Dej-a-Vu: early roots of Romania's independence.

Once upon a time, according to Romanian jokesters, the American CIA and FBI competed with Nicolae Ceausescu's Securitate to prove superiority in apprehending criminals. They released a rabbit into the forest and all agreed that the first agency to catch it would win the contest. The CIA planted informants throughout the forest, questioned all plant and animal witnesses, and eventually concluded that the rabbit never existed. The FBI tried next, but with no leads after two weeks, burned the forest completely, rationalizing that the elusive rabbit deserved to die. Then the Romanian first secretary sent in the Securitate. After one hour, a huge bear, bruised and bleeding, limped out of the forest, with paws high over his head, whimpering, "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit!"

The joke, writ large, juxtaposes American impatient, short-term thinking with Romanian ruthlessness, a Ceausescuan world in which one is guilty until proven innocent and where torture-induced confessions prove guilt. Delighted in 1967 when Ceausescu refused to sever ties with Israel during the Six Day War, established diplomatic relations with West Germany, and denounced the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia a year later, Washington decided to reward him--sending U.S. President Richard Nixon to visit Bucharest (August 2-3, 1969); inviting Ceausescu thrice to visit Washington (October 1970, December 1973; and April 1978); and conferring Most Favored Nation status to Romania (August 1975). (1) Time Magazine put Ceausescu's face on the cover of its March 18, 1966 issue and quoted the future dictator: "The word freedom can be spoken in many languages, but it has the same meaning [...] People must be fully equal, have the right to express their opinion, and be able to take part in the guiding of society." (2) With their simplistic enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend mindset, Washington officials failed to understand that Ceausescu's ostensibly "liberal" foreign policy stance masked horrendous abuses of human rights at home--exporting food despite acute shortages at home, censuring writers and religious groups, arranging fatal accidents for strike leaders; (3) firing thousands of disgruntled miners; outlawing contraceptives and abortions, resulting in tragic deaths and swelling orphanages; (4) bulldozing Hungarian villages in Transylvania, and transforming Romania into the poorest of Warsaw Pact countries in order to pay off ten billion dollars in foreign debt.

A surfeit of books and articles--and jokes--exist about Ceausescu, while surprisingly few address his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Perhaps this is due to Ceausescu's defiance of Moscow, the stark dichotomy between his foreign and domestic policies, length of his incumbency, flagrant nepotism, and televised execution by firing squad on December 25, 1989. (5) As Romanian scholar Vladimir Tismaneanu put it, "In the avalanche of incriminating material relating to the Ceausescu family dictatorship, there is a tendency to forget who presided over the Stalinization and Sovietization of the country [...] The name of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej has only been mentioned occasionally." (6)

One can go still further. There is also a tendency to forget who made Romania's greater independence vis-a-vis Moscow possible and who first established the pattern of foreign policy openness and "liberalness" coupled with domestic repression. Romania under Gheorghiu-Dej has commonly been viewed as one of the most loyal of Soviet allies in 1956. (7) However, it was Dej who--inspired by the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Austria in 1955--masterminded the exodus of Soviet troops (1958) and KGB advisors (1964) from Romania and conceived the April 27, 1964 "declaration of independence." Indeed, Romania became the only Warsaw Pact country from which both Soviet troops and advisors were actually withdrawn during the Cold War. (8) Ceausescu's later audacity toward Moscow would have been highly unlikely had Soviet troops still been stationed throughout Romania. As Dej opined to the Romanian ambassador to the United States, Silviu Brucan, in 1956: "if I don't do a U-turn now in our relations with the Soviet authorities, we are lost." (9)

Drawing on archival documents, published memoirs, and recent Romanian scholarship, this article will examine the patterns of deception Dej employed to achieve greater independence from the Soviet Union. The cunning strategist feigned loyalty to Khrushchev (whom he loathed) and kept a low profile in order to survive destalinization and eventually expel Soviet troops from his country. (10) Unlike Ceausescu, Dej forfeited short-term forms of ego gratification in exchange for a long-term, but permanent, fait accompli (a country rid of Soviet troops).

Just two months after the twentieth congress of the communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), February 14-25, 1956, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerul Afacerilor Externe, or MAE) took measures to resume diplomatic relations with several capitalist democracies, and even NATO members, such as Norway, Iceland, Greece, Brazil, Burma, as well as with less stable countries like Sudan and Uruguay. (11) MAE also attempted to resolve old financial issues with the United States, Great Britain, and Greece. MAE sent a proposal to Washington on March 7, 1956, for example, to begin negotiations to resolve the problem of sequestered or liquidated Romanian funds in the United States. Robert Thayer, the U.S. minister to Romania, replied and suggested a further exchange of memoranda about both this issue and about the restrictions imposed on the U.S. legation in Bucharest and the statute regarding American citizens in Romania. (12) Romanian officials issued a visa for an American agricultural expert to visit Romania and requested a visa for a Romanian agricultural expert to visit the United States. (13) In addition, the Romanian government accepted an invitation from Washington to send two or three representatives to the United States for an expense-paid, two-week visit so they could "observe the bipartite electoral process." Other bloc states were invited, but only the Romanians--like the Russians--accepted, and thus from October 21 until after election day on November 6, the very period spanning the Hungarian revolution, three Romanians freely toured Washington, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Washington proposed the visit on a reciprocal basis, hoping to get invited to observe "elections" in Romania. However, by January 24, 1957, the Bucharest regime, following the Soviet cue, welshed on the swap agreement, stating that an American visit to Romania would be "inappropriate at the present time." (14)

Bucharest also sent industrial goods and Romanian oil and communications experts to Egypt in May. In return, President Nasser promised to send advisers on irrigation techniques. (15) Moreover, Bucharest invited a Brazilian delegation to visit Romania in June to become acquainted with Romanian folklore, music, dance and costumes. The Bucharest regime also invited to Romania a cultural delegation from India, consisting of musicians and dancers and headed by the deputy minister of foreign affairs, and then sent a delegation to visit India the following September 1956. (16)