Soviet Occupation of Romania - SovRoms

The SovRoms were Soviet-Romanian joint ventures established on Romanian territory at the end of World War II, and lasting until 1954–1956. An agreement between the two countries regarding the establishment of these enterprises was signed in Moscow on May 8, 1945. In theory, the purpose of these ventures was to generate funding for post-war reconstruction efforts. However, their real purpose was to provide resources for the Soviet side. Generally, they were a contributing factor to the draining of Romania's resources, in addition to the war reparations demanded by the Armistice Agreement and the Paris Peace Treaties, which had been set at 300 million U.S. dollars. The Soviet contribution to the creation of the SovRoms consisted mostly in reselling leftover German equipment to Romania, at systematically overvalued prices. The total value of goods sent from Romania to the Soviet Union was estimated at 2 billion dollars, exceeding by far the amount of war reparations demanded by the Soviets. By 1952, 85% of Romanian exports were directed towards the Soviet Union. The last Sovrom was dissolved in 1956.

One of these companies was Sovromcuarţ, which started its operations in 1950 at the Băiţa mine in Bihor County, under a name that was meant to conceal the true object of its activity. Its initial workforce consisted of 15,000 political prisoners; after most of them died of radiation poisoning, they were replaced by local villagers, who were completely unaware of the fact that they were working with radioactive material. Romania secretly delivered 17,288 tons of uranium ore to the Soviet Union between 1952 and 1960, which was used, at least in part, in the Soviet atomic bomb project. Uranium mining continued there until 1961. All ore was shipped abroad for processing, initially to Sillamäe in Estonia; the uranium concentrate was then used exclusively by the Soviet Union.