The Soviet occupation of Romania refersThe term "occupation" is widely used by Western and post-Revolutionary Romanian historians. Examples include:
"Soviet forces occupied Romania in 1944 and stayed for more than a decade." Roger E. Kirk, Mircea Răceanu, Romania Versus the United States: Diplomacy of the Absurd, 1985–1989, p. 2. Palgrave Macmillan, 1994, . "Soviet occupation troops had been withdrawn in 1958." Gordon L. Rottman, Ron Volstad, Warsaw Pact Ground Forces, p. 45. Osprey, 1987, . "The country had to endure a long Soviet occupation (until 1958), and to pay the Soviets massive reparations." Lucian Boia, Romania: Borderland of Europe, p. 106. Reaktion Books, 2001, . "Soviet occupation forces in Romania [allowed for] unlimited interference in Romanian political life." Verona (Military Occupation and Diplomacy: Soviet Troops in Romania, 1944-1958), p. 31. "In June 1958, based on complex arrangements between the Romanians, the Russians, and the Yugoslavs, the occupying Soviet Army units left Romania." Tismăneanu, p. 25. "Romanian communists remained an unappealing marginal group until the occupation of the country by the Red Army in 1944." ibid., p. 59. "The Soviet Army occupied Romanian territory and ... the Soviet-controlled political formation called the RCP was exploiting this state of affairs to establish a Stalinist regime as soon as possible, whatever the human cost." ibid., p. 91. "The primary focus is the occupation of the rest of Romania from 1944 to 1958...There is little doubt that the Soviet occupation had a devastating economic, political, and social impact on Romania." Aurel Braun, review of The Red Army in Romania, in Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, 146-147, Spring 2002. "The withdrawal of Soviet troops signified the end of the country's direct military occupation, which lasted 14 years." Istoria României în date, p. 553. Editura Enciclopedică, Bucharest, 2003, "Wisner (who had, as an OSS officer, witnessed the brutal Soviet occupation of Romania)", David F. Rudgers, "The origins of covert action", Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 35 , no. 2 (2000), 249–262 Flori Stănescu, Dragoș Zamfirescu, Ocupația sovietică în România – Documente 1944-1946 (The Soviet Occupation in Romania – Documents 1944-1946). Vremea, 1998, . "The first period of communist rule in Romania, 1944-1958 is defined by Stefan Fisher Galati as the loss of national identity by the destruction of the "bourgeois nationalist" legacy and the diminution of Romania's national sovereignty under a virtual Soviet occupation." Constantin Iordachi, "The Anatomy of a Historical Conflict: Romanian-Hungarian Diplomatic Conflict in the 1980s", MA Thesis, Central European University, 1995-1996. 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, Valeriu Râpeanu, "The Dictatorship Has Ended and along with It All Oppression" (from the Proclamation to The Nation of King Michael I on the night of August 23, 1944), Curierul Național, August 7, 2004 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.Verona, pp. 49–51
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, Constituția Republicii Populare Române 1952 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,Ioan Vlad, Alexandru Baboș, Războiul României pentru reîntregirea națională (1941–1945), Ch. 3, in Istoria artei militare, Sibiu, 1996. 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."Country Studies: Romania. Chap. 23. US Library of Congress The coup effectively amounted to a "capitulation","Hitler Resorts To 'Puppets' In Romania", The Washington Post, August 25, 1944 an "unconditional""King Proclaims Nation's Surrender and Wish to Help Allies", The New York Times, August 24, 1944 "surrender""Bulgaria – Bulgarian resistance to the Axis alliance," Encyclopædia Britannica to the Soviets and the rest of the Allies. In the wake of the cease fire order given by King Michael, Alexandru Duțu and Florica Dobre, "Generali români in prizonierat" 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.Vartan Arachelian "Pamfil Șeicaru despre 23 August: 'Mai multă rușine, mai puține victime' ", Ziua, August 16, 2004
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 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: Allied powers: "representative of the Allied (Soviet) High Command, Marshal of the Soviet Union, R. Y. Malinovski, duly authorized hereto by the Governments of the United States of America; the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom." Romania: "Minister of State and Minister of Justice L. Patrascanu, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Adjutant of His Majesty the King of Rumania General D. Damaceanu, Prince Stirbey, and ."
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.