Repression
Given the repression of the Hungarian Revolution by the Red Army, organising another protest in Bucharest was out of the question. In the universities, acts of dissent ceased. Students from the Faculty of Philosophy did try to organise a new protest on 15 November, but the organisers were arrested before they could go further with their plan.
On 27 October 1956, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers' Party, meeting in a crisis session, had set up a crisis command under the leadership of Emil Bodnăraş, whose subordinates were Nicolae Ceauşescu, Alexandru Drăghici and Leontin Sălăjan. The command had extensive powers, including the right to order troops to open fire and to declare a state of emergency in any part of the country. The command had the explicit right to suspend classes in institutes of higher learning.
The party organs immediately began repressive actions. A whole series of arrests followed, with arrest warrants issued by another special party committee, headed by Gheorghe Apostol. Investigations were intense; the chief interrogator was Captain Gheorghe Enoiu of the Direction of Penal Investigations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was aided by, among others, Lieutenant Major Vasile Dumitrescu, Lieutenant Gheorghe Blidaru, Lieutenant Horia Brestoiu, Lieutenant Nicolae Domniţa, Lieutenant Major Florea Gheorghiu, Lieutenant Major Gheorghe Mihăilescu, Lieutenant Major Iosif Moldovan, and Lieutenant Major Dumitru Preda.
The majority of arrests took place in November–December 1956, but arrests continued throughout 1957. Some students were sentenced to 1–4 years in prison; some died in prison. For instance, Ştefan Negrea, a student at the Faculty of Letters, died in Gherla prison on 3 November 1958.
At the same time, the universities and other places associated with students were placed under strict surveillance. At the order of the Ministry of Education, actions against students were taken by university administrators: students who were suspected of having approved the movement were expelled and a strict system of surveillance was put in place to monitor the behaviour of students. Additionally, student organisations (UTM as well as the Union of Student Associations / Uniunea Asociaţiilor Studenţeşti) organised sessions to unmask "enemy elements". At these sessions, not only were students removed from these organisations, but it was asked that they be expelled – a request immediately granted by the university administration. Those expelled had no right to re-enroll in any institution of higher learning. Sessions were organised at which students were obliged to express their indignation against those who "splatter with mud" Romania's studious youth. Furthermore, the principal protest organisers were unmasked in public sessions during which their expulsion was requested in view of their status as people enemy to the regime. These actions were coordinated by university party organisations as well as by Marxism-Leninism departments. (One especially zealous persecutor during this period was Constantin Bulai, who taught Marxism.) Students convinced professors and artists to sign petitions asking that those arrested be freed; as a result, repressive actions intensified and more were condemned and expelled.
Aside from the immediate measures taken against those students who headed the protest movement, a series of other organisational repressive measures took place in the political realm. On 13 November, in a session of the Political Bureau, it was decided that the Ministry of Education should draw up "a concrete programme of measures to lead to an improvement in the social composition of students". The first to be targeted were former political detainees who had been allowed to return to the universities in 1955-56. Although the great majority of them had not been involved in the protest movement, Nicolae Ceauşescu explicitly asked for this step to be taken in a speech held in Bucharest on 15 November 1956. Around the same time, Virgil Trofin, secretary of the Central Committee of UTM, declared, "We have to know how many enemies there are in our country and are trying to fight against our party".
Concurrently, the student organisations were reorganised. Ion Iliescu, who had recently become a member of the UTM Central Committee, was also named president of the Union of Student Associations of the Romanian People's Republic in order to ensure more stringent control by the party over students.
In an address to the Moscow Komsomol on 8 November 1956, Nikita Khrushchev alluded to the student protests, saying that there were some unhealthy moods among students in one of the educational establishments in Romania. He also congratulated the Romanian Communist Party on having dealt with those protests quickly and effectively.,
Read more about this topic: Bucharest Student Movement Of 1956
Famous quotes containing the word repression:
“People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.”
—Brian Friel (b. 1929)
“Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.”
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“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)