Rumania: Among the Last

Bushy-browed Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who died of pneumonia at 63 in Bucharest last week, was, with East Ger many's Walter Ulbricht, the last of the unregenerate Stalinists who rose to power on the Red Army wave that swept over Eastern Europe in 1944. None theless, in his last years, he earned some popularity by astute maneuvering that won Rumania a measure of independence from Soviet domination.

Bear Twist. Rumanians have always hated the Russians anyway, but Gheorghiu-Dej chafed particularly under the raw-material-supplying role assigned his country by the Soviets' version of the Common Market, Comecon. He had no intention of letting...

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