Petru Groza

March 6, 1945 – June 2, 1952 June 12, 1952 – January 7, 1958

**Petru Groza**

Office:	Prime Minister of Romania
Term of Office:
Office:	President of Romania
Term of Office:
Date of Birth:	December 7, 1884
Place of Birth:	Bacia, Romania
Date of Death:	January 7, 1958
Religious Affiliation:	Romanian Orthodox

Petru Groza, (December 7 1884 - January 7, 1958), nicknamed The Red Bourgeois by his political adversaries, was a leading political figure in interwar Romania who eventually became Premier of the state's coalition government from 1945 to 1952. Groza, who founded a radical peasant organization known as the Ploughmen's Front (Frontul Plugarilor) during the Great Depression, became the premier in 1945 when Nicolae Rădescu, a leading military general who assumed power briefly following the conclusion of World War II, was forced to resign by the Soviet Union's deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Andrei Y. Vishinsky. Under Groza's term as premier until 1952, Romania's monarch, Michael I of Romania, was forced to abdicate as the nation officially became a "People's Republic". Although his authority and power as Premier was compromised by his reliance upon the Soviet Union for support, Groza presided over the consolidation of communist rule in Romania before eventually being succeeded by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in 1952.

Early life and career

Born of wealthy parents in Bacia, a village near Deva in Transylvania, Groza was afforded a variety of opportunities in his youth and early career to establish connections and a degree of notoriety which would later prove essential in his political career. Groza began his higher education in Austria-Hungary, studying at the University of Budapest before attending universities in both Leipzig and Berlin. By the eve of World War I, Groza had completed his studies and returned to Deva to work as a lawyer. In 1918, Groza emerged on the political scene and obtained a position on the Grand Council of Transylvania, which he maintained over the course of the following two years. Throughout this period of his life, Groza established a variety of political connections, working in various Transylvanian political and religious organizations. From 1919 to 1927, for example, Groza obtained a position as a deputy in Synod and Congress of the Romanian Orthodox Church. In the early 1920s, Groza began to serve as the Minister for Transylvania and Minister of Public Works and Communications. During this period in his life, Groza was able to amass a personal fortune as a wealthy landowner and establish a notable reputation as a prominent layman within the Romanian Orthodox Church, a position which would later make him invaluable to a Communist Party that was desperately attempting to attract the support of Eastern Orthodox Christians who were the nation's most popular religious group in 1945.

Ascendancy to Power

Despite having briefly retired from public life in 1928 after holding a series of political posts, Groza reemerged on the political scene in 1933, founding a peasant-based political organization, the Ploughmen's Front. Although the movement originally began in opposition to both the increasing levels of debt incurred by Romania's peasants during the Depression and the National Peasants' Party's inability to offer assistance to the most marginalized of the peasant class, by 1944 the organization was primarily under the control of the communists. Since the Communist Party had little more than one thousand official members by 1944, leading Romanian communists were forced to establish a broad coalition of political organizations. This coalition was comprised of four major front organizations: the Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union, the Union of Patriots, the Patriotic Defense, and, by far the most widely backed by the Romanian populace, Groza's Ploughmen's Front. From his position as the chief political actor in the largest of the communist front organizations, Groza was able to assert himself in a position of eminence within the Romanian political sphere as the Ploughmen's Front joined the Romanian Communist Party to create the National Democratic Front in October, 1944.

Groza's prominent position within the National Democratic Front afforded him the opportunity to succeed as premier when, in January,1945, the government under General Nicolae Rădescu met stern opposition from notable Romanian communists Ana Pauker and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej due to Rădescu's alleged failure to adequately deal with fascist sympathizers. The communists soon mobilized workers to hold a series of demonstrations against Rădescu, and by February numerous fatalities had occurred as the demonstrations often exploded into violence. While the communists claimed on tenuous grounds that the army was responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians, Rădescu minimized his own popular support, when he declared that the communists were foreigners without God or a nation. In response, a Soviet delegation consisting of Andrei Y. Vishinsky, the Soviet vice commissioner of foreign affairs, arrived in Bucharest to compel Rădescu to resign and install Groza as premier on March 6 1945.

The Groza Government

To confirm Groza's installment as the Romanian premier, elections were held on November 19 1946. Despite the fact that the Ploughmen's Front had become part of a coalition that failed to win a majority in the Grand National Assembly, the rigged elections "confirmed" Groza as premier, much to the protests of the United States and the United Kingdom who believed that, according to agreements reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945, only, interim governmental authorities broadly representative of the population, should be supported by the major powers. As a result, Groza's government was permanently estranged from the United States and Great Britain, who nominally supported the waning influence of the monarchist forces under King Michael.

Despite the grievances of the two powers, communist representation within Groza's government was actually significantly less than that of the other, more traditional Romanian political parties. The leading figures in the Romanian Communist Party, Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej, advocated that the Groza government retain the façade of a coalition government and ultimately function as a means through which the communist party could win the confidence of the masses, since support for the doctrine in the immediate post-war period was still relatively weak amongst the general populace, with only one thousand party members as of 1945. For this reason, leading communist figures, including both Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej, did not have official posts within Groza's regime and instead hoped to enact reforms desired by the communist party under the coalition government currently in place. By conflating the successes of the regime with their Party, Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej hoped to win support for the party and lay the foundations for a more outright communist regime in 1952. Groza, therefore, maintained the illusion of a coalition government, appointing members from various political organizations to posts within his cabinet and outlining his government's immediate goals in broad, non-ideological terms. He declared at a cabinet meeting on March 7, 1945, for example, that the government sought to guarantee safety and order for the population, implement desired land reform policies, and to focus on the "rapid cleansing" of the state bureaucracy, immediately prosecuting war criminals and those responsible for war crimes committed by the wartime Ion Antonescu Fascist government.

As Premier

Within days of becoming premier, Groza delivered his first major success. On March 10, 1945, the Soviet Union agreed to hand over Northern Transylvania, over 17,400 square miles of territory formerly held by Romania from 1918 to 1940. Groza promised that the rights of each ethnic group within the newly acquired territory would be protected (mainly, as a reference to Hungarians), while Joseph Stalin declared that the previous government under Rădescu had permitted such a large degree of sabotage and terrorism in the region that it would have been impossible to deliver the territory to the Romanians. As a result, only after Groza's guarantee of ethnic minority rights did the Soviet government decide to satisfy the petition of the Romanian government. The acquisition of this territory, nearly fifty-eight percent Romanian in 1945, was hailed as a major accomplishment within the formative stages of the Groza regime.

Groza continued to improve the image of his own government while strengthening the position of the Communist Party with a series of political reforms. He proceeded to eliminate any antagonistic elements in the government bureaucracy and, in the newly acquired Transylvanian territory, removed three city prefects, including that of the region's capital, Cluj. The prefects removed were immediately replaced by government officials directly appointed by Groza, so as to strengthen loyalist elements in local government in the region. Groza also promised a series of land reform programs to benefit military personnel which would confiscate and subsequently redistribute all properties in excess of one hundred and twenty five acres in addition to all the property of traitors, absentees, and all who collaborated with the wartime Romanian government, the Hungarian occupiers during Miklós Horthy and Ferenc Szálasi's régimes, and Nazi Germany.

Despite giving the appearance of liberalism by granting women's suffrage, Groza pursued a series of reforms attempting to clamp down on the prominence of politically dissident media outlets in the nation. During the first month of his premiership, Groza acted to close down Romania Nouă, a popular newspaper published by sources close to Iuliu Maniu, leader of the traditional National Peasants' Party who disagreed widely with Groza's attempted reforms. Within a month of his assumption of the premiership, Groza shut down over nine provincial newspapers and a series of periodicals which, Groza declared, were products of those, who served Fascism and Hitlerism. Groza soon continued this repression by limiting the number of political parties allowed within the state. Although Groza had promised to purge only individuals from the government bureaucracy and diplomatic corps immediately after assuming power, in June 1947 he began to prosecute entire political organizations, as he arrested key members of the National Peasants' Party and sentenced Maniu to life in prison for political crimes against the Romanian people. By August of that year, both the National Peasants' Party and the National Liberal Party had been dissolved and in 1948, the government coalition incorporated the Romanian Workers' Party (the forced union of communists and Romanian Social Democrats) and the Hungarian People's Union, effectively minimizing all political opposition within the state.

During his term as premier, Groza also clashed with the nation's remaining monarchist forces under King Michael. Although his powers were minimal within Groza's regime, King Michael symbolized the remnants of the traditional Romanian monarchy and, in late 1945, the King urged Groza to resign. The King maintained that Romania must abide by the Yalta accords, allowing the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union to each have a hand in post-war government reconstruction and the incorporation of a broader coalition force he had already organized. Groza flatly rejected the request, and relations between the two figures remained tense over the next few years, with Groza and the King differing on the persecution of war criminals and in the awarding of honorary citizenship of Romania to Stalin, in August 1947. Finally, in December 1947, Gheorghiu-Dej and Groza pressured King Michael to abdicate the throne, abolishing the Romanian monarchy and firmly declaring the state a "People's Republic".

Groza's legacy

After Groza was succeeded by Gheorghiu-Dej in 1952, he occupied the position of chief of state for the next six years until 1958, when he died from complications following a stomach operation. Although never a Communist Party member, Groza had permitted the gradual introduction of a communist regime in Romania. By serving a role of limited independence from the Soviets and Communist Party leaders, Groza allowed the Communist Party to develop a more substantial backing and, through his repression of both the media and political organizations, limited any form of opposition or dissent within the state. After ousting the king and declaring the nation a "People's Republic", Groza served to ease the transition towards the later communist regime under Gheorghiu-Dej.

The mining town of Ştei was named after him, a name it kept until after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

Footnotes

Petru Groza of Rumania Dies; Chief of State of Red Regime, 72. New York Times; January 8, 1958; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) pg. 47
Petru Groza of Rumania Dies; Chief of State of Red Regime, 72. New York Times; January 8, 1958; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) pg. 47
Petru Groza of Rumania Dies; Chief of State of Red Regime, 72. New York Times; January 8, 1958; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) pg. 47
Petru Groza of Rumania Dies; Chief of State of Red Regime, 72. New York Times; January 8, 1958; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) pg. 47
Petru Groza of Rumania Dies; Chief of State of Red Regime, 72. New York Times; January 8, 1958; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) pg. 47
Saiu, Liliana, The Great Powers and Rumania, 1944-1946, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. p. 39
Crampton, R. J., Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century - And After, New York: Routledge, 1997. p. 229
Crampton, R. J., Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century - And After, New York: Routledge, 1997. p. 229
Crampton, R. J., Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century - And After, New York: Routledge, 1997. p. 229
Winkler, Paul, Interim Government, The Washington Post; March 22, 1945; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Washington Post (1877-1989). p. 6
Fischer-Galati, Stephen, The New Rumania: From People's Democracy to Socialist Republic, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1967. p. 29-30.
Groza Pledges Order, New York Times; March 8, 1945; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002). p. 4
Transylvanian Area Restored to Romanians, Chicago Daily Tribune; March 11, 1945, ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 – 1985). p. 8.
Sweeping Reform Begins in Rumania, New York Times; March 12, 1945, ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) p. 5.
Sulzberger, C. L., 2 Moves by Groza Spurring Reforms, New York Times; March 25, 1945; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) p. 16
Fischer-Galati, Stephen, The New Rumania: From People's Democracy to Socialist Republic, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1967). p. 35
Crampton, R. J., Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century - And After, New York: Routledge, 1997. p. 231
Lawrence, W. H., Chamber Ratifies Rumanian Treaty, The New York Times; August 24, 1947, ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) p. 43.
Petru Groza of Rumania Dies; Chief of State of Red Regime, 72. New York Times; January 8, 1958; Proquest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2002) pg. 47