•
First Groza cabinet (6 March 1945 - 30 November 1946) •
Second Groza cabinet (1 December 1946 - 30 December 1947), the last of the Kingdom of Romania •
Third Groza cabinet (30 December 1947 - 14 April 1948), the first of the Socialist Republic of Romania •
Fourth Groza cabinet (15 April 1948 - 2 June 1952) Groza headed four cabinets between 1945 and 1952, the first two in the frame of the constitutional monarchy, and the latter two after playing a major role in forcing King Michael I to abdicate on 30 December 1947 and the ensuing declaration of the People's Republic.
Political crisis: Western opposition and royal strike On 18 August 1945, Roy Melbourne presented to Foreign Minister Gheorghe Tătărescu a verbal note showing that the American government "wants the establishment of a representative regime made up of all democratic groups in this country". Consequently, the United States will only sign a final peace treaty with a fully recognized democratic government. Both Groza and Tătărescu rejected the note, declaring it null and void. They argued that the US could not address a government it did not recognize. British diplomats also sent such a note, but the government had the same attitude. Faced with Groza's refusal to resign, King Michael instituted, on 21 August, the royal strike (21 August 1945 – 7 January 1946) and no longer agreed to countersign the government's documents. At the December 1945 Conference, it was decided that the situation should be resolved by appointing one PNL and PNȚ member each to the government, after which free elections would be organized and freedom of "press, speech, religion and association" would be ensured. Maniu warned that without the neutrality of the Ministries of Interior and Justice, free elections could not take place in Romania, but the decision had to be followed. On 7 January 1946,
Emil Hațieganu, from PNȚ, and , from PNL took the oath as ministers. Basically, the decisions in Moscow represented the victory of the Soviet point of view, the government of Petru Groza being recognized by the USA and Great Britain on 5 February 1946. During his term as premier, Groza also clashed with the nation's remaining
monarchist forces under
King Michael I. 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, the United Kingdom, 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 prosecution of war criminals and in the awarding of honorary Romanian citizenship to Stalin in August 1947.
First Groza cabinet (6 March 1945 - 30 November 1946) Groza gave key portfolios such as defence, justice, and the interior to the Communists. It nominally included ministers from the
National Liberals and
National Peasants as well, but the ministers using those labels were
fellow travellers like Groza, and had been handpicked by the Communists. Despite the annoyance of the two powers, the Communists constituted only a minority in Groza's cabinet. The leading figures in the Romanian Communist Party,
Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej, wanted the Groza government to preserve the façade of a coalition government and thus enable the Communists to win the confidence of the masses, since right after the Second World War the communists enjoyed very little political support. For this reason top communist figures like Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej did not join Groza's cabinet. They planned to gradually impose an out-and-out Communist regime under the veil of the existing coalition government. 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
one-party state. Accordingly, Groza maintained the illusion of a coalition government, appointing members of diverse political organizations to his cabinet and formulating his government's short-term goals in broad, non-ideological terms. He stated at a cabinet meeting on 7 March 1945, for example, that the government sought to guarantee safety and order for the population, implement desired
land reform policies, and focus on a "swift cleanup" of the state
bureaucracy and immediate prosecution of
war criminals, i.e., officials of the
Fascist wartime regime of Marshal
Ion Antonescu (''see
Romania during World War II and
Romanian People's Tribunals''). To confirm Groza in office, elections were held on
19 November 1946. The count was rigged in order to give an overwhelming majority to the Bloc of Democratic Parties, a Communist-dominated front that included the Ploughmen's Front. Years later, historian reviewed a confidential Communist Party report about the election that showed the BPD had, at most, won 47 percent of the vote. He concluded that had the election been conducted honestly, the opposition parties would have won enough votes between them to form a coalition government—albeit with far less than the 80 percent support long claimed by opposition supporters.
The November 1946 elections After the failure of the royal strike, Mihai adopted a more cautious position with the government. In view of the elections, the governmental political forces constituted, on 17 May 1946, the Bloc of Democratic Parties to submit joint lists for the elections. BPD consisted of PCR, PSD, PNL-Tătărescu, PNȚ-Alexandrescu, FP, and PNP. Instead, the democratic parties, PNȚ, PNL, and PSDI, failed in their attempt to create a common opposition front. The government also amended the electoral law, so that for the first time in history, women could also participate in the electoral process. The election campaign was carried out by numerous and serious abuses by government forces and exacerbated opposition attacks against them. Although Washington and London repeatedly gave Maniu guarantees that the elections to be held would be free and supervised by the Western powers, the government did not hesitate to use Stalin's dictum in the electoral process: "It doesn't matter who votes
with whom, it matters who count the votes". The elections took place on 19 November 1946, with a massive turnout. The official published results were: BPD – 69.81%, PNȚ – 12.88%, UPM – 8.32%, PNL – 3.78%, PȚD – 2.36%. Immediately, the opposition accused the government of fraud, with Maniu claiming that the results had been reversed, so that in fact the PNȚ had won. Instead, the governing parties claimed that the election results reflected the citizens' adherence to the BND program, and the minor incidents that occurred were provoked by the opposition. In fact, it was the same Romanian electoral tradition that the government declared that the elections were fair, while the opposition accused them of fraud. The same divergence existed between Moscow and the British and American officials. Reports arrived in Washington from the diplomatic mission of the Western powers and from the Ministry of the Interior in Bucharest, which had the same divergent content. The US and Great Britain limited themselves to some formal declarations, the agreement on the division of spheres of influence having been taken a long time ago. The memoirs prepared by Maniu and Brătianu were not taken into account, and on 1 December 1946, King Michael delivered the Opening Message of the Assembly of Deputies: "I am happy to be among the representatives of the country, gathered today for the first time, after a long interruption of parliamentary life."
Second Groza cabinet (1 December 1946 - 30 December 1947) On 10 February 1947, Romania signed the Peace Treaty with the Allied and Associated Powers, so the regime of the Armistice Convention officially ended. This fact meant that the UK and the United States no longer had any leverage to intervene in favor of the opposition, Romania passing under the exclusive control of the USSR. In the mind of the Groza government, the 1946 election confirmed it in office. This claim was made in the face of protests by the United States and the United Kingdom who held that, pursuant to the 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 the United Kingdom, who nominally supported the waning influence of the monarchist forces under
King Michael I. and
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, on a visit to Bulgaria, July 1947 Within days of becoming premier, Groza delivered his first major success. On 10 March 1945, the Soviet Union agreed to return to Romania
Northern Transylvania, a territory of over that had been assigned to
Hungary through the 1940
Second Vienna Award sponsored by
Germany and
Italy. Groza promised that the rights of each
ethnic group within the restored territory would be protected (mainly, as a reference to the
Hungarian minority in Romania), 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 recovery 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 administration 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 loyal 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 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 liberal democracy 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".
1947-48: removal of opposition parties After shutting down opposition newspapers, Groza soon continued his 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, after the
Tămădău Affair, he arrested key members of the National Peasants' Party and sentenced Maniu to life in prison "for political crimes against the Romanian people". when he refused, Groza threatened to launch a bloodbath and arrest thousands of people. Michael eventually signed the document, and a few hours later parliament abolished the monarchy and declared Romania a republic. Two bills were unanimously approved. The first took note of the abdication of King Michael I, for himself and his descendants, the
Constitution of Romania was abrogated, and the new official name of the state became the
Romanian People's Republic. It was also specified that the legislative power will be exercised by the Assembly of Deputies until its dissolution and the meeting of a Constituent National Assembly, which will be held at a date fixed by the Assembly of Deputies. It will adopt the new Constitution of the RPR. Through the second project, the members of the Provisional Presidium of the RPR were appointed:
Constantin Ion Parhon, president, Mihail Sadoveanu,
Ștefan Voitec, , and
Ion Niculi, vice presidents. The meeting ended after only one hour.
Premiership during the first years of the People's Republic (1948-1952) On 24 February 1948, the Assembly of Deputies was dissolved. Three days later, the People's Democracy Front was established, an electoral alliance formed by the Romanian Workers' Party (the new name adopted by the Communists following the merger with the PSD), the Plowmen's Front, PNL-Bejan, and the Hungarian People's Union. On March 28, the elections were held for the
Great National Assembly, the unicameral legislative forum of the RPR. The first objective of the Great Assembly was to draft a new fundamental law. The Constitution of the Romanian People's Republic was promulgated on 13 April 1948. Groza kept his mandate as prime minister until 2 June 1952. ==Policies during the Groza-led governments==