RUMANIA: Revolution?

Russia’s news blackout of Rumania was pierced again last week by rifle flashes and the suggestion of muffled cries, scudding feet and bodies thudding in the dark. From Bern, Switzerland, New York Timesnum Daniel T. Brigham reported somewhat luridly that in Bucharest Communists had attacked the Royal Palace, other State buildings. Communist outbreaks were said to have taken place also in Brasov, Craiova and Caracal. The Red Army took no part in the fighting.

The revolt was said to have been organized by Anna Pauker, formerly a left—wing trade-union organizer in the U.S., where her husband, a Rumanian by birth but a Soviet citizen, worked in the personnel department of Amtorg (Russia’s official trading corporation in the U.S.).

In a midnight broadcast Radio Bucharest reported that “the Government at present is master of the situation.” (Earlier Radio Bucharest reported that a political assassin had tried, but failed, to kill Premier General Nicolai Radescu.)

From Moscow came a report that a new “National Democratic Front” was about to take over the Government. The new Front was demanding “decisive action against pro-Fascist elements in the Government and the dismissal of the Radescu Government.” Moscow also reported that “on the demand of representatives of the Allied Control Commission the shooting at demonstrators had stopped.”

The reported “revolution” might well have taken the form of big-scale, violent demonstrations, like the EAM demonstrations which touched off the Greek civil war. But whatever was happening, one thing seemed clear: the days of the Radescu Government were numbered.