Onset of The Armed Resistance Movement
However, starting with the summer of 1948, individuals or small groups went underground into the Carpathians, forming various groups of armed resistance in what was a relatively large movement, gathering several thousand people. The rebels came from all social strata and all areas of the country, spreading everywhere the terrain could shield them. The movement was related to the spate of mass arrests hitting the country after the communist power seizure on the eve of 1948, as well as to the political and economical measures which ruined a sizeable part of the peasantry and the middle class.
There were several reasons for people seeking shelter in the mountains. While some went underground to escape imminent arrest, more generally people fled as they abandoned hope for surviving after being economically ruined and risking detention or worse. Significantly, entire families took flight in late 1948 and early 1949. Thus, the British consular official in Cluj, reporting on May 1, 1949 on the situation of partisans under the leadership of General Dragalina noted that:
- “clothing and medicine are short and this is probably true as their numbers have been increased by a considerable proportion of women and children since the March 1st land expropriation. I have been given a figure as high as 20,000 as the number who has joined since the expropriation (…) The increase in the number of women and children will create problems of survival next winter (…) I am told now and again of lorries of army supplies going over to the partisans, sometimes by capture and sometimes by desertion, but I cannot say to what extent…"
The members of the armed resistance were not called "partisans" by the population, but haiduci, a word for the generous highwaymen, considered folk heroes.
A further major component of the armed resistance consisted of individuals and groups motivated by anti-communist convictions and persuaded that only an armed engagement could contain increasing terror and prevent an irrevocable communist takeover. Some of the resistance groups were led by ex-army officers and acted in a more coordinated and planned way. It appears that they put their hope in stirring up a more general armed insurrection, which never came to life. A smaller category of insurgents were Romanian refugees recruited in Europe by the Office of Policy Coordination, trained in France, Italy and Greece and then dropped in the Carpathians. It seems, however, that most of them, not being able to create local contacts imperative for survival, were soon captured.
The rebels had links with the CIA, which conducted parachute missions in Romania in the early post-war years. At the beginning of 1949, the CIA through its Office of Political Coordination began to recruit displaced Romanians from Germany, Austria, and Yugoslavia. Gordon Mason, the CIA station chief in Bucharest from 1949–51, said that the smuggling of weapons, ammunition, radio transmitters, and medicine were organized. Agents smuggled into Romania by the CIA were to help organize the sabotage of factories and transport networks. In particular, a two-man team was parachuted into Romania by the CIA on 2 October 1952 near Targu Carbunesti in Oltenia. Three American-trained agents were sent in June 1953 to the Apuseni Mountains, who were later captured, but not executed, as the Romanian authorities intended to use them as double agents. In the Oradea-Satu Mare region, three airdropped agents were killed, one of them in a firefight and two others later executed.
Among Romanians recruited by the CIA at the beginning of 1951 were Constatin Saplacan, Wilhelm Spindler, Gheorghe Barsan, Matias Bohm, and Ilie Puiu. The Securitate discovered that they had been recruited in Italy by a former Romanian pilot. Following this, the Romanian Government sent a note to the American protesting interference in the country's internal affairs, and that the captured CIA agents had been "sent to carry out acts of terrorism and espionage against the Romanian Army."
Read more about this topic: Romanian Anti-communist Resistance Movement
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