Granville Outcover.Indd

The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies Johanna Granville Number 1905 “If Hope Is Sin, Then We Are All Guilty”: Romanian Students’ Reactions to the Hungarian Revolution and Soviet Intervention, 1956–1958 The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies Number 1905 Johanna Granville “If Hope Is Sin, Then We Are All Guilty”: Romanian Students’ Reactions to the Hungarian Revolution and Soviet Intervention, 1956–1958 Dr. Johanna Granville is a visiting professor of history at Novosibirsk State University in Russia, where she is also conducting multi-archival research for a second monograph on dissent throughout the communist bloc in the 1950s. She is the author of The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 (2004) and was recently a Campbell Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, USA. No. 1905, April 2008 © 2008 by The Center for Russian and East European Studies, a program of the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh ISSN 0889-275X Image from cover: Map of Romania, from CIA World Factbook 2002, public domain. The Carl Beck Papers Editors: William Chase, Bob Donnorummo, Ronald H. Linden Managing Editor: Eileen O’Malley Editorial Assistant: Vera Dorosh Sebulsky Submissions to The Carl Beck Papers are welcome. Manuscripts must be in English, double-spaced throughout, and between 40 and 90 pages in length. Acceptance is based on anonymous review. Mail submissions to: Editor, The Carl Beck Papers, Center for Russian and East European Studies, 4400 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Abstract The events of 1956 (the Twentieth CPSU Congress, Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, and the Hungarian revolution) had a strong impact on the evolution of the Romanian communist regime, paving the way for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Roma- nia in 1958, the stricter policy toward the Transylvanian Hungarians, and Romania’s greater independence from the USSR in the 1960s. Students complained about their living and studying conditions long before the outbreak of the Hungarian crisis. Eth- nic Hungarians from Transylvania listened closely to Budapest radio stations, and Romanian students in Budapest in the summer of 1956 were especially affected by the ferment of ideas there. For the Gheorghiu-Dej regime, the Hungarian revolution and Soviet invasion provided a useful excuse to end the destalinization process and crack the whip conclusively—carrying out mass arrests, but also granting short-term concessions to ethnic minorities and workers. Of all segments of the Romanian population, university students were the most discontented. Drawing on archival documents, published memoirs, and recent Romanian scholarship, this paper will analyze and compare the student unrest in Bu- charest, Cluj, Iaşi, and Timişoara. Due to a combination of psychological, logistical, and historical factors, students in the latter city were especially vocal and organized. On October 30 over 2,000 students from the Polytechnic Institute in Timişoara met with party offi cials, demanding changes in living and study conditions, as well as the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Romania. Another 800-1,000 students convened on October 31, calling for the release of students who were arrested the day before. Obvious discrepancies between the Romanian and Hungarian media sparked their curiosity about events in Hungary, while their cramped dorm rooms actually facili- tated student meetings. In the Banat region itself, a tradition of anti-communist pro- test had prevailed since 1945. Although arrested en masse, these students set a vital precedent—especially for the Timişoarans who launched the Romanian Revolution thirty-three years later. 1 Bilingual comics of the Republic of Moldova fi nd differences between the Rus- sian and Romanian languages grist for the humor mill. In one joke, an effervescent Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev invites the Romanian communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej over to the Kremlin one day for the Romanian national dish, mămăligă (polenta). “Yesh!” he says, beaming. Indignant, Gheorghiu-Dej gets up from the table and walks out the door. In Russian, “Yesh!” means “Eat!” but in Romanian it is the imperative form of the verb a ieşi, meaning to go out or exit. Although widely considered to be one of Khrushchev’s most loyal allies in 1956, Dej secretly loathed the mercurial Soviet leader. He stalled even longer than Matyás Rákosi in Hungary (March 12–13, 1956) and Walter Ulbricht in East Germany (Mar- ch 4, 24–30, 1956) in reporting thoroughly on the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) of February 1956.1 On March 23, Dej dodged the Secret Speech altogether and relayed to the leadership of the Romanian Workers Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Român, or PMR) only the main conclusions of the congress: “peaceful coexistence” and the avoidability of a third world war. Dej stated that Stalin had besmirched his reputation by indulging in the “cult of person- ality” and permitting the secret police to abuse its power. (Only at a meeting with apparatchiks of the Bucharest region in Floreasca Hall on March 30 did Dej present a short version of Khrushchev’s speech, forbidding the audience to take notes.) A full debate on the “teachings” of the Twentieth CPSU Congress did not take place until almost a year and a half later, at the plena of June 28-29 and July 1-3, 1957, when Miron Constantinescu was expelled from the Politburo and Iosif Chişinevschi was expelled from both the Politburo and Secretariat. Both men were expelled from the Central Committee three years later, on June 25, 1960.2 The events of 1956—the Secret Speech, de-Stalinization, and the Hungarian revolt, as well as its suppression—had a strong impact on the evolution of the Romanian communist regime, paving the way for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Romania in 1958, the stricter policy toward Transylvanian Hungarians, and Bucharest’s greater independence from Moscow thereafter. Students griped about their living and studying conditions long before the outbreak of the Hungarian crisis. Ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania listened closely to Budapest radio stations, and those studying in Budapest in the summer of 1956 were especially affected by the ferment of ideas there. For the Dej regime, the Hungarian revolution and Soviet invasion provided a splendid excuse to end Khrushchev’s zany experiment in de-Stalinization and crack the whip conclusively—carrying out mass arrests, but also granting short-term concessions to the workers and to Hungarian, German, and Serbian minorities. Of all segments of the Romanian population, university students were the most restless. In their “informational bulletins,” secret police (Securitate) offi cers frequently 2 warned about widespread “demonstrations” (manifestarile) that allegedly occurred.3 However, these were mostly isolated, anonymous incidents that were economically, not politically, motivated, such as rumors, graffi ti, vandalism, arson, and physical beatings—a far cry from the types of organized civil disobedience possible in Western democracies, such as the events in 1968 in Berkeley, California or the demonstrations in Kent, Ohio and Paris. No organized, nationwide revolutionary movement was possible in Dej’s Romania. The PMR leadership took comprehensive, draconian measures to prevent a Hungarian-style revolt. Put metaphorically, the “spillover” or steam from the Hungarian uprising evaporated on the Romanian stove. Drawing on archival documents, published memoirs, and recent Romanian scholarship, this essay will analyze and compare the student unrest in four main Ro- manian cities with universities (Bucharest, Cluj, Iaşi, and Timişoara).4 The students in Timişoara came the closest, on October 30, 1956, to organizing a mass demonstration due to a combination of psychological, logistical, and historical factors. Although arrested en masse, they set a vital precedent—especially for the Timişoarans, who launched the Romanian Revolution thirty-three years later. The Background Romania’s Uniqueness Compared to those of other communist bloc states, Romania’s reactions to the events in Hungary are unique in many ways. Romania’s complex minority problem, together with its historically disputed, 448-kilometer border with Hungary, gave the Romanian communist authorities a great stake in the crisis. Romania possesses the largest community of ethnic Hungarians living outside Hungary, in comparison to Slovakia, Subcarpathian Ukraine, Serbia (Vojvodina), Austria (Burgenland), Croatia (Baranya), and Slovenia (Mura region). Of the 14 percent of the Romanian population that was not ethnic Romanian in 1956, 9.1 percent were ethnic Hungarians. They were largely Roman Catholic or Calvinist, not Orthodox like most Romanians of the eastern Wallachian and Moldavian regions. Over two hundred fi fty thousand Hungarians lived in the Oradea (Nagyvárad) region just eight kilometers from the Hungarian border.5 Other Hungarians lived in key cities of Transylvania (Erdély in Hungarian, Ardeal in Romanian). Apart from security-related fears, the PMR leadership had a great incentive to cooperate with Khrushchev in the repression of Hungary given the fact that, earlier, on November 7, 1955—long before the Hungarian revolution erupted—Khrushchev had promised to withdraw Soviet troops from Romania. The Soviet leader delivered the verbal pledge to Emil Bodnărăş at a reception in the Kremlin following

Load more