Oldal 1 [1]
XeAe NOelle for July 1952.
REPORT FROM RUMANIA
Rumania is going these days, step by step, through the same
evolution snd rapide re-organization as all its neighboring s&&ellite
States.
The spectacula downfall of Anna Pauker has been commented in "
this digest. Her disgrace has been completed since. It was the most
Symptomatic part of a total picture of Soviet repression and unification
According to latest official news, Anatol Lavrentiev, Moscow's expert
on titoism, was assigned on July 7th to become Russia's Ambassador to
Bucharesteee
A complete Moscowization,.
Rumania's last fatal step towards total absorption in the
Soviet orbit started with the present year. In January a monetary
reform was imposed: new lei were issued. The rate of exchange variedj
for one new unit, one had to present from 100 to 400 old lei, With a
&ingle stroke ordered by Mescow, all private reserves were wiped oute
Business as wéll as farmers and worker,woke up to realize that they had
labored and saved for the State alone and that their deposits had
vanished. MreLuca, then Minister of Finance, had not full-heartedly
agreed to the measures He was thus declared "enemy of the people™.Charge
as scapegoat of many sins, the Transsylvanian Minister and high-ranking
Party leader was dismissed. Outstanding colleagues in Party and governm
ment shared in his disgrace. Gheorghiu Dej was left as single uictator.
But the usual vicious circle continued, With an average
monthly wage of 200 lei, people have to live. Prices are established at
approximately 10 lei for one kilo of meat, 20 lei for a kilo of butter,
60 for a pair of shoes. this sounds reasonable; but the actual situatior
is a different ones The abovermmmtioned prices apply to rationed oe
“hese however are insufficient in quantities. Buyers have to use the
free market, where prices of course are imcomparably ghere Consequen
the black mrket and the trucking of goods is going fubl scale;
standards of living are lowered; raw material and currency are becom
extremely scarce, evem in governmental enterprises. Salaries are often
late to be paid, saving and reserves have disappeared and people thus —
are often left with no resources whatsoever.
This economic situation leads to discontent and with it to
further repressions ses In the middle of March started an intense wave
of purges and dpportations. Nearly 200 thousand members were excluded .
from the Party; they were labeled as profiteers and enemies of the peel
these repressions were accom fnied by the usual legal gosta
the Rumanian Parliament - in the same its Albanian anda bulgarian
sisters had been"inspired"to do - voted a new penal code and establishe
a new set of tribunals, entirely copied on the Soviet patterne A.
regulation foresaw the right of deportation with a 46—hours notice.
On the 15th of March, milicia rounded up certain sectors of
Nnon-activistic intellectuals" were forced to register and were taken
away in groups of 100 to 150 people. Immediatbéy after that first VERE