of policy
and doctrine from the party to the general population. PCR leaders have
described the duties of mass organizations as the mobilization of the
working people for the fulfillment of party policies and the provision
for their participation in the economic, political, and cultural life of
the country. Leaders of the mass organizations are always reliable PCR
members.

Citizens are constitutionally guaranteed the right to join together in
organizations. At the same time, the Constitution defines the leading
role of the party in relation to the mass organizations, asserting that
through such organizations the PCR "achieves an organized link with the
working class, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, and the other
categories of working people" and mobilizes them in "the struggle for
the completion of the building of socialism."

Two broad classes of organizations are included under the rubric of mass
organizations: those based on common interests or common categories or
persons, such as youth and women's associations, and those based on
professions, such as the General Union of Trade Unions. Several of the
organizations belong to international organizations and associations,
such as the World Federation of Trade Unions and the World Federation of
Democratic Youth.

Among the more important of the mass organizations are the Union of
Communist Youth, the General Union of Trade Unions, and the National
Council of Women. The chairmen of the Union of Communist Youth and the
General Union of Trade Unions sit on the Council of Ministers and have
ministerial rank; the chairman of the youth union serves simultaneously
as head of the Ministry of Youth Problems.

The Union of Communist Youth

At the time of its founding in early 1949 the Union of Communist Youth
(Uniunea Tineretului Comunist--UTC) was looked upon as the youth branch
of the PCR. It was set up with much the same organizational structure as
the party and, in practice, functioned both as a youth political party
and mass organization. Resulting from the party-decreed merger of all
existing youth organizations, the UTC was given the task of educating
the young in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and mobilizing them, under
the guidance of the party, for the building of socialism.

In early 1972 the UTC continued to be one of the most powerful of the
mass organizations in the country, with an estimated membership of 2.5
million. Membership was open to young peop