pressive and essentially
Stalinist; only minor liberalizing changes took place over the next
several years.

After the death of Stalin in 1953 Gheorghiu-Dej supported the new form
of collective leadership, which separated government and party
functions. Following the Soviet pattern he gave up his party post but
reclaimed it two years later, coincidentally with the emergence of
Nikita Khrushchev as the leading figure in the Soviet hierarchy. Also,
Romania further demonstrated its allegiance to the communist cause by
formally endorsing the drastic action taken by the Soviets in
suppressing the Hungarian revolt against the communist regime in 1956.

The next step in the pursuit of national goals was taken in the economic
field and consisted of measures that sought to lessen Romania's economic
dependence on the Soviet Union and the more developed East European
countries. These goals were embodied in the country's Five-Year Plan
(1960-65), which called for the accelerated creation of an expanded
industrial base supported by its own natural resources and technical
assistance from the more advanced noncommunist countries. This ambitious
program was vigorously pursued beginning in 1960 and, by 1962, had come
into sharp conflict with Premier Khrushchev's announced plans of
revitalizing the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and
transforming it into a unified system that would integrate the economies
of all Eastern European member nations (see ch. 14).

COMECON, set up by the Soviets in 1949 as a counterpoise to the European
Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), was basically an economic commission
designed to assist the economic development of the communist Eastern
European nations during the post-World War II period. Within this
organization Romania had acted largely as a supplier of agricultural
products, petroleum, and other raw materials and depended on the more
industrialized member states for most manufactured goods. Under the
Khrushchev plan, Romania's role in this organization would remain
unchanged, and all domestic plans that had been developed to produce a
balanced economy through increased industrialization would be
effectively nullified.

Khrushchev, in pushing his revised plans for COMECON, publicly called
for the creation of a supranational planning agency within the
organization that would be empowered to select investment projects,
allocate regional resources, and prescribe economic tasks to be
un