Abstract
Most Western scholars agree that a distinguishing feature of communist political systems is the high concentration of influence in the hands of the “men at the top.” This is particularly true in Romania where, as Kenneth Jowitt has noted, Ceausescu is attempting to develop “his personal role to the point where the Party cannot check, divert, or delay his policies.” Andrzej Korbonski has argued that “this concept of leadership ... provides at least a partial explanation of the process of change in that country.”1 The personalities and priorities of Ceausescu and those around him certainly are important inputs into the political process. Of course, no political system can be fully understood by studying only its leaders. However, information about these individuals can provide insight into the nature of the political decision-making process in which they participate.
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Notes
Jowitt’s statement appeared in his article “Political Innovation in Romania,” Survey 20, no. 4 (1974):148. It was also quoted by Korbonski when he made his assertion in “The Change to Change in Eastern Europe,” in Jan F. Triska and Paul M. Cocks, Political Development in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1977), p. 20.
For a discussion of the importance and methodology of comparative elite studies in communist systems, see the introduction and conclusion by William A Welsh in Carl Beck et al., Comparative Communist Political Leadership (New York: McKay, 1973), pp. 1–42, 298–308. The extent to which power is concentrated in diffeent communist systems; the nature, unity, and goals of the ruling elites (technocrats or apparatchiks); and the degree and meaning of mass “participation” in political decisions have all become matters for debate among scholars. This is not the place to document the history of these various debates. However, for an elaboration of this author’s views on internal party organization and the elite-mass relationship in Romania, see her “Participatory Reforms and Political Development in Romania,” in Triska and Cocks, Political Development in Eastern Europe,pp. 217–37.
Recent studies on comparative communist leaderships stress the inadequacy of data on Romania. See, for example, the comments in R. Barry Farrell, Political Leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), pp. 89, 160. Romania is not mentioned in Beck et al., Comparative Communist Political Leadership. There is no biographical handbook for parliamentary deputies, such as exists for the U.S.S.R. Dictionar enciclopedic romin,3 vols. (Bucharest, 1962–1966), and Mic dictionar enciclopedic (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica Romina, 1972) include some biographical information on the highest leaders: date of birth and party membership, but not education or complete career data.
One example is the now out-of-date article by D. A. Tomasic, “The Rumanian Communist Leadership,” Slavic Review 20 (October 1961):477–94. See also Ghita Ionescu, Communism in Rumania, 1944–1962 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); Kenneth Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Romania, 1944–65 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). Several works by Stephen Fischer-Galati, particularly The New Rumania (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1967), also contain information on the Romanian leadership. However, all of these studies focus on the pre-1965 period, as well as on the very top group.
See Michel-P. Hamelet, Nicolae Ceausescu: Présentation, choix de textes, apercu historique, documents photographiques (Paris: Seghers, 1971); Donald Catchlove, Romania’s Ceausescu (London: Abacus, 1972); Omagiu Tovarasului Nicolae Ceausescu (Bucharest: Editura Politica, 1973 ). The last is an enormous, illustrated volume published in honor of his fifty-fifth birthday.
This does not imply that the party leader at either time had absolute control. As far as we can tell, Gheorghiu-Dej had few limits to his personal power; he was severely criticized by Ceausescu in 1968 for arbitrarily usurping the functions of the Politburo (see, for example, Ceausescu’s speech to the Bucharest party organization, Scinteia,April 28, 1968). Ceausescu evidently has done the same, but it is impossible to know the extent of his power. The dangers of political prediction are obvious, as Khrushchev’s abrupt departure in 1964 illustrated. An individual may become too confident, producing “harebrained” schemes and forcing his colleagues to take the drastic step of removing him.
Included are the nine full members of the Politburo, the five candidate members, and the one Central Committee Secretary, Mihai Dalea, not on the Politburo. Ethnicity, except in the case of Jews, is defined in terms of mother tongue.
The location of Bodnaras and Salajan during the war is not completely certain. At present, the Romanians claim that both were in Romania, but most sources indicate otherwise.
The distinction between a “home communist” and a “Soviet communist” is usually considered to be the location of the individual during World War II: at home, often in prison, or in the Soviet Union. It is frequently asserted that Gheorghiu-Dej purged the “Soviet” group in 1951 and 1952; Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca were indeed ousted then, but others remained.
One of these men, Ion Gheorghe Maurer, lost the position he held from 1952 to 1960.
The two exceptions were Mihai Dalea, who joined during the war, and Stefan Voitec, who had been a Socialist during the 1930s and played an important role in uniting the Socialist party with the communists in 1948.
Romanian accounts still give the U.S.S.R. credit for creating the “favorable international conditions” that allowed the RCP to overthrow the Antonescu regime. See the official Histoire de la Roumanie by Miron Constantinescu et al. (Paris: Horvath, 1970; originally published as Istoria Romaniei,Bucharest, 1970), p. 361. The more recent Pages from the History of the Romanian Army (Bibliotheca Historica Romaniae, Monograph XV, Centre for Military Research and Theory Studies and Research, Bucharest: Editura Academiei and Editura Militara, 1975) attributes the favorable conditions to “the victories of the anti-Hitler coalition and… the impetus of resistance movements in the countries occupied by fascists.” More emphasis is thus given to domestic opposition, but still “the decisive event was the Soviet offensive.” See pp. 206–07.
For examples, see Ionescu’s discussion of the prewar RCP in Communism in Rumania,especially pp. 10–28, 40–46, 58–61.
See Nicholas Spulber, The Economics of Communist Eastern Europe (London: Wiley, 1957), pp. 35ff., 78, 172ff., 190ff., 202ff., 213ff.; John Michael Montias, Economic Development in Communist Rumania (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1967), pp. 16–23, 187–88; Ionescu, Communism in Rumania, pp. 90–92, 112–13, 137–38. Ironically enough, Gheorghiu-Dej himself had carried out these reparation payments as Minister of National Economy.
For an excellent discussion of the Romanians’ emulation of the Soviet model, see Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs, pp. 100-02, 178–82.
There is a fascinating note on the Romanian national background for these protectionist policies in Montias, Economic Development, pp. 195–96.
In a sense, then, it was a continuation of the quarrels within the COMINTERN.
The group discussed here consists of the twenty-three full members of the Executive Committee elected by the Eleventh Party Congress in November 1974. Information on these individuals comes from the Mic dictionar enciclopedic (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica Romina, 1972), the Romanian press, and this author’s visual impressions at the Congress (age, for example).
Bodnaras’s obituary appeared in Scinteia on January 25, 1976. Two additional members of the 1974 Executive Committee had been candidate members of the Gheorghiu-Dej Politburo, but one was Stefan Voitec, the old Socialist whose position had long been titular, and the other was Leonte Rautu, who remained on the Executive Committee after losing his important cultural posts. He had been reduced to rector of the Stefan Gheorghiu Higher Party Academy.
These included Rautu, Voitec, and Ceausescu’s wife, Elena, leaving only four others.
This was Gheorghe Radulescu, educated at the Tashkent Planning Institute.
For a more detailed discussion of the status of the major national minorities in Romania, see this author’s “Nation and Nationality in Romania,” in George W. Simmonds, ed., Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the Era of Brezhnev and Kosygin (Detroit: University of Detroit Press, 1977), pp. 504–21. The analysis of political, economic, and cultural indicators leads to the conclusion that official regime policies have not been significantly more disadvantageous for the minorities than for other citizens of Romania. Recent reports to the contrary are disturbing. See, for example, Eric Bourne, Christian Science Monitor,February 8, May 2, and May 25, 1978; Michael Dobbs, Guardian,March 12, 1978; Radio Free Europe Research,Romanian Situation Reports/4, 5, 6, 7 (February 16 and 25, March 9 and 17, 1978); Amnesty International, Romania (New York: Amnesty International, 1978). The data presented in these sources do indeed suggest discrimination; however, the Romanianization of the party leadership in itself does not.
Congresul al IX-lea al PCR (Bucharest: Editura Politica, 1966), p. 732.
The two members of the Politburo who did not make it to the Presidium, Petre Borila and Alexandru Moghioros, were elected to the Executive Committee. Both were rumored to be sick, and both died within a few years; so their reduction in status was at least partly due to natural causes.
Leonte Salajan, Minister of Defense, who died in 1966 of a “serious digestive hemorrhage,” was the one exception. His death led to the abrupt dismissal of the Minister of Health for the “grave deficiencies” in his ministry revealed by errors in the treatment of Salajan (Scinteia, August 25, 29, and 30, 1966 ).
The two not elected in 1965 were Gheorghiu-Dej himself and Mihai Dalea, who did continue as Central Committee Secretary and finally was elected a candidate member of the Executive Committee in 1970. The five remaining after 1969 were Ceausescu; Maurer, the chairman of the Council of Ministers, who retired in March 1974; Bodnaras, who retained his high office until his death in January 1976; and Rautu and Voitec (see note 19).
Scinteia,April 19, 1972.
This was Gheorghe Radulescu (see note 21). Others, however, were well educated — Niculescu and Lupu, for example — and Berghianu had received advanced party training in economics. Nevertheless, the educational background of this group presents a sharp contrast to the subsequent promotion of technical specialists, such as Manescu, Oprea, and Patan.
Scinteia,February 18, 1971, p. 1.
The four who lost out were Maxim Berghianu, Petre Blajovici, Florea Danalache, and Constantin Dragan, all former regional First Secretaries.
The additional members elected to the Buro in early 1977 merely reinforce this conclusion. They include Cornel Burtica, a cultural specialist who rose to prominence in the late 1960s; Elena Ceausescu, wife of the president; Gheorghe Radulescu (see note 21); and Ilie Verdet, one of Ceausescu’s closest associates, brought into the top party leadership immediately after the death of Gheorghiu-Dej. Both Burtica and Verdet reportedly are related to Ceausescu. The Buro had reached that magic figure of nine members, which for so long characterized both Gheorghiu-Dej’s Politburo and Ceausescu’s Presidium. Other shifts made at the same time involved major changes throughout the local party apparatus and in the Council of Ministers. See Scinteia, January 26, 1977, pp. 1–2.
The RCP did recently introduce multicandidate elections, but unfortunately little room for choice was allowed to (or exercised by) the voters. See this author’s “Participatory Reforms and Political Development in Romania” (note 2).
If appointed as regional First Secretary in 1966 or 1967, that year is taken as the starting point.
X2 = 4.96, p.05. Of course, age would also have been a factor.
This was Ion Voina, who lost his post in Brasov after only one year.
Maxim Berghianu and Vasile Vilcu; Ion Stanescu and Virgil Cazacu; Stefan Matei, Aldea Militaru, and Gheorghe Rosu. An eighth man, Victor Bolojan, temporarily disappeared, possibly also to the Central Committee apparatus, and turned up in 1968 as a county First Secretary.
Ion Carcei, Vasile Potop, Gheorghe Calin, and Constantin Mindreanu.
That is also the year in which Miron Constantinescu lost his position in the Secretariat; evidently Ceausescu took over his responsibilities for cadres. Ceausescu did bring him back into the leadership after 1965, and even to the Secretariat from 1972 until his death in July 1974. However, in 1961 Ceausescu attacked him viciously for his activities as Central Committee Secretary in the 1950s; this was at the Central Committee Plenum that described in detail the errors of those purged in 1957. For Ceausescu’s speech, see Scinteia, December 13, 1961, p. 2. He described Constantinescu as a man devoid of scruples, a careerist, who conducted the Central Committee organizational section without regard for party regulations.
The members added in January 1977 balance this somewhat: Verdet did begin his career in the local party apparatus, and Burtica, the one cultural specialist on the Buro, rose in the student and communist youth organizations.
It is difficult to distinguish between the use of troubleshooters, on the one hand, and demotions or “circulation” of supporters, on the other, but surely the careers of Niculescu, Trofin, Cioara, Pana, and Verdet all reveal a bit of both.
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Fischer, M.E. (1980). Political Leadership and Personnel Policy in Romania. In: Rosefielde, S. (eds) World Communism at the Crossroads. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7631-4_10
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