January 2007
Nicoleta Ionescu-Gură, The Central Committee Nomenclature of the Romanian Workers’ Party
Bucharest, Humanitas Publishing House, 2006
The volume has two parts. The first one offers a historical descriptive view on the functioning of the Romanian Workers’ Party apparatus and nomenclature. The second one brings forward documents referring to the departments within the Central Committee, the recruitment criteria of the nomenclature cadres, the organization of the schools of the Party and the material privileges that the communist elites enjoyed. Chapter one of the first part presents the organization of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers’ Party apparatus in conformity with the Soviet model, as well as the changes that occurred within its structure between 1950 and 1965. Chapter two refers to the establishment of the nomenclature of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers’ Party in 1950, to its numeric evolution until 1965, to recruitment, promotion and dismissal criteria, as well as to the bodies which controlled the functioning of the nomenclature. Within Chapter three, the author focuses on the privileged social status of the nomenclature, whose members had access to well-equipped clinics and comfortable rest houses, generously provisioned stores and farms of the Party. Chapter four describes the organization of the schools of the Party, the way the candidates were selected and the positioning of the graduates within Party structures and state institutions. The documents edited in the second part of the book illustrate the above-mentioned aspects and represent, at the same time, useful documentary elements towards the accomplishment of new researches.
Nicoleta Ionescu-Gură has a Ph.D. in History and works as a researcher within the National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives. In 2005, she published
Stalinizarea României (Stalinist Romania)
, a book on the organization of the state and the Romanian Workers’ Party in accordance with the Stalinist model.< Back