g relations with the
Soviet Union has been Romania's refusal to take the Soviet side in the
Sino-Soviet dispute. In keeping with its policy of maintaining friendly
and fraternal relations with all socialist states, the Ceausescu regime
has cultivated relations with the People's Republic of China and is
thought by some observers to have played a role in the establishment of
contacts between the Communist Chinese and the United States. In
mid-1971 Romanian leaders also mediated the restoration of relations
between the People's Republic of China and Yugoslavia. These actions led
to charges in the Soviet press that Romania was organizing an
anti-Soviet bloc in the Balkans under the patronage of the People's
Republic of China.

Despite the ups and downs of Soviet-Romanian relations throughout the
period of the Ceausescu regime, the two states signed a twenty-year
treaty of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance in July 1970.
This treaty replaced a similar 1948 accord that had been set to expire
in 1968 but continued in force under an automatic five-year renewal
clause. Negotiated before the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia,
the actual signing of the treaty was delayed because of strained
relations between the two states and Soviet attempts to insert a clause
containing the essence of the Brezhnev Doctrine. The Ceausescu
government refused to renegotiate the original agreement, however, and
the treaty was finally signed at ceremonies in Bucharest.

Brezhnev did not attend the ceremonies and, in contrast to similar
Soviet treaties with other Eastern European communist states, which were
signed by both the party leaders and the prime ministers of each
country, the Soviet-Romanian treaty was signed only by the prime
ministers. Coming in the midst of serious disagreements between the two
countries, the signing of the treaty was considered by some observers as
a formality and something of a smokescreen intended to cover a widening
split.

Other Communist States

In general, relations with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German
Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, and Poland mirrored
Romania's relations with the Soviet Union. The communist leaders of
these countries followed the Soviet lead in the policy differences with
the Ceausescu regime and, although each state had friendship treaties
that expired in 1968 and 1969, only the treaty with Czechoslovakia was
renewed before the Soviet-Romanian treaty was