The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania. The fate of the territories held by Romania after 1918 that were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 is treated separately in the article on Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.
During the Eastern Front offensive of 1944, the Soviet Army occupied the northwestern part of Moldavia as a result of armed combat that took place between the months of April and August of that year, while Romania was still an ally of Nazi Germany. The rest of the territory was occupied after Romania changed sides in World War II, as a result of the royal coup launched by King Michael I on August 23, 1944. On that date, the king announced that Romania had unilaterally ceased all military actions against the Allies, accepted the Allied armistice offer, and joined the war against the Axis powers. As no formal armistice offer had been extended yet, the Red Army occupied most of Romania as enemy territory prior to the signing of the Moscow Armistice of September 12, 1944.
The armistice convention and eventually the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 provided a legal basis for the Soviet military presence in Romania, which lasted until 1958, reaching a peak of some 615,000 personnel in 1946.
The Soviets and the Romanian communists referred to the events of August 1944 as the "liberation of Romania by the glorious Soviet Army" in the 1952 Constitution of Romania, and August 23 (the day of 1944 coup) was celebrated as Liberation from Fascist Occupation Day. On the other hand, most Western and Romanian anti-communist sources use the term "Soviet occupation of Romania," some applying it to the whole period from 1944 to 1958.
Background and beginning of the occupation
After having withdrawn its troops from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in response to the June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum, Romania entered an alliance with Nazi Germany and declared war on the Soviet Union. Romanian troops entered World War II in June 1941 as part of Operation Barbarossa, under the German High Command. Following the recapturing of the territory annexed by the Soviet Union in June 1940, Romanian troops occupied Southern Ukraine all the way to the Southern Bug. However, Romania's eastern campaign ended in disaster, notably at the Battle of Stalingrad.
By the end of 1943, the Red Army had regained control over most of the Soviet territory, and was advancing westward beyond the borders of USSR to defeat Nazi Germany and its allies. It was in this context that the Soviet forces crossed into Romania and occupied Northern and Eastern Moldavia.
On August 23, 1944, King Michael, supported by all major parties, launched a coup d'état, thereby overthrowing the pro-Nazi government of Ion Antonescu, and putting Romania's Army on the side of the Allies. As a result, King Michael was the last monarch behind the Iron Curtain to lose his throne, on December 30, 1947.
The coup facilitated the advance of the Red Army into Romania at an accelerated pace, and enabled the combined Romanian and Soviet armies to liberate the country from the German occupation. In the absence of an actual signed armistice, the Soviet troops continued to treat the Romanians as a hostile force. The armistice was signed three weeks later, on September 12, 1944, "on terms Moscow virtually dictated." The coup effectively amounted to a "capitulation", an "unconditional" "surrender" to the Soviets and the rest of the Allies. In the wake of the cease fire order given by King Michael, between 114,000 and 160,000 Romanian soldiers were taken prisoners of war by the Soviets without resisting, and they were forced to march to remote detention camps, located in the Soviet Union; according to survivors interviewed in a 2004 documentary, up to a third of the prisoners perished on the way.
By August 30, Soviet troops had reached Bucharest; by September 12, the Red Army had already gained control over much of the Romanian territory. Under the terms of its Armistice Agreement with the Allies, Romania became subject to an Allied Control Commission, composed of representatives of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom, while the Soviet military command exercised predominant, de facto authority. Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were again incorporated into the Soviet Union.
At the beginning of the occupation, pillaging and rapes of Romanian women by Soviet soldiers were recorded, prefiguring the eventual epidemic of rape during the occupation of Germany. To this day, this remains a sensitive subject; for instance, in late 2018, the Russian Embassy in Romania denounced "the existence in Romania of a campaign of denigration against the Red Army," by means of which the Soviet soldiers were presented as "a gang of robbers and rapists," instead of "liberators of Romania." Historians Mădălin Hodor and Vadim Guzun disputed these assertions, the latter noting that "the USSR occupied, dismembered and Sovietized Romania. Red Army atrocities cannot be washed away with offensive statements, which disagree with the truth."
Founding documents
The Armistice Agreement
Article 3 of the Armistice Agreement with Romania (signed in Moscow on September 12, 1944), stipulated that
The Government and High Command of Rumania will ensure to the Soviet and other Allied forces facilities for free movement on Rumanian territory in any direction if required by the military situation, the Rumanian Government and High Command of Rumania giving such movement every possible assistance with their own means of communications and at their own expense on land, on water and in the air.
Article 11 of the same agreement stipulated that Romania will compensate the Soviet Union for losses suffered in the war "to the amount of three hundred million United States dollars payable over six years in commodities (oil products, grain, timber products, seagoing and river craft, sundry machinery, et cetera)." Article 18 stipulated that
An Allied Control Commission will be established which will undertake until the conclusion of peace the regulation of and control over the execution of the present terms under the general direction and orders of the Allied (Soviet) High Command, acting on behalf of the Allied Powers.
In the Annex to Article 18, it was made clear that
The Rumanian Government and their organs shall fulfill all instructions of the Allied Control Commission arising out of the Armistice Agreement
and that The Allied Control Commission would have its seat in Bucharest.
In line with Article 14 of the Armistice Agreement, two People's Tribunals were set up for the purpose of trying suspected war criminals, one in Bucharest, and the other in Cluj.
The plenipotentiary signatories to the armistice as indicated therein were:
Paris Peace Treaties, 1947
The effect of the Armistice Agreement ceased on September 15, 1947, when the Paris Peace Treaty with Romania entered into force. Article 21, paragraph 1 of the new treaty provided the legal foundation for continued and unlimited Soviet military presence in Romania:
Upon the coming into force of the present Treaty, all Allied Forces shall, within a period of 90 days, be withdrawn from Roumania, subject to the right of the Soviet Union to keep on Roumanian territory such armed forces as it may need for the maintenance of the lines of communication of the Soviet Army with the Soviet zone of occupation in Austria.
The Romanian delegation at the Paris Conference was headed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Gheorghe Tătărescu. The Peace Treaty with Romania was signed on February 10, 1947, in the Salon de l'Horloge of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. On the Romanian side, the four signatories were Gheorghe Tătărescu, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, Ștefan Voitec, and Dumitru Dămăceanu. The signatories for the Allied powers included United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Ernest Bevin.
Soviet forces in Romania, 1944–1956
After the conclusion of the Armistice Agreement in 1944, Soviet troops occupied the entire territory of Romania. Estimates of troop levels vary between 750,000 and 1 million (estimates of British military officials), to between 1 and 1.5 million (estimates of the Romanian General Staff); many Western diplomats and experts refer to more than 1 million Soviet troops.
On November 8, 1945, King Michael's name day, an anti-communist demonstration in front of the Royal Palace in Bucharest was met with force, resulting in dozens of casualties. Soviet officers restrained Romanian soldiers and police from firing on civilians, and Soviet troops restored order.
The estimated strength of Soviet forces stationed in Romania (including air, navy, ground, and security troops), from VE Day to 1952, is shown in the table on the right.
During the second half of 1946, more than half of the combat capabilities of the Soviet Air Forces were residing outside the USSR, with the largest portion in Poland and Romania (2,500 planes in each country). The troop levels surged to a high of 615,000 in March 1946, but they were drawn down after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty in 1947. By the end of 1946, Soviet units in Romania were concentrated in four areas: Craiova–Slatina, Sibiu–Alba-Iulia, Constanța, and Brăila–Focșani. Troop levels reached a relatively stable level from May 1948 until October 1956: two full divisions, plus supporting units adding up to roughly a third division.
Although with the signing of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955 the reason for the presence of Soviet troops as stated in the Paris Peace Treaties ceased to exist, Premier Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej announced that these troops would stay as long as foreign soldiers continue to be stationed in West Germany.
Soviet troops stationed in Romania participated in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of November 1956. Soviet troop facilities inside Romania were off limits to all Romanians at the time.
Reorganization of the Romanian Army
The Soviet occupation of Romania led to a complete reorganization of the Romanian People's Army under the supervision of Soviet Army representatives. The manpower of the Romanian army was limited by the Paris Peace Treaty to a total of 138,000 (officers and troops); however, under the Soviet occupation it grew far beyond the limits imposed by the treaty, through increasing militarization of Romania's population. By 1953, regular army forces had grown to approximately 300,000; reserve army forces to approximately 135,000; and "interior" forces (border guards, security brigades, et al.) under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior to over 325,000.
At the inception of this organizational overhaul, pro-German elements were purged from the Romanian armed forces. In 1944–45, two divisions composed of Romanian volunteers—former prisoners of war, trained in the Soviet Union during the war, and also Communist activists such as Valter Roman—were formed: the Tudor Vladimirescu Division, under the command of Colonel Nicolae Cambrea, and the Horea, Cloșca și Crișan Division, under the command of General Mihail Lascăr (who was to serve as Minister of Defense from 1946 to 1947). These two units were to form the nucleus of the new Romanian Army under Soviet control. Once the Romanian Communist Party took the reins of power, 30% of officers and noncommissioned officers (mostly experienced soldiers, but at the same time a potential source of opposition to the Sovietization of the Army) were purged from the military.
Following the Romanian Workers' Party seizure of political power, the Sovietization of the Romanian army went into full gear, under the supervision of the new Minister of Defense, Emil Bodnăraș. This reorganization involved the adoption of the Soviet model of military and political organization, and a change of the military doctrine of combat and defense, in the context of Romania's integration into the Soviet strategic system, at the dawn of the Cold War.
Soviet officers were appointed as advisers charged with supervising the thorough reorganization of the army. They held leadership and surveillance positions in the main institutions of the state, but also in areas of lesser importance. In the beginning, they only held a few positions in the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff, and the political sections inside the army. With the passage of time, the number of Soviet advisers gradually increased, while at the same time their positions became permanent. In November 1952, there were 105 permanent and 17 temporary Soviet adviser positions in military schools. After 1955, their number began to decrease: 72 in 1955, 63 in 1956, 25 in 1957, and 10 in 1958.
After 1945, new military regulations were developed, following the templates of the Red Army, and they were finalized in 1949–1952. Consequently, a number of officers and military students were sent to the Soviet Union to complete their training. Between 1949 and 1952, 717 Romanian students were being trained in the USSR, while in 1958 471 Romanian military students were pursuing education in the USSR. Their number decreased in the following years.