In a bid to gain support, on the day before Groza’s appointment, the government confiscated the lands of war criminals and of those who had fought against the Allies or fled for political reasons. Also seized was the property of absentee landlords and those who possessed more than fifty hectares—the latter were compensated. Most of the spoils were redistributed to the poorest peasants. Production fell almost immediately, and soon desperate shortages and famine arose in a place the Soviets viewed as one of “milk and honey,” where they could always find badly needed foodstuffs.32
On March 7 a delegation of Soviet specialists met with Pauker and four of her comrades. According to a report by the fledgling OSS, the team came with a ten-point political plan that the government would follow for the next three years to transform it into a one-party dictatorship. Using a refurbished secret police, they were to eliminate political opposition, one way or another.33
That evening the fifteen members of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party met to map out specifics. Pauker expressed confidence that the national front strategy would help gain support, although she felt that they had to make themselves more visible and recruit members, as indeed soon happened. She also said that the Communists had to repress the “reactionary” segments of society and not allow “people on the street who will become active enemies,” perhaps even put them in camps. The Party would have to make strenuous efforts to win over the population at large, organize the workers, and reach out to the countryside with land reforms.34
The same day Groza announced that there would be a purge of the fascists from public life, and that meant getting rid of anyone standing in the way. In April two people’s courts were established, and Communist minister of justice Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, recently returned from the Soviet Union, appointed public prosecutors, most of them members of the party, to examine the cases of 2,700 persons. About half were indicted and 668 were found guilty, mostly in absentia because they had fled. In total, 48 people were sentenced to death, but only four of them were executed. Groza mentioned offhandedly in May 1945 that 90,000 people were under arrest. Something on the order of one thousand magistrates were forced out and replaced by more politically reliable candidates. By the end of 1945, an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 government workers had been dismissed, and beyond that threats were used to gain people’s support for the regime.35
On June 28, 1946, the tribunals were disbanded. Their verdicts had been mild, especially given the extent of the previous regime’s crimes—which included the wartime mass murder of Jews. According to a recent commission’s report, between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews from “territories under Romanian administration” had been killed during the Holocaust.36 Half or even less of the Jewish community survived.
The Kremlin had long since decided that the only way the Romanian Communists would get into power seamlessly was through elections that could be held up to the West as beyond reproach. However, the majority of the people still hated the Soviet Union and had little taste for Communism. Moreover, the Red Army’s occupation of the country led to inevitable crimes against the population, which partly undermined the Stalinist political mission. Additionally, the factions in the Romanian Communist Party sometimes worked at cross purposes. In spite of everything, when Gheorghiu-Dej visited the Soviet capital in April 1946, he was bold enough to assure Molotov that in the next elections he and his allies would certainly get 70 to 75 percent of the vote. The party was badly in need of funding, however, and to ensure the results, Molotov provided $200,000.37
The Romanian Communists then formed a Bloc of Democratic Parties (BPD), another of the grand alliances of the Left. The first elections were finally held on November 19. By that time everything possible had been put in the way of a free expression of opinion. Although rumor had it that the vote ran against the Communists, the official tally (published after checking with Moscow) gave the Bloc 349 seats, or 70 percent of the vote. Gheorghiu-Dej had promised Stalin that they would get close to those figures. The opposition parties combined ended up with only 65 seats, a result no one believed. Recent research suggests that non-Communist parties likely obtained 70 percent of the ballots.38
This lack of popular backing made local Communists that much more dependent on the Soviet Union. In Romania during 1947, the governing officials eliminated one political party after the next, until December 30, when the king was forced to abdicate, and the Communists proclaimed the Romanian People’s Republic.39
Looming over it all was the notorious Securitate, or security police, which arrested hundreds of people. The organization had been created in the 1930s and during the war had been used against the Jews. With the emergence of the Groza government, the Communists took it over. Soviet agents or others schooled in the Soviet Union ran its operations, modeling the Romanian setup on what they knew best. In August 1948, Gheorghe Pintilie moved from a position on the Communist Party’s Central Committee to reorganize the Securitate. He formulated its broader mission, as defined by its statute, as “to defend the democratic achievements and to protect the security of the People’s Republic of Romania from enemies at home or abroad.”40
In real terms, the mission called for keeping the Communist regime in power and crushing opposition. Pintilie was born in a Romanian part of the Russian Empire in 1902. He had fought in the Red Army during the civil war, was later recruited by the Soviet secret police, and worked for the Romanian revolution on Moscow’s behalf. Along with two assistants who were also Soviet agents, he fashioned a service modeled on the NKVD, and the practices of the Securitate were every bit as brutal.41
From the outset, the regime created its own concentration camp system, which spread across the country like a cancer. Recent Romanian reports point to tens of thousands dragged through these dens of horror and count as many as 230 different camps. Thousands were arrested on the eve of the elections in 1946, and the waves of arrests continued for years. The Romanian Communists strove to be “more orthodox than the Kremlin,” as the saying went; they kept their concentration camps operating long after Stalin died and the Soviets had dismantled the Gulag.42
The government kept up its efforts to get Romanians to embrace Communism. One of the benign ways was to orchestrate a leadership cult for Stalin. Although some citizens found collectivizing agriculture and nationalizing industry hard to swallow and felt keenly the loss of freedom, the government found it easy to acknowledge Stalin as a paternal figure who stood for progress, peace, and humanity. The regime took great care to foster that image in Romania, which culminated on his official seventieth birthday festivities in 1949 with conferences, celebrations in the public squares, and adulation in all the newspapers.43
HUNGARY
The Hungarians may have been more bitterly opposed to Communism and the Soviet Union than the Romanians, but like them they were liberated and occupied by the Red Army. According to the percentages deal, Churchill offered Stalin only a 50/50 split of influence in Hungary. After Molotov got through wrangling with Secretary Eden the following day, the British caved in to 80/20 shares. This outlandish horse trading was a symptom of the times, and though Stalin smiled and Churchill felt awkward, the Kremlin never failed to bring up that agreement. It was their “proof” that the British accepted the rightfulness of Soviet domination.44