Romania: The Rise and Fall of Romanian Communism

The Rise and Fall of Romanian Communism

Politically and economically, Romania became increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union. A Communist-led coalition government, headed by the nominally non-Communist Peter Groza, was set up in 1945. In Dec., 1947, Michael was forced to abdicate, and Romania was proclaimed a people's republic. The first constitution (1945) was superseded in 1952 by a constitution patterned more directly on the Soviet model. Nationalization of industry and natural resources was completed by a law of 1948, and there was also forced collectivization of agriculture. Control over the major industries, notably petroleum, was shared with the USSR after 1945, but an agreement in 1952 dissolved the joint companies and returned them to full Romanian control. In 1949, Romania joined the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), and in 1955 it became a charter member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and also joined the United Nations.

For all but a year of the period from 1945 to 1965 Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was head of the Romanian Workers' (Communist) party; he was succeeded by Nicholae Ceauşescu as leader of the party, renamed the Romanian Communist party. Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceauşescu were both dictators who followed the Stalinist model of rapid industrialization and political repression. In 1965, Romania was officially termed a socialist republic, instead of a people's republic, to denote its alleged attainment of a higher level of Communism, and a new constitution was adopted.

Beginning in 1963, Romania's foreign policy became increasingly independent of that of the USSR. In early 1967, Romania established diplomatic relations with West Germany. It maintained friendly relations with Israel after the Arab-Israeli War of June, 1967, whereas the other East European Communist nations severed diplomatic ties. In 1968, Romania did not join in the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and in 1969, Ceauşescu and President Tito of Yugoslavia affirmed the sovereignty and equality of socialist nations.

During the 1970s, the emphasis on rapid industrialization continued at the expense of other areas, especially agriculture. Political repression remained severe, particularly toward the German and Magyar minorities. In 1981, a rising national debt, caused in part by massive investment in the petrochemical industry, led Ceauşescu to institute an austerity program that resulted in severe shortages of food, electricity, and consumer goods. In Dec., 1989, antigovernment violence broke out in Timişoara and spread to other cities. When army units joined the uprising, Ceauşescu fled, but he was captured, deposed, and executed along with his wife. A 2006 presidential commission report estimated that under Communist rule (1945–89) as many as 2 million people were killed or persecuted in Romania.

A provisional government was established, with Ion Iliescu, a former Communist party official, as president. In the elections of May, 1990, Iliescu won the presidency and his party, the National Salvation Front, obtained an overwhelming majority in the legislature. Iliescu was reelected in 1992, but was defeated by Emil Constantinescu of the Democratic Convention party in 1996.

Throughout the 1990s and into the next decade the country's economy lagged, as it struggled to make the transition to a market-based economy. Price increases and food shortages led to civil unrest, and the closing of mines set off large-scale strikes and demonstrations by miners. Privatization of state-run industries proceeded cautiously, with citizens having shares in companies but little knowledge or information about their investments. Widespread corruption also was a problem. In Nov.–Dec., 2000, elections Iliescu again won the presidency, after a runoff against Corneliu V. Tudor, an ultranationalist.

In Oct., 2003, the country approved constitutional changes protecting the rights of ethnic minorities and property owners; the amendments were designed to win European Union approval for Romania's admission to that body, but continuing pervasive corruption remained a stumbling block. The country joined NATO in Mar., 2004. The Nov.–Dec., 2004, presidential election was won by the center-right opposition candidate, Traian Basescu of the Liberal Democratic party (PDL); Basescu defeated the first round leader, Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, after a runoff. In Apr., 2005, Romania finally signed an accession treaty with the European Union; Romania became a member of the EU in 2007, but corruption and judicial reform remained significant EU concerns and delayed the nation's joining the EU's borderless Schengen Area into the 2010s. In Feb., 2006, Nastase, who had become parliament speaker, was charged with corruption; he accused the government of mounting a politically inspired prosecution. Nastase was acquitted in that case in Dec., 2011, but was convicted in a second corruption case in Jan., 2012, and of blackmail in a third case in Mar., 2012.

Disagreements between the outspoken, popular president and the center-right prime minister, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, of the National Liberal party (PNL), became increasing acrimonious in early 2007, after the president accused the prime minister of having attempted to influence a corruption investigation of a political ally. In April the left-wing opposition and Popescu-Tariceanu's allies in parliament voted to suspend the president for unconstitutional conduct, a dubious charge given that the constitutional court had ruled previously that the president had not violated the constitution, but the court also upheld the president's suspension. The suspension forced a referendum on impeaching the president, and in the May poll 74% of the voters opposed impeachment. The prime minister's government subsequently (June) survived a no-confidence vote.

In the Nov., 2008, parliamentary elections, the Social Democratic and Conservative parties (PSD-PC) won the most votes, but the PDL won the most seats. The two formed a coalition government, with PDL leader Emil Boc as prime minister. In Oct., 2009, however, the coalition collapsed after Boc dismissed the PSD interior minister; the resulting PDL minority government soon lost a no-confidence vote. The president nominated Lucian Croitoru, an economist, for prime minister, but a parliamentary majority rejected him, having proposed Klaus Iohannis, the mayor of Sibiu and a member of a small, ethnic German party.

Basescu was reelected by a narrow margin in Dec., 2009, defeating the PSD-PC's Mircea Geoana. Geoana, whom polls had predicted would win, accused Basescu of fraud and sought a revote; a court-ordered review of the invalidated votes increased Basescu's lead slightly. Basescu appointed Boc as prime minister of the PDL-led coalition government. In 2010 the government imposed a number of austerities, including public sector pay cuts and tax increases, as part of its efforts to reduce the deficit and secure loans from International Monetary Fund. In early 2012, several weeks of protest over the effects of those measures and over corruption and cronyism led Boc's government to resign in February. Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, the head of the foreign intelligence service, succeeded Boc as prime minister, heading the same PDL-led coalition, but the government lost a no-confidence vote in April.

In May, 2012, Victor Ponta, the PSD leader, became prime minister of a three-party center-left coalition government. In July the president's opponents in parliament for a second time voted to suspend him on charges of unconstitutional behavior, forcing a referendum on removing him from office; Ponta's government also reduced the powers of the constitutional court. The moves prompted criticism from the European Union. The July referendum, which went decisively against Basescu, had less than a 50% turnout, and because of that the result was declared invalid by the constitutional court in August.

The PSD and its coalition allies won two thirds of the parliamentary seats in the Dec., 2012, election, and Ponta again became prime minister. The new government subsequently lowered the turnout threshold for a valid referendum to 30%. Efforts by the parliament during 2013 to protect lawmakers from criminal corruption investigations were criticized by the EU and others. In Feb., 2014, tensions within the ruling coalition led the Liberal party to withdraw, but the Hungarian Democratic Union (UDMR) entered into coalition with the PSD and a new government, with Ponta as prime minister, was formed in March.

Ponta subsequently ran for president, but lost to Klaus Iohannis, the mayor of Sibiu and leader of the center-right National Liberal party. PSD lost two of its coalition allies following the election, but the remaining parties nonetheless formed a solid majority. In 2015 Ponta was named in a criminal corruption investigation and charged with tax evasion and other crimes, and he stepped down as party leader. He did not resign as prime minister, however, till Nov., 2015, following anticorruption public protests in response to a deadly Bucharest nightclub fire; Ponta was later (2018) acquitted of the charges. Dacian Cioloş, a former agriculture minister and EU agriculture commissioner, was appointed prime minister and formed a technocratic government with the support of the PSD and Liberals.

In the Dec., 2016, parliamentary elections the PSD and their allies won majorities in both houses, but PSD party leader Liviu Dragnea was ineligible to serve as prime minister due to an election-fraud conviction. PSD member Sorin Grindeanu, a former communications minister, ultimately became prime minister, but Dragnea was regarded as the real power in the government. A government decree (Jan., 2017) that would have decriminalized some corruption convictions led to widespread protests and was reversed before it took effect. Grindeanu then lost the support of the PSD-led coalition, was ousted by a no-confidence vote in June, and replaced as prime minister by Mihai Tudose, a Dragnea ally and former economy minister.

In Jan., 2018, Tudose resigned after he lost the PSD's backing; the PSD's Viorica Dăncilă, a relatively inexperienced politician, succeeded him. In 2018 and 2019, the government continued to move to thwart corruption prosecutions through a range of legislation whose affects included decriminalizing some offenses and limiting permissible evidence, through forcing the dismissal of the chief anticorruption prosecutor and then charging her with corruption, and through other measures; many of the actions were criticized by the European Union, and some of the measures were nullified by the constitutional court. In June, 2018, Dragnea was convicted of abuse of power in a corruption case, and he was jailed after an unsuccessful appeal in May, 2019.

In Aug., 2019, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats quit the governing coalition, leaving the PSD with a minority government. Two months later, Dăncilă's government lost a no-confidence vote. In November, Ludovic Orban, of the National Liberal party (PNL), formed a minority center-right government. In the subsequent presidential election, Iohannis was reelected, easily defeating Dăncilă in a November runoff. Orban lost a no-confidence vote in Feb., 2020, due to proposed electoral changes, but then won a confidence vote in March amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Dec., 2020, parliamentary elections, the PSD won a plurality, with nearly 30% of the vote (and less than a third of the electorate voting); the PNL placed second. Orban resigned as prime minister in the wake of the vote, and Defense Minister Nicolae Ciuca became interim prime minister. The PNL's Florin Citu, the finance minister, then became prime minister of a center-right government with the reformist Save Romania Union–Freedom, Unity and Solidarity Party alliance (USR-PLUS) and UDMR.

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