Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2013) |
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej | |
---|---|
Minister of Public Works | |
In office 6 March 1945 – 30 November 1946 | |
Prime Minister | Petru Groza |
Preceded by | Virgil Solomon |
Succeeded by | Ion Gh. Vântu |
Minister of Communications | |
In office 4 November 1944 – 30 November 1946 | |
Prime Minister | Constantin Sănătescu Nicolae Rădescu Petru Groza |
Succeeded by | Nicolae Profiri |
Personal details | |
Born | 8 November 1901 Communist Party of Romania (1930–1965) |
Spouse | Maria Alexe |
Signature | |
a. ^ First Secretary of the Romanian Worker's Party (from February 1948) | |
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈɡe̯orɡe ɡe̯orˈɡi.u ˈdeʒ] ⓘ; 8 November 1901 – 19 March 1965) was a Romanian politician and electrician. He was the first Communist leader of Romania from 1947 to 1965, serving as first secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (ultimately "Romanian Workers' Party", PMR) from 1944 to 1954 and from 1955 to 1965, and as the first Communist Prime Minister of Romania from 1952 to 1955.
Born in Bârlad (1901), Gheorghiu-Dej was involved in the communist movement's activities from the early 1930s. Upon the outbreak of World War II in Europe, he was imprisoned by Ion Antonescu's regime in the Târgu Jiu internment camp, and escaped only in August 1944. After the forces of King Michael ousted Antonescu and had him arrested for war crimes, Gheorghiu-Dej together with prime-minister Petru Groza pressured the King into abdicating in December 1947, marking the onset of out-and-out Communist rule in Romania.
Under his rule, Romania was considered one of the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite states, though Gheorghiu-Dej was partially unnerved by the rapid de-Stalinization policy initiated by Nikita Khrushchev at the end of the 1950s. Gheorghiu-Dej stepped up measures that greatly increased trade relations between Romania and the Western countries. At the same time his government committed human rights violations within the country.
He died of lung cancer in March 1965. His once protégé Nicolae Ceaușescu succeeded him as General Secretary.
Early life
Gheorghiu-Dej was the son of a poor worker from Bârlad,[1] his father was Tănase Gheorghiu and his mother, Ana. At the age of two he was adopted by his uncle Nicolae Gheorghe Ionescu from Moinești, Bacău County and attended secondary school in the current school no. 1 "Ștefan Luchian". After finishing school, he worked at a sawmill, at a weaving mill, and then worked for carpenters in Piatra Neamț and Moinești. He also had a younger sister named Tinca Gheorghiu.
Career
Poverty made him leave school early on and start working at the age of 11.[1] Due to his age and the lack of professional training, he often changed jobs, eventually settling to be an electrician.[1] Working at a factory in Comănești, he joined the workers' union and participated in the 1920 Romanian general strike, during which all the participants were dismissed.[1]
A year later, he was hired as an electrician at the Galați tramway company, where he was also fired after organizing protests against the 9-hour workday and for higher wages.[1] He was later hired by the Romanian Railways (CFR) workshops in Galați.[2]
As the workers' standard of living was already low, the
On 15 August 1931 Gheorghiu was accused of "communist agitation" and punitively transferred to Dej, a town in Transylvania, where he continued the union activity.[2] The union presented a petition in February 1932 to the CFR Railways, demanding better working conditions and higher wages. As a response, the CFR Railways closed down the Dej plant and fired all the workers, including Gheorghiu, who was deprived of the opportunity to be hired by any other CFR Railways workshop in the country.[3]
Activist
During this time, Gheorghiu got the moniker Gheorghiu-Dej from the Siguranța (secret police), in order for his name to be differentiated from other union activists called Gheorghiu.[3] After his dismissal from the CFR Railways workshop, Gheorghiu became even more active in organizing the unions and coordinating the workers of Iași, Pașcani, and Galați.[4]
On the night of 14–15 July 1932 he was arrested for placing "subversive posters on the walls and poles of Giulești Road", being held in the Văcărești Prison.[5] Defended by lawyer Iosif Schraier, he was freed because the posters were meant to be related to the elections, during the electoral campaign for the 1932 Romanian general election.[5]
Gheorghiu-Dej was briefly arrested again on 3 October 1932, at the end of a workers' meeting in Iași, after he urged the workers to "unite for the fight against the capitalist class", on alleged charges of having hit a police commissioner.[6] He was freed as the charges were found to be false.[6]
In January 1933, the Romanian Government announced some even more stringent
As the negotiations failed, the government feared a
In prison
Gheorghiu-Dej was sentenced to prison in the same year by a
As a known activist, he was detained at Târgu Jiu internment camp during all of Ion Antonescu's regime and most of World War II period, and escaped only on 10 August 1944, a few days before the fall of the regime. He became general secretary in 1944 after the Soviet occupation, but did not consolidate his power until 1952, after he purged Ana Pauker and her Muscovite faction comrades from power. Ana Pauker had been the unofficial leader of the Party since the end of the war.
While in prison, Gheorghiu-Dej met Nicolae Ceaușescu. They were imprisoned after a rally organized by the communist party, of which both Ceaușescu and Gheorghiu-Dej were members. Gheorghiu-Dej taught Ceaușescu in prison Marxist-Leninist theories and principles, and kept him close as Gheorghiu-Dej steadily gained power after their release from prison in 1944.[12] During 1946–1947, he was a member of Romania's Gheorghe Tătărescu-led delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.
Political career
Under Soviet directives
On 30 December 1947, Gheorghiu-Dej and Prime Minister Petru Groza forced King Michael I to abdicate. Years later, Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha alleged that Gheorghiu-Dej personally pulled a gun on the King and threatened to kill him unless he gave up the throne.[13] Hours later, Parliament, fully dominated by Communists and their allies after the elections held a year earlier, abolished the monarchy and declared Romania a People's Republic. From this moment onward, Gheorghiu-Dej was de facto the most powerful man in Romania.
Soviet influence in Romania under
Creation of heavy industry
Gheorghiu-Dej became the architect of a new semi-autonomous foreign and economic policy under the Warsaw Pact and CAER at the end of the sixth decade. He decided to create a heavy industry, an initiative that contradicted the Muscovite plans that had reserved for Romania the role of granary of the communist bloc. Thus, the Galați Steel Plant was created, the construction of which was to be made with funds from the IMF. Production was based on iron ore imported from India and Australia. In 1952, construction began of the Borzești Petrochemical Platform with the first combine (Refinery no. 10) and the related city of Onești, mostly with the workforce of political prisoners. Also, in 1953, the Bârlad Bearing Company was put into operation, which later developed reaching a number of approx. 9,000 employees, about 1/9 of the city's population (approx. 80,000 inhabitants in 1989).
Romania became one of the world's leading steel-producing countries, the machine building industry expanded considerably, and the chemical industry was overdeveloped, with an oil refining capacity far in excess of domestic raw material production. Romania began to produce, at high cost prices but of inferior quality, civil and military aircraft, tanks, maritime vessels, helicopters, automobiles and computers.[citation needed]
A large-scale development was achieved by three industrial branches: the steel industry , the petrochemical industry and the machine building industry. Romania, lacking sufficient sources of domestic raw materials, was forced to rely on imports, sometimes obtained at extremely high prices. In addition, the decrease in demand for steel, of machine tools and petrochemical products on the world market, in the last decade of the Gheorghiu-Dej regime, limited the possibilities of exporting Romanian industrial products and, implicitly, massively reduced the foreign exchange funds thus obtained. The lack of competitiveness of Romanian products, mainly due to their poor quality and outdated technologies, forced Romania to sell its industrial goods at prices lower than their production costs, mostly on Third World markets and often within barter or credit exchanges.
Personal rule
The first five years of the
Gheorghiu-Dej briefly gave up the first secretaryship of the Communist Party in 1954 to Gheorghe Apostol, retaining the premiership. However, he was still the actual leader of Romania, and he regained the party leadership in 1955, at the same time handing the premiership to Chivu Stoica. In 1961, he became president of the newly created State Council, making him de jure head of state. However, he had already been de facto head of state since 1947 by virtue of his leadership of the Communist Party.
Gheorghiu-Dej was at first unsettled by
Yet, the Securitate was still Dej's instrument of choice,[16] and Romania joined the other Warsaw Pact countries' wave of repression after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 – incidentally, Hungarian leader Imre Nagy was shortly detained on Romanian soil.
In his late years, Gheorghiu-Dej established diplomatic relations with the First World, including the United States. Such steps were highly encouraged by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had come to see Romania as an almost friendly[vague] Communist country in the Cold War context (1963).[citation needed] Also, 1964 was the year many political prisoners were released.[citation needed]
Interaction with the West
In the early years of Gheorghiu-Dej's rule, Romania's relations with the West were tense, marked by accusations of
Later, however, 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 29 August 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.
Romania's foreign policy 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 23 December 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 instructed the new ambassador to the U.S. to meet with both
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. 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, 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.
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 powers to increase trade between the U.S. and Eastern Europe, a policy which President Lyndon Johnson also followed.
Thus, 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, attended by 33 foreign delegations, including a special French envoy sent by General Charles de Gaulle. Gheorghiu-Dej's policies set the stage for his successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu, to carry Romania's new course even further.
Death and legacy
Gheorghiu-Dej died of lung cancer in Bucharest on 19 March 1965.[17] Gheorghe Apostol has claimed that Gheorghiu-Dej himself designated him party leader in waiting; in any case many perceived him as such in 1965. But Prime Minister Ion Gheorghe Maurer, who had developed hostility towards him, made sure that Apostol was prevented from taking power, rallying the Party leadership instead around longtime Gheorghiu-Dej protégé Nicolae Ceaușescu. Securitate general Ion Mihai Pacepa, who defected to the United States in 1978, wrote that Ceaușescu had allegedly told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill"; Gheorghiu-Dej was among them.[18]
Gheorghiu-Dej was buried in a
Gheorghiu-Dej was married to Maria Alexe and they had two daughters, Vasilica (1928–1987) and Constantina (1931–2000).
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 77
- ^ a b c d Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 78
- ^ a b Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 80
- ^ Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 81
- ^ a b Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 82
- ^ a b Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 84
- ^ a b Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 86
- ^ Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 87
- ^ Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 88
- ^ Neagoe-Pleșa, p. 100
- ^ Oane, Sorin (2015), "Comuniști în închisoarea de la Ocnele Mari (1918–1938)", Buridava. Studii și materiale (in Romanian), XII (2): 66–78
- ^ "Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Stalinism in Romania". Radio Romania International. 21 September 2015. Retrieved 11 December 2018.
- ISBN 0-271-02935-8
- ^ The contradictions between domestic and foreign policies in the Cold War Romania (1956–1975), Ferrero, M.D, 2006
- ^ Johanna Granville, "Dej-a-Vu: Early Roots of Romania's Independence," East European Quarterly, vol. XLII, no. 4 (Winter 2008), p. 366.
- ^ Deletant, p. x
- ^ Mihailide, Mihail (June 14, 2013). "Un careu de ași pentru sănătatea lui Dej & co". Viața Medicală (in Romanian). Retrieved December 29, 2022.
- National Review Online.
- ISBN 978-1-4985-0110-1.
- ^ Andrei, Cristian (April 23, 2022). "România în stand-by. Reforma administrativă, încremenită în modelele Stalin și Ceaușescu" (in Romanian). Europa Liberă România. Retrieved May 18, 2022.
References
- Neagoe-Pleșa, Elis (2014). "Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej și "procesul ceferiștilor" (1933–1934)". In ISBN 978-606-16-0520-0.
- OCLC 40762619.
Primary sources
- Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1964; p. 11; Tito Socialism Wins Support in Balkans; Donald Starr.
- The Times, Saturday, August 29, 1953; p. 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; p. 7; Issue 55698; col C. "Comecon Meets In Warsaw Preparing For Party Secretaries' Talks".
- The Times, Tuesday, Nov 26, 1963; p. 9; Issue 55868; col D. "Rumania Leader At Yugoslavia Steel Centre Power Project On Danube".
- The Times, Monday, Apr 13, 1964; p. 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; p. 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; p. 13; Issue 56192; col F. "Rumanian Drive For Independence".
- The Times, Friday, Jan 22, 1965; p. 9; Issue 56226; col A. "Warsaw Pact Warning On M.L.F. Counter-Measures Threatened".
- The Times, Thursday, Mar 25, 1965; p. 10; Issue 56279; col E. "Rumania Affirms Independence".
Secondary sources
- .
- Deletant, Dennis (1998). Romania under communist rule. Bucharest: Fundația, Civic Academy Foundation. OCLC 42404569.
- Fischer, Mary Ellen (1983), Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Romanian Political Leadership: Nationalization and Personalization of Power (PDF), National Council for Soviet and East European Research
- Fischer-Galați, Stephen (1970). Twentieth Century Rumania. New York: OCLC 71802.
- OCLC 57750161.
- Granville, Johanna (2008). "Dej-a-Vu: Early Roots of Romania's Independence". East European Quarterly. XLII (4): 365–404. Archived from the original on 2013-10-14. ProQuest 195170946
- Harrington, Joseph F.; Courtney, Bruce J. (1991). Tweaking the nose of the Russians: fifty years of American-Romanian relations, 1940–1990. Boulder: East European Monographs. OCLC 23051317.
- Quinlan, Paul D. (1988). The United States and Romania: American-Romanian relations in the twentieth century. Woodland Hills, Calif.: American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences. OCLC 19323636.
- OCLC 35033916.
- Tismăneanu, Vladimir (2003). Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism. Berkeley: OCLC 51172356.