good conduct may also earn parole. An inmate who performs
an exceptional service may be pardoned altogether; many were freed for
their work in combating the great floods during the spring of 1970.

Other disciplinary measures include reprimand, simple isolation, severe
isolation, or transfer to an institution with a more severe regimen.
All convict mail is censored, and correspondence whose content is
considered unsuitable is withheld. Conversation during visits is limited
to Romanian or to a language familiar to someone available to monitor
what is said.

Amnesties are granted periodically. Some, such as those that freed
political prisoners in 1964 and the one in late 1970, reduce prison
populations considerably. They may, as in 1964, free a particular
category of prisoner or, as in the December 30, 1970, amnesty, serve to
reduce sentences of all types but on a basis of the amount of the term
unserved. At that time full pardon was granted all who had less than a
year of their sentences to serve, even if an individual had been
sentenced but had not yet begun to serve the term. Full pardon was also
granted to pregnant women, women with children under five years of age
who had up to three years of their sentences remaining, and to all women
over the age of sixty. The amnesty even applied to cases in court.
Trials were to continue, but the amnesty would take effect if it were
applicable to the sentence. If, however, an amnestied person committed
another crime within three years, he would be confined for the unserved
portion of his commuted sentence in addition to the new one.

CHAPTER 13

ARMED FORCES

In 1971 Romania was a member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw
Pact), but it was not fully cooperating in its activities nor in total
agreement with the Soviet Union's interpretation of the organization's
mission. Romania saw little threat to its territorial boundaries or to
its ideology from the West. On the other hand, since the invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968 by other pact members, various Romanian leaders
have expressed concern about the danger to individual sovereignty from
within the pact itself.

Much of the nation's military history has been that of an alliance
partner. It has not fought a major battle in any other capacity. How
well it has fared at peace tables has depended in large part on the fate
of its allies or how the peacemakers believed that the Balkan area of
the continent should b