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As the title suggests, this story was tacked onto the end of newsreel no. 9/1969 after it had already been completed, as a result of the events that took place in Budapest. Between February 26 and March 5, 1968, a consultative meeting of the communist and workers’ parties took place in Budapest; the Chinese Communist Party did not participate, against the backdrop of the intensification of the Sino-Soviet split. During the conference, participants presented their parties’ views on strengthening the unity of the international communist and labour movement in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. The PCR delegation led by Paul Niculescu-Mizil (Secretary for ideological issues of the Central Committee of the RCP) was criticized by the leader of the Syrian communists, Khalid Bagdash, who questioned the international policy of the RCP – who had launched an appeal at the beginning of the conference so that the parties absent from the meeting would not be penalised/punished/disciplined. Despite RCP’s protestations that the Syrians retract Bagdash’s statement, they refused, and the appeal fell on deaf ears to the rest of the delegates.

At the time, Romanians believed that the USSR was behind the RCP’s position (something that could not be publicly confirmed). In reality, the positions of the two countries on the guidelines of the international communist movement really had started to diverge: the Romanians spoke in favour of the autonomy for the parties in the socialist countries and against a leading centre of the world communist movement. On February 29, 1968, the Romanian delegation consulted the RCP in Bucharest: The Executive Committee of the Central Committee held a meeting and decided to withdraw its representatives from the conference in Budapest and summon them back to the Capital as a sign of protest. They denounced the absence of dialogue and “free and democratic exchange of views” at the conference, claiming that the agreement made at the beginning of the meeting – not to fight the fraternal parties in absence – had been violated. Eventually, the delegation of the Syrian Communist Party retracted its claims, ending the incident.

The next day (1 March, 1968) an extraordinary plenary meeting of the CC took place in Bucharest, which confirmed the positions of the previous meeting of the Executive Committee and the attitude of the delegation from Budapest. The results of the Plenary were immediately published and popularized in the press in order to gather the support of the “popular masses”.

The newsreel documents a number of rallies that took place on a local level to inform the population about the recent events – in factories, plants and higher education institutions. Note the absence of synchronous sound and the conventional framing and editing, with one speaker in the foreground facing an impressive crowd, silent or applauding in unison as a sign of unanimity and enthusiasm – a recognisable formula that would become emblematic of the final two decades of the communist regime.  (MB, AB)