Romania: From 23 August to the People's Republic

23 August: The King's Coup and the Armistice

In the summer of 1944 the Romanian army was collapsing before the Soviet Iași-Chișinău offensive, which opened on 20 August and broke the fronts of the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies within three days. On the afternoon of 23 August King Michael I summoned Marshal Ion Antonescu to the palace and demanded an immediate armistice; when Antonescu refused, the king ordered the palace guard to arrest him. That night the king announced on the radio that Romania accepted an armistice with the Allies and was at war with Germany. The coup had been prepared jointly by the king and his court, Iuliu Maniu of the National Peasant Party, Dinu Brătianu of the National Liberals, Titel Petrescu of the Social Democrats, and Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu and Emil Bodnăraș of the Communists. Pătrășcanu drafted the proclamation the king read; the arrested Antonescu was handed to the Communists and delivered to the Soviet army on 1 September.

Negotiation had preceded the coup. In the spring of 1944 Maniu's emissary Barbu Știrbei had made contact with the Allies in Cairo, and on 12 April the Soviet Union had set out armistice terms: recognition of the frontier, reparations and war against Germany. The king and the parties put off accepting them through the summer and acted when the front collapsed. For several days after 23 August the Soviet army went on disarming Romanian units and took some 130,000 prisoners, treating Romania as a belligerent until the armistice was signed.

The new government was led by General Constantin Sănătescu, with each of the four parties (National Peasants, National Liberals, Social Democrats, Communists) providing one minister without portfolio. German aircraft bombed Bucharest on 24 August but German forces were driven off by the Romanian army, and Soviet troops entered Bucharest on 31 August. The armistice was signed in Moscow on 12 September. Romania was to pay 300 million dollars in reparations in goods over six years, to accept the frontier that had given Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union in 1940, and to receive northern Transylvania back "subject to confirmation in the peace settlement". An Allied Control Commission was to supervise the armistice under the direction of the Soviet High Command; its nominal chairman was Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, but the work was done by Lieutenant General Vladislav Vinogradov and, from 1945, Colonel General Ivan Susaikov. The American and British representatives were there to be informed. In the percentages agreement exchanged by Churchill and Stalin in Moscow on 9 October 1944, Romania was written as 90 Soviet to 10 British; the agreement itself is covered in the parent page and in the Yalta and Potsdam entry.

The Two Sănătescu Governments and the Rădescu Government

In August 1944 the Communist Party had around a thousand members; by its national conference of October 1945 it claimed more than 250,000. The Tudor Vladimirescu Division, formed in the Soviet Union from Romanian prisoners of war, returned with the Soviet army at the end of August and became a reservoir of politically trained troops. Its leadership came in three strands: Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, released from prison; Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca, returned from Moscow; and Pătrășcanu and Bodnăraș from the underground at home. The Ploughmen's Front was a Transylvanian peasant organisation founded by Petru Groza at Deva in 1933, which had cooperated with the Communists since 1935. On 12 October the party formed the National Democratic Front with the Social Democrats, the Ploughmen's Front, the Patriotic Union and the trade unions, and demanded more places in government. On 4 November Sănătescu's second government was formed with the parties dividing the ministries; the Communists received Justice (Pătrășcanu) and Communications (Gheorghiu-Dej). The Front demanded the Interior and War ministries, and the National Peasants and Liberals judged that Sănătescu was conceding too much to the Communists. In early December Sănătescu resigned and General Nicolae Rădescu took the government, keeping the Interior Ministry himself with the Communist Teohari Georgescu as under-secretary. Sănătescu wrote in his diary that the Soviet side "means to decide the composition of the government itself", while the Communist Party's papers described both governments as "protecting the remnants of reaction": two records of the same events.

In the same weeks the Soviet army removed the Romanian administration from northern Transylvania and installed direct military government there on 12 November, citing the treatment of Hungarians by Romanian gendarmes. When and to whom the region would be returned became the lever of Bucharest politics for the following months. In January 1945 the Soviet authorities conscripted some 70,000 Romanian citizens of German origin for labour in the Soviet Union; the Rădescu government protested but could not prevent it.

February and March 1945: Vyshinsky and the Groza Government

In February 1945 the National Democratic Front held rallies across the country demanding a change of government, while in the provinces peasants occupied the large estates. At a rally in Palace Square in Bucharest on 24 February shots were fired and several people were killed; the government and the Front each blamed the other. That night Rădescu, in a radio address, called Pauker and Luca "hyenas" and "foreigners without kin or God". The Soviet press and the Control Commission described Rădescu as responsible for fascist terror.

On 27 February Soviet deputy foreign minister Andrei Vyshinsky arrived in Bucharest and saw the king. The next day he demanded the dismissal of the Rădescu government and gave a two-hour deadline; the recollection that he slammed the door of the king's study on leaving has entered the record. When the king's side proposed Barbu Știrbei of the National Peasants as prime minister, Vyshinsky refused and named Groza. The Soviet side told the king that a Groza government was the written condition on which northern Transylvania would be returned to a "democratic government". On 6 March a government with Petru Groza as prime minister took office. Groza led the Ploughmen's Front and was not a party member. The Tătărescu wing that had split from the National Liberals took the foreign ministry; the Communists received Interior (Georgescu), Justice (Pătrășcanu), Communications and the under-secretaryship of War (Bodnăraș). The parties of Maniu and Brătianu refused to take part. On 9 March Stalin authorised the return of Romanian administration to northern Transylvania.

On 23 March the government decreed land reform by Law 187. Holdings above fifty hectares and the land of war criminals, absentee landlords and citizens of German origin were confiscated and distributed to some 800,000 households; the land involved exceeded a million hectares. The reform targeted the large estates that had survived the National Peasants' reform of 1921, and Maniu's party did not oppose it in principle. In April the Groza government set up people's tribunals for war crimes; Antonescu was tried in May 1946 and executed on 1 June. On 8 May in Moscow the Soviet Union and Romania signed an agreement on joint companies, and on 17 July the first SovRom, Sovrompetrol, was set up to run oil extraction and refining in Prahova. The party's national conference of 16 to 21 October elected Gheorghiu-Dej general secretary and set its line as "strengthening the democratic united front".

The King's Refusal to Sign and the Moscow Conference

At Potsdam the United States and Britain decided not to recognise the Romanian government. On 21 August the king asked Groza to resign, and when Groza refused he stopped signing government decrees. This "royal strike" lasted until 7 January 1946. The government promulgated its decrees without the royal signature, and on 8 November, the king's name day, a crowd of his supporters in Palace Square clashed with government supporters and there were deaths. The American representative Burton Berry and the British representative Ian Le Rougetel refused recognition, while the Soviet side answered that the government represented "the broad democratic forces".

The conference of the American, British and Soviet foreign ministers in Moscow from 16 to 26 December produced a compromise on Romania: one minister each from the National Peasant and National Liberal parties would be added to the Groza government, and once the government guaranteed free elections and freedom of the press, the United States and Britain would recognise it. A commission of the three ambassadors went to Bucharest, and on 7 January 1946 Emil Hațieganu of the National Peasants and Mihail Romniceanu of the National Liberals entered the government as ministers without portfolio. The United States and Britain recognised the government on 5 February. The king ended his refusal. The two ministers sat in cabinet without departments and had no effective voice in the preparation of the election that followed. In the spring of 1946 Hațieganu asked during the drafting of the electoral law that opposition scrutineers be admitted to the count, and was refused; both men left the government after the election. Maniu read the outcome as the West abandoning Romania; the American State Department papers record it as the most that could be obtained in a country the Soviet Union already held.

19 November 1946: Two Counts

The general election, postponed several times, was held on 19 November 1946. The electoral law abolished the Senate and introduced women's suffrage. At its congress of 10 March the Social Democratic Party voted for a joint list with the Communists; its president Titel Petrescu, who had opposed the decision, left and founded the Independent Social Democratic Party in May. The government side, the Communists, the Social Democrats, the Ploughmen's Front, Tătărescu's National Liberals, the National People's Party and the Patriotic Union, ran a single list as the Bloc of Democratic Parties. The National Peasants and Brătianu's National Liberals ran their own lists. During the campaign opposition meetings were obstructed, candidates and organisers arrested and opposition newspapers stopped. The United States and Britain sent notes of protest before and after the vote.

Some 6.9 million voters were registered, and the count was in the hands of commissions appointed by the Interior Ministry. The official result, announced on 21 November, gave the Bloc 69.8 per cent and 347 seats, the National Peasants 12.9 per cent and 33 seats, the National Liberals 3.8 per cent and 3 seats, and the Hungarian People's Union 8.3 per cent. The opposition rejected the result at once and refused to take its seats. Later research left different figures. The historian Petre Țurlea, analysing a confidential internal report of the Communist Party, concluded that the Bloc had in fact received between 45 and 47 per cent; the claim that the National Peasants held a majority and the opposition's contemporary claim of 80 per cent rest on different evidence. The final report of the Presidential Commission of 2006 recorded the election as falsified. Whichever count is taken, the official result gave the government bloc four fifths of the chamber, and that chamber passed the laws of the following year.

1947: The Peace Treaty, Tămădău and the Maniu Trial

The peace treaty was signed in Paris on 10 February 1947. Romania recovered northern Transylvania and lost Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and southern Dobruja, and reparations were fixed at 300 million dollars. The treaty came into force on 15 September, and the Allied Control Commission was dissolved that day. Soviet troops stayed on, citing the maintenance of lines of communication with the occupation forces in Austria. The dissolution of the commission removed the last institutional channel through which the United States and Britain could intervene in Romanian domestic affairs.

On 14 July, at Tămădău airfield near Bucharest, the National Peasant vice-president Ion Mihalache, Nicolae Penescu, Ilie Lazăr, Nicolae Carandino and others were arrested while attempting to leave the country; the Interior Ministry had known of the aircraft in advance. On 19 July the chamber stripped the National Peasant deputies of their immunity, and on 30 July the party was dissolved on the report of Interior Minister Georgescu. Maniu was arrested on 22 July. The trial ran from 29 October to 11 November before a military court in Bucharest, and Maniu and Mihalache were sentenced to hard labour for life for treason. Maniu died in Sighet prison on 5 February 1953. The prosecution called the accused traitors linked to the American and British legations; Maniu answered in court that his actions had been lawful political activity. The trial record was published after 1990.

Drought in Moldavia in 1946 and 1947 brought famine, and the government took Soviet grain aid; the currency reform of 15 August 1947 exchanged old lei at 20,000 to one and wiped out the savings of the urban middle class, a measure the government called a blow against speculators and the opposition called confiscation. In early November Tătărescu's National Liberal wing was pushed out of the government, and Brătianu's National Liberals had ceased activity on 1 November. On 6 November the chamber passed a motion of no confidence in Tătărescu as foreign minister, and on 7 November Ana Pauker took the ministry. Vasile Luca became finance minister and Emil Bodnăraș minister of war on 23 December. Every major ministry was now in Communist hands.

30 December: Abdication and Republic

In November the king attended the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in London, where he became engaged to Anne of Bourbon-Parma. He returned on 21 December and stayed at Peleș Castle in Sinaia. On the morning of 30 December Groza summoned him to Bucharest. Arriving at the Elisabeta Palace, the king found it surrounded by troops of the Tudor Vladimirescu Division, and Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej presented him with a pre-typed instrument of abdication. By the king's account the telephone lines had been cut and he was told that a thousand detained students would be shot if he did not sign; Groza is said to have joked afterwards, showing the pistol in his pocket, that he too had come prepared. The king signed shortly after noon. That afternoon the chamber passed Law 363 abolishing the monarchy and establishing the Romanian People's Republic. The king left Romania by train on 3 January 1948, and in March in London declared the abdication void as extracted under duress.

The United States and Britain stated in notes of January 1948 that the abdication had been extracted under duress, but kept relations with the new government; the Soviet Union recognised the People's Republic in early January.

Accounts of the abdication diverge. The government announced that the king had abdicated "of his own will"; the king and his circle said it was coercion under arms. Romanian historiography since the 1990s largely follows the latter, as did the Presidential Commission report of 2006. On the other side, the Groza government's papers recorded that the monarchy had lost real power after the 1946 election and that the abdication confirmed that fact.

February 1948: The Workers' Party, and What Was Fixed

On 4 February 1948 Romania and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance in Moscow. From 21 to 23 February the unification congress of the Communist Party and the Social Democrats (the organisation that remained after Petrescu's wing had left) met in Bucharest and founded the Romanian Workers' Party. Gheorghiu-Dej became general secretary, with Pauker, Luca and Georgescu in the secretariat. At the congress Pătrășcanu was criticised for "nationalist deviation" and was not elected to the Central Committee; he left the Justice Ministry on 23 February and was arrested on 28 April. He was tried in April 1954, executed at Jilava on the 17th, and rehabilitated in 1968. The unification congress had, in effect, adopted in Romania ahead of time the formula of late 1948, set out in the parent page, that defined people's democracy as a road to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

On 28 March a single-list election of the People's Democratic Front returned an official 93.2 per cent, and on 13 April the Grand National Assembly adopted the constitution of the Romanian People's Republic. On 11 June industrial, banking, insurance, mining and transport enterprises were nationalised, and on 30 August the General Directorate of State Security, the Securitate, was set up under the Interior Ministry; its first director, Gheorghe Pintilie, came from Soviet intelligence, and Soviet advisers were attached to it. The SovRoms had grown from oil to transport (Sovromtransport), banking (Sovrombanc), timber and chemicals, more than ten by 1947, and the treaty of 4 February provided for mutual assistance against an attack by Germany or a state allied with it. Romania in the spring of 1948 had a single-list parliament led by the Workers' Party, a constitution, a treaty with the Soviet Union, the SovRom companies, and an army and security service with Soviet advisers. Of the men who had been in the palace together on 23 August 1944, Maniu was in prison, Pătrășcanu in detention and the king abroad. Where this sequence matched the other countries of Eastern Europe and where it differed is the subject of the parent page.