securitate), one in three Romanians was an informant for the Securitate. Due to this situation, income from tourism dropped substantially, the number of foreign tourists visiting Romania dropping by 75%, with the three main tour operators that organized trips in Romania leaving the country by 1987.
Another legacy of this era was pollution: Ceaușescu's government scored badly on this count even by the standards of the Eastern European communist states. Examples include Copșa Mică with its infamous Carbon Powder factory (in the 1980s, the whole city could be seen from satellite as covered by a thick black cloud), Hunedoara, or the plan, launched in 1989, to convert the unique Danube Delta – a UNESCO World Heritage site – to plain agricultural fields.