Romanian forces that continued the war were committed in support of the Soviet army in Transylvania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Those engaged on the Moldavian front were disarmed, and control over the greater part of the country was maintained by the Soviets. Among the occupation troops stationed in Romania was the communist-indoctrinated "Tudor Vladimirescu" division, a force composed of captured Romanian prisoners that had been organized after the German-Romanian defeat at Stalingrad. In addition, the Soviets were given the chairmanship of the Allied Control Commission, the joint body that was established to administer the occupied country. COMMUNIST SEIZURE OF POWER The several conferences held by the Allied powers concerning postwar arrangements and the understandings that resulted from bilateral discussion among individual leaders indicated that the Soviet Union was to become the dominant military and political power in the Balkans. As a result, the Soviets, from the outset of their period of occupation, acted determinedly to consolidate their position within Romania and to influence the development of a permanent postwar governmental system designed along communist lines. Although Romania had surrendered in August 1944, it took several months to create a government stable enough to carry out essential programs. The first postwar coalition regimes included relatively few Communists who ostensibly cooperated with the revived traditional political parties. Despite their small numbers, however, they vigorously engaged in disruptive antigovernment tactics to prevent the stabilization of political authority along democratic lines. This course of action was dictated by the general weakness of the Communists who had surfaced after the war and was handicapped by the absence of partisan or resistance organizations, which could have been used as a basis for expanding political control. Lacking popular support, the Communist Party set about creating mass organizations, labor unions, and front organizations through which they could increase their power. Among the leaders in these activities were Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, an early Communist who had been imprisoned during the war, and Ana Pauker, who had spent the war years in Moscow before returning to Romania after the entry of Soviet forces. By the fall of 1944 the Communists had been successful in grouping a leftist-oriented agrarian party called the Plowman's Front, splinter elements of the Social Democratic Party, various labor unions, and several social welfare organizations into the National Democratic Front. The front became the principal instrument through which the party worked to achieve political dominance.