Radio România Internațional

Tag: communist party

  • The Communist Party, banned

    The Communist Party, banned

     

    The end of WW1, far from clearing the air, fuelled new anger and obsessions, and extreme solutions were considered the most appropriate. Thus, left-wing and right-wing extremism, communism and fascism, monstrous creations of the war, came to dominate the minds of many people. A particularity of the Great War was that neither the victors could enjoy their victory nor the losers could give up thoughts of revenge. It took WW2 for the destructive energies to be consumed.

     

    The new states resulting after 1918 took measures against extremism and for securing their borders. The Kingdom of Greater Romania, also a creation of the Versailles system, took harsh measures to liquidate extremist behaviours that endangered its existence and functioning.

     

    On February 6, 1924, more than 100 years ago, the Liberal government headed by Ion I. C. Brătianu passed the law on legal entities, which made extremist organizations illegal. The two main organizations targeted were the far-right National Christian Defense League, founded in 1923, and the far-left Romanian Communist Party, founded in 1921. The architect of the law, from which the document took its name, was the Minister of Justice Gheorghe Gh. Mârzescu, a law expert and mayor of the city of Iași during the war years.

     

    If the far right reinvented itself in 1927 under the form of the Legionary Movement and was able to operate legally and successfully in public in the late 1930s, the far left, an agent of Moscow in Romania, remained banned until 1944. At the end of WW2, after the Soviet Union occupied Romania and brought the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) to power, the few members of the party made a title of glory out of the fact that they had been members of a banned organization. They were called “illegals” and among them were both those who were in prison and those who, not in prison but out of sight, followed instructions from Moscow.

     

    One of the ‘illegals’ was Ion Bică. The archive of the Oral History Center of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation has an interview with him from 1971 in which he explained how from the camp in Târgu Jiu, where some of the communist militants were detained, they escaped in April 1944 with the help of some people from the administration: “The party had managed to establish a close connection between the militants outside and the militants in prisons and camps. It was going to face a difficult situation. As Hitler’s armies were receiving blow after blow, the party’s activity intensified in the country. The connection between the communists inside and those outside was made through simple people who performed certain jobs in the administrative system of the camp. For example, there were women who, with the dissolution of the camp, left for various localities in the country and to Bucharest. There were women who enjoyed the trust of the communists, they carried notes, correspondence between the communists outside and those inside.”

     

    Anton Moisescu was also an ‘illegal’ and in 1995 he explained what his activity consisted of before the war and during it: “I was still doing the party activity illegally before, but working in a factory and with my real name, known to everyone, but unknown as a party activist or activist with the Union of the Communist Youth (UTC) . This time, however, I had to change my name and not show myself anywhere, so that none of the agents would spot, or they would have arrested me immediately. And then, I lived in a secret house, I carried out my activity at night, I went out to meetings and sessions only at night. I was searched for, but I was not found anywhere by the Security.”

     

    Anton Moisescu also referred to the means of subsistence that an ‘illegals’ had: “We lived off the aid of the group in the Capital. People would collect some money for us because there were only a few of us. There were not many in this situation. The other party members and sympathizers collected for the political prisoners, I also took care of that, with the Red Aid: clothing, food, provisions, money. I would give them what we collected through their relatives, I would send them to prisons. They would also collect for us. We had a secret house where we could live, usually we had nothing to rent, we didn’t have any house in our name. It was the house of a sympathizer where we would stay for a period of time. When something seemed suspicious to us, we would go to another house of another sympathizer and so on. All the time we were in secret houses unknown to the Securitate, to people who were not known as activists either, but only as sympathizers.”

     

    The period of illegality when the Romanian Communist party operated, between 1924 and 1944, was one in which the Romanian state consolidated in terms of legislation administration and economy. The Mârzescu Law was the instrument through which extremism, both right-wing and left-wing, was prevented from hijacking the development of a state that had paid with heavy sacrifice for what it had achieved.

  • The Goma Movement

    The Goma Movement

    The Ellenpontok (Counterpoints) samizdat, written by a group of Hungarian intellectuals in the 1970s, the Aktionsgruppe Banat, a protest movement of German language writers also from the 1970s, and the Goma Movement, were the most important forms of protest by Romanian society against the communist regime. The Goma Movement is named after novelist Paul Goma, the initiator of the protest.



    Paul Goma was born in 1935 in the Republic of Moldova in a family of teachers, who came to Romania as refugees after Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR in 1944. He published 30 volumes of fiction and memoirs. He was also a political detainee. Cristina Predescu, a professor of political science at the Bucharest University, has explained that there is a difference between the initiator of the protest and the people who supported it.



    Cristina Predescu: “We have this phrase, the Goma Movement, circulating in historical writings, which is the way in which this protest movement is known. In fact, this unfortunate phrase is the name that the Securitate gave the group. In this case, the situation is a bit more complicated, because it is a larger group than Ellenpontok and Aktionsgruppe Banat. I will try to make something of a reinterpretation of this movement. First of all, I will make a difference between who Goma was, as a cultural opponent of the communist regime, and the Goma movement, which is something completely different.



    The relationship between Goma and the regime was sinuous, going from radical opposition to support, especially in 1968, when the new leader in Bucharest, Nicolae Ceausescu, spoke openly against the communist regime in Moscow. Cristina Petrescu: “We look at the opponents of the regime always following the dynamic of the relationship between the opponents and the regime. Goma has the privilege of being one of the longest standing opponents, the most resilient of them, which is a performance even among the people known as being the initiators of movements against the regime. He started by taking part in the student revolt in Bucharest, which coincided with those in Budapest in 1956. He became a political detainee, he was then placed under house arrest, and later reintegrated in the University system. There was an attempt to recruit him as an informer, but that failed. In 1968, he enrolled voluntarily in the Communist Party, in support of the Ceausescu regime, as he himself confessed.



    In spite of all this, Goma remained an unpredictable and uncomfortable interlocutor for the authorities. Cristina Petrescu explains that the leader of the Romanian human rights movement continued to annoy the regime: “Goma stood out by the fact that in the 1970s he was a peak of non-conformism among Romanian writers, because he was the first among Romanian writers to publish outside Romania two volumes, which had been turned down by the censors. One of them was clearly against the regime and spoke about prisoners obsessed with freedom. They were very successful because they were published at a time when Solzhenitsyns The Gulag Archipelago when was being translated into other languages, whch is why Goma is referred to as the Romanian Solzhenitsyn.



    Goma again came into open conflict with the communist authorities in 1977 when he signed a joint protest letter that was sent to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe hosted by Belgrade that year, a letter that was read out by Radio Free Europe. The letter denounced the violation of human rights in Romania.



    Professor Cristina Petrescu: “Its a known fact that Goma was the initiator of the human rights movement modelled on Charter 77 from Czechoslovakia, after which he tried to be co-opted by the regime, which he partly succeeded if we look at the articles he published before he was arrested. While in prison, he recanted many of the views he had voiced earlier and was released following international pressure before being expelled and becoming a leading member of the democratic exile until 1989. He remained a controversial figure after 1989 as well, in particular because of the views he held in respect of the Sovietisation of Bassarabia. In conclusion, I would say that Paul Goma is, to a great extent, a forgotten hero of our recent history, in which he hasnt yet found a suitable place.



    This is how the Goma Movement emerged. It included a total number of 430 people who were related, in one way or another, to “The Bearded Man, the code name given by the Securitate (the former political police) to Goma. Some of the best-known figures who endorsed Gomas movement were literary critic Ion Negoiţescu, psychiatrist Ion Vianu and worker Vasile Paraschiv. 186 of them got a passport to emigrate, after the movement was stifled.



    Cristina Petrescu: The Goma Movement is being described as one of the peak moments of mobilization against the former communist regime. It was a movement that numbered some 200 supporters, a figure comparable to the number of supporters of Charter 77. However, the two movements followed completely different paths. While the Goma Movement ended with his arrest, Charter 77 survived the communist regime and gave Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic a president, after the fall of communism.



    On April 1, 1977, Paul Goma was arrested and that same year, on November 20, the line authorities withdrew his, his wifes and his child s Romanian citizenship and they were expelled from Romania. They reached Paris where they sought political asylum, but Goma did not want to apply for the French citizenship. As moral reparation, Goma was given back his Romanian citizenship after 1989.


  • Romania’s de-Stalinization and its immediate aftermath

    Romania’s de-Stalinization and its immediate aftermath

    Three years after Joseph Vissarionovich Stalins death in 1953, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev lambasted his predecessors political excesses, demanding a new policy. Khrushchevs Report presented at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Unions Communist Party held in February 1956, a report which is still a classified document and known today as “the Secret Speech, is described as the outset of the de-Stalinization process. Back then Khrushchev launched a broadside at the purges that had killed devoted members of the party, whose loyalty to Stalin was beyond doubt. However, Khrushchev exposed only the crimes Stalin had committed against party and state activists, but not the mass-level crimes of Stalinism.



    Notwithstanding, Khrushchevs report was received differently in the Soviet Bloc countries. Some of these countries had timidly begun small-scale reforms, while others stuck to the hard line of socialism, without liberalizing the course they had committed themselves to after 1945. Hungarys anti-communist revolt in the fall of 1956 was an example used by those who contested the de-Stalinization process initiated by Khrushchev in order to warn against the possible effects of a relaxation of socialist policies.



    In Romania, the immediate effects of Khrushchevs rhetoric were contradictory. Stalinist leader Gheorghiu Dej maintained his position, to the detriment of the high–ranking party officials who contested the report, Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chişinevschi.



    Radio Romanias Oral History Center in 2002 recorded the testimony of Stefan Barlea, who in 1957 was a party activist in charge with youth problems. Barlea took part in a political bureau meeting staged to discuss Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chişinevschis opposition to Gheorghiu-Dej. According to Barlea, Politburo meetings were a strictly inside deal, with only members of the bureau taking part:



    Stefan Barlea: It was the second meeting I took part in, Gheorghiu-Dej didnt turn up, but Nicolae Ceausescu was there, he presided the proceedings. As far as I remember, also attending were Constantin Parvulescu and three or four other key members. The situation was laid out as to why those measures were adopted and suchlike, Liuba Chisinevschi, Iosif Chisinevschis wife, was also there, she had gotten involved in the conflict. The two contestants, Constantinescu and Chişinevschi, didnt attend. Ceauşescu gave the presentation, with Pârvulescu adding up to it, Alexandru Moghioroş was also there, and, yes, I forgot to mention the main actor, Petre Borila. A talk had been held in Moscow, immediately after Stalins personality cult had been exposed by Khrushchev, and taking part in that meeting were Gheorghiu-Dej, Miron Constantinescu, Iosif Chişinevschi and Petre Borilă. Of course things had been presented in detail there, just as they were also laid out at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the personality cult issue included. The two of them, Constantinescu and Chişinevski, shared the opinion that personality cult elements had been identified in Romania as well. According to rules of the time, a debriefing session was mandatory after any visit abroad, at the Politburo, and, if the case, at the Central Committee. But apparently Constantinescu and Chişinevschi did not report this to Gheorghiu-Dej. Instead, the two began advocating the idea that Gheorghiu-Dej too resorted to the cult of personality, that such proclivities had been reported for our country as well. Stuff Borila did not accept, nay, he even rejected it.



    The struggle for power at the top of the party was bitter, but there was no longer any question of physical harm, as had been the case during Stalin. The worst that could happen to Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chisinevschi was to be kicked out of the party.



    Stefan Barlea: “The two of them tried to garner support in the Politburo behind Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dejs back. One went to Constantin Parvulescu, the other to Moghioros, trying to plant the idea into their heads. Nothing came of it, naturally, so a discussion was held in the Politburo. Gheorghiu-Dej looked like he was faced with a fait accompli, or was supposed to believe he was. Both Parvulescu and Moghioros rejected these things and said as much in the politburo meeting. So Constantinescu and Chisinevschi found themselves isolated. Miron Constantinescu still had a score to settle with Gheorghiu-Dej, having made some irreverent comments about him to Stalin himself when they were discussing sidelining Ana Pauker. Gheorghiu-Dej reacted quite strongly and decided to raise the matter during a plenary meeting of the Central Committee. Ceausescu, who was a young man at the time, told us it was decided that Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chisinevschi would explain to the Central Committee their report to the Politburo, the conclusions and everything else. In other words, it was a kind of self-incrimination before the Central Committee. The outcome was that the Committee decided to exclude them from their ranks and strip them of all their positions. Miron Constantinescu had worked closely with Gheorghiu-Dej and held important positions in the party, as part of the Soviet group. It was in fact a power struggle, with Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chisinevschi trying to appear as the real leaders. Except that Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was better at playing this game.



    De-Stalinisation did not have many consequences in Romania, with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej maintaining his position. The most visible effect of de-Stalinisation was the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in 1958, which did not affect much what happened later in Romania.


    (translated by: Calin Cotoiu, Cristina Mateescu)