It was only then that the public learned about the several small armed groups, which sometimes termed themselves "hajduks", that had taken refuge in the Carpathian Mountains, where some hid for ten years from authorities.

[3] Some academics argue that the extent and influence of the movement is often exaggerated in the post-communist Romanian media, memoirs of the survivors, and even historiography, while the authoritarian, anti-Semitic and/or xenophobic ideology of part of the groups are generally overlooked or minimized.

[4] Others, generally civic associations and former dissidents, argue that had external circumstances been different, and had the Western powers not permitted the Soviet Union to incorporate Romania and other countries from Eastern Europe into its sphere of domination, the anti-communist armed resistance could have led a successful war of national liberation.

[5][6] Still others, mainly former officials, former members of the Securitate secret police, as well as sympathizers of the communist government, label these clandestine groups as fascist, criminal, or anti-national elements subordinate to foreign Western interests seeking to destabilize the country.

[7] A battalion was created and trained by the Wehrmacht to fight the NKVD;[8] consisting exclusively of local volunteers, this unit, which reached up to 1,378 fighters, could not stem the tide.

In late 1944 and early 1945, some small armed groups were formed in Romania, with a mission of harassing the Red Army in a future war between the Soviets and the West.

After the communists also sent in armed workers, violence erupted between the two groups; the Romanian soldiers in the Soviet Army fired warning shots and ultimately the crowd dispersed.

[10][11] After the elections of 1946, a coalescence of anti-communist forces led to a structure reuniting generals, senior officers, and politicians preparing and coordinating armed groups under a single command.

[12] The central coordinating structure inside Romania reported on this initiative to the Romanian National Committee residing in Paris, which in turn informed the Western governments.

However, starting with the summer of 1948, individuals or small groups went underground in the Carpathians, forming various units of armed resistance in what was a relatively large movement, gathering several thousand people.

The movement was related to the spate of mass arrests hitting the country after the communists seized power on 30 December 1947, as well as to the political and economical measures which ruined a sizable part of the peasantry and the middle class.

While some went underground to escape imminent arrest, more generally people fled as they abandoned hope for surviving after being economically ruined and risking detention or worse.

Thus, the British consular official in Cluj, reporting on 1 May 1949 on the situation of partisans under the leadership of General Corneliu Dragalina noted that: clothing and medicine are short and this is probably true as their numbers have been increased by a considerable proportion of women and children since the March 1st land expropriation.

A smaller category of insurgents were Romanian refugees recruited in Europe by the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), trained in France, Italy, and Greece and then dropped in the Carpathians.

At the beginning of 1949, the CIA through its Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) began to recruit displaced Romanians from West Germany, Austria, and Yugoslavia.

Among the Romanian volunteers recruited by the CIA at the beginning of 1951 were Constantin Săplăcan, Wilhelm Spindler, Gheorghe Bârsan, Matias Bohm, and Ilie Puiu.

In the Apuseni Mountains region of Transylvania, the most active group was led by Leon Șușman, a former member of the Iron Guard who had been sentenced for his participation in the Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom.

[20] An armed group called "The National Defense Front-The Haiduc Corps" was headed by a former officer of the Royal Army who participated in the war against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, Major Nicolae Dabija.

Gavrilă-Ogoranu states that some of the arrested rebels and their supporters were killed during interrogation, while other members of resistance groups were indicted in public or secret trials, and sentenced to death or prison.

Capital punishment was carried out – either secretly, with bodies thrown into unknown common graves, or publicly in order to intimidate the local population.

The social structure of the insurgent groups was heterogeneous, comprising a considerable part of peasants, many students, and intellectuals as well as several army officers.

[12] A report of the Securitate from 1951 containing information on 804 arrested resistance members ranking among 17 "mountain bands" reveals the following: 63% of people who participated in the anti-communist insurgency had no political affiliation.

[68] Elisabeta Rizea and her husband, two peasants opposed to the government's policy of forced collectivization, joined the guerrilla group "Haiducii Muscelului" led by Colonel Gheorghe Arsenescu, providing food and supplies.

[12] In 2016, a monument dedicated to the anti-communist resistance in Romania and Bessarabia was unveiled in front of the House of the Free Press, in Bucharest, close to the spot where a statue of Vladimir Lenin was between 1960 and 1990.