HOW WAS COMMUNISM SET UP IN ROMANIA?

 

After the second Vienna Diktat and the occupation of northern Transylvania by the Hungarian fascist troops, suddenly and overtly, almost all the Hungarian and Magyarised population became Horthyst, that is, more than both fascist and Nazi put together. Hundreds of Romanians were assassinated by the Hungarian army and their neighbours, merciless Christians (nincs kegyelem). Hundreds of thousands of Romanians fled or, if they had failed to understand the “suggestion” of the hundreds of assassinations, they were subjected to forced evictions in freight and cattle wagons. From a family of 10 children from Călăţele (the family of Boboş Viorica from the Computer Technology Institute in Cluj Napoca), only one returned home after the expulsion of the occupant, while the rest, boys and girls, who had fled to southern Romania in the autumn of 1940, never returned home. Hundreds of thousands of young Romanians were enrolled in the Hungarian Army and sent to death as auxiliary forces to clean the front line of mines. This was one of the favourite practices of government in Budapest: racial purification. Thus, the Hungarian Prime Minister Kallay informed the parliamentary committee of the loss of 100,000 people on the eastern front, saying “do not be frightened, they were not Hungarians” (see the work of Johann Weidlein)! The Jews were also not forgotten, since, as the Hungarian State Secretary Endre Laszlo said on Radio Budapest on 31 March 1944, the “Hungarian society, defender of racial purity, has unanimously urged for nearly 25 years the solving of the Jewish problem.” The Hungarian Council of Ministers of 29 March 1944 adopted the first measures of the “final solution” and, in a few days, over 166,000 Jews from northern Transylvania arrived in the death camps. Romania and the Romanians, to their credit, did not respond in the same way, which was also noticed by some Hungarians, who had remained to live in the parts of Transylvania that had not been occupied by the Horthysts.

From Braşov, some Magyarised Szeklers, not forced in any way by the Romanian majority, but quite enthusiastic about the racial purification practised north of the provisional Horthyst border, withdrew into Szekler Land in the autumn of 1940. Their jobs were occupied by the Romanians who had been forced out of Northern Transylvania. Thus, some young refugees from Maramureş were hired by the Rubber Factory in Braşov, where they acquired qualifications and secured, over the following years, a respectable position for themselves due their diligence and skill. Meanwhile, they married, had children and developed attachments to their new place of residence. The Rubber Factory was headed then by Octavian Stoichita and one of the union leaders was Luca Capatina. However, on 25 October 1944, the last locality in northern Transylvania was freed from the fascists by the Romanian troops. Suddenly all the Hungarians and the Magyarised became communists and were organised in an association called MADOSZ, on racial grounds, Romania being under the occupation of the Soviet troops. Of course, this instant metamorphosis, as yet unencountered in history, also had pragmatic reasons: rather than face prosecution for crimes committed as Horthysts against the Romanians, better as communist accusers and prosecutors of the “undemocratic” Romanians. And so, in October 1944, the sui generis Bolshevisation of Transylvania started with the former Horthysts. Since the Romanians were not communists, the party of the communists, about 200 members, had consisted, until then, of Bulgarians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, and Serbs and was called, accordingly, the Communist Party in Romania. Already in February 1945, in Braşov, MADOSZ organised large demonstrations of intimidation against the supporters of the National Peasants’ Party (NPP) and the local Romanian newspaper, Avantul (The Elan), which opposed Bolshevisation. Besides invectives addressed to the Radescu government and the NPP, the protesters also had more “democratic” slogans, such as: “We’ll shoot Radescu,” “We will kill Maniu” and “Down with the King” (see Avantul, 19 February 1945). They also started a newspaper in Romanian, Drum nou (New Way). Shortly thereafter, the “bourgeois” newspaper Avantul was liquidated and only one opinion, of their new way, would be broadcast. The former workers who had left the Rubber Factory in 1940, as enthusiastic Horthysts across the border, came back as communists, organised by MADOSZ, and reclaimed their old jobs. The trade union from the factory refused to endorse, before the factory management, the firing of the workers from Maramureş, to make room for the Szeklers. That’s what the trade unionists had been waiting for! But this is what the newspaper “New Way” reported: “The situation from the Rubber Factory did not escape the vigilance of the democratic authorities in Braşov, as well as of the conscious working class, who will know how to put an end to the hooligan provocations sponsored by Capatana.” And indeed, the communist Horthysts racially grouped together in MADOSZ would know. Several truckloads of workers armed with clubs and iron crowbars descended from the Szekler Land upon the workers from the Rubber Factory in Braşov, who were in a union meeting in which they had just discussed the challenges they were put up to by the new “democratic forces” on the rise. They were severely beaten and were left almost breathless in the meeting room. Their families gathered them in cars and carts. However, the workers and clerks who had been “cautioned in worker-like fashion” returned to the factory the next day, suffering, injured, bandaged, some with splints; they resumed work, but would not leave the factory to accommodate the new communists! In no time, the hordes of the new ethnic communists were back in more trucks, better equipped with clubs, iron crowbars, knives and chains, more determined, more hateful. They invaded the factory, all the Romanians being removed with club blows onto the pavement in front of the factory, where they were beaten unconscious, until they could no longer move, with blood streaming down their noses and mouths! Their human and Christian resistance (people and spirit) in order to defend their jobs and make a living for themselves and their children was, this time, gathered by the police, meanwhile placed in the service of the “people.” Here is how the same communist-Horthyst sheet recorded, on 12 December 1945, under the title “A Factory Purged of Saboteurs and Reactionaries,” and with subtitled such as “Hooligan Methods” or “Manist Arguments: Iron Crowbars and Knives,” the final results of the intervention made by the fresh communists: “The hooligans proved to be well trained, iron crowbars and knives being found on some. They were all disarmed and those found guilty of conspiracy were surrendered to the police, which drew up documents for their arrest.” And, indeed, those mutilated, bloody bodies were arrested.

This is how communism was installed in Transylvania!