Word: dej
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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 Rumania be a combination "market garden" and "gas station." Instead, he talked the Soviets into supplying iron ore and machinery for the construction of a huge steel complex at Galati...
...Dej next became bold enough to make overtures to the West. Without waiting for the Soviets, he expanded Galati by signing a $42 million contract for a steel plant with a British-French combine. The Sino-Soviet split gave Dej another chance to twist the bear's tail. Rumania's Premier Ion Maurer winged off to Peking last year and agreed to boost trade with the Chinese Communists by 10% . He stopped off in the Soviet Union on the way back and kindly volunteered to "mediate" Sino-Soviet differences, while back in Bucharest, Russian bookstores were being closed...
...that in a hurry. Gathered in Warsaw last week were Premiers, Presidents and party bosses of the Warsaw Pact nations: Russia's Brezhnev and Kosygin, Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslova kia's Antonin Novotny, East Germany's Walter Ulbricht, Rumania's Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Hungary's Janos Kadar, Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka...
Over the past few years these men have grown ever more diverse in their national interests and their approaches to everything from Comecon to the Sino-Soviet split. Prime disunifier of the lot was Rumania's Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who had not deigned to talk publicly with Russian leaders in 18 months. He agreed to talk this time, but the official silence was appalling...