Soviet occupation of Romania

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Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Petru Groza, and Gheorghe Tătărescu with Andrey Vyshinsky, Vladislav Vinogradov and Ivan Susaikov [ro], at the Soviet legation în Bucharest, 11 March 1945

The Soviet occupation of Romania refers[1] to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania. The fate of the territories held by Romania after 1918 that were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 is treated separately in the article on Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

During the Eastern Front offensive of 1944, the Soviet Army occupied the northwestern part of Moldavia as a result of armed combat that took place between the months of April and August of that year, while Romania was still an ally of Nazi Germany. The rest of the territory was occupied after Romania changed sides in World War II, as a result of the royal coup launched by King Michael I on August 23, 1944. On that date, the king announced that Romania had unilaterally ceased all military actions against the Allies, accepted the Allied armistice offer,[2] and joined the war against the Axis powers. As no formal armistice offer had been extended yet, the Red Army occupied most of Romania as enemy territory prior to the signing of the Moscow Armistice of September 12, 1944.

The armistice convention and eventually the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 provided a legal basis for the Soviet military presence in Romania, which lasted until 1958, reaching a peak of some 615,000 personnel in 1946.[3]

The Soviets and the Romanian communists referred to the events of August 1944 as the "liberation of Romania by the glorious Soviet Army" in the 1952 Constitution of Romania,[4] and August 23 (the day of 1944 coup) was celebrated as Liberation from Fascist Occupation Day. On the other hand, most Western and Romanian anti-communist sources use the term "Soviet occupation of Romania," some applying it to the whole period from 1944 to 1958.

  1. ^ The term "occupation" is widely used by Western and post-Revolutionary Romanian historians. Examples include:
    • "Soviet forces occupied Romania in 1944 and stayed for more than a decade." Roger E. Kirk, Mircea Răceanu, Romania Versus the United States: Diplomacy of the Absurd, 1985–1989, p. 2. Palgrave Macmillan, 1994, ISBN 0-312-12059-1.
    • "Soviet occupation troops had been withdrawn in 1958." Gordon L. Rottman, Ron Volstad, Warsaw Pact Ground Forces, p. 45. Osprey, 1987, ISBN 0-85045-730-0.
    • "The country had to endure a long Soviet occupation (until 1958), and to pay the Soviets massive reparations." Lucian Boia, Romania: Borderland of Europe, p. 106. Reaktion Books, 2001, ISBN 1-86189-103-2.
    • "Soviet occupation forces in Romania [allowed for] unlimited interference in Romanian political life." Verona (Military Occupation and Diplomacy: Soviet Troops in Romania, 1944-1958), p. 31.
    • "In June 1958, based on complex arrangements between the Romanians, the Russians, and the Yugoslavs, the occupying Soviet Army units left Romania." Tismăneanu, p. 25. "Romanian communists remained an unappealing marginal group until the occupation of the country by the Red Army in 1944." ibid., p. 59. "The Soviet Army occupied Romanian territory and ... the Soviet-controlled political formation called the RCP was exploiting this state of affairs to establish a Stalinist regime as soon as possible, whatever the human cost." ibid., p. 91.
    • "The primary focus is the occupation of the rest of Romania from 1944 to 1958...There is little doubt that the Soviet occupation had a devastating economic, political, and social impact on Romania." Aurel Braun, review of The Red Army in Romania, in Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, 146-147, Spring 2002.
    • "The withdrawal of Soviet troops signified the end of the country's direct military occupation, which lasted 14 years." Istoria României în date, p. 553. Editura Enciclopedică, Bucharest, 2003, ISBN 973-45-0432-0
    • "Wisner (who had, as an OSS officer, witnessed the brutal Soviet occupation of Romania)", David F. Rudgers, "The origins of covert action", Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 35 , no. 2 (2000), 249–262
    • Flori Stănescu, Dragoș Zamfirescu, Ocupația sovietică în România – Documente 1944-1946 (The Soviet Occupation in Romania – Documents 1944-1946). Vremea, 1998, ISBN 973-9423-17-5.
    • "The first period of communist rule in Romania, 1944-1958 is defined by Stefan Fisher Galati as the loss of national identity by the destruction of the "bourgeois nationalist" legacy and the diminution of Romania's national sovereignty under a virtual Soviet occupation." Constantin Iordachi, "The Anatomy of a Historical Conflict: Romanian-Hungarian Diplomatic Conflict in the 1980s", MA Thesis, Central European University, 1995-1996.
  2. ^ (in Romanian) Valeriu Râpeanu, "The Dictatorship Has Ended and along with It All Oppression" Archived 2016-02-28 at the Wayback Machine (from the Proclamation to The Nation of King Michael I on the night of August 23, 1944), Curierul Național, August 7, 2004
  3. ^ Verona, pp. 49–51
  4. ^ (in Romanian) Constituția Republicii Populare Române 1952 Archived 2008-06-15 at the Wayback Machine