Revista Română de Geografie Politică Year XII, no. 2, November 2010, pp. 356374 4 ISSN 14542749, EISSN 20651619 Article no. 122114209 9 http://rrgp.uoradea.ro ECONOMICAL DIVERGENCES AND GEOPOLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES. ROMANIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE LAST PERIOD OF THE GHEORGHIUDEJ REGIME Emanuel COPILAŞ West University of Timişoara, Faculty of Political Science, Filosophy and Communications Sciences, Department of Politology, Timişoara, email: copilasemanuel@yahoo.com Abstract: The reconfiguring of Romania’s international position at the beginning of the “60 represents a complex and insufficiently analyzed process, with numerous economical, geopolitical and social implications that help us understand the foreign orientation of Romanian communism in its ideological and political (i)maturity stage. In this context, the stake of the Romanian step can be reduced to the following questions: to what extent did Bucharest distance itself from Moscow? How did it use the contemporary international dynamics in order to attain its goals? Without claiming to offer exhaustive responses, the present essay proposes only to hatch the premises which entailed the autonomization of Romania’s international position with reference to the Moscow centre. Key words: International context, SinoSoviet conflict, RomaniaCOMECON dispute, “independence” declaration, national communism * * * * * * INTRODUCTION Nothing anticipated in 1960, at the third Congress of Romanian Workers Party (RWP), the sudden cooling of RomanianSoviet relations which will occur after only two years. With this occasion, GheorghiuDej, the primesecretary of RWP, expressed himself turgid towards the most important socialist state, servilely insisting upon Moscow’s international merits, which it considered “a model of Leninist policy through the consistency with which promotes the principles of coexistence, through its scientific character based on the profound analysis of all international factors, through the firmness and principledness it unmasks the followers of international tensions, through the perseverance with which it militates for the union of peace forces”. 1 Truly, there were no palpable 1 Congresul…, 1960, p. 99. The documentation for this article was partially facilitated by an AMPOSDRU scholarship, obtained trough the following grant: Investeste în oameni! Fondul Social European, Programul Operaţional Sectorial pentru Dezvoltarea Resurselor Umane 20072013, proiectul „Studiile doctorale factor major de dezvoltare al cercetărilor socioumane şi umaniste”.