Union of Communist Youth
Encyclopedia
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
: ; UTC) was the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
's youth organisation, modelled after the Soviet
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....
Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
. It aimed to cultivate young cadres into the party, as well as to help create the "new man" envisioned by communist ideologues.
History
Founded in 1922, the UTC went underground along with the rest of the party when it was banned in 1924. A marginal group under strict control of the CominternComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
's Young Communist International
Young Communist International
The Young Communist International was the parallel international youth organization affiliated with the Communist International .-International socialist youth organization before World War I:...
, it began to emerge as a mass movement in 1944, after 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...
had entered Romania and the party became legal once again. 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...
was the First Secretary of the UTC from August 23, 1944 to June 1945.
Beginning in 1948, the Romanian Workers' Party (PMR, as it was then called) began to contemplate merging and purging the country's youth organisations – political, professional, religious, cultural, etc. At the same time, young people were faced with several waves of arrests. Starting in 1945, participants at anti-communist demonstrations were arrested, while category-based arrests began in 1948. Members of youth liberal
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...
, peasant
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
, and Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
organisations were targeted, and political and religious youth organisations were shut down. The educational reform of August 3, 1948 initiated the ideological re-education of youth and Sovietization
Sovietization
Sovietization is term that may be used with two distinct meanings:*the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets .*the adoption of a way of life and mentality modelled after the Soviet Union....
of the educational system by restructuring it along Marxist-Leninist
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
principles. That year, the Komsomol recommended the formation of a single youth group, and at a congress on March 19–21, 1949, hitherto separate youth organisations were merged to create a Union of Working Youth (Uniunea Tineretului Muncitoresc; UTM). Its name was changed back to UTC in 1965.
Right after the single organisation was formed, the party asked for a purge, which in its first phase involved the "re-signing up" of UTM members (equivalent to PMR "verification" campaigns). After this process, 34,000 UTM members and activists were purged as "dangerous elements" (kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
s (chiaburi), former Iron Guard or National Christian Party
National Christian Party
The National Christian Party was a Romanian political party, the product of a union between Octavian Goga's National Agrarian Party and A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League; a prominent member of the party was the philosopher Nichifor Crainic...
members, former members of democratic parties, religious activists (especially non-Orthodox
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
ones), UTM leaders who did not heed PRM decisions, etc.). The UTM now numbered 650,000 members; purges would continue, under the pretext of "improving its class composition", especially after the turbulent years of 1952, 1956, and 1968.
Removal from the UTM could mean social exclusion, professional marginalisation or even open the way to a criminal investigation. One's social origin and membership in a communist organisation were the most important factors in climbing up the political, social and professional ladders. UTM purges were one way that institutions, universities, schools, army units and factories were cleansed of troublesome elements. These purges had a major social impact, quickly and decisively changing the face of society, as membership steadily rose (some 20% of youths were in UTM in 1950; by the end of the decade, a third; in another decade, half; and by the 1980s the great majority).
One major dilemma was how to deal with the peasantry. Poor peasants were at first eagerly welcomed into the UTM, but 40% of those initially purged were peasants. This made the group rather unrepresentative in a country whose population was three-quarters rural at the time. The beginning of collectivisation
Collective farming
Collective farming and communal farming are types of agricultural production in which the holdings of several farmers are run as a joint enterprise...
in 1949 demanded a large presence of communist organisations in the villages, but by the end of the 1950s, only about 28.5% of the eligible rural population was in the UTM, which numbered 30-35% peasants. Their share steadily fell as urbanisation increased, to about a quarter in the 1960s and under 20% in the 1980s.
Starting in the 1950s, UTM activists were mobilised to help with collectivisation, participating in propaganda actions and unmasking class enemies at the party's behest. At UTM meetings, members were asked to convince their relatives and friends to give over their land to collectives, to denounce kulaks and those who opposed collectivisation, and even to speak out against marriages between kulaks and poor peasant girls.
In 1952, as 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...
fell from grace for her "right-wing deviationism" that involved massive membership sign-ups, which, without proper vetting, had introduced numerous Iron Guardists and other "enemy elements" into the party, the ensuing purge hit the UTM as well. Between August 1952 and June 1953, 19,000 UTM members and activists were excluded for "right-wing deviationism". By contrast, 12,000 had been eliminated between October 1950 and August 1952. The crisis was accompanied by several leadership changes until 1956, when the party found in Virgil Trofin, who had worked as an officer in the Superior Political Directorate of the Army, the iron hand it was searching for to control the UTM; he held the post for eight years before being promoted into the party, surviving the successive intra-party crises of the late 1950s.
After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the UTM began to target university and high-school students. In fact they had long been eyed with suspicion for ideological reasons. Students had played a key role in the anti-communist demonstrations of 1945-46. Half of those initially purged from the UTM were students. In 1950, instructions for admisison of new members specified that meritorious students "devoted to the organisation and the Party" would be admitted. At the same time, ideological criteria were applied for university admission, on the basis of social origin and pre-communist political allegiance (either of the students themselves or of their parents). Of 57,000 students, some 80-90% were in the UTM, as admission was otherwise very hard to obtain. By 1953, university and high-school students formed almost 30% of the UTM, a figure that declined sharply after 1956. In 1957 it had fallen to under 20%, and to under 10% by 1958-59, due to the massive purges provoked by the student protests of 1956.
During these demonstrations, UTM activists were instructed to prevent, discourage, denounce, unmask and fight against the "enemy protests" and were mobilised, alongside party activists and workers, to spy on student gatherings, crush demonstrations and waste students' free time. During the Bucharest student movement of 1956
Bucharest student movement of 1956
The events in Poland which led to the elimination of that country's Stalinist leadership and the rise to power of Władysław Gomułka on 19 October 1956 provoked unrest among university students in Eastern bloc countries. The state of unrest in Poland began to spread into Hungary...
, groups of young UTM workers were assembled to physically beat the "bandits" (i.e., student protesters), and in 1957, UTM activists helped arrest young protesters in Cluj
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
. Starting in 1956, several thousand students were arrested, of whom tens were sent to prison. Countless unmasking and indoctrination sessions were held by PMR and UTM leaders and activists. Tens of UTM chapters across Romania were dissolved.
Up to 1,500 UTM members were removed from the group every month. For the first time since 1948, total membership declined. Between July 1, 1956 and July 1, 1957, the proportion of workers in the UTM rose from 27% to 35%, while that of university and high-school students fell from 14% to 9%. Students at theological institutes were expelled from the UTM. During this period, Ion Iliescu
Ion Iliescu
Ion Iliescu served as President of Romania from 1990 until 1996, and from 2000 until 2004. From 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008, Iliescu was a Senator for the Social Democratic Party , whose honorary president he remains....
, head of the UTC between 1967 and 1971, led the Union of Romanian Communist Student Associations.
After 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...
came to power in 1965, he pursued the goal of expanding mass organisations, trying to include as many people as possible in communist structures. Thus, while in 1960 UTM had 1.9 million members, UTC had 2.4 million members in 1971, 3.9 million in 1985, and 4.1 million by the end of the 1980s, when it was one of the most powerful mass organisations in the country. In 1983, 90% of 9th graders belonged to the UTC, and 98% in 1988. Beginning in 10th grade, practically everyone was in the UTC, membership being mostly automatic and compulsory. Those not in were usually excluded or expelled for some reason rather than simply not interested. In the 1970s and '80s, internal instructions for admission to the UTC combined political and meritocratic criteria.
The UTC's anti-religious mission persisted. For instance, on December 26, 1968, Ion Iliescu convened an urgent session of the UTC's Central Committee to express his distress at the lack of combativeness displayed by UTC members toward 2,000 Christmas carolers the day before.
Structure
Membership was open to persons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-six; UTC members over eighteen could also become members of the PCR. The Tenth Party Congress in 1969 introduced the requirement that applicants under the age of twenty-six would be accepted into the party only if they were UTC members.Having essentially the same organizational structure as the Romanian Communist Party (PCR, from 1965), the UTC was both a youth political party and a mass organization. Its mission was to indoctrinate young people in the spirit of communism and mobilize them, under the guidance of the PCR, for the building of socialism. The UTC organised political and patriotic courses in schools, among peasant groups, and among workers and members of the armed forces. It also guided and supervised the activities of the Union of Romanian Communist Student Associations.
The structure of the UTC underwent a number of changes in the decades following its creation. By the 1980s, the organization functioned on the national level with an eight-member Secretariat, including the first secretary, who was also the UTC chairman, and a bureau of twenty-one full and ten candidate members. The first secretary of the UTC also held the position of minister of youth. From 1983 to 1987, Ceauşescu's son, Nicu
Nicu Ceausescu
Nicu Ceaușescu was the youngest child of Romanian leader Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu. He was a close associate of his father's political regime and considered the President's heir apparent.-Life during Communism:...
, functioned as UTC first secretary. This showed the importance of youth organisations for the regime, as Nicu was virtually the heir to power, and was also a clear indication of its dynastic and clientelistic nature. Nicu's poor reputation contributed to cynicism and corruption in the youth organisations, whose members had become blasé, bureaucratic and ritualised in nature, a far cry from their predecessors' fervor in the 1940s-'50s. The UTC had come to serve the dictator's personality cult, a form of political consolidation and social control.
In each of the forty counties
Counties of Romania
The 41 judeţe and the municipality of Bucharest comprise the official administrative divisions of Romania. They also represent the European Union' s NUTS-3 geocode statistical subdivision scheme of Romania.-Overview:...
(which took their present form in 1968) and the city of 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....
, UTC committees were patterned after the national-level organization. The UTC had its own publishing facilities and published its own propaganda organ, Scînteia Tineretului ("The Spark of Youth").
Other organizations
Pioneer Organization
The Pioneer Organization was a pioneer movement in Communist Romania, founded on April 30, 1949.Most students joined the organization while in the second grade and remained pioneers throughout eighth grade, therefore, in practice, the normal age range extended from seven to fifteen, or nearly...
, was created for young people between the ages of nine and fourteen. Until 1966 the Pioneers functioned as an integral part of the UTC, but thereafter they were under the direct control of the party Central Committee. Moreover, there were Şoimii Patriei ("The Fatherland's Falcons"), a youth organization established in 1976 where children aged four to seven could enter and where they learned to respect the party, also participating in demonstrations.
The UTC, the Pioneers and Şoimii Patriei, like the rest of the party, ceased to exist after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
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...
.
First Secretaries (also Ministers of Youth)
- Haia LifşiţHaia LifşiţHaia Lifşiţ or Lifschitz was a Russian-born Romanian communist who died as a result of a hunger strike while in detention for her political opinions....
(1928-1929), a schoolteacher - Gheorghe Florescu (March 1949–August 1952), a former typographer
- Vasile Muşat (August 1952–July 1954), a lathe operator
- Cornel Fulger (July 1954–June 1956), a former electrician
- Virgil TrofinVirgil TrofinVirgil Trofin was a Romanian communist activist and politician, who served as minister under the Communist regime.-Biography:Born in Vaslui, Trofin had an early career as a mechanical fitter and boilermaker...
(June 1956–June 1964), a mechanical fitter and boiler maker - Petru Enache (June 1964–1967), a lathe operator and graduate of the Ştefan Gheorghiu AcademyStefan Gheorghiu AcademyThe Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy The Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy The Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy (Romanian: Academia Ştefan Gheorghiu, in full: Academia de învăţămînt social-politic Ştefan Gheorghiu de pe lîngă CC al PCR - approx...
- Ion IliescuIon IliescuIon Iliescu served as President of Romania from 1990 until 1996, and from 2000 until 2004. From 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008, Iliescu was a Senator for the Social Democratic Party , whose honorary president he remains....
(1967–1971) - Dan Marţian (1971–1972), former secretary of the UTM committee of Romanian students in Moscow
- Ion Traian Ştefănescu (1972–1979), a jurist become activist
- Pantelimon Găvănescu (1979–1983), a worker and graduate of the Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy
- Nicu CeauşescuNicu CeausescuNicu Ceaușescu was the youngest child of Romanian leader Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu. He was a close associate of his father's political regime and considered the President's heir apparent.-Life during Communism:...
(1983–1987) - Ioan Toma (1987–December 1989), a graduate of the Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy
Other notable members
- Filimon SârbuFilimon SârbuFilimon Sârbu was a Romanian communist activist and anti-fascist militant executed by the pro-Nazi authorities during World War II. After the war, he was acclaimed as a hero by the communist government....
- Justin GeorgescuJustin GeorgescuJustin Georgescu was a Romanian communist activist and anti-fascist militant assassinated in police custody during World War II....
- Nicolae CeauşescuNicolae CeausescuNicolae 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...
- Alexandru NicolschiAlexandru NicolschiAlexandru Nicolschi was a Romanian communist activist, Soviet agent and officer, and Securitate chief under the Communist regime...
- Gheorghe UrsuGheorghe UrsuGheorghe Emil Ursu was a Romanian construction engineer, poet, diarist and dissident. A left-wing activist and avant-garde intellectual who joined the Romanian Communist Party as a youth, he was soon after disillusioned with the Communist regime, and became one of its most outspoken critics...
- Miron ConstantinescuMiron ConstantinescuMiron Constantinescu was a Romanian communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party , as well as a Marxist sociologist, historian, academic, and journalist...
- Vladimir ColinVladimir ColinVladimir Colin was a Romanian short story writer and novelist. One of the most important fantasy and science fiction authors in Romanian literature, whose main works are known on several continents, he was also a noted poet, essayist, translator, journalist and comic book author...
- Adrian PăunescuAdrian PaunescuAdrian Păunescu was a Romanian poet, journalist, and politician. Though criticised for praising dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, Păunescu was called "Romania's most famous poet" in a Associated Press story, quoted by the New York Times.-Life:Born in Copăceni, Bălţi County, in what is now the Republic...
- Nicolae LabişNicolae LabisNicolae Labiș was a Romanian poet.-Early life:His father, Eugen, was the son of a forest brigade soldier and himself fought in World War II; he became a schoolteacher in 1931. His mother Ana-Profira, the daughter of a peasant killed in the Battle of Mărășești, was also a schoolteacher...
- Vladimir TismăneanuVladimir TismaneanuVladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
- George CoposGeorge CoposGheorghe Copos is a Romanian businessman and politician.He is the owner of a chain of confectioner's shops, a chain of electronics shops, several hotels, as well as the football club Rapid Bucureşti....
- Mihai Răzvan UngureanuMihai Razvan UngureanuMihai Răzvan Ungureanu is a Romanian historian, diplomat and politician. He was the foreign minister of Romania from December 28, 2004 to March 12, 2007...
- Cristian DiaconescuCristian DiaconescuCristian Diaconescu is a Romanian jurist and politician. A member of the National Union for the Progress of Romania and formerly of the Social Democratic Party , he has sat in the Romanian Senate since 2004, representing Constanţa County from 2004 until 2008, and Bucharest since then...
- Dan PavelDan PavelDan Pavel is a Romanian political scientist, academic, politician, journalist and 1989 revolutionary. He was a consultant to Gigi Becali in 2003.-References:...