By 1983, membership of the PCR had risen to 3.3 million, and, in 1989, to 3.7–3.8 million—meaning that, in the end, over 20% of Romanian adults were party members, making the PCR the largest communist group of the Eastern Bloc after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 64,200 basic party units, answering to county committees, varying in number and representing various areas of Romanian society, were officially recorded in 1980. Statistics also indicated that, during the transition from the 1965 PMR (with 8% of the total population) to the 1988 PCR, the membership of workers had grown from 44 to 55%, while that of peasants had dropped from 34 to 15%. In the end, these records contrasted the fact that the PCR had become completely subservient to its leader and no longer had any form of autonomous activity, while membership became a basic requirement in numerous social contexts, leading to purely formal allegiances and political clientelism.