High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
Source: Johanna C. Granville, "
Dej
-a-Vu: Early Roots of Romania's Independence,"
East European Quarterly
, vol. XLII, no. 4 (Winter 2008), pp. 365-404.
Dej
-a-Vu: Early Roots of Romania's Independence
Johanna GranvilleOnce upon a time, according to Romanian jokesters, the American CIA and FBIcompeted with Nicolae Ceauşescu's Securitate to prove superiority in apprehendingcriminals. They released a rabbit into the forest and all agreed that the first agency to catchit would win the contest. The CIA planted informants throughout the forest, questioned allplant and animal witnesses, and eventually concluded that the rabbit never existed. TheFBI tried next, but with no leads after two weeks, burned the forest completely,rationalizing that the elusive rabbit deserved to die. Then the Romanian first secretary sentin the Securitate. After one hour, a huge bear, bruised and bleeding, limped out of theforest, with paws high over his head, whimpering, "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit!"The joke, writ large, juxtaposes American impatient, short-term thinking withRomanian ruthlessness, a Ceauşescuan world in which one is guilty until proven innocentand where torture-induced confessions prove guilt. Delighted in 1967 when Ceauşescurefused to sever ties with Israel during the Six Day War, established diplomatic relationswith West Germany, and denounced the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia a year later,Washington decided to reward him - sending U.S. President Richard Nixon to visitBucharest (August 2-3, 1969); inviting Ceauşescu thrice to visit Washington (October 1970,December 1973; and April 1978); and conferring Most Favored Nation status to Romania(August 1975).
Time Magazine
put Ceauşescu's face on the cover of its March 18, 1966issue and quoted the future dictator: "The word freedom can be spoken in manylanguages, but it has the same meaning […] People must be fully equal, have the right toexpress their opinion, and be able to take part in the guiding of society."
With their
1
simplistic enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend mindset, Washington officials failed tounderstand that Ceauşescu's ostensibly "liberal" foreign policy stance masked horrendousabuses of human rights at home -- exporting food despite acute shortages at home,censuring writers and religious groups, arranging fatal accidents for strike leaders;
firingthousands of disgruntled miners; outlawing contraceptives and abortions, resulting intragic deaths and swelling orphanages;
bulldozing Hungarian villages in Transylvania,and transforming Romania into the poorest of Warsaw Pact countries in order to pay off ten billion dollars in foreign debt.A surfeit of books and articles - and jokes - exist about Ceauşescu, while surprisinglyfew address his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Perhaps this is due to Ceauşescu'sdefiance of Moscow, the stark dichotomy between his foreign and domestic policies, lengthof his incumbency, flagrant nepotism, and televised execution by firing squad on December25, 1989.
As Romanian scholar Vladimir Tismăneanu put it, "In the avalanche of incriminating material relating to the Ceauşescu family dictatorship, there is a tendency toforget who presided over the Stalinization and Sovietization of the country […] The nameof Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej has only been mentioned occasionally."
One can go still further. There is also a tendency to forget who made Romania's greaterindependence vis-a-vis Moscow possible and who first established the pattern of foreign policy openness and "liberalness" coupled with domestic repression. Romaniaunder Gheorghiu-Dej has commonly been viewed as one of the most loyal of Soviet allies in1956.
However, it was Dej who - inspired by the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Austriain 1955 - masterminded the exodus of Soviet troops (1958) and KGB advisors (1964) fromRomania and conceived the April 27, 1964 "declaration of independence." Indeed,Romania became the only Warsaw Pact country from which both Soviet troops andadvisors were actually withdrawn during the Cold War.
Ceauşescu's later audacitytoward Moscow would have been highly unlikely had Soviet troops still been stationed
2
throughout Romania. As Dej opined to the Romanian ambassador to the United States,Silviu Brucan, in 1956: “if I don’t do a U-turn now in our relations with the Sovietauthorities, we are lost.”
Drawing on archival documents, published memoirs, and recent Romanian scholarship,this article will examine the patterns of deception Dej employed to achieve greaterindependence from the Soviet Union. The cunning strategist feigned loyalty to Khrushchev(whom he loathed) and kept a low profile in order to survive destalinization and eventuallyexpel Soviet troops from his country.
Unlike Ceauşescu, Dej forfeited short-term forms of ego gratification in exchange for a long-term, but permanent,
fait accompli
(a country rid of Soviet troops).Just two months after the twentieth congress of the communist party of the SovietUnion (CPSU), February 14-25, 1956, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs(
Ministerul Afacerilor Externe
, or MAE) took measures to resume diplomatic relations withseveral capitalist democracies, and even NATO members, such as Norway, Iceland, Greece,Brazil, Burma, as well as with less stable countries like Sudan and Uruguay.
MAE alsoattempted to resolve old financial issues with the United States, Great Britain, and Greece.MAE sent a proposal to Washington on March 7, 1956, for example, to begin negotiationsto resolve the problem of sequestered or liquidated Romanian funds in the United States.Robert Thayer, the U.S. minister to Romania, replied and suggested a further exchange of memoranda about both this issue and about the restrictions imposed on the U.S. legation inBucharest and the statute regarding American citizens in Romania.
Romanian officialsissued a visa for an American agricultural expert to visit Romania and requested a visa fora Romanian agricultural expert to visit the United States.
In addition, the Romaniangovernment accepted an invitation from Washington to send two or three representativesto the United States for an expense-paid, two-week visit so they could "observe thebipartite electoral process." Other bloc states were invited, but only the Romanians - like
3
Add a Comment