871.00/7–948: Telegram
The Minister in Romania (Schoenfeld) to the Secretary of State
761. We have no trustworthy indications of any plans for incorporation of Rumania into Soviet Union at this time (urtel 392, June 23) nor indeed any confirmation of report that at May 9 observance demonstrators shouted for such incorporation.
If and when such a thing should happen, it is likely to be engineered with great celerity so that advance clues are likely to be slight.
Our views we express on this question are therefore necessarily merely rationalization.
Of all the satellites Rumania appears to be the most completely integrated into the Soviet system. It is clear that extent and type of arrangements entered into between the two states envisage permanent grafting of the one upon the other. The economic and military arrangements are in no sense a coordination of alignment, they are a merger and if allowed to continue unhindered, will in time produce a single organism. The time may come when Soviets will wish to give juridical recognition to this political identity but I see no reason at this time for them to hasten to do so.
[Page 364]There are in fact a host of reasons against it. It is true that with publication of resolution expelling Yugoslavia, from Cominform, the absolutism of Soviet pretensions vis-à-vis its satellites has come into the open, if it were not already abundantly apparent.
Technically, however, this is still on the party level. To raise it to a national level by juridical absorption of another state would remove all pretense of Soviet respect for the independence and sovereignty of any of its associates would deprive it in large measure of its power of diplomatic maneuver, would render its propaganda a farce, would add nothing to its economic advantages but probably the reverse, and would in fact offer no corresponding advantage.
That Soviet Union has the power to bring about open annexation of Rumania without the slightest demur here is unquestioned. The personalities now wielding power in Rumania could be induced to apply for such annexation and effect it at a moment’s notice. But that Soviet Union itself would encourage or permit it at this time is in my opinion open to grave doubt. I should judge that only if it had made up its mind to burn all its bridges to the west would it embark upon open annexation.
While incorporation rumor has from time to time been current here, there are no visible signs at the moment pointing to discontinuance of present system whereby Rumania is under de facto political, economic and military control of Soviet Union but retains nominal sovereignty and trappings of independent state.