same
time, supporting moves aimed at weakening Soviet hegemony in the
communist world. In early 1954 Gheorghiu-Dej sensed the political
significance of Khrushchev's "peaceful coexistence" theme for Romania
and began to exploit the situation to gain leverage for the extracting
of concessions from the Soviet Union. The first significant achievement
came later that same year when negotiations led to the dissolution of
the joint Soviet-Romanian industrial enterprises that had been the
primary instrument of Soviet economic exploitation during the postwar
period.

The regime also sought to gain increased domestic support by emphasizing
the country's historical traditions, by calling for "Romanian solutions
to Romanian problems," and by cautiously exploiting the population's
latent anti-Soviet sentiments. In August 1954, on the occasion of the
tenth anniversary of the country's liberation from Nazi forces,
Gheorghiu-Dej asserted that the primary credit for driving out the
occupiers belonged to Romanian Communists rather than to the Soviet
army, a view that was subsequently condemned by the Soviets and
supported by the Communist Chinese.

Although the Gheorghiu-Dej regime formally supported the Soviet action
in suppressing the 1956 Hungarian revolt, the Romanian leaders attempted
to exploit the situation in order to obtain additional concessions from
the Soviets and to gain recognition of the legitimacy of the so-called
Romanian road to socialism. At that time, one of their primary aims was
the removal of Soviet occupation forces that had remained in the country
throughout the post-World War II period. Although the regime was not
successful in obtaining formal Soviet recognition of a Romanian variant
of communism, an agreement was reached placing a time limit on the
presence of the Soviet troops, the forces finally being withdrawn in
1958.

Important problems were posed to the Gheorghiu-Dej regime by the
reactivation of COMECON and the Soviet intentions to integrate the
economies of the member states. Initially established in 1949 as the
Soviet counterpart to the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan),
COMECON was largely dormant until 1955, when Khrushchev decided to
revitalize the organization as an instrument of Soviet economic policy
in Eastern Europe. COMECON plans called for the subordination of
national economic plans to an overall planning body that would determine
economic development for the member states as a