police apparatus headed by the Securitate (created in 1949 and rapidly growing in numbers) maintained a steady pace in its suppression of"class enemies", until as late as 1962–1964. In 1962–1964, the party leadership approved a mass amnesty, extended to, among other prisoners, ca. 6,700 guilty of political crimes. This marked a toning down in the violence and scale of repression, after almost twenty years during which the Party had acted against political opposition and active anti-communist resistance, as well as against religious institutions (most notably, the Romanian Roman Catholic and Greek-Catholic Churches). Estimates for the total number of victims in the 1947/1948-1964 period vary significantly: as low as 160,000 or 282,000 political prisoners, and as high 600,000 (according to one estimate, about 190,000 people were killed or died in custody— ). Notorious penal facilities of the time included the Danube-Black Sea Canal, Sighet, Gherla, Aiud, Pitești, and Râmnicu Sărat; another method of punishment was deportation to the inhospitable Bărăgan Plain. Gheorghiu-Dej and the "national path" Nationalism and national communism penetrated official discourse, largely owing to Gheorghiu-Dej's call for economic independence and distancing from the Comecon. Moves to withdraw the country from Soviet overseeing were taken in quick succession after 1953. Khrushchev allowed Constantinescu to dissolve the SovRoms in 1954, followed by the closing of Romanian-Soviet cultural ventures such as Editura Cartea Rusă at the end of the decade. Industrialization along the PMR's own directives highlighted Romanian independence—one of its consequences was the massive steel-producing industrial complex in Galați, which, being dependent on imports of iron from overseas, was for long a major strain on the Romanian economy. In 1957, Gheorghiu-Dej and Emil Bodnăraş persuaded the Soviets to withdraw their remaining troops from Romanian soil. As early as 1956, Romania's political apparatus reconciled with Josip Broz Tito, which led to a series of common economic projects (culminating in the Iron Gates venture). A drastic divergence in ideological outlooks manifested itself only after autumn 1961, when the PMR's leadership felt threatened by the Soviet Union's will to impose the condemnation of Stalinism as the standard in communist states. Following the Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s and the Soviet-Albanian split in 1961, Romania initially gave full support to the Khrushchev's stance, but maintained exceptionally good relations with both Maoist China and Communist Albania. Romanian media was alone among Warsaw Pact countries to report Chinese criticism of the Soviet leadership from its source;