ince 1945,
his influence and that of other Romanian Communists in government
affairs was limited. The Moscow-trained element led by Pauker, which
followed the Soviet forces into Romania, had become dominant in the
party organization, largely because it enjoyed both the support and
confidence of the Soviets. This group, considered essentially foreign
within the Romanian communist movement, firmly controlled the party
apparatus, including the secret police, the key posts that dealt with
foreign affairs, and the domestic economy.

This maldistribution of power within the ruling group led to factional
disputes and internal bickerings, which were brought to the surface and
finally solved by the purging of Pauker and the remainder of the
Muscovite group in 1952. After the purges Gheorghiu-Dej and his close
collaborators assumed full and undivided authority within the party. The
party was successful in maintaining a high degree of homogeneity in its
leadership, and the resultant stability within its ranks enabled it to
adopt, and later carry out, policies that favored Romanian over
international interests in communist affairs.

After the purges Gheorghiu-Dej assumed the premiership and, as the
government and party machinery were now in Romanian hands, the
nationalistic character of the communist government began to appear. In
the early stages emphasis was placed on disengaging the country from
many of the tight Soviet controls that still existed. As an initial move
the Romanians in 1954 successfully negotiated the dissolution of the
onerous joint Soviet-Romanian industrial concerns that had been used by
the Soviets to drain the Romanian economy during the postwar years. This
was followed in 1958 by obtaining Soviet agreement to the withdrawal of
all occupation forces from Romanian territory. At the same time efforts
to stimulate and improve the economy led to the establishment of limited
economic relations with several Western and noncommunist bloc countries
(see ch. 14).

Despite the nationalistic shift in Romanian external policy during this
period, the Romanians were careful to indicate to Moscow that, although
they wished to conduct their affairs with a minimum of Soviet
interference, they had no intention either of abandoning their adherence
to the Soviet bloc or of diminishing their efforts toward the
achievement of all basic communist aims in the country. The manner and
form of internal control in Romania remained re