Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Europe, Volume V

871.00/1–1146

Mr. Mark Ethridge to the Secretary of State ³⁵

[Washington,] December 8, 1945.

Dear Mr. Secretary: When you asked me to go to Rumania and Bulgaria you instructed me to ascertain whether the interim governments of those countries were broadly representative in the sense of the Yalta Declaration, which expressed the conviction of the Big Three that a lasting peace could be based only on fully representative and democratic governments, and whether the peoples of those countries would have an opportunity to vote in elections free from coercion and fear. Under your instructions, our concern was not with the political complexion of the two governments, but with their representative character.

I must report to you that, having had conversations in the two countries with considerably more than three hundred persons, representing all elements and shades of public opinion, I do not consider that the government of either Rumania or Bulgaria is broadly representative of all democratic elements in the Yalta sense. Furthermore, I must say in all honesty that both governments are authoritarian and are dominated by one party, and that large democratic segments of the populations in both Rumania and in Bulgaria have been forcibly excluded from representation in the government, while in Rumania particularly, former pro-Fascist collaborators and even some Iron Guardists³⁶ occupy key positions in the government.

In both countries “front” governments are in power. In Bulgaria the Fatherland Front, organized in 1942 as a combination political and partisan resistance movement operating against the Nazis and the dictatorship of King Boris, came to power, with the overthrow of the Muraviev³⁷ cabinet in September 1944. At its inception, the Fatherland Front movement could indeed have been considered broadly representative and its announced program progressive; it has become much less representative in the fifteen months of its life. Of the original parties which constituted the Fatherland Front, only the Communist and Zveno have retained any semblance of unity within their own ranks. The prime minister, a member of the Zveno party, was criticized in his own party congress for not putting a stop to excesses and for allowing the government to be dominated by one party. The leader of the Socialist party in Bulgaria is not in the government at all, and the dissident Socialist leader who is in the cabinet cannot be considered representative of any large element of his own party. Although the Agrarian party is by common consent the largest party in Bulgaria its first, leader after the war, Dr. G. M. Dimitrov, found it necessary to leave the country after taking refuge temporarily in the United States Political Mission³⁸ and its second leader, Nikola Petkov, resigned from the cabinet when he became convinced that he could remain in it only if his own party accepted domination of a single group. Altogether, six members out of the original cabinet have resigned. With each resignation the government became less representative of the other democratic elements in Bulgaria and more representative of the Communists who, by the highest estimate I received, have about thirty per cent of voting strength in Bulgaria, by the lowest, about ten per cent. The Zveno party was not a party at all until after the coup d’état; it was a conspiratorial league of military men and independent intellectuals who had great faith in government by an elite and in their own ability to outwit the leaders of the traditional parties.

There was no pretense on the part of anybody before the elections on November 18, except the Communists, that the government was representative in the Yalta sense. All that was contended was that the government would have a majority. There was no way for the government not to have a majority; as a matter of fact, I was told a month before the elections how they would come out. They signify nothing. Under a thin veneer of “civil liberties”, they were characterized by coercion and fear and they were rigged in advance so that they could not possibly have expressed the will of the people. Seats in the Sobranye, the national parliament, were allotted before the election, not on any basis of popular support, but by arbitrary agreement between the parties in the Fatherland Front. A single list was used so that, with the opposition groups abstaining, the voter could only vote yes or deposit a blank ballot, which theoretically would be a vote against the government. It was not possible to vote by parties as in Hungary and Austria. Feeling that the whole basis of such elections was fraudulent, the Agrarian and Socialist parties, which represented a very important element of democratic opinion, refused to participate in them. The only surprise of the election was that so many people apparently had the courage to deposit blank ballots; every form of threat and coercion had been used to prevent them from doing so. The Communist party has control not only of the election machinery but also, through the Ministries of Interior and Justice, of all the machinery of government, down to the mayoralty of the smallest village, the militia, the urban police and the courts.

The pattern of the seizure of power in Rumania is much the same, but with significant differences. The Antonescu regime was overthrown by the coup d’état of August 23, 1944. The government which emerged was composed of the three traditional parties, the National Peasants, the National Liberals and the Social Democrats, and the Communists. The latter had been an illegal organization until that time, suffering great persecutions and repressions. Three cabinets fell within seven months and with each cabinet crisis the Communists strengthened their position. On March 6 of this year, at the insistence of Mr. Vyshinski, the Soviet Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs, the present government headed by Petru Groza was installed. In Moscow Mr. Vyshinski insisted to me that his action did not constitute interference in the affairs of Rumania, but only interference in the affairs of the Allied Control Commission. Nevertheless the government was changed and the Communists, whose strength, according to the highest estimate I received, and that from a high official of the present government, is about ten per cent, occupy the Ministries of Interior and Justice, and thus control the courts, the police, the gendarmerie, the secret police and the election machinery. They control, in addition, several other cabinet posts, including that of prime minister, either directly or through representatives of the Plowmen’s Front and the Patriotic Union, parties which they have organized to appeal to the peasants and to the artisans and professional men. These groups have a working agreement at the top level with the Socialists, which is probably the largest party in the coalition, but there is great friction underneath and the coalition may not survive.

The National Peasant and National Liberal parties, which participated in the government until March 6 in the coalition cabinets of General Sanatescu and General Radescu, are out altogether now and have suddenly become “Fascist beasts”, although for years they were the leading representatives of parliamentary democracy in Rumania and actively resisted King Carol’s pro-Fascist policy. A great many of their ward and district leaders have been arrested and the parties faced the prospect, when I left Rumania, of being outlawed altogether. Their newspapers have been suppressed, their clubhouses have been taken over in a great many instances, and their attempts at political meetings are broken up. The regrettable and largely spontaneous street rioting which occurred in Bucharest on November 8 has been blown up by the government into a great “fascist plot”. In the Groza Government the Rumanian people now have a new dictatorship in place of the one which they overthrew in August 1944. The new dictatorship has not yet attempted to legalize its position by holding elections.

The Soviet Government has recognized these two governments and has consistently maintained the position that they are representative, which has had the effect of keeping them in power. It has also taken advantage of this opportunity to conclude trade agreements with both countries and to get extensive economic concessions in Rumania—such sweeping concessions as to constitute an economic blackout for other countries. We, on the other hand, have adhered to a strict interpretation of the Yalta pledge “to concert during the temporary period of instability in liberated Europe the policies of the three governments in assisting the peoples … to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems”. On several occasions we have formally protested the authoritarian character of the two governments. While I fully sympathize with the need of the Red Army to protect its southern flank while it was actively engaged in Central Europe, the irritation which the Soviet Government may have felt with regard to the events of the past year in Greece and its concern over the question of the Straits,³⁹ as well as the bitterness of the Russian people over the terrible ravages of the Rumanian Army in the Ukraine, I feel that these considerations should now have much less weight and I trust that it will eventually be possible for the Russians and us to reach an agreement concerning these countries along the lines of those already reached with regard to the other former enemy countries in Eastern Europe. Particularly with regard to elections, I hope that the precedents of separate lists and civil liberties established in Austria and Hungary, agreed to by all three Yalta Powers, may be applied in Bulgaria and Rumania.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Ethridge

35. A penciled notation reads: “Ethridge letter intended for publication but not published.” Initials to the notation not decipherable.
36. Pre-war Rumanian fascist movement.
37. Kosta Muraviev, Bulgarian agrarian leader and Prime Minister, September 2–8, 1944; subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment by the Communist-dominated Bulgarian Government.
38. Regarding the granting of asylum in the United States Mission in Sofia to Dr. Georgi M. Dimitrov, leader of the Bulgarian Agrarian Party, and his eventual flight from the country in August 1945, see vol. iv, pp. 220–251 passim, 261, 269–270, 280, and 313–314.
39. For documentation regarding American interest in Soviet-Turkish negotiations and the Straits question, see vol. viii , first section under Turkey.