Once Upon a Time There Was a Big Party. the Social Basis of the Romanian Communist Party(Part I),...

8/9/2019 Once Upon a Time There Was a Big Party. the Social Basis of the Romanian Communist Party(Part I), n East Europ

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10.1177/0888325405281092Once upon a Time There Was a Big PartyEast European Politics and Societies

Once upon a Time There Was a

Big Party: The Social Bases of theRomanian Communist Party (Part I)Ca*ta*lin Augustin Stoica

Employing survey data, this article highlights the following characteristicsof theRomanian CommunistParty (RCP): Withan estimatedmembership of33 percent of Romanias employed population, the late RCP was propor-tionally the largest Leninist party in Eastern Europe. Consistent with the so-called deproletarianization thesis, the RCP manifested a marked preferencetoward recruiting well-educated individuals and professionals among its

ranks. The RCP also tended to recruit from amongdisadvantaged classes (inparticular, peasants and their offspring). Despite some prowomen affirma-tive action policies, women were underrepresented among Party mem-bers. Some ethnic minorities had fewer chances of joining the RCP thaneth-nic Romanians. As compared to other communist parties, the RCP had oneof the highest rates of intergenerational political reproduction among itsranks. This article suggests that the amorphous character of the RCP and itsclosed elite could also explain why Party members did not bother to savetheir historically obsolete leader.

Keywords: political sociology; Eastern Europe; social stratification; com-munist party membership; Romania

Q:What is the difference between the U.S. and the SovietRussia?

A: In the U.S., you can always find a party. In the Soviet Russia,the Party always finds you.1

686East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 19, No. 4, pages 686716. ISSN 0888-3254

2005 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1177/0888325405281092

* I am extremely grateful to Vladimir Tismaneanu for his excellent comments on a previousversion of this article. The participants in Stanfords workshop Politics and Social Changehave been subjected to an imperfect draft of this article. Andrew G. Walder has patientlyread several versions of this article, providing comments that have sharpened and improvedmy analyses. My thanks also go to Liviu Chelcea, Robin Marie Cooper, and Elaine Goetzkefor their substantive and editorial suggestions. Any errors and misinterpretations are my soleresponsibility.

1. Adaptation of the cold war joke of Yakov Smirnoff, Russian-born U.S. comedian.


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The joke cited above also applies to Romania, whose CommunistParty was proportionally the largest in Central and EasternEurope. Official Party figures and other studies indicate thatapproximately 3.7 million Romanians were Party members in1988.2 Specifically, in the late 1980s, 15.8 percent of Romaniaspopulation3 or 33 percent of its employed individuals4were affili-ated with the Romanian Communist Party (RCP). Some authorsdeemed this fact an attempt by Ceaus,escu to increase the legiti-macy of his rule, both domestically and internationally.5Yet inDecember 1989, when he and his wife were arrested, Ceaus,escuseemingly realized that size does not matter. Partymembers didnot show up en masse to rescue him, and most of them probablycelebrated his and his wifes hasty trial and execution on Christ-

mas Day 1989. Moreover, a few weeks later, on 12 January 1990,dissatisfied with seeing too many former Party officials in thenew government, thousands of Romanians gathered in the frontof the governments headquarters and demanded the outlawingof the Communist Party. Under the pressure of people who wereburning their Party membership cards, Ion Iliescuthe leader oftheprovisional government anda former Party officialtoldpro-testers that the RCP would be banned.6

In this article, I address the social bases of the once large RCP.The exceptionalism of the RCP was nicely described by Ghit,a*Ionescu in the early 1960s.7 In the early 1970s, Ken Jowitt

explored the Romanian communists nation-building strategyand addressed the Romanian case in subsequent writings.8 Rob-

East European Politics and Societies 687

2. Richard F. Staar, CommunistRegimesin EasternEurope, 5th ed. (Stanford, CA: Hoover Insti-tution Press, 1988), 196.

3. Ibid., 195.4. Library of Congress, Country Studies: Romania Area Handbook Studies 1989, http://mem-

ory.loc.gov/frd/cs/rotoc.html; Robert R. King, Romania, in Richard F. Staar, ed., 1989Yearbook on International Communist Affairs(Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press),347-48.

5. See, for instance, Vlad Georgescu, Istoria romnilor: de la origini pna n zilele noastre(Bucuresti, Romania: Ed. Humanitas, 1992).

6. However, the next day, the provisional government did not fulfill its promise and theRomania Communist Party (RCP) was not legally banned.

7. Ghit,a*Ionescu, Communism in Rumania: 1944-1962(London: Oxford University Press,

1964).8. Ken Jowitt,Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Roma-

nia, 1944-1965(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); some of Jowitts other


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ert R. King made a significant contribution to the general historyof the RCP and Michael Shafir wrote a solid monograph aboutpolitics, economy, and society in socialist Romania.9 Recently,

Vladimir Tismaneanu has provided the most comprehen-sive account to date of the political history of Romanian commu-nism.10 Tismaneanus and others studies, however, have mainlyaddressed the fascinating struggles within the RCPs elite, as wellas its political, ethnic, and social composition. Such a focus onthe top levels of the RCP has been a matter of personal choiceand intellectual interest. However, the lack of survey data aboutordinary Party members has also limited other scholars inquiriesabout the RCPs rank-and-file. Studies using survey data aboutthe social composition of communist parties of Hungary, the for-

mer Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, and China have been regu-larly published in American journals since the late 1980s.11Yetsimilar works about ordinaryParty members in Romania havenot been published.12

688 Once upon a Time There Was a Big Party

important contributions are gathered in his volume New World Disorder: The LeninistExtinction(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

9. Robert R. King,A History of the Romanian Communist Party(Stanford, CA: Hoover Institu-tion Press, 1980); and Michael Shafir,Romania. Politics, Economics, and Society. PoliticalStagnation and Simulated Change(London: Frances Pinter, 1985). The list of works pre-sented above is by no means exhaustive; for other works about Romania, readers shouldconsult the bibliographies included in the studies mentioned here.

10. Vladimir Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Commu-nism(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Tismaneanus contributions to thistopic (in both Romanian and English) are extremely numerous. For a list of these contribu-tions, see his Stalinism for All Seasons.

11. See, for instance, Eric Hanley, A Party of Workers or a Party of Intellectuals? Recruitmentinto Eastern European Communist Parties, 1945-1988, Social Forces81 (2003): 1073-1105;Bobai Li and Andrew G. Walder, Career Advancement as Party Patronage: SponsoredMobility into the Chinese Administratative Elite, 1946-1996,American Journal of Sociology106 (2001): 1371-1408; Szonja Szelnyi, Social Inequalities and Party Membership: Pat-terns of Recruitment into the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, American SociologicalReview52 (1987): 559-73; Andrew G. Walder, Career Mobili ty and the Communist Polit icalOrder,American Sociological Review60 (1995): 309-28; Andrew G. Walder, Bobai Li, andDonald J. Treiman, Politics and Life Chances in a State Socialist Regime: Dual Career Pathsinto the Urban Chinese Elite, 1949-1996,American SociologicalReview65 (2000): 191-209;and Raymond S. K. Wong, The Social Composition of the Czechoslovak and HungarianCommunist Parties in the 1980s, Social Forces75 (1996): 61-90.

12. In contrast to other sisterly countries, public opinion polls and sociological surveys were

virtually absent in socialist Romania. In the late 1940s, Romanian sociology was branded abourgeois science and banned from academia. Following the ideological relaxation fromthe mid-1960s, sociology programs were reinstituted in public universities. In the late


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This is the first study that addresses the social bases of the RCPusing survey data. Admittedly, some authors from the flourishingindustry of market transition studies might deem the past lessinteresting than the present or the future. Aside from filling upknowledge gaps in a particular case, such a study of the past isimportant for at least two reasons: Firstalong with Walder, Li,and TreimanI contend that, before asking how market transi-tion has modified the value of education and political status, wemust first possess an adequate understanding of their signifi-cance under state socialism.13 Second, although communist par-ties formally disappeared from most East European countries,news about their death might have been grossly exaggerated. AsHanley puts it, The influence of these parties lives on in the

sense that Party members [in the region] continue to wield powerand enjoy privileges in the postcommunist period.14 In other

words, since past affiliation with the Communist Party still shapesindividuals life chances during transition, studying the featuresof former communist parties is more than an exercise in twenti-eth centurys history. As Hanley rightfully stresses, such a study


1970s, however, Ceaus,escu banned again sociology from academia. Sociology courses(with a strong Marxist flavor) continued tobe taught sporadically within other departments,but the only degree-granting program in sociology was at the Stefan Gheorghiu Party Acad-emy. While public opinion surveys have flourished since Ceaus,escus demise, Romaniansociologists have avoided asking questions about Party membership. Affiliation with theRCP was a rather delicate issue in the early 1990s, when anti-communist parties and civicorganizations were calling for the exclusion of former Party members from public life. Inaddition, in the early 1990s, it was quite difficult to conduct face-to-face interviews for pub-lic opinion surveys because most Romanians were suspicious of individuals who were ask-ing political and other opinion questionsa thing that only Ceaus,escus infamous SecretPolice (Securitate)did. These facts explain theabsence ofRomanian survey dataabout RCPmembership.

13. Walder, Li, and Treiman, Politics and Life Chances, 191-92.14. Hanley, A Party of Workers, 1075. For instance, Stoica has shown that, ten years after the

collapse of the communist regime, former Romanian cadres are more likely than ordinaryindividuals to be employersan elite form of entrepreneurship. See Ca*ta*lin AugustinStoica, From Good Communists to Even Better Capitalists? Entrepreneurial Pathways inPost-Socialist Romania, East European Politics and Societies18(2004): 236-77. For theadvantages of former Party members in contemporary Russia, see Theodore Gerber, Mem-bership Benefits or Selection Effects? Why Former Communist Party Members Do Better inPost-Soviet Russia, Social Science Research29:1(2000): 25-50. See also Akos Rona-Tas and

Alya Guseva, The Privileges of Post-Communist Party Membership in Russia and Endoge-nous Switching Regression: Comment to Theodore Gerber, Social Science Research30:4(2001): 641-52; and Theodore Gerber, The Selection Theory of Persisting Party Advan-tages in Russia. More Evidence and Implications: Reply to Akos Rona-Tas and AlyaGuseva, Social Science Research30:4(2001): 653-71.


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has an immediate relevance for grasping the logic and effects ofpost-socialist changes.

My study of the contours of the RCP attempts to answer the fol-lowing questions: What was the sociodemographic compositionof the RCP? What role did education play for becoming a Partymember in Romania? Put differently (and paraphrasing Hanley),

was the late RCP a Party of intellectuals or a Party of workers?How important was an individuals social origin for entry into theRCP? What were the chances of social minorities (e.g., womenand ethnic others) to join the RCP? More generally, how did theRCP fare as compared to other parties in the region in terms of itssocial composition?

To answer these questions, I will rely on recent Romanian sur-

veys that have addressed the issue of Party membership. Thisarticle is divided into two parts and published in two issues ofEast European Politics and Society. In the first part, I beginby dis-cussing the history of the RCP. Since this history has been welltold by others (in particular by Tismaneanu), I will provide only asketch of it, emphasizing the historical shifts in the RCPs person-nel policies and practices. The second section of the current arti-cle will present the survey data and measures employed in mystudy. In the third section, I will discuss the sociodemographicprofiles of Party members in Romania and four other formercommunist countriesBulgaria, the former Czechoslovakia,

Hungary, andPoland. In the secondpart of this article, which willbe published in the next issue ofEEPS, I will detail thesociodemographic profiles of Romanian Party members, Partyfunctionaries, and nonmembers. I will also examine, from acausal perspective, patterns of recruitment into the RCP. Finally, I

will summarize the main findings of this study, followed by abrief discussion of their relevance for political sociology andtransition studies.

1. The Romanian Communist Partyspersonnel policies, 1944-1989

Previous sociological contributions to the topic of communistparties personnel policies and practices have highlighted the fol-



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lowing trends:15 First, in their attempt to transform and mastertheir societies, communist regimes have struggled with conflict-ing demands of rewarding either an individuals qualifications orhis or her political loyalty. Second, in different historical periods,communist regimes have adopted different solutions to this red

versus expert dilemma. During the Stalinist period, EasternEuropean regimes emphasized political loyalty at the expense ofindividual merits. In particular, communist parties discriminatedagainst bourgeois and other enemy classes and tended torecruit from among disadvantaged social categories, that is,

workers and peasants.Facing serious legitimacy problems after Stalins death, East

European communist elites contemplated a series of reforms and

[invited] the technocracy and even the ideological intelligentsiato share power.16 The invitation was accepted, and by the 1970s,Konrad and Szelnyi claimed, the intellectuals were a dominantclass instatu nascendi. Or, in their now famous phrasing, intel-lectuals were on the road to class power. With the further adventof industrialization, communist parties focused on recruiting

well-educated individuals. In the next sections, I employHanleys term deproletarianization in reference to Konrad andSzelnyis arguments, who emphasized that an increasing num-ber of technical personnel and well-educated individuals enteredthe Party at the expense of manual workers.

Despite common trends, Eastern European communistregimes embraced specific institutionalarrangements. In this sec-tion, I discuss the Romanian case. As I mentioned before, thestory of Romanian exceptionalism has been well covered byothers. Therefore, I provide readers with a sketch of the post

World War II history of the RCP, focusing on historical shifts in itspersonnel policies and practices. My treatment of this topic, how-ever, is bynomeans exhaustive. Readers interested in more


15. Space limitations prevent me from discussing in detail previous sociological analyses ofcommunist parties social composition. Comprehensive overviews of such studies can befound in Hanley, A Party of Workers; Li and Walder, Career Advancement; S. Szelnyi,Social Inequalities; and Walder, Li, and Treiman, Politics and Life Chances.

16. George Konrad and Ivan Szelnyi, The Intellectuals on theRoad to Class Power(New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 3.


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detailed accounts of Romanian communism are urged to consultthe original works on which this section heavily draws.

Romanian communists (among others) faced serious legiti-macy problems dating back to the interwar period. PreWorld

War II Romania was a country with an undeveloped industry anda large agricultural sector.17 Industrial workers, likely supportersof the Communist Party, represented a meager 10 percent ofRomanias active population.18 Moreover, Romanian communists

were disliked domestically because [their] party championedideas and slogans with minimal appeal to the class it claimed torepresent, portraying Romania as a multinational imperialistcountry and advocating the dismemberment of the Romaniannation-state brought into being by the Versailles and Trianon

treaties of 1919-1920.19 Consequently, for most of the interwarperiod and during the Second World War, Romanian authoritiesbanned the Communist Party. Many of its leaders wereimprisoned, while others sought refuge in the Soviet Union.

Near the end of the Second World War, Romania, Hitlers ally,switched allegiance on 23 August 1944, and a pro-Allied govern-ment took power in Romania. At that time, Romanian commu-nists were a minuscule, negligible political force: there wereonly 80 [party] members in Bucharest, and fewer than 1,000throughout the country, including those in prisons and concen-tration camps. . . . Proportionally, the Romanian Communist

Party was thus the smallest communist party in Eastern Europe.In absolute terms, it equaled the membership of the Albaniancommunist party.20Yet at Stalins pressures, Romanian commu-nists were given a central role in the new government.

When the RCP reemerged from underground, it was organiza-tionally debilitated, it was unappealing to the masses, and itlacked trained cadres. The RCP began to open its doors and con-solidate its bases after the March 1945 installation of the new gov-


17. Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons.18. Georgescu,Istoria romanilor, 215.19. Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 24. As Tismaneanu notes, during the interwar

period, the Polish communistsfollowing strictly the Cominterns positionalsodenounced the Versailles and Trianon treaties. Contesting the very existence of postWorld

War I Poland and Romania was the worst strategy to gain popular support in two nationsthat for a long period saw their territories divided among powerful neighbors.

20. Ibid., 279, n. 37.


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ernment of Dr. Petru Grozathe figurehead of the communist-controlled National Democratic Front. In seven months (Febru-ary-October 1945), approximately 240,000 new members joinedthe Party. Ten months later, the number of Party membersreached 720,000.21 During this time, recruitment policies targeted

workers, who were concentrated in the few industrialized citiesof Romania. King notes that the RCP had considerable successamong this group, which reached 55 percent within the Partysranks in 1945.22 Because peasants were a majority in Romania,the peasantry was the second group that the RCP actively soughtto recruit. Recruiting Party members from this social group wasalso successful, especially after the land reform initiated by theGroza government, which favored poor and middle peasantry.

Consequently, the proportion of peasants among Party membersgrew from one-third in 1945 to around two-fifths in 1947. 23

In its attempt to consolidate its bases, the RCPs leadershipclosed its eyes when former supporters of the pro-Nazi govern-ment of Antonescu and members of the fascist movement theIron Guard jumped ship and entered the RCP in the late 1940s. Inthe fratricidal struggles that would ensue in the early 1950s,Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej accused his rivals Ana Pauker, TeohariGeorgescu, andlater on, in 1961Miron Constantinescu foradmitting former fascists and other opportunists into the RCP.Gheorghiu-Dej, with the support of Stalin, would win the battle

against his rivals and become the absolute leader of Romaniancommunists. Yet as Tismaneanu, Levy, and King note, this policyof dont ask, dont tell (about your fascist past)was actively pur-sued by the entire leadership of the RCP.24 The cooperation withformer fascists was necessary because at the end of World War II,the RCP lacked proper territorial representation, whereas the for-mer Iron Guardists possessed superior organizational skills andan impressive grassroots network in most Romanian regions.Concomitantly, the RCP established and/or sought to infiltrateother organizations, from trade unions to youth and womens


21. King,A History, 63.22. Ibid.23. Ibid., 65.24. Tismaneanu, Stalinismfor All Seasons; Robert Levy,Ana Pauker: The Rise and Fall of a Jew-

ish Communist(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); and King, A History.


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organizations to professional associations to ethnic organizationslike the Hungarian Peoples Union.25 In addition, the RCP leader-ship focused on the development and training of its cadre aktif.To this end, in February 1946, the RCP opened the StefanGheorghiu Party School and instituted six-month courses atregional party schools throughout the country.26

With help from the Soviets, through intimidation, manipula-tion, and outright falsification, the communist alliance won thegeneral elections in November 1946. Thirteen months later, on 30December 1947, King Michael of Romania was forced to abdicateand went into exile. What followed afterwards is an example ofcoerciveas well as mimetic institutional change.

27Like other

communists in the region, Romanians adopted the institutional

blueprintsprovided by Stalins Soviet Union. In this first periodofinstitutional change, the new regime targeted a rapid develop-ment via mobilization of all available resources,

28with a strong

emphasis on industrialization. According to Jowitt, Romaniancommunists perceived industrialization as an essential part of thebreaking through task of nationbuilding.29 The industrializationpolicy would also manufacture most of the RCPs constituencyof industrial workers, which was a mere fiction in the mid-1940s.These early years of copycat Stalinism also implied the national-ization of large and middle-size enterprises, of the housing stock,and the collectivization of agriculture.

The growth of the RCP reached a peak in 1948 when it mergedwith the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to form the RomanianWorkers Party (RWP). Approximately 260,000 SDP membersjoined forces with the communists at the RWPs founding con-


25. King,A History, 68.26. Ibid., 69-70.27. For a definition of these types of institutional change, see Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell,

The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organiza-tion Fields, American Sociological Review48 (1983): 147-60. In his discussion of howRomanian communists imported the Soviet Unions institutional blueprints, Jowitt uses theterm emulation (see Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs). However, Jowitts emula-tion and Powell and DiMaggios coercive and mimetic institutional change refer to simi-lar processes in this case.

28. Jowitt,New World Disorder.29. Jowitt,RevolutionaryBreakthroughs, 111. Breaking through, Jowitt notes, is the decisive

alteration or destruction of values, structures, andbehaviors which are perceived by a revo-lutionary elite as comprising or contributing to the actual power or potential existence of alter-native centers of power (p. 7).


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gress in February 1948. Overall, between 1944 and 1948, thenumber of Communist Party members grew from 1,000 to800,000. As King states, with the addition of SDP members, theproportion of workers in the newly formed RWP actuallydecreased from 47 percent in 1947 to 39 percent at the time of themerger.30 Such a decrease raised concern among the Party leader-ship regarding the improper representation of workerswithin theRWP.

The founding congress marked an important shift in recruit-ment policies. First, the RWP leadership adopted new and strictercriteria for entry into the Party: no members of the formerexploiting classes were to be admitted, a mandatory six-monthperiod of candidate membership would henceforth be required,

and those applying for admission were to be carefully screenedon an individual basis.31 Second, a few months later, the RWP ini-tiated a verification campaign, which aimed to cleanse andstrengthen the party.32 The strengthening of the Party also trans-lated into instituting direct control over other organizations suchas the Union of Working Youth and the womens front.33

The verification campaign also aimed to increase workersrepresentation within the Party, who were supposed to represent80 percent of the new Party members. To achieve this goal, theParty promoted a proworker affirmative action, based on a three-tier admittance system. The system gave priority to workers in

the heavy industry, followed by workers in other industrialbranches and agriculture, and ended with individuals from allother social categories.34Applicants from the first tier had theshortest probationary period as candidate members. Moreover,they were required to have fewer recommendations from otherParty members. In addition, such recommenders did not have tobe senior or veteran Party members. The requirements werestricter for applicants from the secondandespecially third tiers.35


30. King,A History, 80.31. Ibid., 72.32. Ibid.

33. Ibid., 74.34. Ibid.35. Ibid.


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At the official end of the verification campaign in 1950, it isestimated that somewhere between 192,000 and 300,000 alien,careerist elements were expelled from the Party.36 Notably, thepurges continued at a slower pace for a few more years.37Yet inassessing the results of this campaign, the leadership noted thatthe Party still lacked strong links to the population, the coopera-tion between the Party and other organizations had plenty ofroom for improvement, and regional and rural Party organiza-tions had to be restructured. The leadership stressed the need forthe creation of a strong Party aktif of 80,000 to 100,000 cadresselected from among the best qualified Party members.38 Thisrequired the intensification and improvement of Party education.Despite sustained efforts to train Party members in such estab-

lishments as the Andrei Zhdanov School for the Social Sciences,the Stefan Gheorghiu Party School (and subsequently Academy),and other regional institutions, the need for well-qualified cadres

was far from being fulfilled.39

The admission of new members officially resumed in 1952,with a few changes in recruitment policies. Entrance into theParty remained organized in a three-tier system, but the proba-tionary period of candidate membership was extended for allapplicants.

40While recruiting workers remained the top priority,

in line with the Partys preoccupation with massive industrializa-tion, the leadership emphasized the need for incorporating well-

educated individuals from technical fields into the RWP. Theshortage of highly qualified members from technical fields waspartly due to the Partys policies themselves, which sent to prisona large number of preWorld War II intellectual elites. As Ionescunotes, at first the Romanian communists treated intelligentsia asclass enemies. Yet the Partys obsession with industrialization


36. Ibid., 73.37. One of the victims of this verification campaign was Lucret,iu Pa*tra*s,canu, who, in the words

of Tismaneanu, was one of the most distinguished, erudite, sophisticated, and urbaneRomanian communist, with a long tradition in the interwar communist movement in Roma-nia. Gheorghiu-Dej perceived Pa*tra*s,canu as a rival, and the latter fell prey to the verifica-tion campaign in 1948, was tried, and was executed in 1954. See Tismaneanu, Stalinismfor all Seasons, 110-20 and 267-68.

38. Ibid., 75.39. King,A History, 75-76.40. Ibid., 78.


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Gheorghiu-Dej sought popular support to resist de-Stalinizationby reviving Romanians anti-Russian sentiments. For example,

writings by Marx that had been previously banned or ignoredbecause they talked of Russias imperialistic tendencies towardRomania were published. Also, some intellectual figures that hadbeen barred from the public sphere for their perceivednationalism were rehabilitated.

Several changes in the Partys personnel policy also reflectedGheorghiu-Dejs attempts to build internal support for his ruleand derail attempts at de-Stalinization. Admission into the Party

was made easier in 1962, when the three-tier system wasreplaced by a two-tier system. The probationary period of candi-date membership was reduced, and the leadership recom-

mended restraint in the expulsion of members. 47 In areconciliatory attempt, admission of members of the so-calledbourgeois classes was relaxed, and a new emphasis was put onrecruiting engineers and technicians into the Party.48 Suchreconciliatory measures reflected Gheorghiu-Dejs increasingself-confidence as the absolute leader of communist Romania.Notably, these seemingly pacifying policies also coincided withthe Romanianization of the political elites, which implied theelimination of ethnic Jews and Hungarians from the Partys com-mand structures.49

The policy of impregnating an externally imposed communist

model with nationalism was taken to new heights by NicolaeCeaus,escu, the person who succeeded Gheorghiu-Dej after hisdeath in March 1965. Ceaus,escu moved away from the coercive,iron fist of Stalinism, to a subtler mode of domination throughthe manipulation of national symbols. On one hand, Ceaus,escucriticized Gheorghiu-Dej in a Khrushchevite manner, accusinghis former political patron of encouraging the development of apersonality cult and of excesses during the verification cam-paign. To further mark a new era of reconciliation, the Ninth RCPCongress in 1965 relaxed the recruitment policies of the Party byformally abandoning discriminatory categories, abolishing the


47. King,A History, 79.48. Ibid.49. I thank Vladimir Tismaneanu for his clarifications on this point.


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two-tier admission system, and eliminating the candidate proba-tionary status.50At the same congress, the Romanian WorkersParty was renamed the Romanian Communist Party.

On the other hand, Ceaus,escu continued Gheorghiu-Dejsmoves toward autonomy from Moscow. He began to decry pub-licly the annexation of Romanian territories by the Soviet Unionin the 1940s. This independent stance and the internal support itbrought him culminated in August 1968, when Ceaus,escustrongly criticized the Warsaw Pact troops invasion of Czecho-slovakia. The effects of Ceaus,escus political stunt were large:First, it portrayed him as an independent leader in the eyes of the

West. Second, by playing on Romanians anti-Russian sentiments,Ceaus,escu managed to gain an unprecedented amount of sup-

port for his communist regime. Such support partly explains whyRomania, in contrast to Poland and Hungary in 1980s, had no sig-nificant oppositional movements. Beginning in August 1968, anycriticism of Ceaus,escu was treated as a sign of support for Roma-nias ages-old enemy, that is, Russia (then in the supersize for-mula of the Soviet Union).51

Politically, during 1965 to 1971, the Party opened itself up andbegan accepting among its ranks former class enemies. Explicitgoals were set to incorporate an increasing number of well-educated individuals into the Party, and the proportion of highlyqualified professionals and college graduates grew significantly

in the late 1960s.52

Universalism or meritocracy was stronglyemphasized in the Partys personnel policies. These Golden

Years were accompanied by a decrease in the top-down controlof cultural production. Censorship was loosened, and intellectu-als were able to gain access to information and ideas that hadbeen forbidden due to their subversive, Western origins.

Robert C. Tucker deems these general trends of ideologicalrelaxation and reform the de-radicalization of Marxist move-ments.53 Unfortunately, communist Romania witnessed a


50. Ibid., 80.51. Pavel Campeanu in Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan,Problems of Democratic Transition and

Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe(Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 348.52. King,A History, 80.53. Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea(New York: Norton, 1969), 172-214.


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reradicalization of its regime beginning in the early 1970s. Specif-ically, Ceaus,escus so-called Golden Years came to an end in1971 when, while visiting China and North Korea, Ceaus,escubecame enamored with Maos and Kim Il Sungs models of com-munism and their near-total control over society. By 1974,Ceaus,escu gained full control over the Party by outmaneuveringand defeating his predecessors barons who, ironically, had pro-motedhim as a leader back in 1965. He not only froze the relativeliberalization but also revived the Stalinist model, characterizedby the hypercentralization of the economy and decision-makingprocesses.

Around that time, Ceaus,escu lost any veneer of formalism andbegan to shamelessly promote his close relativesmost notably,

his wifeto top positions of power. While, as Shafir notes, thiswas not a uniquely Romanian phenomenon,54 Ceaus,escu tookparty familialization to such new heights that some analystslabeled his regime dynastic socialism.55 Specifically, in the late1970s, Ceaus,escus wife, Elena, became one of the three FirstDeputy Ministers in the Romanian government andmostimportantshe was appointed the chairwoman of the RCPsCentral Committee for State andParty cadres.56 Elena Ceaus,escusbrother was a member of the RCPs Central Committee, the Exec-utive Bureau of the Socialist Democracy and Unity Front, anddeputy chairman of theGeneral Confederationof TradeUnions.57

In 1983, Ceaus,escus brother Ilie became deputy minister ofdefense and head of the Higher Political Council of the Romanian

Army. Nicolae A. Ceaus,escuanother brother with the same firstname as the Party leaderwas a lieutenant general in the Minis-try of Interior.58 Florea Ceaus,escu, another brother, was a mem-ber of the editorial staff ofScnteia(the Spark, the RCPs newspa-per).59A third brother, Marin, had a position in the foreign trade,and Ion Ceaus,escuyet another brotherwas minister-secre-


54. Shafir,Romania, 89.55. Georgescu,Istoria romanilor.56. Shafir,Romania, 76.57. Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 223.58. Shafir,Romania, 78.59. Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 223.


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tary of state of the State Planning Commission.60 A sister ofCeaus,escuu was deputy minister of education, and her husband

was the first secretary of the RCP in Olt, Ceaus,escus nativecounty.61 Ceaus,escus younger son Nicu held posts in the RCPsExecutive Committee and the Communist Youth Union and wasthe head of the Sibiu County Party organization. Nicknamed thePrince and a noted party boy, Nicu was groomed by his parentsto succeed Nicolae [his father] as Romanias leader (the only suchcase in a European Leninist regime).62

Ceaus,escu, who had previously denounced Gheorghiu-Dejspersonality cult, started presenting himself as the savior of Roma-nia. In addition to the practices of propaganda and the personal-ity cult, in the late 1970s and 1980s, with the help of the

Securitate(the Secret Police), Ceaus,escu managed to suppressany oppositional movement. Inspired by Webers ideal type ofsultanism, Linz and Stepan describe Ceaus,escus extremely per-sonalized rule as totalitarisnism-cum-sultanism. They note thatin such a regime, There is a strong tendency toward familialpower and dynastic succession, there is no distinction between astate career and a personal service to the ruler, there is lack ofrational, impersonal ideology . . . and the ruler acts only to hisunchecked discretion, with no larger, impersonal goals.

63

The RCPs personnel policies after 1971 are aptly described byShafir as zigzags.64 Ceaus,escus interpersonal trust was confined

to his clique of sycophants and close family. Therefore, to pre-vent the formation of oppositional groups within the Party, heinstituted and pushed to the extreme the policy of rotating cad-res. Through this policy, cadres were periodically transferred todifferent administrative subunits across the country.65 The policyof recruitingwell-educated individuals also fluctuated. FollowingCeaus,escus minicultural revolution inspired by his visits toChina and North Korea, official Party figures indicate that theproportion of intellectuals dropped from 23 percent in 1969 to


60. Ibid.61. Ibid.62. Ibid., 259.

63. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 52 and 349-56.64. Shafir,Romania, 89.65. King,A History, 94-95.


17/31

less than 19 percent in 1972.66 Seven years later, in 1979, officialstatistics show that intellectuals represented 29 percent of Partymembers.67 The interest in recruiting workers into the RCPremained pronounced throughout the 1980s and was linked toCeaus,escus decision to continue with the extensive industrial-ization of the country at a time of global economic recession. Atthe level of its cadres, the Party struggled with breeding a newtype of manager and ideologuenamely, cadres who weresimultaneously technocrats and ideologuesan aging Partyaktif, incipient intergenerational struggles among cadres, andoccasional cleansings of unworthy elements.68 In the 1970s and1980s, the RCPs leadership raised concerns regarding the repre-sentation of ethnic minorities and women among Party members

and cadres. Several reformist outbursts aimed to increase thepresence of such groups (in particular, women) within the Party.(I will discuss the outcomes of these affirmative action programsin the next sections.)

Shafir notes that the only stable feature in the Partys convo-luted personnel policies was its constant growth in membership,especially in the late 1970s and 1980s.

69This constant growth is

visible in Table 1, which depicts the evolution of membership infive communist parties by country and year.

While in the 1950s and 1960s, membership figures oscillateddue to initial mergers with other left-wing parties and subsequent

purge campaigns, beginning with 1970, communist parties in theregion grew constantly. The only exception to this is Poland,

which recorded a decrease in Party membership in the mid-1980s, following the Solidaritys anti-government actions.

The RCP is the only Party in the region that grew at a substan-tially higher rate in the 1970s and in 1980s than other sisterlypoliticalmachines. Under Ceaus,escu, thebigpush to grow is visi-ble in the 1970 membership figures. First, this sudden growth

was generated by the relaxation of admission policies adopted atthe Ninth Congress of the RCP in 1965. Second, the increase in


66. Shafir,Romania, 89.67. Ibid.68. Ibid., 90-93. See also King, A History, 80-84.69. Shafir,Romania, 89.


18/31

703

Table

1.

EvolutionofMembershipin

FiveCommunistPartiesbyCoun

tryandYear

Year

R

omaniaa

Bulgaria

b

Czecho

slovakiac

Hungaryd

Pola

nde

1944

Es

t.1,000

NA

2

7,000

Est.3,000

Est.20,0

00

1948/1949

1,060,000

460,000

1,78

8,383

887,000

1,500,0

00

1956/1957

595,000

360,000

1,38

5,610

102,000

1,344,0

00

1960/1961

834,600

NA

1,37

9,441

467,000

1,270,0

00

1970/1971

2,194,627

699,990

1,17

3,183

662,000

2,270,0

00

1980/1981

3,150,812

826,000

1,32

5,150

812,992

2,942,0

00

1985/1986

NA

932,055

NA

870,992

2,125,7

62

1987/1988

3,709,735

NA

1,60

7,578

NA

2,130,0

00

Note:NA=notavailable.

a.ForRomania,t

he1944to1981membershipfigures

arefromMichaelShafir,Romania.Politics,Ec

onomics,andSociety.PoliticalStagnationan

dSimu-

lated

Change(London:FrancesPinter,1985),87.Membershipfiguresfor1985and1988aref

romRichardF.Staar,CommunistRegimesin

Eastern

Euro

pe,5thed.(Stanford,CA:HooverInstitutionPress,1

988),1

96.Becausemembershipfigure

swerenotavailableforeither1956or1957,t

hemem-

bershipfigureisfrom1955.

b.ForB

ulgaria,t

he1948to1981membershipfigures

arefromEricHanley,APartyofWorkersoraPartyofIntellectuals?RecruitmentintoEaste

rnEuro-

pean

CommunistParties,1

945-1988,

SocialForces81(2003):1073-1105,at1076.Membershipfiguresfor1986arefromStaar,CommunistRegimes,41.

c.ForCzechoslovakia,t

he1948to1981membershipfiguresarefromHanley,APartyofWorkers,1

076.Membershipfiguresfor1988arefromStaar,Com-

mun

istRegimes,156.

d.ForH

ungary,the1948to1981membershipfigures

arefromHanley,APartyofWorkers,1

076.Membershipfiguresfor1985arefromStaar,Com

munist

Regimes,132.

e.ForP

oland,allmembershipfiguresarefromStaar,CommunistRegimes,156.


19/31

Party membership was the result of Ceaus,escus opposition tothe 1968 Soviet intervention in the former Czechoslovakia. Asdiscussed previously, Ceaus,escus position vis--vis the invasionof Czechoslovakia helped him gain a large amount of support forhis regime. Biographical accounts from that time and scholarly

works attest that politically indifferent individuals and even anti-communists decided to join the RCP due to Ceaus,escus anti-Soviet stance.

Yet what did it take to join the RCP in the 1970s and 1980s? Asmentioned previously, the two-tier admission system and thecandidate probationary status were eliminated in 1965. Accord-ing to the rules that, in theory, governed the RCP during 1970sand 1980s, Party membership [was] open to persons who

reached the age of 18 years.70 Individuals younger than 26 yearscouldbe admitted into the Party only if they were members of theUnion of CommunistYouth (UCY). Furthermore, persons apply-ing for admission to Party membership [had] to present recom-mendations from two Party members who had been in the Partyfor at least three years.71 For individuals younger than 26 years,one of the recommendations had to be given by the UCY organi-zation to which the applicant belonged.72 Party members whorecommended an individual had to know the applicant from ajoint activity of at least one year. Admission to RCP membership

was decided upon by the general meeting of the basic organiza-

tion. The decision to admit a new member had to be endorsed byan upper-level Party organization (e.g., enterprise, county,municipal, town, or communal).73

In the RCPs hierarchy, the so-called basic Party organizationrepresented the foundation of the Party; such basic organizationsexisted in government, industry agriculture, schools, and mili-tary units. Their size [varied] from a minimum of 3 to a maximumof 300 members.74 County organizations were the intermediatelevel between the basic organization and the Central Committee


70. The RCP, The Rules of the Romanian Communist Party(Bucharest, Romania: MeridianePublishing House, 1975), 26.

71. Ibid.72. Ibid.73. Ibid., 27.74. Staar, Communist Regimes, 195.


20/31

(CC) of the RCP. The CC was elected by the RCPs Congress everyfive years. In turn, the CC elected the Political Executive Commit-tee and the Central Committee Secretariat.75 As Staar notes,These bodies [were] not elective but actually consisted of lead-ing Party personalities who were chosen by an inner group andthen rubber-stamped by the Central Committee.76 Notably, at theTenth Congress of the RCP in 1969, Ceaus,escu modified the ruleregarding the election of theRCPs general secretary. Accordingto the new rule, the general secretary was elected by the RCPsCongress. [Ceaus,escus] arguments were that this should bedone for reasons of national autonomy because the Congress

would be harder for Moscow to manipulate, and for democracy,because the Congress should be the sovereign body of the

party.77 In fact, by shifting the responsibilities of electing theRCPs general secretary to the Partys Congress, Ceaus,escuknowing all too well the fate of Khrushchevwanted to mini-mize the risk of a similar intra-Party coup.78

As mentioned previously, Romanian historian Georgescuviewed Ceaus,escus preoccupation with beefing up the Party asan attempt to silence domestic and especially foreign critics whoquestioned the popularity of his brand of socialism.79 In a com-parative perspective, in the 1970s and 1980s, when other socialistcountries were trying to rationalize, modernize, and reform theireconomies, Ceaus,escus administration was becoming extremely

irrational (i.e., personalized and unchecked). Also, Ceaus,escusemphasis on membership growth became more and more pro-nounced at a time when other sisterly countries (e.g., Polandand Hungary) were contemplating the possibility of democraticreforms. By the time when the RCP reached mammoth-likedimensions of around 3.7 million members, Ceaus,escuspower . . . was falling apart. . . . He considered Gorbachev thearch-traitor to Leninist ideals and tried to mobilize an interna-tional neo-Stalinist coalition. In August 1989, he was so irritated


75. Ibid., 191.76. Ibid.

77. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 349.78. I thank Vladimir Tismaneanu for his clarifications at this point.79. Georgescu,Istoria romanilor.


21/31

by the formation of a Solidarity government in Poland that heproposed a Warsaw Pact intervention in that country.80 InDecember 1989, however, Romanians became so irritated byCeaus,escu that he was overthrown by a popular revolt, sum-marily tried, and executed.81

2. Data and measures

In the previous section, I reviewed the postWorld War II his-tory of the RCP. Most of the studies I mentioned previously relyexclusively on Party official statistics. In the remainder of this arti-cle, I employ survey data about Party membership to examinethe RCPs recruitment policies.

2.1. Data

The survey data come from two studies, conducted in May andNovember 2000 at the request of Open Society Romania.82 Thetwo samples include 3,751 individuals, stratified by Romaniasso-called historical regions (eight regions plus Bucharest, thecapital city), residential milieu (urban and rural), and the size oflocalities. In the final stage of the sampling, the subjects werechosen using systematic sampling from the most recent electorallists. The samples are representative of Romanias adult popula-

tion, ages eighteen years and over (in 2000). In my analyses Iinclude only respondents born before 1972 (N= 2,944). Theseindividuals were at least eighteen years old in 1989, the age at

which, in theory, an individual could have been considered forParty membership.


80. Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 229.81. For an excellent account of the December Events and the narratives that surrounded the

downfall of Ceaus,escu, see Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery, Romania afterCeaus,escu: Post-Communist Communism? in Ivo Banac, ed.,Eastern Europe in Revolution(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 117-47. For an analysis of collective represen-tations of December 1989 a decade later, see John F. Ely and Ca*ta*lin Augustin Stoica, Re-Membering Romania, in Henry F. Carey, ed.,Romania since 1989: Politics, Economics,

and Society(Oxford: Lexington Books, 2004), 97-114.82. The surveys were conducted by two private research agencies: Metro-Media Transylvania

(May 2000) and the Center for Urban and Regional SociologyCURS (November 2000).


22/31

Before presenting the results of my analyses, I must, however,offer a few caveats regarding the survey data described above.The story of individuals recruitment into communist parties isnot a straightforward one. First, communist parties personnelpolicies varied sharply by historical period. In the late 1940s andearly 1950s, East European Leninist parties primarily recruitedcandidates with a proper social background (i.e., workers andpeasants). Individuals from bourgeois families and intellectuals

were discriminated against by recruitment policies. After Stalinsdeath, most East European communist parties relaxed their per-sonnel practices. In the early 1970s, some communist partiesbegan to explicitly incorporate professionals among their ranks,

which led Konrad and Szelnyi to conclude that intellectuals

were on the road to class power (see, however, Szelnyis secondthoughts on this, as well as Hanleys study of recruitment into theCommunist Party in five countries).

83Second, the timing of entry

into the Party also shaped the contours of communist parties. AsLi and Walder show in the Chinese case, some candidates wereselected early on in their adult life, sponsored by the Party tocomplete their education, and subsequently assigned importantpositions of authority within the system.84 Other individualsjoined the Party at a later stage in life, which put them ontodifferent career tracks.

Against this background, life history data and event-history

modeling techniques would have been ideal to account for theabove mentioned historical complexities of recruitment into theRCP. My data, however, are mostly cross-sectional and containinformation about respondents careers at two points in time:1989 and 2000. This fact limits both my modeling strategies andthe conclusions one might draw from my analyses. Specifically,lacking information about the timing of individuals careers, Icould not include a respondents occupation as a predictor in my


83. Konrad and Szelnyi, The Intellectuals; for Ivan Szelnyis self-criticism, see The Prospectsand Limits of the East European New Class Project: An Auto-Critical Reflection on the Intel-lectuals on the Road to Class Power,Politics and Society15 (1986): 103-44; see also Con-clusions, in Ivan Szelnyi (in collaboration with R. Manchin, P. Juhasz, B. Magyar, and B.

Martin), Socialist Entrepreneurs(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); andHanley, A Party of Workers.

84. Li and Walder, Career Advancement.


23/31

causal analyses. Also, readers should exercise some caution ininterpreting the effects of education on entry into the Party. Mysurvey data do not contain information that would have allowedme to detail cases of sponsored mobility, as described by Li and

Walder.85

Nevertheless, when proper modeling strategies are employedand limitations acknowledged, studies using cross-sectional datasuccessfully highlight the intricacies of recruitment into commu-nist parties.86 In addition, I reiterate that Romanian survey dataaboutParty membership have beenuncommon.As far as I know,this is the first study that uses survey data to answer importantquestions regarding the RCPs personnel policies.

2.2. Measures

Although most of the variables employed in the followinganalyses are self-explanatory, I owe readers additional clarifica-tions regarding some of the measures I rely on. For Party mem-bership, I use a source item that asked respondents whether they

were members of the RCP before 1990. Answers were recordedwith the following categories: No (1); Yes, [I was a] rank-and-file member (2); Yes, [I was a] Party member with a position ofauthority at local level (3); Yes, [I was a] Party member with aposition of authority in the RCPs Central Committee or within the

Government (4); those who refused to answer were recordedinto a separate category. The surveys did not ask questions aboutthe year when respondents joined the Party, the duration of Partymembership, and whether they were ever excluded from theParty prior to 1990. Thus, my Party membership variable cap-tures whether a respondent has everbeen affiliated with the RCP.

Also, these nationally representative samples included onlythree respondents who held top positions of authority in the gov-ernment or in the RCPs CC. The number of Party functionariesincluded in these samples is thirty-three. This number is too smallto allow for separate, more refined causal analyses. Therefore, Iregrouped them as follows.


85. Ibid.86. See, for instance, S. Szelnyi, Social Inequalities.


24/31

From the source item described above, I first constructedParty membera dichotomous variable coded 1 if a respon-dent was a Party member (including those respondents who hadpositions of authority at the local and top levels), and 0 other-

wise. I employ Party member to examine generalpatterns ofrecruitment into the RCP. To account for differences withintheParty, I rely on two additional measures: rank-and-file Partymember is coded 1 if a respondent was an ordinary Party mem-ber (with no position of authority in the party) and 0 otherwise.Party functionary is a dummy variable indicating whether therespondent was a party member with position of authority atlocal or top level.

Fathers political affiliation with the RCP was coded from

similar source items that asked respondents whether their fatherswere RCP members. I use the following dummy variables to cap-ture fathers RCP membership: father was a rank-and-file RCPmember (1 = yes), father was a Party functionary (1 = yes),father nonmember (1 = yes). To avoid potential sample selec-tion bias, I employ a dichotomous variable for cases where infor-mation about fathers political affiliation is missing.

An individuals social originusually captured by fathers occu-pationwas an important criterion for recruitment into the RCP.In these surveys, fathers occupation was recorded through anopen-ended question. From the answers to this question, I con-

structed the following dummy variables to measure a respon-dents social origin: father professional (1 = yes), fathernonmanual worker (1 = yes), father manual worker (1 = yes),father self-employed (1 = yes), father agricultural worker (1 =

yes), and father not in the labor force (retiree on disabilitygrounds, unemployed, etc.) (1 = yes). Respondents occupationin 1989 was also recorded through an open-ended question. Irecoded theanswers to these questions into the following dichot-omous variables for respondents occupations before the col-lapse of Ceaus,escus regime: professional, nonmanual

worker, manual worker, self-employed, agriculturalworker, and not in the labor force. To avoid sample selectionbias, I employ two dummy variables for cases when informationabout fathers and/or respondents occupations is missing. Also,



25/31

Party functionary was similar to holding a managerial or super-visory position. To avoid double-counting, I treat Party function-ary as the primary occupation of respondents who declared thatthey or their fathers were Party functionaries. In other words, if arespondent (or his or her father) had a position of authority

within the Party, then his or her (or his or her fathers) occupa-tion is Party functionary.

To highlight the effects of education on entry into the RCP, Iemploy a series of dichotomous variables: college graduate(1 = yes), high school graduates (1 = yes), vocational schoolgraduates (1 = yes), ten years of education or less (1 = yes).High school graduates also includes graduates of the so-calledposthigh school programsusually one-year (and rarely two-

year) education programs in such fields as nursing, accounting,and pedagogy. Also, previous studies have uncovered the com-munist parties propensity to appoint their members in supervi-sory positions. To account for this, I employ a dummy variablecoded 1 if a respondent had at least three subordinates in 1989and 0 otherwise.

The communist project in Romania (and elsewhere) aimed toeradicate all differences among individuals. This task, however,

was taken to new heights by Ceaus,escu. As Kligman notes, Thenation itself was to be reconstituted through a neo-Stalinistsocial engineering project known as omogenizare(homogeniza-

tion) to homogenize the populace and create the new socialistperson. . . . To this end, race, gender, and ethnicity were all to behomogenized.87At the same time, ethnic minorities were recog-nized as categories that required special protection and a fair rep-resentation in all Party and governmental bodies.88 But interviewevidence and other studies suggest that, in practice, minoritiesaccess to such bodies was more restricted than the Partys politi-cally correct discourse led us to believe.89 To account for this, inbivariate analyses, I employ a series of dichotomous variables for


87. Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceaus,escus Romania(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 33.

88. Mary Ellen Fischer, Women in Romanian Politics: Elena Ceaus,escu, Pronatalism, and thePromotion of Women, in Sharon L. Wolchik and Alfred G. Meyer, eds., Women, State, andParty in Eastern Europe(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), 126.

89. Shafir,Romania; Staar, Communist Regimes.


26/31

respondents ethnicbackground: Romanian (1 =yes), Hungar-ian (1 = yes), German (1 = yes), Gypsy (1 = yes), Other (1 =

yes). Due to the extremely small number of ethnic Germans,Gypsies, and Others, in the causal analyses I employ threedummy variables to capture a respondents ethnic backgroundRomanian (1 = yes), Hungarian (1 = yes), Other (1 = yes).

3. Cross-national profiles of Party members

In this section, I will examine the social composition of theParty members and nonmembers in Romania, Bulgaria, the for-mer Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. For Party membersprofiles in the latter four countries, I heavily rely on Hanleys

analyses. To ensure comparability with his data, in Table 2, Iregrouped some of my variables as follows: father nonmanualoccupation includes both father professional and father lownonmanual occupation; tertiary education comprises collegegraduates; less than secondary education also includes gradu-ates of vocational schools. Missing observations are excludedfrom the percentages reported in Table 2.

The large number of RCP members represents the first andmost striking differencebetween thisParty and its comrades fromthe region. According to Table 2, 38.5 percent of Romanianrespondents born before 1972 were Party members. Other stud-

ies that relied on Party official statistics indicate that in April 1988the total number of RCP members was 3,709,735.00.90 Partymembers at that time represented 15.8 percent of the adult popu-lation91 and approximately 33 percent of its working adults.92 Thedifferences between these survey data and official statistics couldbe attributed to the following facts: First, I remind readers that theRomanian samples are representative of the adult Romanianpopulation in 2000. As mentioned previously, I employ asubsample of individuals who were at least eighteen years old in1989. Second, thepercentage of Party members reported in Table2 excludes missing observations. If missing observations are


90. Staar, Communist Regimes, 196.91. Ibid, 195.92. Library of Congress, Country Reports; King, Romania.


27/31


28/31

713

Table

2.

CharacteristicsofCommunistPartyMembersandNonmemb

ersinSixEastEuropeanCountries

TheCzech

Rom

aniaa

Bulgaria

b

Hungaryb

Polandb

Republicb

Slova

kia

b

Non-

Non-

Non-

Non-

Non-

Non-

Party

PartyPartyPartyPartyParty

PartyPartyPartyPartyParty

Party

EverP

artymembers

38.5b

13.5

c

10.9

c

11.4

c

15.2

c

14.7

c

Highesteducation

Less

thansecondary

69.8

59.0

59.5

35.7

70.9

48.2

60.8

45.1

68.8

53.9

64.4

45.2

Secondary

24.0

28.8

35.0

45.6

22.3

28.6

31.9

36.3

24.8

30.4

27.7

36.7

Tertiary

6.1

12.2

5.5

18.6

6.9

23.2

7.2

18.6

6.4

15.7

7.9

18.0

Gender(male)

39.1

54.7

46.5

59.0

45.4

65.9

45.9

70.7

43.5

69.7

43.5

73.4

Numb

erofcases

1,5701,0454,144

6,493,952

4402

,902

3754,720

7683,958

683

Father

nonmanual

11.6

14.1

13.2

18.5

13.6

16.4

16.1

20.8

20.7

29.0

18.8

26.8

Father

self-employed

3.6

2.1

19.5

18.7

18.9

19.1

35.6

39.9

8.5

5.6

10.4

9.5

Numb

erofcases

1,6721,0453,661

5933,231

3972

,583

3273,881

6773,552

622

Father

Partymember

18.4

45.5

14.5

37.6

12.7

20.8

16.1

21.5

22.9

45.0

17.9

35.0

Numb

erofcases

1,6721,0453,189

6223,287

4092

,626

3393,766

6933,538

623

Source:ForRomania,HumanandSocialResourcesintheRomanianTransition(seetext),Maya

ndNovember2000(totalN=3,751).Foralltheother

countries,EricHanley,APartyofWorkersoraPartyofIntellectuals?RecruitmentintoEasternEuropeanCommunistParties,1

945-1988,

SocialForces

81(2003):1073-1105.

Note:Missingobservationsareexcluded.Figuresrep

resentpercentages(exceptwherespecified).

a.Autho

rsanalysesfromHumanandSocialResourcesintheRomanianTransition;figuresarecalc

ulatedonlyforrespondentsbornonorbefore

1971.

b.

ThefiguresreportedbyHanleyarefromthestudy

coordinatedbyIvanSzelenyiandDonaldJ.T

reiman(1993,ascitedinHanley,APartyofW

orkers)

and

includerespondentsbornbetween1923and

1971.

c.Hanley,

APartyofWorkers,1088.


29/31

members than among nonmembers, which seems to indicate thatthe RCP targeted well-educated individuals for recruitment. Yetas compared to all of the other brotherly parties, the RCP hadthe lowest percentage of graduates of a tertiary school (i.e., 12.2percent). The other outlier is Hungary, whose Communist Partyincorporated more college graduates (i.e., 23.2 percent) than anyother Party in the region. In particular, Hungarys Socialist Work-ers Party had two times more university graduates among itsranks than the RCP. Some of these differences can be partlyexplained by the overall proportion of college graduates in thesecountries. For instance, previous studies estimate that, as com-pared to the other five countries discussed here, Romania had arelatively low percentage of college educated individuals. Never-

theless, the variations in the number of university graduatesamong Party members are also explained by the recruitment pol-icies of communist parties in each countryan issue to which I

will return in the following sections.In Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and the former Czechoslovakia,

individuals with less than a secondary degree (a category thatincludes vocational education) were underrepresented amongParty members.96 The same is true for Romania if one comparesthe proportion of individuals with less than a secondary degreeamong Party members and nonmembers (see the first two col-umns in Table 2). Yet across countries, the RCP had the highest

percentage of Party members with less than a secondary degree(i.e., 59 percent). The Czech Republic is the only other country

where respondents with less than a secondary degree were amajority among Party members (i.e., 53.9 percent). High schoolgraduates were somewhat overrepresented among Party mem-bers in Bulgaria, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, andPoland. This was also the case in Romania, where Party members

with a secondary education represented almost 29 percent.Although women had a significant presence in the workforce

in all of the countries I examine, they were a minority amongParty members. Notably, Party membership disparities betweenmen and women were the lowest in Romania and Bulgaria,


96. Hanley, A Party of Workers, 1092.


30/31

where women made up more than two-fifths of Party member-ship. In contrast, in Hungary, Poland, and the former Czechoslo-

vakia, only one-third or less of Party members were women.Individuals with fathers in nonmanual occupations were more

numerous among Party members than among nonmembers inBulgaria, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Thesame was true in Romania, but I would like to note that the RCPhad the lowest percentage of Party members with fathers innonmanual occupations. Interestingly, Hanleys analyses showno clear evidence that individuals whose fathers were self-employed experienced discrimination in Party recruitment pro-cesses [in Bulgaria, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, andPoland].97At this point, Romania is, again, an exception: across

countries, the RCP had the lowest percentage of individualswhose fathers were self-employed. However, like in the formerCzechoslovakia and in Bulgaria, in Romania too the percentageof offspring of self-employed is slightly higher among nonmem-bers than among Party members.

Overall, in all of the five countries analyzed by Hanley, Partymembers offspring were overrepresented among the Partysrank and file.98 In Bulgaria and especially in the former CzechSocialist Republic, Hanley finds a higher proportion of Partymembers who reported that their fathers were Party members.99

As Walder argues, aside from social background, parents politi-

cal affiliation was an important (ascribed) criterion in recruitmentpolicies of communist parties.100As shown in Table 2, the RCPhad the highest proportionof Party members offspring among itsranks (45.5 percent), followed closely by the Communist Party ofthe former Czech Socialist Republic (45 percent). Put another

way, children of Party members were two times more numerouswithin the ranks of the Romanian and the Czech communist par-ties thanwithin the ranks of the Hungarian and Polish communistparties.


97. Ibid.98. Ibid.

99. Ibid., 1090, 1092.100. Andrew G. Walder, The Political Dimension of Social Mobility in Communist States:

Reflections on theSoviet Unionand China,Research in Political Sociology1 (1985): 105.


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Yet the inbreeding of Party members seems less pronouncedwithin the RCP than within the Czech Communist Party. Giventhat the late RCP was a mass organization, it is unsurprising thatmore than two-fifths of ordinary Party members were offspring ofParty members. In contrast, the Czech Communist Party was sig-nificantly smaller than the RCP. According to Table 2, only 15.2percent of adult Czechs were Party members as compared to 38.5percent of adult Romanians who were Party members. Given therelative size of these two communist parties, the degree ofinbreeding among Party members was more pronounced in theCzech Republic than in Romania.

In the second party of this study, which will be published inthe next issue ofEEPS, I will employ more refined categories to

highlight the differences between Party members and nonmem-bers in Romania. I will sharpen my interpretations of statisticalanalyses with ethnographic evidence from different sources. I

will also examine patterns of recruitment into the RCP. In the finalsection of the second part, I will summarize the main findings ofthis study, followed by a brief discussion of their relevance forpolitical sociology and transition studies.


Once Upon a Time There Was a Big Party. the Social Basis of the Romanian Communist Party(Part I),...

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