The Romanian Communist Party ( ; PCR) was a Marxist-Leninist party in Romania. It was founded in 1921 and became the founding and ruling party of the Communist Socialist Republic of Romania in 1947. From then, until its overthrow in the Romanian revolution in 1989, it was effectively the only legal party in the country. Ideologically committed to Marxism–Leninism, the party oversaw Romania's departure from Soviet satellite status and incorporation of national communism.
The successor to the pro-Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave an 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, illegal grouping for much of the interwar period and was subject to direct Comintern control. During the 1920s and 1930s, most of its activists were imprisoned or sought refuge in the Soviet Union, leading to the creation of competing factions that sometimes came into open conflict. That did not prevent the party from participating in the country's political life through various front organizations, most notably the Peasant Workers' Bloc. In 1934–1936, PCR reformed itself in the mainland of Romania, with foreign observers predicting a possible communist takeover. The 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 pressured King Michael I into abdicating, and it established the Romanian People's Republic in December 1947.
The party operated as the Romanian Workers' Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Romîn between 1948 and 1964 and Partidul Muncitoresc Român in 1964 and 1965) until it was officially renamed by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who had just been elected secretary general. While other political parties nominally existed in Romania, their influence was limited, and they were required to accept the constitutionally authorised leading role of the PCR as a condition of their existence. All other legal parties and entities were part of the Communist-dominated Front of Socialist Unity and Democracy.
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 the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so through much of its existence. In 1948, the Communist Party absorbed the Romanian Social Democratic Party and attracted various new members. In the early 1950s, the group around Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, with support from Stalin, defeated all other factions and achieved full control over the party and country. After the late 1950s, 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 Romanian nationalist and stance was continued under the leadership of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Following an episode of liberalization in the late 1960s, Ceaușescu again adopted a hard line by imposing the "July Theses", re-Stalinizing the party's rule by intensifying the spread of Marxist–Leninist ideology in Romanian society and solidifying a national communist line. At the same time, he consolidated his grip on power whilst using the party's authority to brew a pervasive cult of personality. Over the years, the PCR became 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, it also became one of the hardest-line parties in the Eastern Bloc, which harmed its relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It collapsed in 1989 in the wake of the Romanian revolution, but Romania kept its socialist-era constitution until 1991. Romania also retained its membership in the Warsaw Pact until its dissolution on 1 July 1991; that role had been largely symbolic since the late 1960s.
The PCR was a communist party, organized on democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist theoretician Vladimir Lenin, which entails democratic and open discussion of policy, subject to unity in upholding agreed-upon policies. The highest body within the PCR was the Party Congress, which began convening in 1969 and meet every five years. The Central Committee was the highest body when Congress was not in session. Because the Central Committee met only twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in 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. The PCR co-ordinated several organizations during its existence, including the Union of Communist Youth, and organized training for its cadres at the Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy (future SNSPA). In addition to Scînteia, its official platform and main newspaper between 1931 and 1989, the party issued several local and national publications at various points in its history (including, after 1944, România Liberă).
History Establishment
The party was founded in 1921 when the Bolshevik-inspired maximalist faction won control of Romania's Social-Democratic party—the Socialist Party of Romania, successor to the defunct Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party and the short-lived Social Democratic Party of Romania (the latter was refounded in 1927, reuniting those opposed to communist policies).Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p. 23-27; Frunză, p. 21-22. The establishment was linked with the socialist group's affiliation to the Comintern (just before the latter's Third Congress): after a delegation was sent to Bolshevist Russia, a group of moderates (including Ioan Flueraș, Iosif Jumanca, Leon Ghelerter, and Constantin Popovici) left at different intervals beginning with January 1921.Frunză, p.25-28
The party renamed itself the Socialist-Communist Party () and, soon after, the Communist Party of Romania ( or PCdR). Government crackdown and competition with other socialist groups brought a drastic reduction in its membership—from the ca. 40,000 members the Socialist Party had, the new group was left with as much as 2,000Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p. 45; Communist press, 1923, in Frunză, p. 30. or as little as 500;Allegations in the Social-Democratic press, 1923, in Frunză, p.30; Iordachi I.2 after the fall of one-party rule in 1989, Romanian historians generally asserted that the party only had around 1,000 members at the end of World War II.US Library of Congress: "The Communist Party". According to PCR leader Iosif Rangheț: "[...] on August 23, 1944, our party had, in Bucharest, 80 party members, not more, not less. And throughout the land, our party had less than 1,000 party members, including our comrades in prisons and concentration camps." (Rangheț, 25–27 April 1945, in Colt). In the late 1940s, Ana Pauker gave the same estimate (Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p. 45; Frunză, p. L202). Other researchers argue that this figure may have been intentionally based on the Muscovite faction figures and, as such, underestimated to undermine the influence of the internal faction; this estimate was afterwards promoted in post-communist historiography to reinforce a stereotypical image of the regime as illegitimate.Dumitru Lăcătuşu, "Convenient Truths: Representations of the Communist Illegalists in the Romanian Historiography in Post-Communism", in Brukenthalia. Supplement of Brukenthal, Acta Musei, No. 4, Sibiu, 2014, p. 199-200.
The early Communist Party had little influence in Romania. This was due to a number of factors: the country's lack of industrial development, which resulted in a relatively small working class (with industry and mining employing fewer than 10% of the active population) and a large peasant population; the minor impact of Marxism among Romanian intellectuals; the success of state repression in driving the party underground and limiting its activities; and finally, the party's "anti-national" policy, as it began to be stated in the 1920s—supervised by the Comintern, this policy called for the breakup of Greater Romania, which was regarded as a colonial entity "illegally occupying" Transylvania, Dobruja, Bessarabia and Bukovina (regions that, the communists argued, had been denied the right of self-determination).Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p.18-45; Frunză, p.38-48, 63–72; Iordachi, I.2; Pokivailova, p.48; Troncotă, p.19-20; Veiga, p.222 In 1924, the Comintern provoked Romanian authorities by encouraging the Tatarbunary Uprising in southern Bessarabia, in an attempt to create a Moldavian republic on Romanian territory;Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p.36; Frunză, p.71; Troncotă, p.19; Veiga, p.115 also in that year, a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, roughly corresponding to Transnistria, was established inside the Soviet Union.
At the same time, the left-wing political spectrum was dominated by Poporanism, an original ideology which partly reflected Narodnik influence, placed its focus on the peasantry (as it notably did with the early advocacy of cooperative farming by Ion Mihalache's Peasants' Party), and usually strongly supported the post-1919 territorial status quo—although they tended to oppose the centralized system it had come to imply. (In turn, the early conflict between the PCdR and other minor socialist groups has been attributed to the legacy of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's quasi-Poporanist ideas inside the latter, as an intellectual basis for the rejection of Leninism.)Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p.47-48
The PCdR's "foreign" image was because ethnic Romanians were a minority in its ranks until after the end of World War II:Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p.18, 44 between 1924 and 1944, none of its general secretaries was of Romanian ethnicity. Interwar Romania had a minority population of 30%, and it was largely from this section that the party drew its membership—a large percentage of it was Jews, Hungarians and Bulgarians.Iordachi, I.2; Pokivailova, p.47 Actual or perceived ethnic discrimination against these minorities added to the appeal of revolutionary ideas in their midst.Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p.18
Communist Party of Romania (1921–1948) Comintern and internal wing
Shortly after its creation, the PCdR's leadership was alleged by authorities to have been involved in Max Goldstein's bomb attack on the Parliament of Romania; all major party figures, including the general secretary Gheorghe Cristescu, were prosecuted in the Dealul Spirii Trial.Cioroianu, Pe umerii..., p.27–30 Constantin Argetoianu, the Minister of the Interior in the Alexandru Averescu, Take Ionescu, and Ion I. C. Brătianu cabinets, equated Comintern membership with conspiracy, ordered the first in a series of repressions, and, in the context of trial, allowed for several communist activists (including Leonte Filipescu) to be shot while in custody—alleging that they had attempted to flee.Troncotă, p.18-19 Consequently, Argetoianu stated his belief that"communism is over in Romania",Argetoianu, June 1922, in Troncotă, p.19 which allowed for a momentary relaxing of pressures—begun by King Ferdinand's granting of an amnesty to the tried PCdR.Troncotă, p.19