%0 Journal Article
%T “Romanian October” Means Breakthroughs and Revaluations in Romania’s Foreign Policy in the First Half of the 60’s of the 20th Century (From the Windows of the Polish People’s Republic Embassy in Bucharest)
%A Nowak, Krzysztof
%J Central European and Balkan Studies
%V 2024
%R 10.4467/2543733XSSB.24.007.20031
%N Volume XXXIII
%P 113-137
%K Polish-Romanian relations after 1956, foreign policy of Romania 1960–1965, Romania in the years 1956–1965, Romania facing the Soviet-Chinese conflict, Polish diplomacy in
Romania after 1956, Polish foreign policy after 1956
%@ 2451-4993
%D 2024
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/ssb/article/romanian-october-means-breakthroughs-and-revaluations-in-romanias-foreign-policy-in-the-first-half-of-the-60s-of-the-20th-century-from-the-windows-of-the-polish-peoples-republic-embassy-in-bucharest
%X After the breakthrough of Polish October 1956, the substantive value of the information contained in the documentation of PPR diplomacy has undoubtedly increased, allowing a better understanding of international relations also between communist countries whose sovereignty was limited. This also applies to the foreign policy of Romania, whose activity in the first half of the 1960s, in the opinion of many historians, led to the country gaining considerable – compared to other Kremlin satellites – independence. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to show, on the basis of surviving sources, how PPR diplomacy perceived and assessed the transformation of Communist Romania’s foreign policy goals, directions and priorities during this period. These eventually led to Romania’s opening up to wider contacts with Western countries, but most importantly to Bucharest’s attempts to undermine the Soviet Union’s dictates in Eastern Bloc foreign policy, through such actions as vetoing Khrushchev’s plans to reform the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance and being cocksure about the Soviet-Chinese conflict. Changes also occurred on domestic grounds, mainly in the cultural sphere, in the form of a programmatic reduction of the influence of Russian and Slavic culture in general, a return to the world of Romanian culture, but also the rise of nationalist sentiment. The diplomacy observing the Romanian transformations and thus the PPR authorities generally supported the de-Stalinization of the “brotherly country” (it was even noted that Romanians referred to their own transition as the “Romanian October”), but were negative about any tendencies that challenged the Kremlin’s dominance in the Eastern Bloc’s foreign policy. The problem, however, was that at the root of the Romanian transition of the first half of the 1960s was also the desire of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s team to avoid a broader de-Stalinization campaign in order to continue in power.