Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Encyclopedia
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (ˈɡe̯orɡe ɡe̯orˈɡi.u deʒ; born Gheorghe Gheorghiu; November 8, 1901, Bârlad
– March 19, 1965, Bucharest
) was the Communist
leader of Romania
from 1948 until his death in 1965.
and sentenced to prison in the same year, serving time in Doftana
and other facilities. In 1936 he was elected to the party's Central Committee
and became leader of the prison faction of the party (party members who were incarcerated, a term distinguishing them from party members living in exile in the Soviet Union
).
As a known activist, he was detained at Târgu Jiu
camp
during Ion Antonescu
's regime and the larger part of World War II
, managing to escape in August 1944. He became general secretary
in 1944 after the Soviet occupation but did not consolidate his power until 1952 when he purged Ana Pauker
and the Muscovite faction from the party. Pauker had been the unofficial leader of the Party since the end of the war.
In 1946-1947, he was a member of Romania's Gheorghe Tătărescu
-led delegation to the Paris Peace Conference
.
nonetheless favored Gheorghiu-Dej, largely seen as a local leader with strong Stalinist
principles. The economical influence of the Soviet Union were highlighted by the creation of SovRom
companies, which directed Romania's commercial exchanges towards unprofitable markets.
On the political level, all of the Romanian political changes had to be pre-approved by Stalin. Gheorghiu-Dej maneuvered Antisemitic trends in the latter stages of Stalinism, by obtaining permission to purge the Party of its "cosmopolitan
" leadership, profiting of the Soviet grip on the Securitate
. The move mirrored the Prague Trials and the so-called Soviet Doctors' plot
. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was not, however, an anti-Semite himself: most of the purged politicians were Jewish by default (including Ana Pauker), and Gheorghiu-Dej's team always comprised Jews such as Gheorghe Gaston Marin
. He was mainly keen on gaining control of Romanian politics, and exhibited more nationalist
attitudes.
Up until Stalin's death, Gheorghiu-Dej did not amend repression policies aimed at Romanian society as a whole (such as the works employing penal labor on the Danube-Black Sea Canal
- a Stalinist Gulag
-type decision which he had countersigned). At the same time, he was the main instigator of the assassination of Ştefan Foriş
in 1946 and the arrest of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
in 1948 - both of whom had been rivals within the Party. The latter move shows the limitations of Gheorghiu-Dej's nationalism: Pătrăşcanu, as the main figure in the secretariat faction, had been seen as a leading nationalist.
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Gheorghiu-Dej was unsettled by Nikita Khrushchev
's reforms and the process of De-Stalinization
. He became the architect of Romania's semi-autonomous foreign and economic policy within the Warsaw Pact
and the Comecon
in the late 1950s, notably by initiating the creation of a heavy industry
which went against Soviet directions for the Eastern Bloc
as a whole (the new large-scale steel plant in Galaţi
was a burden on Romanian economy, as it relied on iron resources imported from India
and Australia
).
In fact, Gheorghiu-Dej kept the façade of Stalinism, this time used to point out flaws in the Soviet leadership. While 1964 was the year many political prisoner
s were released, he organized a new wave of arrests and purges. Adding to the many contradictions of his rule, many of the survivors were released while he was still in power (around 1964). The Securitate was still his instrument of choice, and Romania joined the wave of repression after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
- for example, Hungarian
leader Imre Nagy
was imprisoned on Romanian soil.
Indeed, Romania under Gheorghiu-Dej has commonly been viewed as one of the most loyal of Soviet allies in 1956. Amidst the international attention Gheorghiu-Dej's successor, Nicolae Ceauşescu, attracted for his flashy defiance of Moscow, there is a
tendency to forget who made Romania's greater independence vis-a-vis Moscow possible.
The ideological steps undertaken were made clear by the ousting of the SovRoms, together with the toning down of Soviet-Romanian common cultural ventures. In 1958, the Red Army
withdrew its last troops from Romania, and the Romanian government began approving the issuing of documents that encouraged anti-Soviet sentiments. The official History of Romania made reference to a Romanian Bessarabia
, as well as other topics which tensed relations between the two communist countries. Moreover, the final years of the regime saw the publishing of Karl Marx
texts which had previously been kept secret, dealing with Russia's imperial policy
in previously Romanian regions that were still part of the Soviet Union.
In his late years, Gheorghiu-Dej established diplomatic relations with the First World
, including the United States
. Such steps were highly encouraged by the US government and president
Lyndon B. Johnson
, who had come to see Romania as a friendly communist country in the Cold War
context (1963). Gheorghiu-Dej's right hand was Gaston Marin, vice-president of the government, who renewed US-Romanian political and economic relations. Marin was the last Gheorghiu-Dej supporter to be purged from the Romanian government in 1982 by Nicolae Ceauşescu
, and later emigrated to Israel
.
espionage and Romanian human rights violations. There were also low levels of trade between Romania and the West as Romania tied itself to the Soviet Union and the other satellite nations; in 1950, Romania’s economic plan involved 89% of trade to be solely with the Soviet Bloc.
However, under Gheorghiu-Dej Romania’s willingness to trade with the West became more apparent. For example, 1952 saw the first publication of the journal Romanian Foreign Trade, which offered opportunities to Western traders to buy Romanian goods such as petroleum
and grain
. Western publications also recognized the potential for Romania to sell its products on the world market; an article from The Times
of August 29, 1953, wrote: “[Romania] could, for instance, it is thought, obtain higher prices on the world market for much of what she is forced to export to Russia, foodstuffs included, in return for machinery and aid.” As Gheorghiu-Dej realized, if Romania were able to trade with the West the standard of living
would likely rise.
From 1953, the West gradually relaxed their export controls, which had limited the products that the U.S., Great Britain
, and France
could export to Eastern Europe
. Gheorghiu-Dej, eager to establish interaction between Romania and the West, relaxed travel restraints on Western diplomats in Bucharest
and allowed Western journalists more access to Romania. In early 1954, Romania also appealed to Great Britain about having talks to resolve Romania’s outstanding claims, to which Great Britain agreed in December of that year.
The foreign policy of Romania towards the West was closely tied to its policy toward the Soviet Union; Romania could only develop trading with the West if it asserted its independence from the intensely anti-West Soviet Union. Gheorghiu-Dej realized this, and thus emphasized Romania’s sovereignty. In the Second Party Congress which opened on December 23, 1955, Gheorghiu-Dej gave a five-hour speech in which he stressed the idea of national communism and Romania’s right to follow its own interests rather than be forced to follow another’s (referring to the Soviet Union). Gheorghiu-Dej also discussed opening up trade with the West. In an attempt to increase the dialogue between Romania and the West, in 1956 Gheorghiu-Dej appointed as the Romanian Minister to the U.S. Silviu Brucan
, who in April met with both Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles
and then with President Dwight D. Eisenhower
. As a result of these meetings, the U.S. Department of State
expressed interest in increasing the interaction between the two nations, including possibly establishing a library in Bucharest.
Romania’s interaction with the West temporarily decreased, however, with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
and the violent response of the Soviet Union to the uprising. Meanwhile, Gheorghiu-Dej continued strengthening the independence of Romania from the Soviet Union. For example, Romanian schools dropped the Russian language requirement. And Romania endorsed the Moscow Declaration of 1957 which stated that "Socialist countries base their relations on the principles of complete equality, respect for territorial integrity, state independence and sovereignty, and non-interference in one another’s affairs…The socialist states also advocate the general expansion of economic and cultural relations with all other countries…” These statements coincided with Gheorghiu-Dej’s claims to national sovereignty and independence.
In fact, by 1957 Romania had substantially increased its Western trade; in that year trade with the West had increased to 25% of Romania’s total trade, although little of that included the U.S. By the early 1960s, Romania under Gheorghiu-Dej was more industrialized and productive. After World War II 80% of the population had worked in agriculture, but by 1963 only 65% did. And despite the decrease in hands working the land, agricultural productivity had actually increased. Additionally, Gheorghiu-Dej had successfully begun a strong shift in trade towards the West, further separating it from the Soviet Union; Romania imported much of its industrial equipment from West Germany
, Great Britain, and France. This trade pattern followed Gheorghiu-Dej’s economic plan, which he made clear to Great Britain and France in 1960, when he sent his head of foreign intelligence to Paris
and London
in order to clarify Romania’s desire to interact with the West and disregard Comecon
orders.
Then by 1964, Gheorghiu-Dej had made a trading agreement with the U.S. that allowed Romania to buy industrial products from them. The agreement came as a result of U.S. businesses’ complaints that they were losing money to Western Europe
. During his presidency, President John F. Kennedy
, concerned with these businesses’ losses, used his discretionary power to increase trade between the U.S. and Eastern Europe, a policy which President Lyndon B. Johnson
also followed.
Throughout this period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, Gheorghiu-Dej greatly increased trade with the West, making Romania the first Soviet Bloc country to trade with the West completely independently. Through his policy of national sovereignty, Gheorghiu-Dej increased the popularity of Romania in the West; national U.S. publications moved away from reports in the early 1950s of human rights
abuses and oppression, towards articles from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s of Romanian de-satellization. In the early 1960s, The Times
also reported often on Gheorghiu-Dej’s and Romania’s increased economic ties with the West. Gheorghiu-Dej’s successful efforts to expand Romania’s foreign relations, especially those with the West, were evident at his March 1965 funeral, at which 33 foreign delegations were present, including a special French envoy sent from General Charles de Gaulle
. Gheorghiu-Dej’s policies of Romanian sovereignty and Western economic interaction set the stage for his successor, Nicolae Ceauşescu
, to carry Romania’s new course even further.
Gheorghiu-Dej died of lung cancer
in Bucharest on March 19, 1965. Some claim that he was intentionally irradiated
during a visit to Moscow
, due to his political stance. Gheorghe Apostol
argued that he had been appointed successor by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej himself, and was in any case perceived as such in 1965. Ion Gheorghe Maurer
, who had developed a hostility towards Apostol, made sure that he was prevented from gaining power, rallying the Party leadership around Nicolae Ceauşescu
- a protégé of Gheorghiu-Dej, and a figure of secondary importance at the time. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa
described a conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu
, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill"; Gheorghiu-Dej was one of them
Gheorghiu-Dej was buried in a mausoleum
in Liberty Park in Bucharest. In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution
, his body was exhumed and reburied in a city cemetery. The Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, renamed to Polytechnic Institute "Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej" Bucharest in his honor, is now known as the Polytechnic University of Bucharest
. Also, the city of Oneşti
was once named Gheorghe-Gheorghiu Dej.
Gheorghiu-Dej was married to Maria Alexe and they had two daughters: Vasilica (1928–1987) and Constantina (b. 1931).
Bârlad
Bârlad is a city in Vaslui County, Romania. It lies on the banks of the Bârlad River, which waters the high plains of eastern Moldavia....
– March 19, 1965, Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
) was the Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
leader of Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
from 1948 until his death in 1965.
Early life
Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930. A railway electrician by trade, he was arrested for taking part in the Griviţa Strike of 1933Grivita Strike of 1933
The Grivița Strike of 1933 was a railway strike which was started at the Grivița Workshops, Bucharest, Romania, on 16 February 1933 by workers of Căile Ferate Române . The strike was brought about by the increasingly poor working conditions of railway employees in the context of the worldwide Great...
and sentenced to prison in the same year, serving time in Doftana
Doftana prison
Doftana was a Romanian prison. Built in 1895, it was used in the 1930s to detain political prisoners, among them the future president Nicolae Ceauşescu. It is situated close to the village with the same name, in the Telega commune...
and other facilities. In 1936 he was elected to the party's Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
and became leader of the prison faction of the party (party members who were incarcerated, a term distinguishing them from party members living in exile in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
).
As a known activist, he was detained at Târgu Jiu
Târgu Jiu
Târgu Jiu is the capital of Gorj County, Oltenia, Romania. It is situated on the Southern Sub-Carpathians, on the banks of the river Jiu. Eight villages are administered by the city: Bârseşti, Drăgoeni, Iezureni, Polata, Preajba Mare, Româneşti, Slobozia and Ursaţi.-History:The city takes its name...
camp
Internment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
during Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
's regime and the larger part of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, managing to escape in August 1944. He became general secretary
General secretary
-International intergovernmental organizations:-International nongovernmental organizations:-Sports governing bodies:...
in 1944 after the Soviet occupation but did not consolidate his power until 1952 when he purged Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
and the Muscovite faction from the party. Pauker had been the unofficial leader of the Party since the end of the war.
In 1946-1947, he was a member of Romania's Gheorghe Tătărescu
Gheorghe Tatarescu
Gheorghe I. Tătărescu was a Romanian politician who served twice as Prime Minister of Romania , three times as Minister of Foreign Affairs , and once as Minister of War...
-led delegation to the Paris Peace Conference
Paris Peace Treaties, 1947
The Paris Peace Conference resulted in the Paris Peace Treaties signed on February 10, 1947. The victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland .The...
.
Under Soviet directives
Soviet influence in Romania under Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
nonetheless favored Gheorghiu-Dej, largely seen as a local leader with strong Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
principles. The economical influence of the Soviet Union were highlighted by the creation of SovRom
SovRom
The SovRoms were economic enterprises established in Romania following the Communist takeover at the end of World War II, in place until 1954-1956 ....
companies, which directed Romania's commercial exchanges towards unprofitable markets.
On the political level, all of the Romanian political changes had to be pre-approved by Stalin. Gheorghiu-Dej maneuvered Antisemitic trends in the latter stages of Stalinism, by obtaining permission to purge the Party of its "cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan was a Soviet euphemism widely used during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953, which culminated in the "exposure" of the alleged Doctors' plot...
" leadership, profiting of the Soviet grip on the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
. The move mirrored the Prague Trials and the so-called Soviet Doctors' plot
Doctors' plot
The Doctors' plot was the most dramatic anti-Jewish episode in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders...
. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was not, however, an anti-Semite himself: most of the purged politicians were Jewish by default (including Ana Pauker), and Gheorghiu-Dej's team always comprised Jews such as Gheorghe Gaston Marin
Gheorghe Gaston Marin
Gheorghe Gaston Marin was a Romanian former communist politician who had many roles under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nicolae Ceauşescu. He was born Gheorghe Grossmann in Pădureni Vaslui County...
. He was mainly keen on gaining control of Romanian politics, and exhibited more nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
attitudes.
Up until Stalin's death, Gheorghiu-Dej did not amend repression policies aimed at Romanian society as a whole (such as the works employing penal labor on the Danube-Black Sea Canal
Danube-Black Sea Canal
The Danube – Black Sea Canal is a canal in Romania which runs from Cernavodă on the Danube to Agigea and Năvodari on the Black Sea...
- a Stalinist Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
-type decision which he had countersigned). At the same time, he was the main instigator of the assassination of Ştefan Foriş
Stefan Foris
Ştefan Foriş was a Romanian communist activist and journalist who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party between 1940 and 1944....
in 1946 and the arrest of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
Lucretiu Patrascanu
Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania , also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at Bucharest University...
in 1948 - both of whom had been rivals within the Party. The latter move shows the limitations of Gheorghiu-Dej's nationalism: Pătrăşcanu, as the main figure in the secretariat faction, had been seen as a leading nationalist.
Personal rule
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's reforms and the process of De-Stalinization
History of the Soviet Union (1953-1985)
In the USSR, the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev , the national politics were dominated by the Cold War; the ideological U.S.–USSR struggle for the planetary domination of their respective socio–economic systems, and the defense of...
. He became the architect of Romania's semi-autonomous foreign and economic policy within the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
and the Comecon
Comecon
The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance , 1949–1991, was an economic organisation under hegemony of Soviet Union comprising the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of communist states elsewhere in the world...
in the late 1950s, notably by initiating the creation of a heavy industry
Heavy industry
Heavy industry does not have a single fixed meaning as compared to light industry. It can mean production of products which are either heavy in weight or in the processes leading to their production. In general, it is a popular term used within the name of many Japanese and Korean firms, meaning...
which went against Soviet directions for the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
as a whole (the new large-scale steel plant in Galaţi
Galati
Galați is a city and municipality in Romania, the capital of Galați County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, in the close vicinity of Brăila, Galați is the largest port and sea port on the Danube River and the second largest Romanian port....
was a burden on Romanian economy, as it relied on iron resources imported from India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
).
In fact, Gheorghiu-Dej kept the façade of Stalinism, this time used to point out flaws in the Soviet leadership. While 1964 was the year many political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
s were released, he organized a new wave of arrests and purges. Adding to the many contradictions of his rule, many of the survivors were released while he was still in power (around 1964). The Securitate was still his instrument of choice, and Romania joined the wave of repression after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
- for example, Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
leader Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions...
was imprisoned on Romanian soil.
Indeed, Romania under Gheorghiu-Dej has commonly been viewed as one of the most loyal of Soviet allies in 1956. Amidst the international attention Gheorghiu-Dej's successor, Nicolae Ceauşescu, attracted for his flashy defiance of Moscow, there is a
tendency to forget who made Romania's greater independence vis-a-vis Moscow possible.
The ideological steps undertaken were made clear by the ousting of the SovRoms, together with the toning down of Soviet-Romanian common cultural ventures. In 1958, the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
withdrew its last troops from Romania, and the Romanian government began approving the issuing of documents that encouraged anti-Soviet sentiments. The official History of Romania made reference to a Romanian Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, as well as other topics which tensed relations between the two communist countries. Moreover, the final years of the regime saw the publishing of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
texts which had previously been kept secret, dealing with Russia's imperial policy
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
in previously Romanian regions that were still part of the Soviet Union.
In his late years, Gheorghiu-Dej established diplomatic relations with the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
, including the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Such steps were highly encouraged by the US government and president
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
, who had come to see Romania as a friendly communist country in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
context (1963). Gheorghiu-Dej's right hand was Gaston Marin, vice-president of the government, who renewed US-Romanian political and economic relations. Marin was the last Gheorghiu-Dej supporter to be purged from the Romanian government in 1982 by Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, and later emigrated to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
Interaction with the West
Post-World War II and into the early years of Gheorghiu-Dej’s rule, Romania’s relations with the West were tense, marked by accusations of United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
espionage and Romanian human rights violations. There were also low levels of trade between Romania and the West as Romania tied itself to the Soviet Union and the other satellite nations; in 1950, Romania’s economic plan involved 89% of trade to be solely with the Soviet Bloc.
However, under Gheorghiu-Dej Romania’s willingness to trade with the West became more apparent. For example, 1952 saw the first publication of the journal Romanian Foreign Trade, which offered opportunities to Western traders to buy Romanian goods such as petroleum
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
and grain
GRAIN
GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Our support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and...
. Western publications also recognized the potential for Romania to sell its products on the world market; an article from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
of August 29, 1953, wrote: “[Romania] could, for instance, it is thought, obtain higher prices on the world market for much of what she is forced to export to Russia, foodstuffs included, in return for machinery and aid.” As Gheorghiu-Dej realized, if Romania were able to trade with the West the standard of living
Standard of living
Standard of living is generally measured by standards such as real income per person and poverty rate. Other measures such as access and quality of health care, income growth inequality and educational standards are also used. Examples are access to certain goods , or measures of health such as...
would likely rise.
From 1953, the West gradually relaxed their export controls, which had limited the products that the U.S., Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
could export to Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. Gheorghiu-Dej, eager to establish interaction between Romania and the West, relaxed travel restraints on Western diplomats in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
and allowed Western journalists more access to Romania. In early 1954, Romania also appealed to Great Britain about having talks to resolve Romania’s outstanding claims, to which Great Britain agreed in December of that year.
The foreign policy of Romania towards the West was closely tied to its policy toward the Soviet Union; Romania could only develop trading with the West if it asserted its independence from the intensely anti-West Soviet Union. Gheorghiu-Dej realized this, and thus emphasized Romania’s sovereignty. In the Second Party Congress which opened on December 23, 1955, Gheorghiu-Dej gave a five-hour speech in which he stressed the idea of national communism and Romania’s right to follow its own interests rather than be forced to follow another’s (referring to the Soviet Union). Gheorghiu-Dej also discussed opening up trade with the West. In an attempt to increase the dialogue between Romania and the West, in 1956 Gheorghiu-Dej appointed as the Romanian Minister to the U.S. Silviu Brucan
Silviu Brucan
Silviu Brucan was a Romanian communist politician. Though he disagreed with Nicolae Ceauşescu's policies, he never gave up his communist beliefs and did not oppose communist ideology...
, who in April met with both Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...
and then with President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
. As a result of these meetings, the U.S. Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
expressed interest in increasing the interaction between the two nations, including possibly establishing a library in Bucharest.
Romania’s interaction with the West temporarily decreased, however, with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
and the violent response of the Soviet Union to the uprising. Meanwhile, Gheorghiu-Dej continued strengthening the independence of Romania from the Soviet Union. For example, Romanian schools dropped the Russian language requirement. And Romania endorsed the Moscow Declaration of 1957 which stated that "Socialist countries base their relations on the principles of complete equality, respect for territorial integrity, state independence and sovereignty, and non-interference in one another’s affairs…The socialist states also advocate the general expansion of economic and cultural relations with all other countries…” These statements coincided with Gheorghiu-Dej’s claims to national sovereignty and independence.
In fact, by 1957 Romania had substantially increased its Western trade; in that year trade with the West had increased to 25% of Romania’s total trade, although little of that included the U.S. By the early 1960s, Romania under Gheorghiu-Dej was more industrialized and productive. After World War II 80% of the population had worked in agriculture, but by 1963 only 65% did. And despite the decrease in hands working the land, agricultural productivity had actually increased. Additionally, Gheorghiu-Dej had successfully begun a strong shift in trade towards the West, further separating it from the Soviet Union; Romania imported much of its industrial equipment from West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, Great Britain, and France. This trade pattern followed Gheorghiu-Dej’s economic plan, which he made clear to Great Britain and France in 1960, when he sent his head of foreign intelligence to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in order to clarify Romania’s desire to interact with the West and disregard Comecon
Comecon
The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance , 1949–1991, was an economic organisation under hegemony of Soviet Union comprising the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of communist states elsewhere in the world...
orders.
Then by 1964, Gheorghiu-Dej had made a trading agreement with the U.S. that allowed Romania to buy industrial products from them. The agreement came as a result of U.S. businesses’ complaints that they were losing money to Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
. During his presidency, President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, concerned with these businesses’ losses, used his discretionary power to increase trade between the U.S. and Eastern Europe, a policy which President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
also followed.
Throughout this period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, Gheorghiu-Dej greatly increased trade with the West, making Romania the first Soviet Bloc country to trade with the West completely independently. Through his policy of national sovereignty, Gheorghiu-Dej increased the popularity of Romania in the West; national U.S. publications moved away from reports in the early 1950s of human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
abuses and oppression, towards articles from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s of Romanian de-satellization. In the early 1960s, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
also reported often on Gheorghiu-Dej’s and Romania’s increased economic ties with the West. Gheorghiu-Dej’s successful efforts to expand Romania’s foreign relations, especially those with the West, were evident at his March 1965 funeral, at which 33 foreign delegations were present, including a special French envoy sent from General Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
. Gheorghiu-Dej’s policies of Romanian sovereignty and Western economic interaction set the stage for his successor, Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, to carry Romania’s new course even further.
Death and legacy
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
in Bucharest on March 19, 1965. Some claim that he was intentionally irradiated
Irradiation
Irradiation is the process by which an object is exposed to radiation. The exposure can originate from various sources, including natural sources. Most frequently the term refers to ionizing radiation, and to a level of radiation that will serve a specific purpose, rather than radiation exposure to...
during a visit to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, due to his political stance. Gheorghe Apostol
Gheorghe Apostol
Gheorghe Apostol was a Romanian politician, deputy Prime Minister of Romania and a former leader of the Communist Party, noted for his rivalry with Nicolae Ceauşescu.-Early life:...
argued that he had been appointed successor by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej himself, and was in any case perceived as such in 1965. Ion Gheorghe Maurer
Ion Gheorghe Maurer
Ion Gheorghe Iosif Maurer was a Romanian communist politician and lawyer.-Biography:Born in Bucharest to a Saxon father and a Romanian mother of French origin, he completed studies in Law and became an attorney, defending in court members of the illegal leftist and Anti-fascist movements...
, who had developed a hostility towards Apostol, made sure that he was prevented from gaining power, rallying the Party leadership around Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
- a protégé of Gheorghiu-Dej, and a figure of secondary importance at the time. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern Bloc. He is now a United States citizen, a writer, and a columnist....
described a conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill"; Gheorghiu-Dej was one of them
Gheorghiu-Dej was buried in a mausoleum
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb or the tomb may be considered to be within the...
in Liberty Park in Bucharest. In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, his body was exhumed and reburied in a city cemetery. The Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, renamed to Polytechnic Institute "Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej" Bucharest in his honor, is now known as the Polytechnic University of Bucharest
Polytechnic University of Bucharest
Universitatea Politehnica din Bucureşti is a technical university in Bucharest, Romania. It was founded in 1864 based on the older technical school of Gheorghe Lazăr and it was renamed "Politehnica" in 1920.-History:...
. Also, the city of Oneşti
Onesti
Onești is a city in Bacău County, Romania, with a population of 51,681 inhabitants.Administratively, the villages of Slobozia and Borzești form part of Onești...
was once named Gheorghe-Gheorghiu Dej.
Gheorghiu-Dej was married to Maria Alexe and they had two daughters: Vasilica (1928–1987) and Constantina (b. 1931).
Primary sources
- Chicago TribuneChicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, July 4, 1964; pg. 11; Tito Socialism Wins Support in Balkans; Donald Starr. - The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Saturday, August 29, 1953; pg. 7; Issue 52713; col F. "Communism In Rumania Arrests And Collectives In A Satellite State From Our Special Correspondent" - The Times, Saturday, May 11, 1963; pg. 7; Issue 55698; col C. "Comecon Meets In Warsaw Preparing For Party Secretaries' Talks"
- The Times, Tuesday, Nov 26, 1963; pg. 9; Issue 55868; col D. "Rumania Leader At Yugoslavia Steel Centre Power Project On Danube"
- The Times, Monday, Apr 13, 1964; pg. 10; Issue 55984; col A. "Mr. Khrushchev's Allies To Meet This Week Rumania Still Stands Aloof From China Dispute From Our Special Correspondent"
- The Times, Monday, Jun 08, 1964; pg. 10; Issue 56032; col F. "Signs Of Coming Russian Clash With Rumania Background To President Tito's Leningrad Visit Today From Our Own Correspondent"
- The Times, Friday, Dec 11, 1964; pg. 13; Issue 56192; col F. "Rumanian Drive For Independence"
- The Times, Friday, Jan 22, 1965; pg. 9; Issue 56226; col A. "Warsaw Pact Warning On M.L.F. Counter-Measures Threatened"
- The Times, Thursday, Mar 25, 1965; pg. 10; Issue 56279; col E. "Rumania Affirms Independence"
Secondary sources
- Johanna Granville,"Dej-a-Vu: Early Roots of Romania's Independence,"East European Quarterly, vol. XLII, no. 4 (Winter 2008), pp. 365–404.
- Bruce J. Courtney and Joseph F. Harrington, Tweaking the Nose of the Russians: Fifty Years of American-Romanian Relations, 1940-1990. (East European Monographs, 1991)
- Tom Gallagher, Theft of a Nation: Romania Since Communism. (Hurst & Company, 2005)
- Mary Ellen Fischer, Nicolae Ceauşescu and the Romanian Political Leadership: Nationalization and Personalization of Power. (Skidmore CollegeSkidmore CollegeSkidmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college with an enrollment of approximately 2,500 students. The college is located in the town of Saratoga Springs, New York State....
, 1983) - Paul D. Quinlan, The United States and Romania: American-Romanian Relations in the Twentieth Century. (ARA Publications, 1988)
- Vladimir TismăneanuVladimir TismaneanuVladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
, Fantoma lui Gheorghiu-Dej, Editura Univers, 1995