Proletkult Diplomacy. What About Romania in the Last Minutes of Tsardom1 and the First of People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1945-1947) Foreign Affairs

Abstract The Romanian-Bulgarian relations were assigned the role of satellites belonging first to the Axis, and then to U.S.S.R., following the regulation of the territorial statute of South Dobrudja on September 7th 1940, through the Treaty from Craiova. After the Red Army has entered Bulgaria, on September 8th 1944, an unusual fact has intervened between Bucharest and Sofia, from the perspective of Kremlin’s influence, of course: the priority of Bulgarian political, ideological and diplomatic factors over the Romanian ones, unprecedented fact in the history of almost seven decades of the modern bilateral relations. The lack of human and ideological resources of the Romanian Communist Party has become obvious during the not even declared competition with the Bulgarian Communists and their leader, Georgi Dimitrov. The Communist Bulgaria has become a model that Romanian communists do not only seriously took into account, yet, at least the year King Mihai I has abdicated (1947), they zestfully were also studying and copying, as the case may have been. Being a so-called People’s Republic even since September 1946, following a falsified popular referendum, Bulgaria has undertaken during the next months to coordinate plans of internal and external politics of Romania. In order to finalize a “Bulgarian way” in Romania, the government led by Petru Groza and the media of propaganda, and mainly the press official of the Romanian Communist Party, “Scânteia”, have scrupulously assumed the role of protagonists. And Communist Bulgaria, just like U.S.S.R., has become for more than two years (1946- February 1948) an extremely important and valuable topic of the Romanian public speech, of the Romanian Communists’ confirmation, of establishing the project for instituting the totalitarian regime. The similarity of actions and of institutes’ organization is striking for this short period, and the treaty signed in January 1948 is nothing but the final of a stage extremely abundant in models and suggestions for the Romanian communists.