Celebrate the Historical Struggle of the Romanian Workers’ Party! – Romanian Workers’ Party (Red Fraction)
Return to Romania
CELEBRATE THE HISTORICAL STRUGGLE OF THE ROMANIAN WORKERS’ PARTY! 1
By
Romanian Workers’ Party (Red Fraction)
2025
With the occasion of the day of Augus 23 and the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Romanian people from the Hitlerite yoke and of the armed insurrection led by the Romanian Workers’ Party, the Red Fraction sends warm greetings to the proletariat and people of Romania.
The Red Fraction has decided to make its existence public through this pamphlet and to share the lessons of the history of the Romanian Workers’ Party [“Partidul Muncitoresc Roman“] and of the struggle for its reconstitution. These lessons are all the more important today when Romania finds itself as the target of a new imperialist offensive against the people, when the fascist threat knocks at the door both from the right (the reactionary circles around George Simion and Calin Georgescu) and from the center (the single party of bureaucrats and compradors, PNL- PSD- USR) and when the revolt of the masses is at the breaking point, the only thing separating us from the resumption of the socialist road being the vanguard party of the working class and the three instruments.
The main task of any communist in Romania is to participate in and bring to completion the reconstitution of the Romanian Workers’ Party as a Marxist- Leninist- Maoist party. In this task it is of the utmost importance to understand the historical lessons of our party, the lessons of the struggle for constitution up to the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, the lessons of the struggle for the accomplishment of the armed insurrection of August 23, 1944, the lessons of the three instruments (especially the Revolutionary Front) employed for the seizure of political power on March 6, 1945, the lessons of the struggle against the external and internal enemy during the realization of the democratic revolution and socialist construction, etc. Throughout its entire existence, our party found itself under a continual siege by the reactionaries and the revisionists, but achieved major accomplishments, leaving behind, after its liquidation in 1965 by the revisionist clique of Ceausescu, a long series of lessons for the communists of today.
GHEREA AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A WORKERS’ PARTY
At the beginning of the 19th century, in the Three Romanian Principalities, feudal relations of production were still dominant, commodity production still being underdeveloped, a condition to which the yoke of the feudal Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, which ruled over and exploited them, also contributed. In this period, nevertheless, socialist ideas manifest themselves on the territory of our country as well, in utopian and anarchist forms, worthy of mention being the Phalanstery of Scaieni (1835) and the families of Moldova (1841) of Teodor Diamant.
Capitalist relations of production develop in the Romanian Principalities as well, around the mid-nineteenth century, the revolutions of 1848 in the territory acquiring the character of bourgeois- democratic revolutions. These revolutions fail, the bourgeoisie taking the path of reforms; thus, the feudal regime becomes a bourgeois- landlord one. Under these conditions of semi- feudality and while foreign capital penetrated even more deeply into the territory of the country, the Romanian proletariat also develops, thus creating a social base for scientific socialism.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, in the Kingdom of Romania, these socialist ideas penetrate the ranks of the progressive intellectuals, who form revolutionary circles, circles which after the winning of independence in 1877 take on a Marxist character, the intellectuals seeking links with the working class. Around 1880 appear the first socialist writings with a Marxist tendency, of Constantin Dobrogeanu- Gherea, who, through the newspaper “Munca” [Labor], waged a struggle against liberal, reactionary, and anarchist ideas, materializing itself in an unwavering struggle for the formation of a party of the proletariat, a party which he called “social- democratic.”
The fruits of this struggle took form in 1893, through the constitution of the Social-Democratic Party of the Workers of Romania, under the leadership of Ion Nadejde, I.C. Frimu, and C. Dobrogeanu- Gherea, which formed workers’ societies, socialist study clubs, and peasant clubs through which it organized and agitated the workers, peasantry, and intellectuals. Affiliating itself to the Second International, the PSDMR suffered from the same narrow- mindedness specific to it, conducting a legalist activity and having a program largely composed of democratic demands.
The legalist shortcomings showed themselves after PSDMR began to launch actions among the peasants, in 1894, organizing peasant clubs. In this context, the Kingdom of Romania was still a society dominated by feudal relations, the landlords, whose foremost representative was the Conservative Party, still held power, and the bourgeoisie was still in an inferior position and developing; the struggle of the peasants against the great landed property and the demand “for land” were burning questions. Frightened by the upsurge of the peasant masses, the landlords conduct a campaign of defamation of the PSDMR, and under the pretext of false peasant revolts, start the repression against the peasants and socialists in June 1899, a repression against which the party had no defense. The peasant clubs came to be dissolved, and some of their activists were expelled.
The party unity of the PSDMR, being of a social- democratic type, as a result of the repression, the weakest and most opportunist elements within it yielded, formulating a liquidationist line, pleading for the dissolution of the party, arguing that “there is no real base for socialism in Romania,” that “there is no proletariat in our country.” This group led by C. Stere, George Diamandy, and Vasile Mortun, nicknamed the “generosi” (the generous ones), saw the way forward through fusion with the National Liberal Party, representatives of the bourgeoisie and the progressive boyars.
Constantin Dobrogeanu- Gherea combated and refuted these views in his well-known pamphlet, “Critical Study on Socialism in Romania,” but without results, the party being dissolved, and the “generosi” joining the PNL.
In the wake of this setback, the movement nevertheless continues its path with small steps under the guidance of I.C. Frimu, C. Rakovski, and Gherea, erupting explosively in 1905, on the basis of the revolution in Russia, first as the Union of Socialists of Romania, and later as the Social- Democratic Party of Romania.
In 1914, with the beginning of the First World War, the PSDR fell into the same deviations as the Center of the Second International; it opposed Romania’s entry into the war, it even participated in the Zimmerwald Conference, but it excused the Right of the International, which “does its duty in time of war,” as C. Dobrogeanu- Gherea himself said.
As regards C. Dobrogeanu- Gherea, he is, in our view, an analogue of Plekhanov in Romania. Through his work “Neoiobagia” [Neo- serfdom], he offered a valuable analysis of the semi- feudality in our country, dealt a powerful blow to the reactionaries, liberals, anarchists, and the liquidationism of the “generosi” and fought unceasingly for the formation of a vanguard to prepare the conscious elements of the proletariat and peasantry “with a view to the attainment of its final goal,” what he called “socialist society,” paving the way for a Party of a New Type. However, Gherea also had numerous shortcomings, following in the wake of the Center of the Second International and of Kautsky, whom he defended to his deathbed, and he saw the salvation of backward countries as coming from a revolution in the advanced
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND AGAINST THE OPPORTUNISTS
The Workers’ Movement in Romania waged fierce struggles, on the basis of the upsurge of the Great October Revolution, against the repression of the ruling classes, manifested through: the Printers’ Strike in Bucharest in December 1918, the strikes against the repression in 1919, the General Strike of October 20, 1920, adding up to over 300 strikes in 1920. The bourgeois- landlord regime struck hard against the proletariat and its most capable representatives, incarcerating and torturing many activists of the movement, among them Ion C. Frimu, who drew his last breath in Văcărești Prison, as a result of the beatings and ill treatment suffered at the hands of the authorities.
Meanwhile, the PSDR, renamed the Socialist Party, incorporates opportunistic social- democratic elements from Transylvania and Bukovina, such as I. Jumanca and I. Flueras, who submit to and support the feudal policy of expansion of the great landed property against the Hungarian Soviet Republic, pleading for the “restoration of respect for the law.” Following the success of the opportunities in the elections of 1919, the parliamentary faction conducts a campaign led by Grigorovici in the party press for “reasonable nationalism” and against the “Bolsheviks” in the party, peace with Soviet Russia being justified solely by the fact that it “had given Bessarabia to Romania.”
The Third International criticized the actions of the opportunist social- democrats, actions which have been taken in certain cases in spite of the protest of the party membership, and encouraged the Romanian communists and the delegation of the Socialist Party to Bolshevize the party in the spirit of the 21 Points of the Second Congress of the Comintern. In the course of the year 1920, the regional organizations of the party purge one after another the traitorous social- democrats, among them Ilie Moscovici, Iosif Jumanca, Ion Flueras, and Gheorghe Grigorovici.
In May 8, in Bucharest, The First Congress of the Communist Party of Romania takes place, where affiliation with the Third International was adopted by the great majority of the members — not through the breakaway of a minority, as the anti- communists and bourgeois parties attempt to rewrite history — and the old Socialist Party became the Communist Party of Romania, section of the Communist International. Nevertheless, in the motions adopted at the Congress, there exists confusions regarding national liberation and the agrarian question.
The law enforcement of the bourgeois- landlord state did not hesitate and attempted to strangle the Communist Party in its cradle; the representatives of the Congress were arrested, planning a joint trial with the terrorist Max Goldstein, attempting to create a false link between the Congress and his bombing. The Dealul Spirii Trial, as it came to be known, aroused the revolt of all democratic forces by its rigged nature and the details of the ill treatment suffered by the communists in prison — following an investigation, the authorities declaring that the detainees had either imagined the beatings or inflicted them upon themselves.
Under the conditions of this repression and anticipating the banning of the Party, after the acquittal of the charges in the Dealul Spirii Trial on June 6, 1922, at Ploiești, on October 3, 1922, a National Conference takes place which becomes the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, with the role of clarifying the uncertainties among the members following the arrest of the first Congress. In this context, the position of general secretary remained with the leader of the former Socialist Party, Gheorghe Cristescu, an unstable, petty-bourgeois, and opportunist element, who prevented the PC from taking clear positions on several questions, especially regarding national liberation, preferring legality to the detriment of principled positions.
Despite all these problems, the Communist Party waged a firm struggle for trade union unity; concurrently, the right- wing social- democrats followed the line of splitting trade union unity at the Trade Union Congresses of Sibiu (1921) and Cluj (1923), desiring the affiliation of the trade unions, by bureaucratic, undemocratic means, to the yellow Trade Union International of Amsterdam. At Cluj, in September 1923, calling upon the forces of repression to exclude the revolutionary delegates, the right- wing social- democrats achieved the split of the trade union movement, voting in the absence of the other delegates for affiliation with Amsterdam. The struggle for trade union unity was carried forward by the Communist Party of Romania, in October 1923 creating in Bucharest the Unitary Trade Unions, formed from the trade unions suppressed at Cluj.
The national question was of the utmost importance in the matter of Bessarabia, which “united” with Romania in 1918, under the occupation of the Romanian army and through the vote of the landlords. The Soviet Union conducted extensive actions and campaigned for the right to self- determination of the nations in Bessarabia, demanding a plebiscite at Vienna in 1924 – a demand refused by the Kingdom of Romania and its imperial masters. The Communist Party, although impeded by the opportunist leadership, conducted propagandistic activity in support of the plebiscite and of the right to self- determination of the Bessarabian people. In response, the ruling classes struck hard at the party through the “Marzescu Law” which placed the Communist Party entirely outside the law in April 1924.
Although today, falsified history attempts to cast blame on the Tatar-Bunar Uprising for the banning of the Party, claiming that they had organized it, the truth is that this was the result of the revolt of the Bessarabian masses at the brazen contempt of the regime toward them. Moreover, the logical connection between the two is impossible, given that the uprising took place in September, after the banning of the party in April.
In September 1924 there also takes place the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, at which the activity of the CC under Gheorghe Cristescu is sharply criticized, the latter creating confusion among the cadres, depriving the party of a clear political line – in order to keep alive, the hopes for the party’s legality – and sabotaging the party’s activity through individualist, petty-bourgeois actions. The Third Congress was an important step in the direction of the constitution of the Communist Party of Romania as a Communist Party, underscoring the necessity of combining legal and illegal work, work among the masses, agitation among the peasants and the oppressed nations, in the case of the latter, under the banner of self-determination. At the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, the semicolonial character of Romania was also enunciated for the first time.
In the wake of the congress, the Party carried out extensive actions of Bolshevization, through organization on the basis of the party cell, through the creation of links with the masses in trade unions and peasant committees and the creation of legal organs such as the Red Aid and the Workers’-Peasants’ Bloc (BM- T). Under these conditions and finding himself deprived of the position of general secretary, Gheorghe Cristescu adopts a line that is not merely opportunist but also liquidationist, sabotaging the Party by every means: in trade union activity, he supports “trade union unity” through affiliation with Amsterdam, practically the liquidation of the Unitary Trade Unions; within the BM- T, refusing to run on its lists in 1925; and, finally, he attempts to seize control of the party press and to defame it among the working masses. These actions lead to his expulsion in absentia in 1926, Cristescu having long since broken ties with the CC – and with his elimination, the remnants of social- democratic opportunism breathe their last.
UNPRINCIPLED FACTIONAL STRUGGLES AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
Despite the elimination of the right liquidationist- opportunist tendency, on the basis of the political- ideological lack of clarity, deviationist lines of the right and the “left” form within the party leadership. The right line is represented by Boris Stefanov; through his revisionist “neo- serfdom” theory, he considered Romania under the rule of a purely feudal oligarchy and the peasantist opposition a progressive force that had to be supported to carry out the bourgeois- democratic revolution — totally different from Gherea’s neo- serfdom, which saw the proletariat as the principal force of the coming revolution. The “left” line overestimated the capitalist character of the country, considering it ready for a socialist revolution, and took a sectarian form on the trade union question, Solomon “Mihalache” Schein asserting that trade union unity was impossible.
Likewise, the forces of repression reorganized in the “Secret Police” [“Sigurantā”] dealt a powerful blow to the communist movement, launching arrests of party members, among them CC members Pavel Tcacenco, who was killed by the authorities, and Wilhelm Roth, who under the threat of beatings betrayed and exposed a large number of members, while other CC members such as Sandor Kőrösi simply deserted. Under these conditions, the party leadership did not fight against the disintegration of the party but accelerated it, breaking up into factions and fighting in an unprincipled manner for the monopolization of power, completely neglecting the organizing of the Party.
While the Political and Organizational Bureaus were under the control of the various factions and attempted to discredit one another, in the regional organization of Bessarabia regional- sectarian tendencies manifested themselves, and in the BM- T legalist- liquidationist tendencies began to show their face; in 1928, the regional organization of Bucharest makes the call for a new Congress, emphasizing the necessity of a capable leadership and unmasking the old leadership.
Thus, in 1928, at Kharkov, the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania takes place, in which the two deviationist tendencies regarding the nature of the coming revolution in Romania are combated, all sectarian and opportunist tendencies of the factions that had divided the party are condemned, and the semi- opportunist actions and passivity of the leadership of Elek Kőblös are unmasked. Following this Congress, the education of party cadres in the Marxist-Leninist spirit truly began, some members of the PC enrolling in the Leninist schools in the USSR.
Nevertheless, decomposed elements from the old leadership continued the factionist struggle; for example, E. Kőblös and D. Fabian, although removed from work within the PC of Romania, attempted to coordinate a faction within it, for which they received a vote of censure from the PCUS. Even more harmful was the activity of Marcel Pauker, who, after losing his position in the CC obtained through co- option after 1926, attracted around himself Dori “Rudolf” Goldstein, a CC member, and the Secret Police (Sigurantā) collaborator Vasile Luca, and conducted extensive activity of sabotage and factionalism, going so far as to demand a split.
The leadership of Vitali “Barbu” Holostenko, wishing to cover up its errors and its detachment from the masses and the party membership, attempts to lead the party “by circulars,” which leads to the disintegration of the leadership into two opposing camps. In this period, the factional struggles reach their apex, engulfing both the legal and illegal press; the party leadership being caught up in this unprincipled struggle and completely neglecting practical activities and the offensive of the peasantist government against the working class.
At the initiative of the party membership and following the “Resolution Concerning the Unprincipled Factional Struggle and the Restoration of Unity of the Communist Party of Romania” of the Comintern, in which the two factions were unmasked for their unprincipled character and their complete lack of self- critical spirit, in 1931, the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania takes place.
The Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania is the congress through which the Communist Party of Romania was truly constituted as a party of a new type, Marxist-Leninist. We, as Marxist- Leninist- Maoists, understand that such a process of constituting a communist party on principled bases can only be carried out by a red fraction, as Lenin defined it: “a group of like- minded people, formed primarily for the purpose of influencing the party in a definite direction, for the purpose of securing acceptance for their principles within the party in as pure a form as possible (i.e. Marxist).” In the process of constitution of the Communist Party of Romania, the role of red fraction was not played by a single group alone, but there were multiple groups and individuals who rose to this level in different periods, beginning in 1921, until the constitution of the Party at the Fifth Congress.
At the congress, all unprincipled factions and their deviationist theories were definitively combated, among them the revisionist “neo- serfdom” theory of Stefanov, the “left” theories of Timotei “Tatarov” Marian and Solomon Timov according to which Romania stood on the threshold of the proletarian revolution – and the theories of Menshevik origin of “individual heroism” and the “hunger strike” of Marcel Pauker.
The Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania was the one that established the general political line of the party, enunciated clearly and concisely the semifeudal and semi- colonial character of Romania as an outpost of the imperialist powers against the Soviet Union, established the strategy and tactics of the party on the peasant, trade union, and national questions, strengthened the iron discipline and unity of the party, and charted the practical tasks among the broad masses. It marks the end of the long struggles for unity and for the constitution of the Communist Party, a foundation without which a strong party leadership could not have been formed, and the proletariat could not have seized political power in our country.
Thus recalls Nicolae Goldberger, one of the participants in the congress, years later: “Without doubt, it is one of the merits of the Fifth Congress that it indicated to the party to link itself with the masses in the most important enterprises, to strengthen the party with working- class elements. We could speak at length, […] I want, comrades, to say that the fact that the Fifth Congress indicated this path and that conscious communist workers rose up, who grew up among the people, in great enterprises, linked to the enterprises, as was comrade Gheorghiu, this allowed our party, because at that time there were no such workers in the leading organs.”
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM AND THE CAPITULATIONIST LINE
After a period of relative stability of capitalism, beginning with 1929, the world economic crisis, against the backdrop of the General Crisis of Capitalism, strikes Romania as well. The industrial crisis is advanced on the basis of the crisis in agriculture and the non- resolution of the agrarian question, as the bourgeois- landlord circles saw escape from the crisis through “curves of sacrifice” on the backs of the toiling masses, striking at the proletariat with wage cuts, at the peasants with increased taxes, and at the entire population with the rising cost of living.
The National-Peasantist Party assumes government from 1928 and unmasks itself as a party of finance capital, not one of the peasantry, making perhaps concessions for the strata of the kulaks. It continues the same antipopular policy of worsening the living conditions of those who toil, which it combines with the increasing repression of the workers’ movement. Furthermore, it gives free rein to fascist organizations, the government protecting them while suppressing democratic and antifascist organizations, in order to benefit from the aid of fascist bands in the suppression of strikes.
Against the backdrop of this offensive against the working class, the miners of Lupeni, with the involvement and aid of the party, declare a strike on August 5, 1929, demanding the 8- hour working day, a raise in wages and their timely payment, cessation of dismissals, etc. The scope of the strike and the occupation of the power plant by the strikers frightened the capitalists, who demanded the violent suppression of the strike by gendarmes and soldiers. Two garrisons of border guards encircle the plant, and on August 6, they open fire on the miners, resulting in 30 dead and over 100 wounded. Despite the bloody repression of the strike, it was a powerful manifestation of the will and fighting power of the working class of Romania.
The Communist Party was not able to fully involve itself in the wave of strikes, in the strikes of the “Astra” workshop in Arad, of the “Lemaître” plant, of the metalworkers of Resita, and of the textile workers of Buhusi. The Party and its fine membership were impeded both by the internal sabotage of the factions which carried on their activity until their liquidation at the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, and by the right- wing social-democrats, social- fascists, who conducted wrecking activity, thus supporting the reaction.
Following the constitution of the Communist Party at the Fifth Congress, healthy elements from the ranks of the working class, such as Bela Breiner, Gheorghe Gheorghiu- Dej, Ilie Pintilie, and Chivu Stoica, were able to rise to the level of a true and capable leadership. This was most clearly seen during the railway workers’ strike at Grivita in February 1933.
In the course of the years 1932 and 1933, the Communist Party of Romania carries out extensive actions of organizing, agitation, and propaganda among the workers, especially among the railway workers, thus creating close links with the masses and obtaining a series of victories. Through its activity within the trade unions of the railway workers, the Communist Party fully assumes the role of leader of the working class, being followed by railway workers from Cluj, Galati, Constanta, Iasi, and Bucharest and by the oil workers of the Prahova Valley. In response, the reactionary bourgeoisie- landlord circles in power throw all the tricks known to them in the path of the workers: insignificant concessions, refusal of dialogue with the communist leaders, use of the rightwing social- democrat reserve to deceive the workers, bringing in the army, etc.
In defiance of the tricks of the ruling classes, on February 1, the CFR Grivita Workshops declare a strike, with demands both economic, for the improvement of working conditions, and political, for the recognition of factory committees. Seeing this, the bourgeoisie- landlord regime accepts the demands of the strikers in full, but meanwhile prepares the repression: it declares a state of siege, the army occupies the capital, and on February 16, fire is opened on the strikers. Following the arrest of over 2,000 workers, a monstrous trial is staged, with false and tendentious accusations, against the railway workers, headed by Gheorghe Gheorghiu- Dej and Chivu Stoica.
Continuing their counteroffensive, the reactionary governments ban and suppress the legal organizations — the BM- T, the Red Aid, the Friends of the USSR — together with the factory organizations in 1933- 34. But, under the leadership of the Communist Party and making use of the revolt of the masses against the fascination of the country, the communists continue to create other mass organizations in which to carry out their activity, such as the Democratic Bloc, the Committee for the Liberation of Anti- fascist Prisoners, the Ploughmen’s Front, MADOSZ, the Democratic Students’ Front, etc. Also, the Communist Party waged the struggle for the creation of the United Workers’ Front.
Meanwhile, the decomposed element, completely detached from the masses, Boris Stefanov, infiltrates himself into the party leadership, occupying the position of general secretary, and against the backdrop of the CPSU’s struggles against the Trotskyist spies of fascism, creating confusions and casting unjustified accusations — truly, we cannot pronounce on the guilt of all those condemned from our Party, but if errors existed in this regard, they are due principally to Stefanov. He loses all positions of responsibility at the end of 1940, after taking his schematic theories to a new absurd conclusion: “Hitler will build socialism in Germany.”
Nevertheless, the effective leadership of the Party in the country during this period was in the capable hands of Bela Breiner, who guided its activity from 1935 until his untimely death in March 1940. This was a difficult period, the growing forces of fascism and reaction worked together ever more powerfully and struck savagely at the workers’ movement, at the national minorities, and at the Communist Party. Thus, in December 1937, the greatest landlord in the country and the foremost representative of the foreign imperialists in the country, King Carol II, hands the leadership of the country into the hands of the fascist Goga, after which, shortly thereafter, he installs his own royal dictatorship, a regime thoroughly fascist, in the interests of the imperialists.
In the context of the ever- greater intensification of the inter- imperialist contradiction, their race for the revision of the world, and the preparation of the anti- Soviet war, fascism in Romania takes a new form under the legionary dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, a servile lackey of German imperialism. Thus, in addition to the dissolution of the trade unions into the National Renaissance Front and the unleashing of terror under the Carlist dictatorship, from September
1940, the Communist Party of Romania is the target of a savage offensive of arrests, the fascists seeking its extermination. Under the conditions of the terror, there makes his way into the Party leadership, through bureaucratic appointments made for lack of alternatives, the general secretary Stefan Foris, who together with his collaborator, Remus Koffler, conducted extensive activity of sabotage of the Party. These two created confusions through the directives they issued, demanded the dissolution of cells, gave a factional character to any principled two- line struggle, and opposed with determination the beginning of partisan warfare against the fascists.
Realizing the stage reached by the fascist terror and the war with the Soviet Union which was unfolding, the Party activists attempted to initiate the People’s War, even if not under this name. The main proponents of this line were Petre “Zidaru” Gheorghe, leader of the Ilfov Committee, and Emil Bodnaras, who would have organized the People’s Liberation Army. Stefan Foris waged against this line a campaign of confusion and mystification combined with slanders against Petre Gheorghe, pushing him into the hands of the Secret Police (Siguranta), which executed him in 1943.
In parallel, in the prisons, where the best representatives of the Party had been cast by the fascist regime, the true Great Leadership concentrates and organizes itself, headed by Gheorghiu- Dej. Thus describes, years later, one of the prisoners the environment of the Doftana prison: “The prison must be like a field of battle, where you must prepare yourself for new and great struggles for the party. I could say that if the prison, comrades, was and indeed was the party university, then the rector, if one can say so, was comrade Gheorghiu.”
Regrouping around the leadership of Gheorghiu- Dej and convinced of the treacherous actions of Foris and of Koffler’s connections with the Secret Police (Siguranta), the Party decides upon his replacement, which is put into practice on April 4, 1944 — an
action accepted and celebrated by the entire party membership. Once cleansed of the treacherous leadership and under a provisional CC formed of Constantin Párvulescu, Emil Bodnaraş, and Iosif Ranghet, the Communist
Party of Romania establishes the Patriotic Defense Guards — the Liberation Army of Romania — to begin the People’s War against the fascist occupation.
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SEIZURE OF POLITICAL POWER AND THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
With the war against the Soviet Union still raging, Romania having been dragged into the war by the Hitlerite gang of Antonescu since 1941, the Soviet offensive against the Nazis approaches the border of Romania — on April 2, 1944, the Liberating Red Army, together with the Romanian volunteer divisions “Horea, Closca and Crişan” [Horea, Closca şi Crişan] and “Tudor Vladimirescu,” crosses the Prut. The Soviet government, assuring that “it does not pursue the goal of acquiring any part of Romania’s territory or of changing the existing social order,” and under the fire of the sabotage actions of the Hitlerites by the partisans, the bourgeois- landlord parties, the PNL and the PNT, yield under pressure and accept the formation of the National-Democratic Bloc with the PCR, pursuing through this the slowing down of the revolutionary upsurge.
Correctly judging the objective and subjective conditions, the Communist Party decides to launch a well- planned armed insurrection of the partisans in August 1944. On August 23, Marshal Antonescu is detained by the Patriotic Defense Guards, followed by long battles on the streets of Bucharest against the German troops, between August 24 and 25. The last battles of the patriotic formations and the armed workers against the Hitlerites were fought until August 31 in Ploieşti and the Prahova Valley. And, on August 30, the Red Army is welcomed with flags and flowers in Bucharest. The day of August 23 remains to this day the day of liberation from the Hitlerite yoke.
Propelled by the Soviet offensive in the Anti- Hitlerite War — an offensive which the Romanian Army joins, participating in the liberation of Hungary and Czechoslovakia — the Communist Movement finds itself in a position of consolidation of forces, while the enemy (the King, PNL, PNT) attempts to maintain its power bureaucratically, by obeying the Anglo- American imperialists and through the repression of the masses.
Given that in the first government after the elimination of the Legionary- military regime, the PCR was more tolerated, it being composed of military men loyal to the king and a representative of each BND party, and that Maniu and Brătianu, the leaders of the bourgeois- landlord parties, sabotaged and fiercely opposed the extension of the front through democratic organizations such as the Ploughmen’s Front, MADOSZ, and the Union of Patriots, the Communist Party and the Social- Democratic Party form together with the democratic organizations the NationalDemocratic Front — a revolutionary front built in a concentric manner.
In the course of September, the United Workers’ Front is formed, under the leadership of the Communist Party and with the aid of the left and center social- democrats, with the united trade unions joining the FND. Thus, on October 2, 1944, the FND is formed, as Gheorghe Gheorghiu- Dej describes it later, in 1959: “in the course of a few months after August 23, the Party succeeded in effectively winning the majority of the people, in forging a broad Democratic Front which included the workers, peasants, intellectuals, the urban middle strata, the masses of women and youth, the toiling people belonging to the co- inhabiting nationalities.”
Under the pressure of the FND and of the broad masses who supported it, a coalition government is obtained (the Sanatescu II Government) in which Petru Groza, the leader of the Ploughmen’s Front, occupies the position of Vice- President of the Council of Ministers. In this period, a difficult struggle is waged for the democratization of the state apparatus and the removal of fascist functionaries, who were protected from within the Internal Ministry by the peasantist Nicolae Penescu. He also resorted to violence against the masses, which intensified the revolt of the people all the more, leading to his dismissal and that of Prime Minister Sanatescu.
Under these circumstances, King Mihai, a passionate collaborator of the legionaries, appoints to the position of President of the Council of Ministers the legionary general Nicolae Radescu. The National- Democratic Front, headed by the Communist Party, having close links with the peasant masses and the proletariat organized in trade unions, wages a long struggle for the purging of the fascist administration and for the carrying out of a genuine agrarian reform that would destroy the rotten semi- feudality that enslaved the peasants. The most difficult battles were fought in February, Radescu calling on the Army for open war against the front, but owing to the balance of forces between the masses and the reaction, which tilted powerfully in favor of the masses led by the FND, the king yields, accepting a Government of the Front led by Petru Groza.
On March 6, 1945, the first democratic government is established, marking the seizure of power by the popular masses, led by the Communist Party of Romania, and the beginning of the people’s democratic regime. The strategic offensive begun in February 1945 continues even after the seizure of power; on March 23 the agrarian reform is instituted, which codifies the agrarian revolution begun through the struggle of the peasant masses for the installation of the FND Government — this meant the expropriation of the property of the German imperialists, of the war criminals, and especially of the landlords, an exploiting class which is liquidated through this process. Over 1.1 million hectares of agricultural land are redistributed to the poor peasants, who, for the first time, find themselves free of the landlord yoke and its oppression.
Having received a powerful blow through the elimination of the landlords, the agents of the reaction — the king, PNL, and PNT — employ all remaining levers, their position in the economy, the state apparatus, and the army to sabotage the democratic revolution begun on March 6. In order to combat speculation and the sabotage actions of the reactionary circles, the government takes a series of measures for the regulation of prices and the circulation of goods, the regulation of wages, and the establishment of canteens for the supply of workers with necessary products and to protect them from the speculation of the reactionary agents of the imperialists.
On November 8, the forces of the reaction — legionaries, fascists expelled from the state party, expropriated landlords, and other enemies of the people’s democratic regime — organize one last attempt to reassure power, assaulting the center of Bucharest and of other major cities. The escapade fails, the worker- peasant masses, under the leadership of the PCR, responding powerfully through demonstrations on November 12 in Bucharest, Cluj, Brasov, Ploiesti, Galați, and in other localities of the country.
One landmark event is the National Conference of the Romanian Communist Party of October 1945, which took place after the achievement of the United Workers’ Front, the agrarian reform, and the defense of the interests of the broad masses by the PCR, through which the party won great prestige among the toiling people. The Conference elected Comrade Gheorghe Gheorghiu- Dej to the position of general secretary, thereby recognizing his merits as a great leader, and charted the future tasks of strengthening the people’s democratic regime, the United Workers’ Front, of carrying the agrarian reform to the end, and of continuing the democratic revolution until “the accomplishment of socialism and communism in our country.
On November 19, 1946, the first free elections in the history of Romania with universal suffrage take place. The reactionary circles led by the peasants, Iuliu Maniu, and the liberal Constantin Bratianu, the right- wing social- democrats, gathered in the Independent Social- Democratic Party led by Constantin Titel Petrescu, conducted a campaign of denigration and sabotage of the elections, relying on the kulaks in the countryside, even contesting the right of women to vote. During the elections, realizing they would lose, the support of the worker- peasant masses being on the side of the Popular Democratic Bloc (the electoral coalition of the FND), the reactionaries, the gangs of Maniu, attempted to storm the polling stations and destroy the ballot boxes; an attempt that failed.
The fruits of the long struggles among the masses waged by the Front under the leadership of the Communist Party were seen in the elections, the BPD obtaining a crushing victory, based on a majority of of the votes. The people’s democratic power had not only been won, but was based on the support of the broad masses, and reactionaries such as Maniu, Bratianu, and Mihai Hohenzollern- Sigmaringen had been reduced to irrelevance.
Political power in our country was won through an extended struggle with elements of a people’s war and with a revolutionary moment between February 23 and March 5, but which was simplified owing to the victory of the Red Army over fascism. The question of initiating a partisan war, that is, a People’s War, was raised by the leadership that prepared the armed insurrection of August 23, yet the inevitability of the defeat of the legionary- fascist regime opened the possibility for the rapid advance of the movement, such that the PCR could seize power in a revolutionary blow on March 6, 1945, after which only actions undertaken for the elimination of the fractionist reaction followed.
THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION AND THE SABOTAGE OF THE PAUKER-LUCA-GEORGESCU CLIQUE
As early as 1944, anti- party elements, careerists, factionalist remnants, and collaborators of the Secret Police (Siguranța), such as Vasile Luca, Teohari Georgescu, and Ana Pauker, united and began, from within the party, to conspire against the existing leadership and to seize power themselves in order to conceal their past. They made use of the prestige of the Soviet Union and of the great Stalin to create prestige for themselves, which they then used to disperse the provisional leadership and to secure places for themselves in the Central Committee.
The reactionary groupings of legionaries began to apply a tactic of infiltrating the Communist Party, intending thereby to change its nature and to destroy it from within. In this context, Ana Pauker offered a helping hand to the reactionaries, supporting the anti- Leninist line of mass admissions to the party (thus violating the Leninist principle of individual admission), in its essence a liquidationist line. In 1945, Ana Pauker even says explicitly that former legionaries can be admitted to the party. This line was combated at the National Conference of 1945, which was concretized through the verification of members beginning in 1948.
In the years 1946- 47, the last elements of the reactionary circles in the leadership of the state apparatus are eradicated. Generals A. Aldea and C. Eftimie organize a plot of armed insurrection, relying on the legionary bands of the National Resistance Movement and Haiducii lui Avram Iancu [the outlaws of Avram Iancu], a plot that failed owing to the vigilance of the state, the generals being arrested and tried in November 1946. Also in 1946, the war criminal Ion Antonescu receives his punishment, being tried and later executed on June 1, 1946. The old friend of the marshal, Iuliu Maniu, also answers before the law for collaboration during the war with the legionary- fascist state, the aid given to the “Manist guards” of terrorists, and for collaboration and espionage for the Anglo- American imperialists, being tried in October- November 1947.
By the end of 1947, the monarchy as well, “a last point of support of the internal and external reaction and a last obstacle on the path of the further development of our country” as it was described was abolished, having been deprived of any influence in 1947, a mere vestige of the old bourgeois- landlord order. And, on December 30, 1947, the Romanian People’s Republic is declared, with a truly democratic constitution that ensured the continuation of the socialist road.
During this period of the completion of the democratic revolution and the transition to the socialist revolution, the people’s democracy increasingly taking on the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, an important step was the achievement of the unity of the working class. After a long period of collaboration within the United Workers’ Front and the National- Democratic Front and through a period of ideological clarification, in November 1947, the PCR (Romanian Communist Party) and the PSD (Social Democratic Party) both adopt the program of the Single Workers’ Party, thus liquidating the split within the ranks of the working class, caused by the right- wing social- democrats. The unity of this Single Workers’ Party could only be built on Marxist- Leninist ideological foundations, not through a mechanical merger, of the social- democratic type of unity.
The First Congress of the Romanian Workers’ Party, the congress of unification, took place between February 21 and 23, 1948. The Communist Party thus becomes the Romanian Workers’ Party, as a result of the achievement of unity, under its leadership, of the working class, which it guides on “the road that leads to new victories of people’s democracy, toward Socialist Romania!” The Congress established the necessity of the verification of party members, monetary reform, and the socialist transformation of agriculture.
During the plenum of June 1948, Lucretiu Patrascanu is expelled for his chauvinist theories and class collaborationism, desiring thereby, on the one hand, to divide the toiling people on national lines and to instigate them against one another, and on the other hand, to prolong the democratic revolution indefinitely. Once deprived of all political power, he, together with his circles of close associates, solicits the aid of American spies, for which he is arrested on August 24.
The Pauker- Luca- Georgescu clique, seeing the liquidationist line of mass admissions ruined, resorts to new methods of sabotage in order to seize power. They sabotage the monetary reform through a right- wing Bukharinist line, saying that “the workers live on the backs of the peasants”; especially Vasile Luca, from within the Ministry of Finance, pushes this line of favoring the kulaks and the petty bourgeoisie, together with the promotion of class enemies within this ministry.
Concurrently, this clique conducted extensive activity of sabotage. Regarding the cadres, they pursued a policy of moral destruction, so that only the most servile and careerist elements would survive. They treated the ministries they led as their “personal fiefdoms.” Teohari Georgescu, in particular, infiltrates into the internal organs the Voinescu- Cairo gang, which carries out a robbery of one million dollars from the National Bank of Romania.
Meanwhile, Ana Pauker sabotages the socialist transformation of agriculture, pursuing a “left” line, putting pressures on the peasants for collectivization into Collective Agricultural Farms (GAC) and refusing the application of the intermediate form of the Collective Agricultural Associations (TOZ). Through these machinations and the spreading of false rumors about the party leadership, Ana Pauker intends to create confusions, which she can exploit in front of Stalin, thus attempting to bureaucratically seize the leadership of the party. The plan fails, Stalin supporting Gheorghiu- Dej, the recognized leader of the party, and the correct line of collectivization.
This faction is combated and loses all power following the plenary session of May 26- 27, 1952, principally owing to the sabotage activity, within the Ministry of Finance, of Vasile Luca and owing to the discovery of the plots and hidden arrangements among the three (that is, factionalism). Vasile Luca acknowledges all accusations and reveals his own past as a Secret Police (Siguranta) collaborator; following the investigations, he is sentenced to life imprisonment in 1954.
In this period, undeterred by the sabotage activity of the class enemies, the Romanian Workers’ Party achieved a series of victories; in addition to the monetary reform and collectivization activities, it carried out the development of industry and transport and realized the electrification of the country, through an ever- improving process of planning, passing from 1950 from annual plans to the first five- year plan. These achievements were celebrated at the Second Congress of the Romanian Workers’ Party.
During the Congress, Comrade Gheorghiu- Dej presented very well the idea that although the class of landlords and of the industrial, financial, and commercial bourgeoisie had been liquidated, the kulaks and other class enemies still remained: “as long as the exploiting classes have not been completely liquidated, the class struggle is a law of the development of our society,” ending with proletarian optimism: “Our state organs have learned to detect the enemies under whatever mask and garment they may hide. As the people say: <<we have a way to deal with them.>>””
THE COUNTERREVOLUTION IN THE USSR AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE MOVEMENTS OF RESTORATION
In 1956, in the Soviet Union, the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU takes place, where the revisionist leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, following its plan to restore capitalism in the USSR and in the socialist camp, strikes a blow against the great Stalin, who had died on March 5, 1953, spreading false accusations and myths about the “cult of personality of Joseph Stalin” and his “abuses.” The declarations made by the revisionist Khrushchev had a great echo and created numerous confusions, including in our party.
Primarily, this line of the liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the attack on the party leadership was carried by weak, anarchist-petty-bourgeois elements, such as Miron Constantinescu and Iosif Chisinevschi. The two raised the question on the “cult of personality of Gheorghiu-Dej,” asserting that he scolds the members of the Political Bureau too harshly, that he is given “excessive praise”, that he “interrupts people too much,” that they would speak with “fear,” or that there was a “risk” in raising this question in essence, that in Romania there would have existed “a little Stalin” — and Miron Constantinescu further attacks the Securitate (Romanian secret police), the MAI [Ministry of Internal Affairs], and their necessity.
This anti-party line of Iosif Chisinevschi and principally Miron Constantinescu, together with the methods which could have led to factionalism, manifested themselves and were combated at the plenum of April 3-12, 1956. The members of the Political Bureau and of the Central Committee combated these manifestations as attacking the unity of the party, and the two acknowledged this line as erroneous. Nevertheless, the two, in the course of a year, did not make a serious self-criticism, not realizing the gravity of the errors, for which they were expelled from the PB during the plenum of June 28 – July 3, 1957.
The Romanian Workers’ Party, having at its disposal false information about the situation in the USSR, nonetheless took a correct position, combating the cult of personality — that is, as the PMR understood it, the use of the prestige of a leader, party, or country for the attainment of personal, antiparty goals, as the Pauker clique had done and not the role of personality, the PMR and Gheorghiu-Dej appreciating that “It would however be unjust to now cast aside everything that Stalin created. Stalin’s works will have to be studied with much discernment” and that “These works have been studied and they must constitute an aid in our work, because these works synthesize the experience of an entire period of socialist construction, experience acquired by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, by the Soviet Union in the construction of the new socialist life.”
On the other hand, in the neighboring country, the Hungarian People’s Republic, taking advantage of the situation of international confusion and from within the party, reactionary elements, Horthyists, storm the institutions of the people’s democracy and plunge Budapest and the entire country into chaos and terror in the autumn of 1956. Faced with these events, the Soviet leadership of Khrushchev takes a capitulationist position, being pushed toward action, to suppress the counterrevolutionaries, by the Communist Party of China. The Romanian Workers’ Party gave a helping hand to the Hungarian people in these difficult hours of trial, over two thousand Hungarian-speaking cadres of the party taking part together with the Red Army in the restoration of order in Hungary.
The counterrevolutionary events in Hungary and the USSR give an impetus to and encourage former exploiters, sons of kulaks, degenerate elements within the party, and other supporters of the capitalist road. They are also encouraged by the “emigration” press to “resist the Stalinist leadership” and to conspire to remove the party leadership, these asserting that “As long as Gheorghiu-Dej and Chivu Stoica are in the party leadership, we shall not be able to rise to positions of responsibility,” preferring instead a vacillating element such as Doncea Constantin, who would have been able to follow “the Yugoslav system” — that is, would have restored capitalism.
Once the counterrevolutionaries revealed their face, the PMR, maintaining its iron unity and the dictatorship of the proletariat, through the Resolutions of the plenary session of the CC of the PMR of June 9-13, 1958, was able to establish the suppression of the counterrevolutionaries, both those who had penetrated the party in minor positions and those outside it. The counterrevolution was averted, the PMR perfectly understanding the link between the manifestations of Constantinescu and Chisinevschi and these attempts at restoration.
Nevertheless, in this period, erroneous positions slip into the PMR’s view; besides the weakening of the prestige of the great Stalin on the basis of information furnished by the CPSU, more damaging is the adoption of the position that the class struggle does not intensify under socialism. But it cannot be said that the Romanian Workers’ Party had renounced the class struggle, reaffirming its importance at both the Second and Third Congress; the most significant examples being these struggles waged by the party between 1956 and 1958 against the class enemies and for the defense and maintenance of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
THE ATTACK OF SOVIET SOCIAL-IMPERIALISM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR UNITY WITH THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA
The Romanian Workers’ Party developed over time fraternal relations with the Communist Party of China; “Scanteia” [The Spark] periodically published articles in support of the people’s war in China, Gheorghiu-Dej recognized the leadership of the CPC as being one “truly Marxist-Leninist,” on a level with the CPSU and, in 1959, on the anniversary of 10 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, both parties mutually recognized each other’s high political level.
Meanwhile, capitalism having been restored in the USSR, and the latter tending ever more toward imperialism, under the revisionist leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and basing themselves on the theses of the revisionist congress of 1956, the Soviet social-imperialists attempt to subjugate and divide China between themselves and the Yankee imperialists: in 1958 the Soviets demanded control over the Chinese fleet; in 1959 at Camp David, Khrushchev demanded that the PRC submit to the demands of the American imperialists regarding Taiwan and India; and in 1960 the CPSU pushes within the World Federation of Trade Unions a document that attacks the CPC’s line and pushes its own revisionist line. Concurrently, the Communist Party of China attempted to counteract the negative influence of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU through its participation in and contribution to the Declaration of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of 1957 and through the pamphlet “Long Live Leninism,” in which they criticized the errors of the CPSU.
In June 1960 the Third Congress of the Romanian Workers’ Party takes place, where the construction of the economic basis of socialism is noted, affirming that “the kulaks — the last exploiting class — have been liquidated; with this, there has been put an end forever, in our country, to the exploitation of man by man” and that “The Socialist Economy today encompasses all of industry, transport, commerce, the financial and credit system, and in agriculture over four-fifths of the arable land.” And, as regards the class struggle, its continuation under socialism is reaffirmed: “At present, the ideological activity, the work of liquidating the influences of bourgeois education from the consciousness of the people, is the principal terrain of the class struggle, of the struggle between the old and the new”, according special importance to the combating of revisionist conceptions, of the “Yugoslav model toward socialism,” the PMR identifying the liquidationist nature of views of this type about the party. The Congress and the achievements of the Romanian Workers’ Party in the construction of socialism brought great prestige to it and to the Romanian People’s Republic.
Desiring to take advantage of this prestige and attempting to sow confusion in the International Communist Movement, thus dividing it, Nikita Khrushchev insists upon the holding of a conference of communist and workers’ parties in Bucharest on June 24. The material which was to be discussed at this conference was kept secret until the day of June 24, and Gheorghiu-Dej was pushed, practically forced, by Khrushchev to preside over the conference, in contradiction with the proposals of the PMR, which would have preferred that the presidency of the conference rotate.
The Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Bucharest was nothing other than an open and despicable attack on the Communist Party of China: the participants in the conference were presented with an 80-page letter of the CPSU, full of attacks and defamatory assertions against the CPC, attacks on the Great Leap Forward and the People’s Communes, interwoven with distortions whose aim was to portray the Chinese communists as bellicose. The revisionists installed after 1956 in the leaderships of the other parties of the socialist camp — such as Todor Zhivkov — supported the CPSU’s line, as in a premeditated attack. The representative of the Communist Party of China, Peng Zhen, held firm against the accusations, while the revisionists attempted to force all participants to take positions without knowledge of the matter. The question is postponed through the mediation of the PMR until the Moscow Conference of November 1960.
In the directly ensuing period, Khrushchev’s plan to force the PMR into a position close to his own starts showing results. The PMR, seized by confusion, also sends on August 2 a letter of condemnation of the CPC, which it regarded as “fraternal aid.” Following the Moscow Conference of 1960, the PMR’s confidence in the CPSU is shaken, especially owing to the profoundly revisionist assertions of Khrushchev, in contradiction with the declarations of the conferences, both of 1957 and of 1960, the latter privately supporting the positions that in the USA the proletariat is not revolutionary and that in Eastern Europe the revolution had been practically exported.
The ideological confusion of the PMR gives rise to a series of errors, appraising Yugoslavia as a socialist country, despite the fact that the PMR correctly identified the leadership of the LCY as revisionist. As regards the theories of Khrushchev concerning the party and state of the whole people, the PMR did not take a very explicit position, and the Plenum of November 30 – December 5, 1960, which followed the Twenty-Second Congress of the CPSU, was much more concentrated on the question of the party’s history and the condemnation of the past ideological manifestations of the Pauker Clique.
The distortions regarding Coexistence, Competition, and Peaceful Transition of Khrushchev find, unfortunately, a place in the PMR’s propaganda from 1957-1963, but only in the ambiguous form accepted in the Declarations of the Conferences of 1957 and 1960. The Romanian Workers’ Party researched this problem, in February 1964 issuing an internal synthesis document of the divergences between the CPC and the CPSU, and by the Plenary Session of April 1964 principled positions are taken against the thesis of Peaceful Transition:
“We [know] of no class in history which, even though condemned by history to perish, would willingly give power to the other class, would say: please, take power. […] It is not by accident that this thesis appeared, that now it is possible in many parts of the globe for communists to come to power by peaceful means and, as opportunist tendencies have existed and will continue to exist, this desire to accomplish the seizure of power by peaceful means, of course, has been embraced. […] We know one thing: we did not come to power by the parliamentary road.”
By the Plenum of April 23-25, 1960, a new victory of socialist construction is achieved: the collectivization is completed. Meanwhile, restorations of capitalism taking place in the socialist camp, the revisionists procrastinating and renouncing Socialist construction in their own countries, they initiate the transformation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) from an organism of socialist mutual aid into one of imperialist subjugation. With this aim and drawing inspiration from the imperialists of Western Europe, from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the Soviet social-imperialists proposed the “specialization of countries” and the creation of a “single planning organ” in order to strengthen their imperialist control over the countries of the former socialist camp. The Romanian Workers’ Party, confronted with these proposals alien to communist principles, continued to support the line of socialist mutual aid within the CMEA and the broadening of this organ to other countries such as Vietnam and China.
The revisionists, realizing that Romania would not submit to the imperialist line, conduct a despicable and scissionistic activity, through an unprincipled and camouflaged polemic against the PMR and pushing the same revisionist line exposed within the CMEA. The PMR combated this line through the party press and in the pages of the publication “Problems of Peace and Socialism.” At the same time, they clashed with the scissionist actions and the policy of intimidation, realizing the erroneous position taken toward China. In the framework of the Plenum of February 26-27, 1963, these conclusions are drawn, but nevertheless the PMR does not yet realize the social-imperialist nature of the USSR, opting instead to work toward the repair of the division within the International Communist Movement.
The problem was very well expounded by Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej: “Our shortcoming is that we realized it later. But the essence is the same, which was expressed last year in Peking as well by our comrades, the tendency of economic, political, and military domination. By how many paths, what methods, in what forms, it does not matter. They want to control us. We do not want to let ourselves be controlled and because of this we want a quarrel.”
The year 1963 had great significance for the relations between the PMR and the CPC, numerous discussions being held in order for meetings to take place with the aim of repairing the division between the two and within the ICM. On the basis of the intensification of the public polemic between the CPC and the CPSU and of the CPSU’s defamatory attack on the CPC, in February 1964, the PMR makes an appeal for the cessation of the public polemic and the discussion of the bases of a principled unity, which would form the foundation of the meeting of March 3-15 between the PMR and the CPC in Peking. At this meeting, in which Mao Zedong also participated, the common points and divergences between the two parties and their opposition to the CPSU are established, thus achieving a Marxist-Leninist unity.
In April 1964, the Romanian Workers’ Party publishes the “Declaration Concerning the Position of the Romanian Workers’ Party on the Problems of the International Communist and Workers’ Movement Adopted by the Enlarged Plenum of the CC of the PMR of April 1964,” which, despite certain incorrect positions arising from the erroneous understanding of the social-imperialist nature of the USSR, nonetheless reaffirms the Marxist-Leninist positions of the PMR and a position with regard to the scissionistic actions of the CPSU. In the course of the year 1964, the unity between the PMR and the CPC broadened, these holding periodic meetings and discussions, opposing any scissionistic actions of the CPSU.
After Khrushchev loses his position as general secretary of the CPSU on October 14, 1964, the PMR investigates the state of affairs within this party, realizing that this change was the result of internal dissatisfactions within the ruling clique of the CPSU. On the basis of these investigations and of the information furnished by the PMR to the CPC, the Communist Party of China wrote the well-known pamphlet “Why Khrushchev Fell.” The unity between the two parties grew with each passing day, and this could have surpassed the level of Marxist-Leninist unity, reaching common antirevisionist positions, or even unity under Mao Zedong Thought, had not in 1965 the revisionists seized power and restored capitalism in Romania. We affirm that both Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and the PMR would be today Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, for Maoism is Marxism-Leninism of today.
THE REVISIONISTS AND THE RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM
After a long struggle waged against illness, Comrade Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, beloved son of the working class and of the Romanian people, great leader of the Romanian Workers’ Party, who dedicated his life to the communist movement, passed away on March 19, 1965. With his death, the Romanian Workers’ Party, the Romanian people, and the International Communist Movement were seized by grief, five days of mourning following until his burial. In this time, the entire people and the ICM paid their last respects to him and to his contribution to the communist cause.
Concurrently, politically decomposed elements who had penetrated the party leadership sought to take advantage of the grieving party, seeking through bureaucratic methods to seize power and impose their anti- party lines. Such elements were Ion Gheorghe Maurer, representing the right deviation, and Nicolae Ceaușescu, representing the “left” deviation. Through a plot and secret backroom arrangements, they succeeded in violating the wish of Gheorghiu-Dej that Gheorghe Apostol be first secretary.
Within the Romanian Workers’ Party, an erroneous position of the “formed leadership,” that is, the excessive confidence that CC and PB members could not fall into revisionism owing to their contributions and history, formed at the beginning of the 1960s as a consequence of the attempts of the Pauker clique and the CPSU to undermine the elected leadership of the party and owing to the erroneous position regarding the non-intensification of the class struggle under socialism. This error allowed the revisionists to seize the party leadership, weakening the guard and vigilance against them.
Finding himself in the position of first secretary and seeking to consolidate the seizure of power, Nicolae Ceaușescu hastily initiates the Ninth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party. This Congress was marked by surprises and abuses; its report and many of its resolutions were prepared and decided arbitrarily by Ceaușescu and a handful of careerists around him (P. Mizil, M. Mănescu, D. Popescu, R. Moldovan, N. Giosan). Drawing inspiration from the revisionist Khrushchev, Ceaușescu also replaces the Political Bureau with the Permanent Presidium, thus moving political power into his own hands.
The Ninth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party took place in July 1965 and heralded the victory of the revisionist line of liquidation of the Romanian Workers’ Party: the candidate stage is eliminated to allow the admission to the party of as many hostile elements as possible (who, according to Ceaușescu, no longer existed); the political dimension loses its significance in the appointment and training of cadres, the bureaucratic fulfillment of tasks becoming the key benchmark; and “the continuous development of the economy” becomes the “basis” of the program of the “Multilateral Flourishing of Socialist Romania,” a theory quite similar to that enunciated by the revisionist Deng Xiaoping, who was moreover present at this congress as a representative of the CPC. Also, the revisionist Ceaușescu and his clique prepare the ground for the restoration of capitalism, sneaking in the thesis of the necessity and importance of investments above the well-being of the people.
In the study of the history of the Romanian Workers’ Party, multiple sources indicate, again and again, the Ninth Congress as a central focal point of qualitative change, striking like lightning, accomplishing the restoration and destroying the vanguard party and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Following it, the liquidationist line pursued, in the past, by so many enemies of the people who had infiltrated the party, wins, in the end, in 1965. These things were also seen at the level of the composition of the leadership: in comparison with 1960, when the CC had 110 members, 79 full and 31 alternate, after the Ninth Congress of the PCR, the CC had 196 members, 121 full and 75 alternate, and in 1965, 100 of the 196 CC members were not members before the congress (33 of the full members and 67 of the alternates), 19 old members lost their CC position, and 30 of the alternate members who appeared in 1965 become full members in 1969, when the CC reaches 285 members.
Strengthening his position through the admission to the party of hostile elements, the rehabilitation of old deviationists, and through the forced retirement of the old leadership (notable cases being: Alexandru Moghioroș and Petre Borilă), the revisionists are determined to deal in 1968 a decisive blow to the memory of the PMR. Through a process decided arbitrarily by Ceaușescu, history is rewritten, and the Trotskyist-type element, Pătrășcanu, is presented as a hero of the Romanian people and a victim of the Machiavellian machinations of Gheorghiu-Dej. Thus, the revisionists Maurer and Ceaușescu, drawing inspiration from the Soviet revisionists, intend to discredit and defame the old leadership, but do not carry the process to its conclusion, fearing that “the whole population will come, and, if desired, even from elsewhere“, most likely referring to the CPC.
Throughout this entire period, the revisionist Ceaușescu covered his anti-Marxist line with “left” phrases; a good example being how during the imperialist invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet revisionists and their lackeys, although in words he opposed the invasion during his speech of August 21, 1968, in deeds, the PCR in fact took a position of passivity. These “left” phrases probably deceived some, and still deceive others today, but in essence, the “left” deviation is one just as revisionist as that of the right, for it is a false left. It is possible that such manifestations confused the members of the CPC and Mao Zedong as well, who maintained relations with the PCR, but the truth is that we do not know exactly what the internal position of the CPC was toward the PCR, especially owing to the restoration of capitalism in China as well in 1976, through the coup d’état of Deng Xiaoping.
In 1969, at the Tenth Congress of the PCR, the ultra-left nature of the revisionist line of Ceaușescu is best expressed. Both he and Maurer make a plea for the increase of the accumulation and investment fund (and the reduction of the consumption fund) as the principal factor in “development toward communism,” thus violating the most fundamental principles of communism, described in the “Communist Manifesto” thus: “In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor. In Communist society, accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer“. Thus, demonstrating once again the truth of the assertion that the right and “left” deviations are identical in essence, and in practice both signify the restoration of capitalism.
This material does not contain a complete critique of the revisionism of Ceaușescu, although we could speak more extensively about all the measures taken by the revisionist PCR, about the introduction of capitalist mandataries, about the reintroduction of exploitation under the label of strengthening “the material and disciplinary responsibility of the employees”, about the penetration of finance capital and loans from the imperialists — in short, about the restoration of capitalism with all its disasters in Romania. In synthesis, we believe the situation was well described by none other than one of Ceaușescu’s technocrats, Ștefan Andrei: “[Ceaușescu] eliminated the notion of ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ because ‘now there are councils, there is democracy’… But Ceaușescu imposed a dictatorship of development, placed in the service of development. That is what it was.”
THE STRUGGLE FOR RECONSTITUTION AND THE RED FRACTION
In the period following the restoration, the so-called party grows to enormous proportions, surpassing 10% of the population and is reduced to a space for networking and socialization for bureaucrats and petty-bourgeois. Left free and unhindered by the dictatorship of the proletariat, nationalist intellectuals rewrite and reinterpret the history of the party, projecting the imperialist policy of Khrushchev and Brezhnev onto past relations with the Comintern, continuing the defamation of the true vanguard party and obscuring the important role played by the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania. These facts give rise to a general confusion among the proletariat, the people, and the good cadres still remaining in the PCR.
From the old leadership of Gheorghiu-Dej, dedicated fighters for the communist cause, such as Gheorghe Apostol and Chivu Stoica, are marginalized and slandered through the prism of bourgeois morality. Chivu Stoica dies under very suspicious circumstances in 1975, probably assassinated by Ceaușescu’s agents, as suggested by all who knew him. Constantin Pârvulescu makes an appeal, during the Twelfth Congress of the PCR, against the voluntarist line of Ceaușescu for the reestablishment of a leadership capable of leading Romania on the road of socialism. But all these are of no avail, as is the Letter of the Six, signed also by Apostol and Pârvulescu, the PCR being beyond all salvation.
At the same time, on the international plane, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) is formed and recognizes, under the guidance of the Communist Party of Peru, Maoism as the third stage of Marxism, a matter of major significance. Nevertheless, as regards our party, the RIM, through its articles in “A World to Win,” offers an incomplete and partially erroneous analysis — especially with regard to the PMR and Gheorghiu-Dej. And Maoism — as the third stage of Marxism — is not yet recognized in Romania.
Driven onwards by a mad thirst for capital and “development” and taking on one of the most authentic forms of a capitalist namely, capital that thinks — Ceaușescu subjected the Romanian people in the 1980s to a brutal austerity, thus awakening the revolt of the people. In December 1989 a genuine revolution of the people takes place, and principally of the Romanian proletariat, against the dictatorship of the capitalist Ceaușescu. Given that the proletariat and the people were deprived of the leadership of a vanguard party, this allows the imperialists and their agents in the country to seize state power.
The state of the moment and of the masses, during the revolution of 1989, was very well described in the pages of the newspaper “Scânteia poporului” [The Spark of the People]: “The great demonstrations of these days had as slogans the removal of the dictatorship of Ceaușescu, freedom, democracy, and firmly pronounced themselves for socialism, for honest, pure socialist principles, for the property of the people, for norms of genuine ethics and equity, untainted by the adventurist spirit and the political demagogy of Ceaușescu, as well as of those who were for so many years his advisors. Nobody shouted down with socialism, but down with the dictatorship of Ceaușescu. The first moments of victory were normally marked by a state of powerful emotion. On the radio, on the small screen, opinions were expressed, short speeches, of course incomplete in their content, perhaps insufficiently clear with regard to the future of the fatherland, of the economy, of science, of culture, of political and social life, patriotic opinions vividly marked by the great emotion. What do we do, where are we heading?”
In the 1990s, there followed a fierce class struggle, the lackeys of imperialism conducting a frenzied offensive against the Romanian people, a policy of destruction of the forces of production, a policy of breaking up the peasant cooperatives, a policy of decimation of the proletariat through emigration, and a policy of reduction of Romania to a semicolonial, semi-feudal country. Under the sign of such a sharpened class struggle, the proletariat waged powerful battles and, still being united under the leadership of its party, the Romanian Workers’ Party, began attempts at the reconstitution of this party.
Multiple groups are animated by this call of reconstitution, taking various forms and names — one even calling itself the Romanian Workers’ Party! — but the lack of ideological clarity and ignorance of the party’s history caused all these organizations to fail, falling into opportunist positions toward the revisionist PCR, being seized by Trotskyists, or falling into social-democratic unity with all manner of revisionists. The final expression of the failure of these groups is the Romanian Socialist Party (PSR), a walking corpse, a caricature of a caricature, an organization as incompetent as it is opportunistic, being led by a bourgeois and adopting as its program a lethal mix of Eurocommunism, Titoism, Dengism, and nationalism.
The trade union movement, although still from the 1990s gripped by revolutionary fervor — the proletariat remaining to this day united under the Romanian Workers’ Party — is however misled and betrayed again and again by its careerist leaders, a matter exacerbated by the blows dealt to the trade union movement by the Boc Government in 2011. Meanwhile, the history of the PMR being once again rewritten with an anti-communist tinge by the “Tismăneanu Commission” of President Băsescu, a loyal lackey of the imperialists, within the student movement all kinds of revisionists make their way in, profiting from the confusion and the revolutionary desires of the youth.
In such a context and waging a fierce struggle against the opportunist and “left” elements within the workers’ and student movement, the members of the Red Fraction were formed. These, guided by the healthiest revolutionary instincts, find one another and begin in the year 2024 the formation of a red fraction, because a communist party can only be most capably constituted or reconstituted by a red fraction.
The accumulation of these forces as a group, however, was not sufficient; the principal task had to be identified as the reconstitution of the Romanian Workers’ Party by the Red Fraction, because the Red Fraction is the vanguard party in the making. Powerful struggles were waged against irresolute, vacillating elements who did not wish to rise to the height of this task, and extensive work of ideological clarification was carried out so that the ideology of the fraction would be accepted as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Then, once the teachings of Maoism were assimilated, a titanic work was undertaken to understand the history of the Romanian Workers’ Party and to apply in a creative manner Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to our situation, to understand what party we are reconstituting as a party of a new type, Maoist.
Once the historical lessons of the Romanian Workers’ Party were learned, in organizational terms iron discipline prevailing and the Red Fraction working hard to establish its links with the masses, the RF assumes, at a conference in July 2025, the name under which it presents itself today, the Romanian Workers’ Party (Red Fraction), fully understanding that its role is to reconstitute the Romanian Workers’ Party, which was constituted as a communist party at the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, which was led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in the seizure of power on March 6, 1945, which achieved the unity of the workers’ movement in 1948, thus becoming the Single Workers’ Party, which accomplished the democratic and socialist revolution in Romania, Romania being a socialist country in 1962, and which was liquidated by the revisionist clique of Ceaușescu in 1965.
CONCLUSIONS AND PROSPECTS
As we have seen, a communist party cannot be constituted or reconstituted except in an organizational framework, which has at its base, as Lenin teaches us, iron discipline and close links with the masses, following the mass line and understanding that such a party must be the vanguard party of the proletariat — any other position would lead to liquidationism, as we have also seen in the historical examples of the lines of the “generous” Ana Pauker, and of Ceaușescu — and therefore our ideology can be none other than the scientific ideology of the proletariat, which is today Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Applying in a creative manner these teachings to the history of our party, we can distinguish certain important points, such as: the constitution of the Communist Party at the Fifth Congress, the seizure of political power on March 6, 1945, the achievement of the unity of the working class in 1948, and the dissolution of the party in 1965 by the revisionist clique of Ceaușescu.
Applying in a creative manner Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the situation of today, we realize that in Romania a new-democratic revolution is necessary, principally against imperialism, under the leadership of the proletariat headed by the Romanian Workers’ Party and carried out through people’s war — people’s war being the universally valid military strategy of the proletariat which must be applied to the concrete conditions — to be followed then by a socialist revolution and further cultural revolutions.
The Romanian Workers’ Party (Red Fraction) sends warm greetings to the proletariat and people of Romania on the occasion of the day of August 23. We also send an appeal to all communists in Romania to unite under Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and to carry through to the end, together with us, the struggle for the reconstitution of the Romanian Workers’ Party, the only one that can return Romania to the communist socialist road, all the way to glorious
CELEBRATE THE DAY OF AUGUST 23! CELEBRATE THE ARMED INSURRECTION OF THE ROMANIAN PEOPLE AND THE LIBERATION OF ROMANIA BY THE RED ARMY!
CELEBRATE AND STUDY THE HISTORY OF STRUGGLE OF THE ROMANIAN WORKERS’ PARTY!
RECONSTITUTE THE ROMANIAN WORKERS’ PARTY AS A PARTY OF A NEW TYPE, MARXIST-LENINIST-MAOIST!
UNITE UNDER MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, AGAINST IMPERIALISM, REACTION, FASCISM, AND REVISIONISM!
PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES AND OPPRESSED NATIONS, UNITE!
1 Footnotes
