Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
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- For the city in Romania formerly known as Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, see Oneşti
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (born Gheorghe Gheorghiu; November 8, 1901, Bârlad - March 19, 1965, Bucharest) was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.
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[edit] Early life
He was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930. A railway electrician by trade, he was arrested due to taking part in the Griviţa Strike of 1933 and sentenced to prison in the same year, serving time in Doftana and other facilities. In 1936 he was elected to the party's Central Committee and became leader of the prison faction of the party (party members who were incarcerated, a term distinguishing them from party members living in exile in the Soviet Union).
As a known activist, he was detained at Târgu Jiu camp during Ion Antonescu's regime and the larger part of World War II, managing to escape in August 1944. He became general secretary in 1945 but did not consolidate his power until 1952 when he purged Ana Pauker and the Muscovite faction from the party. Pauker had been the unofficial leader of the Party since the end of the war.
In 1946-1947, he was a member of Romania's Gheorghe Tătărescu-led delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.
[edit] In power
[edit] Under Soviet directives
Soviet influence in Romania under Joseph Stalin nonetheless favored Gheorghiu-Dej, largely seen as a local leader with strong Stalinist principles. The economical influence of the Soviet Union were highlighted by the creation of SovRom companies, which directed Romania's commercial exchanges towards unprofitable markets.
On the political level, all of the Romanian political changes had to be pre-approved by Stalin. Gheorghiu-Dej maneuvered Antisemitic trends in the latter stages of Stalinism, by obtaining permission to purge the Party of its "cosmopolitan" leadership, profiting of the Soviet grip on the Securitate. The move mirrored the Prague Trials and the so-called Soviet Doctors' plot. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was not, however, an Antisemite himself: most of the purged politicians were Jewish by default (including Ana Pauker), and Gheorghiu-Dej's team always comprised Jews such as Gheorghe Gaston Marin. He was mainly keen on gaining control of Romanian politics, and exhibited more nationalist attitudes.
Up until Stalin's death, Gheorghiu-Dej did not amend repression policies aimed at Romanian society as a whole (such as the works employing penal labor on the Danube-Black Sea Canal - a Stalinist Gulag-type decision which he had countersigned). At the same time, he was the main instigator of the assassination of Ştefan Foriş in 1946 and the arrest of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu in 1948 - both of whom had been rivals within the Party. The latter move shows the limitations of Gheorghiu-Dej's nationalism: Pătrăşcanu, as the main figure in the secretariat faction, had been seen as a leading nationalist.
[edit] Personal rule
Gheorghiu-Dej was unsettled by Nikita Khrushchev's reforms and the process of De-Stalinization. He became the architect of Romania's semi-autonomous foreign and economic policy within the Warsaw Pact and the Comecon in the late 1950s, notably by initiating the creation of a heavy industry which went against Soviet directions for the Eastern Bloc as a whole (the new large-scale steel plant in Galaţi was a burden on Romanian economy, as it relied on iron resources imported from India and Australia).
In fact, Gheorghiu-Dej kept the façade of Stalinism, this time used to point out flaws in the Soviet leadership. While 1954 was the year many political prisoners were released, he organized a new wave of arrests and purges. Adding to the many contradictions of his rule, many of the survivors were released while he was still in power (around 1964). The Securitate was still his instrument of choice, and Romania joined the wave of repression after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution - for example, Hungarian leader Imre Nagy was imprisoned on Romanian soil.
The ideological steps undertaken were made clear by the ousting of the SovRoms, together with the toning down of Soviet-Romanian common cultural ventures. In 1957, the Red Army withdrew its last troops from Romania, and the Romanian government began approving the issuing of documents that encouraged anti-Soviet sentiments. The official History of Romania made reference to a Romanian Bessarabia, as well as other topics which tensed relations between the two communist countries. Moreover, the final years of the regime saw the publishing of Karl Marx texts which had previously been kept secret, dealing with Russia's imperial policy in previously Romanian regions that were still part of the Soviet Union.
In his late years, Gheorghiu-Dej established diplomatic relations with the Free World, including the United States. Such steps were highly encouraged by the US government and president Lyndon B. Johnson, who had come to see Romania as a friendly communist country in the Cold War context (1963). Gheorghiu-Dej's right hand was Gaston Marin, vice-president of the government, who renewed US-Romanian political and economic relations. Marin was the last Gheorghiu-Dej supporter to be purged from the Romanian government in 1982 by Nicolae Ceauşescu, and later emigrated to Israel.
[edit] Death and legacy
He died of liver cancer. Some claim that he was intentionally irradiated during a visit to Moscow, due to his political stance. Gheorghe Apostol argued that he had been appointed successor by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej himself, and was in any case perceived as such in 1965. Ion Gheorghe Maurer, who had developed a hostility towards Apostol, made sure that he was prevented from gaining power, rallying the Party leadership around Nicolae Ceauşescu - a protégé of Gheorghiu-Dej, and a figure of secondary importance at the time. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa described a conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill"; Gheorghiu-Dej was one of them [1]
Gheorghiu-Dej was buried in a mausoleum in Liberty Park (now Carol Park), Bucharest. In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution, his body was exhumed and reburied in a city cemetery. The Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, renamed to Polytechnic Institute "Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej" Bucharest in his honor, is now known as the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. Also, the city of Oneşti was named Gheorghe-Gheorghiu Dej between 1965 and 1990.
Gheorghiu-Dej was married to Maria Alexe and they had two daughters: Vasilica (1928-1987) and Constantina (b. 1931).
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ The Kremlin’s Killing Ways - by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, November 28, 2006
[edit] References
- Vladimir Tismăneanu, Fantoma lui Gheorghiu-Dej, Editura Univers, 1995
| Preceded by Ştefan Foriş |
General secretary
of the Romanian Communist Party |
Succeeded by Gheorghe Apostol |
| Preceded by Gheorghe Apostol |
General secretary
of the Romanian Communist Party |
Succeeded by Nicolae Ceauşescu |
| Presidents of Romania | ||
| Romanian People's Republic (as Presidents of the State Council and heads of state) (1947 - 1965) | Parhon | Groza | Maurer | Dej |
 |
| Socialist Republic of Romania (General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of the State Council; President of the Socialist Republic of Romania after 1974) (1965 - 1989) | Ceauşescu |
|
| Romania since 1989 | Iliescu | Constantinescu | Iliescu | Băsescu |
 |
