MONETARY REFORMS AFTER THE W.W.II

AS SHOWN BY THE ROMANIAN STAMPS

 The monetary reform of January 28, 1952

     A period of a relative monetary stability has followed, the highest stamp value being of Lei 100, shown on the Transportation stamp, issued on November 22, 1948, Sc. C34, Mi. 1164. You can see an overprinted version of it below, on the second row, on the right.

    On January 28, 1952 the government has suddenly again deflated the currency, this time without to bring as excuse an earlier inflation period. All the existing money immediately lost its validity, without any transition period.

    This was the second and the definitive blow of the Communist party (the ruling party and the only one accepted by the Constitution) against its declared "class enemies". The result was that everybody lost his money reserves and became fully dependent of the state and of its jobs (practically the only existing jobs). Just to notice that laws, already promulgated earlier, forbade and severely punished the ownership of gold, jewelry or foreign currency. See below on the right the stamp commemorating the new Constitution, that stipulated the rule of the unique party. It was issued issued on April 8, 1948 and surcharged together with other stamps in 1952.

     A limited selection of stamps that were urgently surcharged in the infamous year 1952 is presented above. Some of surcharged stamps of that period are quite scarce (like the Winter Games, the second and the third stamp on the first row, Sc. 847-848, Mi. 1340-1341), because their run was of under 100,000 pieces. The general population and the stamp collectors alike, left without money in their pockets, usually hadn't the means to buy at that time the surcharged stamps. The first not surcharged commemorative set appeared on February 16, 1952 and the first not surcharged definitive set was issued in May 1953. Starting with the surcharged issues of the year 1952, all stamps are postally valid in Romania.

    A new inflation period started in Romania in 1991, an year after the overthrow of the communist regime. Another page on this site shows the 23 (!) stamps surcharged only during the first 8 months of the year 2000.