Rumania: Debate on Doctrine

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Though no formal friendship pact between the U.S. and Rumania was negotiated during President Nixon's visit to Bucharest, Rumanians seemed convinced last week that one had been signed, sealed and delivered. In an informal sense, it had. The images of Nixon's tour would remain for a long time. People folded away newspaper clippings showing a smiling Nixon with Rumanian shoppers and folk dancers (see color). They held onto the miniature U.S. flags handed out for the President's reception. Well into the week, at least one Bucharest shopwindow was still decorated with a homemade U.S. flag and pictures of the Apollo astronauts.

President Nicolae Ceauşescu had to postpone the opening of the Tenth Congress of Rumania's Communist Party for two days in order to give workmen time to take down the American flags on the city's street lamps and replace them with substitute banners in honor of the guest delegations from 66 countries. The new decorations, however, could not paper over Rumania's deep disputes with the Soviet Union. As a result, the congress turned into an extraordinary confrontation between Rumania's policy of forming ties with the West and Moscow's rigid Brezhnev Doctrine that insists on obedience and conformity among the Soviet Union's East Bloc neighbors.

Marathon Speech. The 1,915 delegates and some 150 foreign guests, including representatives from Cuba and North Viet Nam, gathered in Bucharest's Palace of Culture, a striking futuristic building that was completed only this year. Though Ceauşescu emphasized his evenhanded approach in the Sino-Soviet dispute by sending an invitation to Peking, the Chinese refused to attend. Apparently, they could not accept his precondition that while in Bucharest they refrain from polemics against other Communist nations. Foreign guests were whisked about in gleaming black Mercedes-Benz limousines, which have replaced Soviet-made Chaikas as the official car. The fleet serves as a reminder that Ceauşescu has made West Germany his second-largest trading partner after Russia. Breaking with Communist tradition, Ceauşescu allowed newsmen, including one Mao-suited Chinese reporter, to sit in the gallery and witness the full proceedings. Delegates soon found out why.

In a marathon five-hour opening speech, Ceauşescu reiterated his departures from Kremlin orthodoxy. A major point was economics. The Soviets wish to bring about a greater consolidation with Comecon, the Communist counterpart of the European Common Market. But Ceauşescu wants to widen trade relations and draw on the West's technical and financial strength. Declared the Rumanian leader: "The intensification of economic collaboration must allow the ever stronger development of each national economy. It must be based on respect for the independence and sovereignty of each socialist state."