in return, Maoist officials complimented Romanian nationalism by supporting the view that Bessarabia had been a traditional victim of Russian imperialism. The change in policies was to become obvious in 1964, when the Communist regime offered a stiff response to the Valev Plan, a Soviet project of creating trans-national economic units and of assigning Romanian areas the task of supplying agricultural products. Several other measures of that year also presented themselves as radical changes in tone: after Gheorghiu-Dej endorsed Andrei Oţetea's publishing of Karl Marx's Russophobic texts (uncovered by the Polish historian Stanisław Schwann), the PMR itself took a stand against Khrushchevite principles by issuing, in late April, a declaration published in Scînteia, through which it stressed its commitment to a "national path" towards Communism (it read: "There does not and cannot exist a "parent" party and a "son" party or "superior" party and "subordinate" parties"). During late 1964, the PMR's leadership clashed with new Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev over the issue of KGB advisers still present in the Securitate, and eventually managed to have them recalled, making Romania the Eastern Bloc's first country to have accomplished this. These actions gave Romania greater freedom in pursuing the program which Gheorghiu-Dej had been committed to since 1954, one allowing Romania to defy reforms in the Eastern Bloc and to maintain a largely Stalinist course. It has also been argued that Romania's emancipation was, in effect, limited to economic relations and military cooperation, being as such dependent on a relatively tolerant mood inside the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the PMR's nationalism made it increasingly popular with Romanian intellectuals, and the last stage of the Gheorghiu-Dej regime was popularly identified with liberalization. Romanian Communist Party (1965–1989) Ceaușescu's rise Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965 and was succeeded by a collective leadership made up of Nicolae Ceaușescu as general secretary, Chivu Stoica as president and Ion Gheorghe Maurer as Premier. Ceaușescu removed rivals such as Stoica, Alexandru Drăghici, and Gheorghe Apostol from the government, and ultimately from the party leadership, and began accumulating posts for himself. By 1969, he was in complete control of the Central Committee. The circumstances surrounding this process are still disputed, but theories evidence that the support given to him by Ion Gheorghe Maurer and Emil Bodnăraș, as well as the ascendancy of Ilie Verdeț, Virgil Trofin, and Paul Niculescu-Mizil, were instrumental in ensuring legitimacy. Soon after 1965, Ceaușescu used his prerogatives