‘Taunting the Bear’: Romania and the Warsaw Pact, 1963–89

Abstract

Recently released documents from the Romanian military archives relating to Romania's stance within the Warsaw Pact permit a more refined view of Romania's autonomy within the Pact than has hitherto been possible. They show that the conventional assertion that Nicolae Ceauşescu refused to join the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 is misleading since he was not invited by the Soviet Union to participate in it. They reveal details of the pressure put on Romania by the Soviet Union after 1968 to toe the Warsaw Pact line, ranging from the imperious comments of General Shtemenko in February 1970 to a senior Romanian officer, to Brezhnev's accusation, levelled at Ceauşescu in person, that the latter intended to leave the Pact. Yet it was the direct challenge to Communist domination by Solidarity in Poland in 1981 that, as these documents show, led Ceauşescu to see the value of the Pact. By the summer of 1989, he had become the advocate of intervention in Poland in order to preserve Socialist solidarity and the cohesion of the Pact.

Notes

 [1] These documents have been published in Deletant and Ionescu, Romania and the Warsaw Pact.

 [2] Eyal, “Romania: Between Appearances and Realities”, 67.

 [3] Braun, Romanian Foreign Policy since 1965, 1.

 [4] Romania's defence policy under Ceauşescu is analysed by Eyal, “Romania”, 67–108.

 [5] Braun, Romanian Foreign Policy, xi.

 [6] Gheorghiu-Dej's break with Moscow is charted and analysed by Tismăneanu, Gheorghiu-Dej and the Romanian Workers' Party.

 [7] King, “Rumania and the Sino-Soviet Conflict”, 375.

 [8] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 107; see also Retegan, Război politic în blocul comunist and Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), Virtual Archive: Romania and the Warsaw Pact, 1955–89 and the Parallel History Project (PHP). This author assisted in the procurement of a number of these documents from the Romanian archives and in editing their translation into English.

 [9] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 125–6; see also CWIHP and PHP.

[10] Verona, Military Occupation and Diplomacy, 101.

[11] Garthoff, “When and Why Romania Distanced Itself from the Warsaw Pact”. Garthoff received this information from Dean Rusk himself.

[12] Ibid., 111.

[13] A personal account of his role as head of the Romanian delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York in September and October 1962 is given by Maliţa, “Small Players in Big Gambles”.

[14] See the discussion in Ionescu's introduction to Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 67.

[15] Pacepa, Moştenirea Kremlinului, 253.

[16] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 177.

[17] The Romanian Workers' Party (RWP) changed its name to the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) in 1965.

[18] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 166.

[19] Şarpe, “Consideraţii cu privire”, 9.

[20] In its updated form it was given the name ‘plan Z’ by the Romanian press which published details of the 1987 version of it in the summer of 1993. Hand-written in order to ensure maximum security the plan consisted ‘mainly in the clandestine and protected removal from the capital of the senior Party leadership, and their passage along previously established routes’ (Evenimentul Zilei, 7, no.7 (1993)).

[21] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 77.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., 190–95.

[24] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 217–18.

[25] Ibid., 78.

[26] Ibid., 271–6.

[27] Ibid., 305.

[28] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 315.

[29] Preda and Retegan, 1989. Principiul Dominoului, 16.

[30] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 332–4.

[31] See above.

[32] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 84.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 349–50.

[35] Shafir, “From Sofia to Beijing”, 5.

[36] Deletant and Ionescu, Romania, 394.

[37] Munteanu, “The Last Days of a Dictator”, 217.

[38] Preda and Retegan, 1989, 26.

[39] Ibid., 164–7, 170–71.

[40] Ibid., 170.

[41] Ibid., 167.

[42] Ibid., 171.

[43] Munteanu, “The Last days of a Dictator”, 217.

[44] See the speech delivered by Ceauşescu at the opening of the 14th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party on 20 November 1989 (Shafir, “From Sofia to Beijing”, 5).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dennis Deletant

Dennis Deletant is Professor of Romanian Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London, and at the University of Amsterdam (on secondment). He is the author of several monographs and volumes of studies on twentieth-century Romanian history, and has edited (with Mihail Ionescu) a collection of documents on Romania and the Warsaw Pact (Bucharest, 2004). His most recent book is Ion Antonescu. Hitler's Forgotten Ally (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). He is currently preparing a study on Britain and anti-Fascist and anti-Communist resistance in Romania, 1940–64.