Rumania

RUMANIA is a strange island in the middle of the Eastern European Communist world. It has long been isolated from its fellow Communists in language and manners, for it is a Latin country with curiously Mediterranean habits. But in the past few years the isolation has been extending to matters political, economic, and emotional. After a long period of nearly total subservience to the Soviet government and Party, Rumania has begun to show a more independent spirit than would have been possible a half dozen years ago.

Rumania is still very much a Communist state, but vastly different from what it used to be, largely because of the activities of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who died in March. As head of the Communist Party and president of the country, he quietly took advantage of every opportunity to exact a measure of independence not yet achieved by any other member of the Communist camp except Yugoslavia, which broke away in 1948. He spent the war years in a Nazi prison camp in Rumania and was liberated by Gheorghe Maurer, an attorney who was later to share some of Gheorghiu-Dej’s power.

Right after the war the Russians installed a Moscow-trained group, headed by the ominous Ana Pauker. Gheorghiu-Dej got a minor post in the government and began his rather rapid rise to power. In 1952 the Ana Pauker government, which was partly composed of what the Russians call “cosmopolites” — meaning Jews — lost Moscow’s favor, and Gheorghiu-Dej was made head of the Party. Maurer, the lawyer, and Chivu Stoica, one of Gheorghiu-Dej’s prison mates, moved into control with him.

Soviet armies withdrew, and the new clan began weaning the country away from dependence on the big government to the north. It was not easy, and Rumania moved carefully. After all, Russia has a 300-mile frontier with Rumania.

Steel as well as wheat

Undoubtedly, the greatest encouragement to take a more independent course came with the ideological dispute between China and the Soviet Union, just as it did in lesser measure in the other countries of Eastern Europe. Rumanians began methodically “de-Russifying the country” (that is a phrase they use privately). Then they took a more independent stance in the Communist version of the European Common Market, called Comecon.

The main proposition which Rumania fought against was a Soviet plan whereby each of the countries was to build its economy in association with the other Communist states, each producing what it could do best. This meant that only Russia was to be a completely self-sustaining economy. Rumania was assigned primarily the job of producing light consumer goods and food. This was appropriate in terms of the past — producing food has been the Rumanian job back through history but like so many others, Rumanians want to graduate from the past. So they insisted on developing their own heavy industry: factories to build tool machinery, tractors, and farm machinery. Besides rich agricultural land, Rumania has oil and untapped reserves of natural gas, resources that are conducive to the development of an industrial plant. Among other things, Rumania wanted a steel mill, a big one.

Rather than endure a disagreeable showdown in the camp, the Russians agreed to help build a one-million-ton iron and steel plant for Galati, at the mouth of the Danube. This was truly not much of a Russian capitulation, for the Russians use this device to try to keep tight the ties with Communist countries. Just such iron and steel mills are being built and expanded in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, both using Russian ore.

It develops, however, that the Rumanian steel mill need not be essentially dependent on the big Soviet iron ore field at Krivoy Rog. Some ore comes from there, but Rumania imports more from as far away as Brazil and West Africa. With low-cost water transport, it is cheaper than Russian ore, which requires an expensive rail haul from the central Ukraine to the Black Sea.

Not satisfied with this show of independence in Comecon, Rumania sent a delegation to Peking to try to “mediate” the Sino-Soviet dispute, a gesture which annoyed Khrushchev, pleased the Chinese, and, of course, accomplished nothing in the way of a settlement.

By the time Khrushchev was ousted, the conflict between him and Gheorghiu-Dej had reached such a point that no tears were shed in Bucharest. It has never been officially announced, but important Rumanian Party officials confirm privately that six months before Khrushchev lost his own job, he tried to expel Gheorghiu-Dej from his. This affair fortified the Rumanian Party’s decision to keep its hands free in the Sino-Soviet dispute: so when the big Communist meeting was called in Moscow in the middle of March, ostensibly aimed at putting the onus on China for breaking Communist solidarity, Rumania stayed home.

Diplomats in Bucharest are not misled about how far this show of independence is going. Rumania is not going to leave either Comecon or the Warsaw military pact. Two months before he died, GheorghiuDej himself led the delegation to the annual Warsaw Pact meeting and had friendly talks with the Soviet leaders, Brezhnev and Kosygin.

The new crew succeeding Gheorghiu-Dej appears likely to hold to policies already set. All were close to the late leader. The youngest of the three, Nicolae Ceausescu, fortyseven, has the job with the most power, Party chairman. He has been a Party apparatchik all his adult fife, though there is little in his background to indicate what he may do or be able to do. He evidently is one of the most anti-Russian among the Party executives.

Maurer, sixty-two, who continues as Premier, is the suavest of the lot. He was already trained in law when the others were still combing peasant straw out of their hair. He speaks French, and German so flawlessly that in 1944 he donned a military uniform and mingled with German officers to smuggle Stoica, Gheorghiu-Dej, and Ceausescu out of prison. Stoica, fifty-seven, came, like Gheorghiu-Dej, of peasant stock, had little formal schooling, and rose through the railroad unions to Party authority. His future is limited by poor health.

English yes, Russian no

While caution continues, Rumanians talk about their continuing de-Russification with a certain satisfaction. They have had too many conflicts with Russians through the years to think very highly of them. Among the first things a traveler notes on entering the country is that the airport signs carry information in English, Rumanian, French, and Italian — not Russian. Street names and squares that once honored the Soviet liberators have been changed. Tolbukhin Boulevard, named to honor the Soviet marshal who drove the Germans out, now is called Republic Boulevard.

Compulsory study of Russian, demanded in all other Eastern European states, has been dropped in Rumania. In Bucharest the prestigious Gorky Institute for teaching Russian language has been closed, along with a Russian reading room. A radio program, Moscow Speaks, formerly on the air once daily, now comes at rare intervals. Pictures of Soviet leaders are no longer carried in Liberation Day parades.

One of the sharper cuts at Moscow — and perhaps a portent of future Rumanian demands — came from a surprising quarter. The Rumanian state printing house published a book of writings of Karl Marx, criticizing Russian seizure of Bessarabia. The articles had nothing to do, of course, with the most recent annexation by Russia after the war. They concerned an earlier one, a century ago, when the Czarist government took possession of Bessarabia as a part of the booty ending a war with the Turks.

Marx criticized this in a series of essays, some of which were written for the old New York Tribune, for which lie was a correspondent in London. These articles, many in Marx’s own handwriting, have been lying in an institute for international studies in Amsterdam all these generations. A Polish student stumbled upon the collection but did not dare to use them. Instead, he tipped off some Rumanian scholars. They photographed the lot and translated them into Rumanian, a somewhat difficult job, for Marx had written the articles in an almost undecipherable mixture of English, German, and French. Some of these quaint documents were printed as photostats in the book. An edition of 20,000 copies sold out in a matter of hours in Bucharest last year.

More trade with the West

Two thirds of Rumania’s trade is with Russia and the other members of Comecon, and it is growing. Trade with the West, though smaller, is growing still faster than Rumania’s trade with the Communist states. Its biggest customers in the West are West Germany and Italy, with France and England next.

Trade with the United Stales was feeble until last year. Then a trade delegation headed by Gheorghe Gaston-Marin, chairman of the planning commission. visited Washington and met a number of industrialists. An agreement was reached for Universal Oil Products Corporation to build in the heart of the oil fields a chemical factory to make synthetic rubber and other products. Firestone Tire and Rubber Company contracted to build a plant to turn the synthetic rubber into tires. The whole operation represents a $50 million contract. This Western plum has caused other Communist states to drool with envy.

From a cultural standpoint, Rumania is so strongly oriented toward the West that, except for its government, it could easily settle down in Western company. There has always been a warm cultural relationship with the French, and many of the older generation speak French as their main foreign language. The youngsters are going for English, and the bookstores are full of books in English of almost every category except political. American and other films from the West dominate the cinema.

Welcome, traveler

Compared with other Communist states, Rumania appears on the surface to be fairly well off. By contrast with Russia, it almost luxuriates in consumer goods. Women’s clothes are pretty, and the women often dress with great chic. American, British, West German, Italian, and French goods are on sale everywhere, although usually at high prices in terms of Rumanian wages and salaries, which are among the lowest in the Communist countries.

It is only when you arrive in Rumania after seeing Holland, Belgium, West Germany, France, or the United States that you notice the sharp difference between East and West. Rumania shares with the rest of Eastern Europe a glaring lack of well-being, a lack of the affluence so visible in Western Europe.

Also, perhaps more than in any other Communist country except the Soviet Union, you sense in Rumania the presence of police. It is far less evident than it was even a year or so ago, but it is there. On relatively short acquaintance Rumanians will talk freely about their hardships and their aversion to their restricted way of life and the limitations on contacts with the West. But the friend you join at the theater one night will not want to be seen with you very soon thereafter, and will caution you to leave no notes around your hotel room. Western diplomats report that they rarely get invited to Rumanians’ homes.

The country, nevertheless, is actively encouraging Western tourism. Rumania has much to offer the traveler. The Carpathian Mountains in the north and west are some of the most beautiful in Europe. The roads in the mountains take you through forest villages out of an illustrated book of fairy tales. The houses are tiny and intrieately carved, inside and out — including each separate shingle.

In the mountains new hotels are multiplying, and ever more hotels line the fine beach front on the Black Sea at Mamaia. Rumanians advertise it as the new Miami, but neither Rumanians nor the Miami Chamber of Commerce should fear that the comparison is accurate.