In the late
evening of August 19, 1989, barely one month after Budapest’s allegations of
Romanian offensive preparations against it had been verified and debunked by
Western analysts, new life was given the active measures theme projecting Romania as an “aggressive
encampment” and imminent military
threat. Seriously alarmed about the ultimate fate of socialism if the Hungarian
and Polish party leaderships continued moving toward greater power-sharing with
non-communist entities, Ceauşescu began advocating a meeting of all socialist
states to discuss the basic issues of the “socialist
construction” with renewed vigor already
by 1987.[i]
 |
| Gyula Horn, May 1989 |
Romanian intentions were discussed by Hungarian communist leader Karoly Grosz
and Foreign Minister Horn during a meeting of the Politburo
in Budapest in May 1989. When Grosz predicted that
Ceauşescu would attack Hungarian reforms and invoke the Brezhnev Doctrine at the Warsaw Pact’s up-coming July 1989 summit
in Bucharest, Horn corrected him, explaining that the Romanians
did not in fact wish to discuss the problem “within the framework of the
Political Consultative Committee” at all.[ii]
Continuing to
maintain the illegitimacy of any foreign military intervention within the Warsaw Pact, Ceauşescu sought a
conference of all socialist countries in
Europe to discuss the current state and future of
socialism [since when]. As he underscored at the July 1989 PCC meeting:
[W]e are of the view
that it is especially important for the socialist member-states of the
Warsaw Pact and for all the socialist countries to jointly
analyze and jointly establish the current issues of
Socialist construction, how we can better work
together, preparing the ranks for crisis and securing the social and economic
development of every peoples on the socialist path.[iii]
 |
| Tadeusz Mazowiecki Editor of Solidarity newspaper, 1981 |
A new opportunity depicting the
Romanian leadership as hell-bent on military intervention was presented after the Solidarity electoral victory, on August 19, 1989, when
Tadeusz Mazowiecki was appointed prime minister and given the
task of forming the Polish government. That midnight, after Ceauşescu had
personally presented his regime’s position on the matter to the Soviet
ambassador, the Romanian foreign ministry called in each of the other Warsaw
Pact ambassadors in turn and proposed an urgent
meeting to discuss the fate of socialism in Poland, in Europe and globally.
According to the version of this “oral declaration” published in the Polish
press, Ceauşescu stated that:
 |
| Mazowiecki elected, 1989 |
As a Communist
party and socialist country, [we] cannot consider this to be solely
a Polish internal affair. [We] believe it concerns all socialist countries. … Given the above, the party
leadership and government of Romania consider that
the Communist and workers' parties of socialist countries, Warsaw
Pact members must take a stand and insist that that
Solidarity not be entrusted with the mission of forming a
government. (...) The RCP leadership has decided to appeal to the PUWP
[Polish United Workers Party] leadership, to political
bureaus, [to] the leaders of many Warsaw Pact countries and other socialist
countries to express grave concern and to act together to prevent the serious
situation in Poland, on the defense of socialism
and the Polish people.[iv]
The Romanian leader
was urgently calling for a “conference of Party leaders, political forums, and
other socialist state leaders” in order to prevent the collapse of socialism in
Poland.[v]
This was promptly spun as a call for military intervention in the very public protests disseminated
widely by Warsaw and Budapest, as well as in the only
slightly more discreet comments of Soviet officials to Western interlocutors.[vi]
Ceauşescu, they claimed, had reversed Romania’s two-decades-long opposition to
the Brezhnev Doctrine and had abandoned the “principle of
non-interference in the internal affairs of states and parties” upon which
Bucharest’s elites had insisted since
the early 1960s.
As Ceauşescu
explained to his party’s Political Executive Committee the following day, a conference of all
socialist countries “would constitute a powerful manifestation of
the unity of our socialist countries, the affirmation of their solidarity and
their decisiveness in strengthening that solidarity,” particularly since the
Polish moves had been taken “in agreement with the Soviet Union and, I believe, one could say even more, even following the advice of the Soviet
Union.”[vii]
For this reason, he continued, “first of all the Soviets were addressed”
because only they could “determine the leadership of the Polish United Workers
Party to take a firmer position.”[viii]
Through his declaration Ceauşescu sought to pressure the Kremlin in the
full knowledge that the Jaruzelski leadership was firmly ensconced in
Moscow’s pocket and not acting on
its own.[ix]
Warsaw soundly
trounced the proposal, expressing its dismay that Bucharest was not more supportive, while the Polish
press advertised Ceauşescu’s initiative as advocating foreign military
intervention against it.[x] Following the Polish media, communist
authorities in Budapest protested Ceauşescu’s call for “a common
action ‘using all means necessary in order to obstruct the liquidation of
socialism in Poland’,” highlighting those aspects
of the Romanian leader’s declaration that could be misconstrued as implying
advocacy for foreign military intervention.[xi] Budapest even announced that “intervening
militarily or with any other means in the domestic
affairs of another country” was “in total contradiction” to Romania’s long-held
stance against the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, as if that is what Ceauşescu had advocated.[xii]
Ironically,
Budapest debunked
its own recent and extremely categorical campaign alleging Romanian
preparations for a military intervention against it during April-July 1989. Now
Hungarian officials were willing to acknowledge that prior to August 19/20,
1989, Bucharest had “permanently” and “systematically
promoted” the principle of “non-interference in the internal affairs of other
states,” before then insisting that the Romania’s alleged advocacy of military
intervention in Poland stood “in total contradiction” to their former
position.[xiii]
 |
| Anatoly Dobrynin, head of CPSU International Dept. 1986-September 1988 |
Soviet officials at the time (and
long afterward) did their best to convince American and European interlocutors of Romania’s
aggressive military threat within the Soviet Bloc. Citing Foreign Minister
Eduard Shevardnadze’s personal aide as his
source, International Department chief Anatoly Dobrynin claimed that Ceauşescu
“demanded a Warsaw Pact military intervention in Poland because the anti-communist party Solidarity had won the elections.”[xiv]
Dobrynin’s deputies at the International Department – which also coordinated the construction and
dissemination of Soviet disinformation themes – propagated the same to U.S.
officials and academics. One of those deputies, a former GRU officer,
insisted to an American historian that “the Romanian government secretly urged
the other Warsaw Pact states to join it in sending troops to Poland.”[xv]
The
Soviet foreign ministry was equally diligent. Sergei Tarasenko, one of
Shevardnadze’s chief aides (and eventual
deputy foreign minister), a specialist on the United States, falsely claimed to
an influential former CIA and State Department analyst that the Romanian leader
was “unaware of Gorbachev’s encouragement” of Polish
reforms when he made his alleged call “for Warsaw Pact military intervention in Poland.”[xvi]
The extent of this campaign and the insistence with which it was propagated
persuaded many analysts in both government and academia that Ceauşescu
was “advocating military intervention across the East Bloc.”[xvii]
The combined
effect of cognitive bias, organizational pathologies
and targeted disinformation ensured that the details of Romania’s role in
ameliorating dangerous confrontation during the Cold War was known to
relatively small circles of administration officials in the United States from Kennedy to Reagan. Among the broader analytical
communities of U.S. intelligence and academia the
perception of Romania hovered between the competing equine images of “maverick” and “Trojan horse” for most of the Cold War.
Much of what Romania undertook and accomplished was simply too improbable and
implausible to be accepted or understood without direct observation or
involvement. And Soviet-sponsored disinformation came in confirmation of
opinion that those accomplishments were not, in fact, real.
Romania had become
the target of a Soviet Bloc-wide La Leyenda Negra;
a scapegoat whose denigration relieved the other Warsaw Pact members from much critical Western attention.[xviii]
And, at the same time, it had become a potentially disastrous problem for U.S. policy, which actively sought a fundamental
transformation of the East-West relationship where the “East” was led and represented by
the USSR. In consequence, the country and its regime
could be depicted in the blackest and most outlandish of terms without serious
challenge or verification. The policy imperative of
neutralizing or removing obstacles to the end of the Cold War, which many in
the West viewed as synonymous with Gorbachev’s opponents, bled into and even superseded the
requirements of analytical accuracy.[xix]
Whittaker Chambers,
the self-confessed Soviet agent who spied for the USSR during the 1930s,
described this phenomenon with considerable eloquence when his testimony regarding the extraordinary
degree to which U.S. federal institutions had been
penetrated by Soviet intelligence met with powerful resistance on the part of
U.S. officials to accept the extent to which they had deceived.[xx]
According to Chambers, there was a “universal
inability to distinguish true from false,” especially “when the false is cast
in the image of the world’s desire and the true is nothing that the world can
fathom, or wants to.”[xxi]
The Romanian “villain” was convenient for the USSR, for the Soviet-loyal
leaderships of Eastern Europe, and, increasingly during the
late 1980s, for the United States and the major Western European states as
well. Clearly, the Ceauşescu regime was behaving villainously (or so
dysfunctional as to appear villainous) to its own population. And the “black
box” of isolation surrounding it made more profound understanding of the
dynamics driving its behavior virtually impossible.
Consequently,
allegations of Romanian military aggressiveness were not subject to serious scrutiny or
verification.[xxii]
For similar reasons, post-1989 analyses were less concerned with what Romania
actually had done or intended to do (according to internal Romanian discussions
and documents) than they were with collecting re-affirmations of the same
allegation from essentially the same sources that alleged them in the first
place.[xxiii]
It became common practice to assert Romania’s aggressive preparations and
intent on the basis of Soviet, Hungarian and Polish documents and declarations
while misrepresenting or ignoring altogether the “best evidence” of Romanian internal
documents and policy declarations.[xxiv]
 |
| Locations of Nuclear Plants in Ukraine, 1989 |
As Romania became
increasingly isolated, analysts of Soviet and East European affairs began
accepting third-party reports regarding Romanian intention and actions at face
value, with little or no independent fact checking. One historian, for example,
considered credible reports of “threats by the Romanian state security agency
(Securitate) to blow up nuclear power stations near the Soviet border” in
December 1989.[xxv]
That would have
been far more difficult than suggested given that Romania had no nuclear
facilities near that frontier (all were located in
the south of the country) and that the Soviet nuclear facility nearest
the
Soviet-Romanian border was more than 300 kilometers away as the crow
flies, the
South Ukraine II Power Plant at Yuzhnoukrains'k in the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic. The distance was greater still if roads or railways
were used, and it well over 400 km if the Moldavian Soviet Socialist
Republic was circumvented.
 |
| Location of Paks Nuclear Plant, Hungary |
Likewise,
official Hungarian sources claimed at the end of 1989 that the Romanians were
targeting the Hungarian nuclear power plant at Paks with missiles deployed at the
Floreşti
Air Defense Base near Cluj.[xxvi]
One problem with this scenario was that Romania’s longest-range missiles were
the SCUD-Bs supplied by the Soviet Union in the 1970s, which had a maximum
range of 300 km.[xxvii]
The Paks nuclear facility was 492 km from Floresti. Another problem was that
none of those missiles were ever deployed at the military base in Floresti. And
all of Romania’s thirteen SCUD-B missiles were part of its contribution to Warsaw
Pact defense missions and aimed southward, to fend off a hypothetical NATO
offensive through Bulgaria and/or Yugoslavia.[xxviii]
In 1976 Ceausescu
had indeed instructed the military to develop plans for a Romanian ballistic
missile with an operating range of 500 km, but a workable project never
materialized.[xxix] By
the beginning of 1979 the project had been dropped from military planning
altogether. Nor did Bucharest purchase the Soviet upgrade of the SCUD-B - the
500 km range SS-23 "Spider." Moscow later admitted that it had
secretly provided the SS-23 to its other Warsaw Pact allies during the
mid-1980s, making Romania possibly the only Warsaw Pact member without such a
capacity.[xxx]
 |
| SCUD-B in the Balkans |
To obscure these rather cumbersome details, Soviet and Hungarian
sources disseminated a variety of rumors and reports that Romania had either
secretly produced its own missile or acquired Chinese or North Korean missiles
with a maximum range of 500 km.[xxxi]
However, military authorities and international verification on the ground after
1989 both confirmed that Romania had not acquired Chinese or North Korean
missiles, nor had it extended the operational range of its SCUD-Bs.[xxxii]
According to General Victor Stănculescu, the
senior officer responsible for military technology and procurement for the
Romanian Armed Forces throughout the 1980s, the only foreign supplier of
missiles to his country was the Soviet Union:
[Claims that] we had missiles for
attacking Hungary are tall tales. We had Russian missiles with an operating
range of 300 km at the military unit in Tecuci [more than 475 km from the
Hungarian frontier]. … The missiles in Floresti were simple ground-air missiles
with a range of 17 kilometers. So, to your question, my response is “Nem Igaz!”
which in Hungarian means “Not True!”[xxxiii]
 |
| General Stănculescu |
General Stănculescu likewise
underscored that the Romanian Army “had no plans for any operations in the
direction of Hungary,” that “there never existed the possibility of war with
Hungary” during the Cold War, and that all of the SCUD-B missiles were trained
elsewhere.[xxxiv]
One consequence of relying on non-Romanian
Soviet bloc sources as authority on Romanian intentions was to leave a series
of “the dog that did not bark in the night”
phenomena that should have counseled caution regarding allegations of Romanian
military or state security threats unexamined.[xxxv]
For example, none of the records from the Warsaw Pact’s Foreign Ministers Committee meeting of
October 1989 reflect any discussion or concern of a Romanian-advocated
intervention.[xxxvi] Nor
was there any “barking” regarding the same at the Defense Ministers Committee meeting in
November 1989.[xxxvii]
Romanian Warsaw Pact documents, which became available in 2015, are likewise
notable for their lack of any discussion of a possible foreign military
intervention.[xxxviii]
Along these same
lines, no offensive military preparations or re-deployments within Romania were
observed at the time nor has evidence of any emerged as of 2016. Nor have any
documents or transcripts surfaced at the level of the Romanian Communist Party
Central Committee or Political Executive Committee – or, for that matter, at any other political
level – that suggest advocacy or even discussion of foreign military
intervention against Poland in 1989. The archives of the Romanian defense
ministry and the Romanian Armed Forces general staff have similarly failed to reveal
any evidence of such discussion or advocacy. And the operational commands are
likewise silent regarding any sort of foreign deployments.
Indeed, assuming
Romanian advocacy of military intervention abroad requires that one ignore almost thirty
years of military policy, preparations, deployments, indoctrination and training that were in part designed to
make the Romanian Army singularly unavailable for such a mission.[xxxix]
Frequently reaffirmed legal and constitutional barriers prohibited
Romanian military forces from undertaking operations beyond national frontiers
in the absence of a military attack by “imperialists,” and then only by an act of
parliament. Even superficial consideration of how Romanian troops might
possibly reach Poland – the only remotely tenable route requiring
the circumnavigation of all of Europe either on or over the sea – reveals the
absurdity of the proposition.[xl]
Interestingly,
when claiming that it had abandoned its stance against military intervention, Budapest and Warsaw referred to Romania’s former
condemnation of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
but not to its more recent and continuing condemnation of the 1979 Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. They also failed to mention
Romania’s singular rejection of foreign (i.e. Soviet bloc) military
intervention against Poland in 1980-1981 and again in 1983, when Bucharest’s attempt to insert a
statement protecting the Poles from foreign intervention in a Warsaw Pact communiqué was rejected even by the Jaruzelski leadership.[xli]
 |
| Foreign Minister Horn and HSWP Chairman Nyers |
When Hungarian
officials in Budapest insinuated that Romania had abandoned its stance against
outside military intervention and was now advocating a military intervention in
Poland, the Romanian ambassador unequivocally denied it:
I
insisted, at once, to clarify to my interlocutor that we could
not accept accusations that the RCP, that its leadership,
has the intention to interfere in the domestic affairs of Poland
and that through this it was renouncing the principle of noninterference in the
domestic affairs of other states, and of sovereignty, as affirmed in the
message of the HSWP [Hungarian Socialist Workers Party].
Likewise,
I took a firm position against the speculative interpretations that are being
made on the margins of the RCP message, demonstrating that Romania has not
given anyone lectures, nor has it stigmatized the fraternal countries and
parties.
The
Romanian Communist Party and the Romanian Government have placed the
unmitigated respect for the principles of full equality of rights, of
sovereignty, of independence and of noninterference in the domestic affairs of
other states at the foundation of their foreign policy.
The
message of our party and state leadership sprang from concerns produced by the
recent events in Poland, a fact also recognized in the response letter of the
Hungarians.[xlii]
 |
| Ambassador Tiazhelnikov |
The record of the
Soviet Central Committee discussion on Ceauşescu’s request, and Gorbachev’s
response, confirm that Bucharest was calling for a “meeting” rather than a
military intervention.[xliii]
Neither of these documents mentions any Romanian suggestion of outside military
intervention whatsoever. The journal of Soviet Ambassador Tiazhelnikov, which
evocatively describes Ceauşescu’s emotional state, is also quite clear on the
non-military intent of the midnight consultation in August 1989. According to Ambassador Tiazhelnikov:
The leadership of the Romanian
Communist Party and Socialist Republic of Romania believes that socialist
Poland still could be saved. It is possible and necessary to prevent the
greatest blow of contemporary imperialism against the cause of socialism.
[They] consider that
after the formation of a new government in the People’s Republic of Poland (the
Polish United Workers Party, the Polish Trade Union and the Army) it is
necessary for the allied states, for all of the socialist countries to accord
Poland economic and financial assistance with the aim of overcoming the
profound crisis.
In conclusion, N. Ceauşescu expressed the hope
that the leadership of the CPSU-USSR will examine operationally and with
attention this appeal, and that M.S. Gorbachev will find the possibility of
meeting with him on August 20.[xliv]
Once again
recalling a report from Radio Yerevan, the Romanian leader did
raise the issue of military intervention at the extraordinary session of party leaders
in Moscow at the beginning of December 1989. But the
manner in which it did so was very much the opposite of what Soviet, Polish and
Hungarian sources alleged. In essence, the Romanian leader delivered a coup de
grace to the chimera of any Romanian-advocated military intervention Poland. In his separate meeting with
the Soviet leader on December 4, 1989, Ceauşescu told Gorbachev:
I believe that the
Soviet Union, and I am referring primarily
to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
could have a certain role – not by force of the military – to help produce a
better orientation [in Warsaw].[xlv]
[i] Somewhat
paradoxically, Ceauşescu exalted the cooperation of the left with bourgeois
parties in Portugal in 1975 in order to prevent the Portuguese left from
becoming a Soviet instrument (as Portuguese communist leader Cunhal then
appeared to be.) In consequence, Romania became the only Warsaw Pact member to sign a treaty of friendship and
cooperation with a NATO member
state during the Cold War. See “Romania: Ceauşescu’s remarks during visit to
Portugal bound to irk Kremlin” in US Intelligence Board, National Intelligence Bulletin, 3 November 1975, p. 8, CIA.
[ii] Minutes of Meeting of the HSWP Political Committee on 16 May 1989-Excerpt on
WP issues, 16 May 1989, pp. 5, 9, in Békés
and Locher (2003), PHP.
[iii] Records of the PCC Meeting in Bucharest: Speech by the General Secretary of the PCR
(Nicolae Ceauşescu), 7 July 1989, German language version, pp. 151-152,
PHP. Author’s emphasis. Unfortunately, this portion of his speech is replaced by an
ellipsis in the English translation on the PHP website. For the entire document see the German language version. According
to the Bulgarians, Ceauşescu sought to include both Warsaw Pact members and “other socialist countries” for a
“joint analysis” of “the problems of socialist construction and ways to overcome the difficulties.”
Ceauşescu proposed “that a meeting be held, not later than October this year”
to “analyze problems of social and economic development and the construction of
socialism and would work out a real program for common action.” Report to the Bulgarian Politburo by the
Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs (Petar Toshev Mladenov) on the PCC Meeting, 12 July 1989, PHP.
[iv]
“Dokumenty Polska-Rumunia,” Gazeta
Wyborcza, 29 September-1 October 1989. Gazeta
Wyborcza specifies that this is a recounting of an “oral declaration.” The Polish rendition of the last sentence
is: “Kierownictwo RPK postanowiło zwrócić
się do kierownictwa PZPR, do biur politycznych, do kierownictw partii krajów UW
i innych krajów socjalistycznych, by wyrazić poważne zaniepokojenie oraz aby
wspólnie zadziałać w sprawie zapobieżenia poważnej sytuacji w Polsce, w sprawie
obrony socjalizmu i narodu polskiego.” The original Romanian
declaration has not yet been published. However, it was discussed in the RCP newspaper the following day. “De la Varşovia”
[From Warsaw], Scânteia, 20 August
1989. See also Florin Anghel, “Considerente asupra România în discursul public
din Polonia, în 1989” [Considerations of Romania in Public Discourse in Poland in 1989], Institutul Revoluţiei Române Din Decembrie
1989, Caietele Revoluţie [Journals of
the Revolution], no. 4, vol. 6 (2006), pp. 45-53.
[v]
A Polish version is in “Dokumenty Polska-Rumunia,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 29 September-1 October 1989. See also Anghel
(2006), pp. 45-53.
[vi]
See e.g. “Romania has called for military intervention in Poland,” Polityka Weekly News Roundup, Warsaw, Polityka in Polish, no. 38,
23 September 1989 (excerpts), p. 2, JPRS-EER-89-130, 27 November 1989, p. 19;
Levesque (1997), p. 120. The allegation has been repeated so many times in so
many works it has now assumed the status of “common knowledge.” The fact that
the allegations both originated with and were confirmed by the same group of
former Warsaw Pact members, primarily former Soviet, Polish and
Hungarian sources, in the absence of Romanian evidence did not unduly concern
an analytical community oriented by cognitive biases and laboring under the influence of
overwhelming disinformation to believe them.
[vii]
Stenograma şedinţei Comitetului Politic
Executiv al C.C. al P.C.R. din ziua de 21 august 1989 [Transcript of RCP CC Political Executive Committee meeting of 21 August 1989], Arhivele
Naţionale, Fond CC al PCR - Secţia Cancelarie, dos. nr. 56/1989;
Clio 1989 (Bucharest), no. 1-2 (2005), pp.
168-170; Ioan Scurtu, “Nicolae Ceauşescu şi Evenimentele din Polonia
(1981, 1989),” 12 December 2011 at http://www.ioanscurtu.ro/nicolae-Ceauşescu-si-evenimentele-din-polonia-1981-1989/.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] This
state of affairs also attested in the reporting of Colonel Kuklinski earlier in the decade and re-confirmed after
1989 by the investigations of Poland’s Institute of National
Remembrance. See e.g., Kuklinski’s references to Jaruzelski and Romania in The Soviet Union’s Control of the Warsaw Pact Forces: An Intelligence Assessment (SOV
83-10175CX), October 1983, pp. 18-19, CIA.
See also CIA Intelligence Information Report: (November
1979) Twelfth Session of the Committee of Defense Ministers of
the Warsaw Pact Member States, 20 February 1980, pp. 3, 6, CIA; CIA Intelligence Information Report: (December
1979) Draft Statute of Warsaw Pact Armed Forces and Their Control Organs in
Wartime, 25 February 1980, p. 4, CIA.
Regarding Jaruzelski’s recruitment by Soviet
military intelligence see Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, “The Jaruzelski Case: The Ascent of Agent ‘Wolski’,” World Politics Review, 12 December 2006,
“The General’s Dark Past” Warsaw Voice,
15 June 2005; Fakty, TVN (Warsaw), 8
June 2005.
[x] See e.g.
Polityka, 23 September 1989 in
JPRS-EER-89-130, 27 November 1989, p. 19; Levesque (1997), p. 120.
[xi] Documents
on Hungarian reaction are reproduced in Dumitru Preda and Mihai Retegan, 1989 Principiul Dominoului: Prăbuşirea regimurilor comuniste europene
[1989 The Domino Principal: The Collapse of the European Communist Regimes],
Bucharest, Fundaţia Culturală Română,
2000, pp. 165-167, 170-171.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii]
Ibid.
[xiv]
Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents,
Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1995, p. 632. The aide referred to by
Dobrynin was apparently Sergei Tarasenko, who was disseminating this story to
all of his American contacts. See footnote 16 below.
[xv]
Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within
the Soviet Union (Part I),” Journal
of Cold War Studies, vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 2003), pp. 197-198. Kramer
apparently relied on non-Romanian sources for his conclusion, the formulation of
which suggests Romanian preparations for such an operation. He cites as source
for this revelation his June 1990 interview with Rafail Fyodorov, first deputy
chief of the CPSU International Department during 1989–1990. However, given
that Fyodorov claimed at the height of the “2 + 4” negotiations that “no one in
the FRG wanted re-unification,” and that he was a military (GRU)
counterintelligence agent with long experience working against Western targets,
his reliability is questionable. See e.g. Gordon M. Hahn, Russia’s Revolution From Above 1985-2000: Reform, Transaction and
Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, New Brunswick,
Transaction, 2002, p. 285.
[xvi]
The foreign ministry official, Sergei Tarasenko, told this to Raymond Garthoff,
then working at the Brookings Institute “think tank”. Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet
Relations and the End of the Cold War, Washington D.C., Brookings Institute, 1994b, p. 604. Elsewhere
in the same volume Tarasenko is described as “Shevardnadze’s closest advisor.”
Ibid, p. 289. Tarasenko also mislead Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice by
implying that Budapest did not have prior Soviet approval to open its
borders for fleeing East Germans in 1989. Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A
Study in Statecraft, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 69.
[xvii]
See e.g. Minutes of the Meeting between
Nicolae Ceauşescu and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Moscow, 4 December 1989 in Mircea Munteanu,
“The Last Days of a Dictator,” Cold War
International History Project Bulletin, no. 12/13(Fall-Winter 2001), pp.
217, 220.
[xviii] The
“Black Legend” closely approximated the methods and goals of Soviet active
measures and disinformation (or, rather, visa versa).” It comprised “the
careful distortion of the history of nation, perpetrated by its enemies, in
order to better fight it. And a distortion as monstrous as possible, with the
goal of achieving a specific aim: the moral disqualification of the nation…in
every way possible.” Alfredo Alvar, La
Leyenda Negra [The Black Legend], Ezquerra, Ediciones Akal, 1997, p. 5. The
term derives from the late 1500s targeting of Spain by “political and religious
propaganda that blackened the characters of Spaniards and their ruler to such
an extent that Spain became the symbol of all forces of repression, brutality,
religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness
for the next four centuries.” Philip Wayne Powell, Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States
Relations With the Hispanic World, New York, Basic Books, 1971. Many
Spaniards aware of their dismal reputation abroad were persuaded by the weight
of propaganda that it must be true, thus becoming unwitting accomplices in
their own marginalization in Europe.
[xix] See
e.g. Jonathan Eyal, “Romania: Between Appearances and Realities,” in Jonathan
Eyal, editor, The Warsaw Pact and
the Balkans: Moscow’s Southern Flank, New York, St. Martin’s, 1989, especially pp.
39-73, 99, 107. For a critical analysis of such interpretations see Ashby B.
Crowder, Legacies of 1968: Autonomy and
Repression in Ceauşescu’s Romania, 1965-1989, Athens, OH, Ohio University, August 2007, Thesis, at
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/Crowder%20Ashby%20B.pdf?ohiou1186838492.
[xx] See
e.g. Whitaker Chambers, Witness, New York, Random House, 1952. Chamber’s autobiography
remains extremely influential.
[xxi]
Chambers (1052), p. 770; Lock K. Johnson and James J.
Wirtz, editors, Strategic Intelligence:
Windows Into A Secret World, An Anthology, Los Angeles, Roxbury, 2004, p.
311.
[xxii] In
one striking, almost unique, exception, the analyst placed Romanian moves and
statements in their proper context and concluded that the regime appeared to be
“seeking the convening of a congress of communist parties, rather than military
intervention.”
Peter Siani-Davies, The Romanian
Revolution of December 1989, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2005, p. 49.
[xxiii] For
example, in his monumental work using both documentary evidence and oral testimony,
Jacques Levesque relied on Soviet, Hungarian and Polish sources regarding
Romanian aggressive intentions exclusively. Jacques Levesque, translated from
the French by Keith Martin, The Enigma of
1989: The USSR and
the Liberation of Eastern Europe, Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1997, pp. 119-121.
[xxiv] When
this author pointed out this methodological problem to Mark Kramer at the
annual conference of the American Society for East European and Eurasian Studies
(ASEEES) in San Antonio, November 2014, Prof. Kramer insisted on the validity
of relying on Soviet sources as “categorical proof” of Romanian intention. This
led to a written exchange in which Kramer misrepresented the conclusions of two
Romanian historians and claimed that this author was a “poor scholar.” For that
exchange see Larry L. Watts, Dennis Deletant and Adam Burakowski, Did Nicolae Ceauşescu Call for Military
Intervention Against Poland in August 1989?, Cold War International History
Project (CWIHP) e-Dossier No. 60, Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, February 3, 2015, at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/did-nicolae-Ceauşescu-call-for-military-intervention-against-poland-august-1989;
and Mark Kramer and Larry Watts, Continuing
Debate: Ceauşescu’s Appeal for Joint Warsaw Pact Action on 19 August 1989,
CWIHP e-Dossier no. 61, February 3, 2015 at
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/continuing-debate-Ceauşescus-appeal-for-joint-warsaw-pact-action-19-august-1989.
[xxv]
For this unsourced allegation see Mark Kramer “The Collapse of East European
Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part I),” Journal
of Cold War Studies, vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 23; and Mark Kramer, “The
Demise of the Soviet Bloc,” Europe-Asia
Studies, vol. 63, no. 9 (November 2011): 1585. While Kramer does cite two New York Times articles after both
assertions, neither article makes any allusion to Romanian threats on the
nuclear facilities of its neighbors.
[xxvi] Arpad
Szőczi, Timisoara: The Real Story Behind
The Romanian Revolution, Bloomington, iUniverse, 2013, pp. 315-316. The
author, a journalist and activist with the Hungarian émigré organization that
accused Romania of genocidal practices during the 1970s and 1980s, cites an
intelligence report of December 13, 1989 from the Hungarian embassy in Romania,
which also offered up the more specific claim that there were 7 (seven)
missiles so targeted. See also interview with former Prime Minister Miklos
Nemeth in Arpad Szőczi, “Former
Hungarian PM Reveals Role Of Hungarian Secret Service In Toppling Ceaușescu,”
January 30, 2015, https://arpadoliverSzőczi.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/december-16-2014-former-hungarian-pm-reveals-role-of-hungarian-secret-service-in-toppling-Ceauşescu/.
[xxvii] See e.g., Col.
Adrian Stroea and Lt. Col. Gheorghe Băjenaru, Artileria Română în
Date şi Imagine [Romanian Artillery in Statistics and Images], Bucharest,
Editura Centrului Tehnic-Editorial al Armatei [Army Technical Publications
Center], 2010, pp. 112-116.
[xxviii]
Actually, only 12 were permanently trained southward. One, at the missile
instruction center at Ploesti, was used for training purposes.
[xxix]
According to Ceausescu’s October 1976 instruction: “a draft program will be
elaborated for adding, in parallel with tactical missiles, a missile with a
maximum range of 500 km into the fabrication process.” For discussion of this
see http://suntemromania.blogspot.ro/2013/10/285cum-facea-ceausescu-afacerile-pentru.html.
[xxx] Alex
Wagner, “U.S., Bulgaria Reach Deal To Destroy Missiles,” Arms Control Today, July/August 2002, at
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_07-08/bulgariajul_aug02;
Vojtech Mastny and Malcom Byrne, editors, A
Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955-1991, Budapest, Central European Press,
2005, p. 31.
[xxxi] Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence
Service, The Nuclear Potential of
Individual Countries, 6 April 1995, at http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/svr_nuke.htm; Hungarian intelligence report in Szőczi (2013), pp.
315-316. China had reportedly assisted North Korea in modifying the
SCUD-B to a maximum range of 500 km, which Pyongyang re-baptized the
“HWASONG-5”. In reality, the HWASONG-5 had a range of only 320 km. A later
version, the HWASONG-6, did have a maximum range of 500 km but was first tested
only in 1990. None had been sold or transferred to Romania.
[xxxii] The United States
monitored Romanian heavy military equipment including missiles with technical
intelligence means during the Cold War just as it did all of the Warsaw Pact
members. Shortly after the revolution
U.S. and NATO experts checked Romanian military inventories for WMD, ballistic
missiles capable of carrying such warheads, and advanced conventional weapons.
A second round of verification was carried out during 1992-1993, prompted by
new rumors of secret WMD programs. Author’s interview with former Presidential
National Security Advisor and Romanian Foreign Intelligence (SIE) Director,
General Ioan Talpeș, June 14, 1993. Talpeș had been chief military advisor to the defense
minister from mid-February to July 1990, and then national security advisor to
the president during July 1990-April 1992 before being appointed SIE Director.
[xxxiii]
Interview with Victor Stănculescu in Stefan Both, “Exclusive Document Secret.
Diversiunea maghiara inainte de Revolutie: Romania a indreptat 7 rachete spre
Ungaria. General Stănculescu: “Nem igaz!” [Exclusive Secret Document. Hungarian
Deception Before the Revolution: Romania Directed 7 Rockets Against Hungary.
General Stanculescu: “Not True!”], Adevarul,
December 17, 2015, 1957 hours, http://adevarul.ro/locale/timisoara/exclusiv-document-secret-diversiunea-maghiara-revolutia-89-romania-indreptat-7-rachete-ungaria-generalului-stanculescu-nem-igaz-1_5672e3187d919ed50e53d58d/index.html.
[xxxiv]
Ibid.
[xxxv]
Describing a phenomenon similar to that recorded by Chambers, the 18th century
forger of Shakespeare plays, William Henry Ireland, observed “how willingly
people will blind themselves on any point interesting to their feelings. Once a
false idea becomes fixed in a person’s mind, he will twist facts or probability
to accommodate it rather than question it.” Lock K. Johnson and James J. Wirtz,
editors, Strategic Intelligence: Windows
Into A Secret World, An Anthology, Los Angeles, Roxbury, 2004, p.304.
Commenting on mainstream assessments made during the Romanian December
revolution, one analyst noted that it
was “a little ironic that a revolution which sought to reassert rationality in
Romania created an apparent collective loss of the same facility in the outside
world.” Siani-Davies (2005), p. 282.
[xxxvi] See
the presentations and reports at “XXVI. Warsaw, 26-27 October 1989,” “Records
of the Warsaw Pact Committee of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs:
1976-1990,” PHP. See also Meeting of the
Committee of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Warsaw, 26-27 October 1989 at Romanian National Archives (Arhivele Naţionale
ale României: ANR), Fond C.C. al P.C.R., Secţia
Relaţii
Externe, dosar 181/1989, f. 1-93.
[xxxvii] See
the presentations and reports at “XXIV. Budapest, 27-29 November 1989,”
“Records of the Warsaw Pact Committee of the Ministers of Defense:
1969-1990,” PHP.
[xxxviii]
The Tratatul de la Varsovia. Ministerul
Afacerilor Externe [Warsaw Pact Organization. Ministry of Foreign Affairs]
collection at the Romanian National
Archives was made publicly accessible on March 26, 2015. See http://www.arhivelenationale.ro/stiri.php?id_stire=249&lan=0.
[xxxix]
The entire defense system of Romania, including military indoctrination and modifications of Marxist-Leninist ideology,
was oriented against foreign intervention and interference. That stance was also the
basis of Ceauşescu’s influence in the Developing World and Non-Aligned Movements. Even if military
non-intervention were not such a fundamental aspect of Romanian policy, it is
difficult to imagine by what means Bucharest would persuade the USSR or Hungary to allow the passage of its troops. Not only
were Moscow, Budapest and Warsaw working closely and publicly
together, Hungary had recently gone very publicly on record as Romania’s
adversary and the security organs of the USSR had treated Romania as such even
longer. While this confrontation was largely clandestine and unknown to many in
the West, the Romanians and the other Pact leaderships were very much aware of
it.
[xl]
The only route hypothetically available for a Romanian military transport to reach Poland went from the Black Sea, through the Bosporus Straits and the
Aegean Sea, past the Adriatic, through the Mediterranean into the Atlantic Ocean, past the North Sea
and into the Baltic Sea to the Polish coast.
[xli] Regarding the Documents Prepared for the PCC Meeting in Prague, 3 January
1983, note prepared by Polish Foreign Minister M. Dmochowski, PHP.
[xlii] “Information
of the Romanian Embassy in Budapest to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” 24
August 1989, 1415 hrs, Document 74 in Dumitru Preda and Mihai Retegan, 1989 – Principiul Dominoului: Prabusirea
Regimurilor Comuniste Europene [1989 – The Domino Principle: The Collapse
of the European Communist Regimes], Bucharest, Editura Fundatiei Culturale
Romane, 2000, pp. 170-171; Archives of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Budapest/1989, vol. 5, pp. 130-132.
[xliii] Resolution of the CPSU CC Politburo No. 132, “Regarding the
Appeal of Cde. Ceauşescu”, August 21, 1989, History and Public Policy Program
Digital Archive, RGANI, F. 3, Op. 103, D. 180, L. 63, and RGANI, F. 3, Op. 103,
D. 181, Ll. 140-141. Translated for CWIHP by Mark Kramer.
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121621
[xliv] See
Soviet Ambassador Evghenni Mikhaillovich Tiazhelnikov’s journal entry in Stefan
Karner, Efim Iosifovich Pivovar, Natalya Georgievna Tomilina, and Alexander
Oganovich Chubarian, Конец эпохи. СССР и
революции в странах Восточной Европы в 1989– 1991 гг. Документы [The End of
An Epoch: The USSR and The Revolutions in the Eastern European Countries in
1981-1991. Documents], Moscow, Rosspen, 2015, Document 241.
[xlv]
Minutes of the Meeting between Nicolae
Ceauşescu and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Moscow, 4 December 1989 in Munteanu (2001),
pp. 217, 220.
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