Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu

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Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu (November 4, 1900—April 17, 1954) was a leading member of the Communist Party of Romania (PCR), a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at Bucharest University.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Pătrăşcanu was born in Bacău to a leading political family, as the son of Poporanist figure Dumitru D. Pătrăşcanu (Lucreţiu's mother was a scion of the Stoika family of Transylvanian small nobility).[1] He became a Poporanist and later a socialist in his youth,[2] joining the Socialist Party of Romania in 1919.[3] He was editor of its newspaper Socialismul in 1921.[4]

Professionally, he was educated at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Law (graduated 1922) and at the University of Leipzig (earning his PhD in 1925);[5] he wrote ample studies of social history, expressing Marxist views.

Increasingly radical after the success of the October Revolution,[6] he was one of the original members of the PCR (known as PCdR at the time) in 1921,[7] Pătrăşcanu and Elek Köblös were the only two representatives of the group to the 4th Comintern Congress in Moscow (November-December 1922) who had been members of the Socialist Party.[8] Alongside the former socialists and the wing of members in exile were Ana and Marcel Pauker, both of whom opposed the former socialist group; Ana Pauker was to lead the so-called Muscovite wing of the party after she decided to remain inside the Soviet Union.[9] Back in Romania, Pătrăşcanu was arrested and imprisoned at Jilava in 1924 (the year when the party was outlawed); he went on hunger strike until being relocated to a prison hospital.[10]

At the Kharkiv Congress of 1928, where he was present under the name Mironov,[11] Pătrăşcanu clashed with the Comintern overseer Bohumír Šmeral, as well as with many his fellow party members, over the issue of Bessarabia and Moldovenism, which was to be passed into a resolution proposing that Greater Romania was an imperialist entity. Pătrăşcanu argued:

"Moldovans are not a nation apart and — from a historical and geographical point of view — Moldovans are the same Romanians as the Romanians in Moldavia [on the right bank of the Prut River]. Thus, I believe that the introduction of such a false point renders the resolution itself false."[12]

With Imre Aladar and three others, Pătrăşcanu was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1931 as a candidate for an umbrella group masking the outlawed party.[13] Later in the same year, the Vth Party Congress (held in Soviet exile, at Gorikovo), chose him among the new Central Committee members — at the moment when Alexander Stefanski rose to the position of general secretary.[14]

In 1932, he was involved in polemics at the Criterion group, where he and his collaborator Belu Zilber defended a Stalinist view of Vladimir Lenin in front of criticism from the far right Mircea Vulcănescu and Mihail Polihroniade,[15] as well as from the Austromarxist perspective of Henri H. Stahl.[16]

Pătrăşcanu again served as the PCdR's representative to the Comintern in 1933, and 1934 (remaining in Moscow until 1935),[17] during which time he is thought to have developed doubts about Stalinism itself. He put these questions aside in order to prioritize opposition to fascism, and remained active in the PCR. In 1936, he was heading the defense team of PCR members who were facinc a much-publicized trial in Craiova, but was himself denounced as a communist and consequently handed the position to Ion Gheorghe Maurer.[18]

[edit] World War II

Pătrăşcanu was imprisoned during World War II and, after August 1940, spent time at the Târgu Jiu internment camp with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and the "prison faction" of the Party (the communists inside Romania, virtually all imprisoned at various stages of the war, as opposed to those who had taken refuge inside the Soviet Union).

Like his fellow activist Scarlat Callimachi, he was set free by the National Legionary Government — at a time when when the fascist Iron Guard, who allied Romania with Nazi Germany, was trying to preserve good relations with the Soviet Union.[19] In 1941, following the Legionary Rebellion, he was again arrested by the regime of Conducător Ion Antonescu. After a release from camp for health reasons in 1943, he was under house arrest in Poiana Ţapului; allowed to settle in Bucharest later in that year, he remained under supervision in May 1944.[20]

In April, Pătrăşcanu was contacted by Ionel Mocsony Stârcea, baron de Foen, marshal of King Michael I's court the between 1942 and 1944, who mediated an agreement between the monarch and the Communists regarding a pro-Allied move to overthrow Antonescu and withdraw Romania, which was fighting the Soviets on the Eastern Front, from the Axis.[21] Pătrăşcanu (together with Emil Bodnăraş, who maintained links with the Soviets)[22] represented the Communist Party during the clandestine talks with the National Liberal and National Peasants' parties, aimed at overthrowing the Antonescu dictatorship. According to Mocsony Stârcea, Pătrăşcanu was responsible for a compromise between the Communist Party and institutions of the Romanian monarchy (allegedly assuring the king that it was not his party's intent to proclaim a republic without a previous referendum on the matter).[23]

The collaboration led to the arrest of Ion Antonescu and Mihai Antonescu at the Royal Palace in Bucharest, during the August 23 Coup (1944). Pătrăşcanu authored the proclamation to the country which the King read on National Radio immediately after the coup.[24] Largely responsible for the success his party had in controlling Romania's legal framework for the following years,[25] he also represented Romania during the armistice talks in Moscow later in 1944. Pătrăşcanu joined the Central Committee of the party in 1945 - after having returned to Romania with the Red Army late in the previous year.

During Soviet occupation, he served on the Politburo from 1946 to 1947 and held power in the new governments, as Minister without Portfolio (1944) and Minister of Justice (1944-1948).[26] Pătrăşcanu, who probably attempted to become general secretary early in 1944 (before Gheorghiu-Dej secured the position for himself),[27] was considered leader of the party's Secretariat Communists (perceived as less willing to follow Stalin's directions).

After ascension of the Petru Groza government, Pătrăşcanu was also one of the initiators of purges and persecutions, being responsible for dismissing and arresting members of the civil service who were considered suspect, for the creation of the Romanian People's Tribunals, as well as the appointment of prosecutors (promoting Avram Bunaciu, Constanţa Crăciun, and Alexandra Sidorovici).[28] He put pressure on the monarch to sign legislation that went against the letter of the 1923 Constitution, which contributed to the latter's decision to initiate the "royal strike" (refusing to countersign documents issued by the Groza executive).[29]

[edit] Conflicts with the party

During the late 1940s, he is thought to have begun expressing his opposition to strict Stalinist guidelines; at the same time, Pătrăşcanu had become suspect to the rest of the party leadership for his intellectual approach to socialism.[30] Gheorghe Apostol, a collaborator of Gheorghiu-Dej's, later expressed a particular view on the matter of Pătrăşcanu's relations with the rest of the party:

"He was a reliable party intellectual. But he was also a very arrogant man, self-important, intolerant, and unwilling to communicate with his party comrades. And yet, [Gheorghiu-]Dej treasured him. Between '46-'48, Pătrăşcanu changed quite a lot."[31]

Historiography is divided over the possibility of Pătrăşcanu having initially allied himself with the PCR's second in command, Ana Pauker, in her post-war confrontation with Gheorghiu-Dej[32] (despite the fact that Pătrăşcanu was allegedly alarmed by Pauker's close cooperation with Soviet overseers, and especially by her tight connection with Dmitry Manuilsky).[33]

During the campaign preceding the rigged elections of 1946, he gave a speech in the Transylvanian city of Cluj (in response to Hungarian-Romanian clashes), attempting to identify communism and patriotism.[34] It stated:

"In the name of the government and of the PCR, I raise my voice against border changes [in connection with the disputed status of newly-recovered Northern Transylvania]. Democratic Romania ensures equal rights to coinhabiting nationalities, but the Magyar population needs to understand that its belonging to the Romanian state is definitive. Nobody has the right to debate our borders."[35]

He ran for the position of deputy in Arad County, and won through various electoral frauds (in Arad's case, forty inspectors nominated by the government had sole control over counting and recording the results).[36]

Pătrăşcanu soon received harsh criticism from Gheorghiu-Dej, who branded the views expressed as "chauvinism" and "revisionism".[37] In parallel, the National Peasants' Party, as the main force opposing the PCR, published praises of Pătrăşcanu in its paper Dreptatea, until Pătrăşcanu met with the editor, Nicolae Carandino, and explained that such articles were harming his image inside the Communist Party.[38] Nevertheless, Pătrăşcanu's writings of the time show that, in contrast with his 1928 point of view, he had largely accommodated Leninist principles regarding the national issue and Bessarabian topics,[39] although he used more neutral terms than the ones present in official propaganda,[40] and was known to have deplored the unwillingness of the PCR to reduce and refine its internationalist policies.[41]

Although, overall, Pătrăşcanu was argued to have been much less revolutionary-minded than various other PCR ideologues,[42] his original perspective on Marxism remained strongly connected with party doctrine in its most essential points[43] (including his intense advocacy of collectivization, using statistics to point out the existence of a class of chiaburi - the Romanian equivalent of the Soviet kulaks).[44]

In 1946-1947, he was a member of the Gheorghe Tătărescu-headed Romanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. According to Zilber, during this time, he read Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon[45] (a glimpse into forced confession alluding to the 1936-1937 Moscow Trials, the book was banned throughout the Eastern Bloc). The attitudes he expressed in Paris were considered nationalist by his Soviet overseers,[46] and he himself complained to Gheorghiu-Dej about the party's suspicion surrounding his diplomatic activities.[47]

He was progressively marginalized inside the party: his texts became subject to censorship and, on public occasions, and his name was mentioned after those of less significant politicians.[48] Significantly, the communist press virtually ceased referring to Pătrăşcanu as "comrade", and used instead the more distant formula "Professor Pătrăşcanu", at the same time as Gheorghiu-Dej's speeches on combating internal currents of the Party.[49] The VIth Party Congress in February 1948 did not confirm his Central Committee membership, and in the months following the event, he was removed from government office.[50]

[edit] Trial and execution

On April 28, 1948, Pătrăşcanu was arrested and came under the investigation of a party committee, comprising the high-ranking Communists Teohari Georgescu, Alexandru Drăghici, and Iosif Rangheţ; interrogations were occasionally attended by Gheorghiu-Dej.[51] His file indicates that the secret police (which was soon to become the Securitate) had been keeping him under surveillance from as early as the summer of 1946.[52]

On Gheorghiu-Dej's initiative (and apparently contrary to the committee's conclusions), he was transferred into Securitate custody in autumn 1949, under the provisional charge that he had not reported various political crimes.[53] A report on "Titoism" and collaboration with the maverick Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was presented to the Cominform: it placed Pătrăşcanu, the Hungarian Republic's László Rajk, and Bulgaria's Traicho Kostov in the same camp, as "imperialist agents" (see Tito-Stalin split, Informbiro).[54] It was also at that time that Pătrăşcanu's trial also implicated Remus Koffler, who had been imprisoned in 1944 (during the confrontation between Gheorghiu-Dej and Ştefan Foriş.[55]

It was in 1951 that he responded to the charges voiced by Gheorghiu-Dej after the Cluj incident, indicating that he had attempted to "answer to the [Hungarian] revisionist campaign", as well as to aid his party in competing with the appeal of the National Peasants' Party among Romanians in Transylvania (to "take the weapon that was Transylvania away from Maniu supporters' hands").[56]

He was also accused of having been financed by "bourgeois" figures during the electoral campaign, and even of having been bought by agents of the United States[57] or of planning, together with Mocsony Stârcea and Titoist agents, an "imperialist" insurrection in Săvârşin.[58] No piece of evidence or confession was provided until after May 1952, when the Plenum Meeting of the Central Committee assigned the investigation to a team of Securitate officials and their Soviet advisors, directly supervised by Alexandru Drăghici.[59] In time, authorities also alleged that, before 1944, Pătrăşcanu had acted as an agent of Siguranţa Statului infiltrating the party.[60]

Pătrăşcanu was kept in detention until 1954, when he was executed, with Koffler, in Jilava, near Bucharest, after a show trial overseen by Iosif Chişinevschi.[61] It is possible that he was tortured throughout the questioning conducted on direct orders from the Securitate's Alexandru Drăghici, and he had one leg amputated for unknown reasons before his trial.[62]

He refused to be represented by a lawyer, and even to organize his own defense. Aside from some outbursts against the prosecutors, he stated:

"I have nothing to say, except [that I] spit on the charges brought against me."[63]

Pătrăşcanu's trial signaled the start of a wave of arrests and prison sentences, including that of his wife, as well as those of Harry Brauner, Lena Constante, Petre Pandrea (who was Pătrăşcanu's brother-in-law), Herant Torosian, Mocsony Stârcea, Zilber, the engineer Emil Calmanovici, and Alexandru Ştefănescu.[64] In preparation for the trial, the Securitate organized violent interrogations of political detainees (among others, the National Peasant Party's Corneliu Coposu and the Liberal politician Bebe Brătianu) or suspects (Gheorghe Tătărescu, who testified against Pătrăşcanu and was the target of a violent response from the latter).[65]

[edit] Rehabilitation and legacy

He was posthumously rehabilitated in April 1968 by Nicolae Ceauşescu, in the latter's attempt to discredit his predecessors and establish his own legitimacy.[66] The main target of this campaign, as indicated by a Central Committee resolution, was Drăghici:

"[...] the party leadership has uncovered the anti-party line which Alexandru Drăghici, encouraged by servile, uncultured, and decaying elements, has introduced to the [Securitate] bodies' activities, attempting to remove them from party control and to erect them into supreme bodies standing above party and state leadership, thus causing serious harm to activity in various domains, including that of scientific research."[67]

A party committee which included Ion Popescu-Puţuri[68] investigated the matter of his arrest and interrogation, concluding that evidence against Pătrăşcanu was fabricated, that he had been systematically beaten and otherwise ill-treated, and that a confession had been prepared for him to sign.[69] This was coupled with various irregularities in procedures (such as the court having been given only 24 hours to assess evidence from years of investigation, and the death penalty having been decided by the party leadership before being imposed on the panel of judges).[70] Evidence was also presented that some of the false confessions were designed as political weapons in internal party struggles (implicating names of politicians who were not facing trial at the time).[71]

Ceauşescu profited on the enduring perception of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu's activities as patriotic and verging on dissidence, while shadowing his fundamental role in the creation of the new penal system in Romania. In fact, although he was frequently quoted and displayed by the regime, Pătrăşcanu's life was usually described in brief and vague sentences.[72] In popular discourse, Pătrăşcanu was also largely identified with positive causes, and remained among the most popular communist figures after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 toppled the regime.[73]

The arguably most influential of Pătrăşcanu's writings remains his analysis of the Romanian intelligentsia, part of Probleme de bază ale României.[74] Transcending Leninist rhetoric, the work postulates a characteristic inability of Romanian intellectuals in sacrificing petty politics for the common good, and argues that Romanian elites, while in subservience to the State, have traditionally been attracted to extremism.[75]

[edit] Personal life

Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu was married to Elena, born Herta Schwamen, who had a career as a stage designer. Elena, who was Jewish, avoided the first wave of official anti-Semitic persecutions at the end of the 1930s (under the Octavian Goga government) by converting to the Romanian Orthodox Church (she was baptized by the socialist sympathiser Gala Galaction).[76] The Pătrăşcanus had no children.

Implicated in the trial and forced to testify against her husband, Elena Pătrăşcanu was given eight years in prison.[77]

[edit] In art

Titus Popovici's play Puterea şi adevărul ("The Power and the Truth"), published in the early 1970s (staged by Liviu Ciulei and filmed, in 1971, by Manole Mărcuş), centers on the character Petrescu, largely based on Pătrăşcanu, who is persecuted by the party secretary Pavel Stoian (a disguised reference to Gheorghiu-Dej), while living to see his hopes for a better future fulfilled by Mihai Duma (standing for Ceauşescu).[78] For a while after its publication, Puterea şi adevărul was translated into several languages and used as official propaganda in cultural contacts with the outside world.[79]

In his 1993 film The Mirror (Începutul adevărului, also known as Oglinda), Sergiu Nicolaescu cast Şerban Ionescu as Pătrăşcanu.

[edit] Works

  • Un veac de frământări sociale, 1821-1907 (A Century of Social Unrest, 1821-1907)
  • Probleme de bază ale României (Fundamental Problems of Romania)
  • Sub trei dictaturi (Under Three Dictatorships)
  • Curente şi tendinţe în filozofia românească (Schools of Thought and Tendencies in Romanian Philosophy)

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Mocsony Stârcea, in Caranfil, p.30
  2. ^ Cioroianu, p.236-238
  3. ^ Cioroianu, p.238-239
  4. ^ Cioroianu, p.239
  5. ^ Cioroianu, p.240
  6. ^ Cioroianu, p.238
  7. ^ Cioroianu, p.34; Tismăneanu, p.48
  8. ^ Cioroianu, p.34; Frunză, p.39
  9. ^ Cioroianu, p.239-240; Frunză, p.38-39
  10. ^ Cioroianu, p.240
  11. ^ Cioroianu, p.37; Ioniţă, p.45
  12. ^ Pătrăşcanu, in Ioniţă, p.45
  13. ^ Frunză, p.148-149; Tismăneanu, p.72
  14. ^ Cioroianu, p.39; Tismăneanu, p.72
  15. ^ Ornea, p.150
  16. ^ Petreu, "O generaţie apolitică, paricidă, autohtonistă, experienţialistă, antipaşoptistă"
  17. ^ Editor's note in Caranfil, p.30
  18. ^ Cioroianu, p.234
  19. ^ Chiva & Şchiop
  20. ^ Editor's note in Caranfil, p.29
  21. ^ Mocsony Stârcea, in Caranfil, p.30
  22. ^ Frunză, p.131
  23. ^ Mocsony Stârcea, in Caranfil, p.30
  24. ^ Barbu, p.188
  25. ^ Barbu, p.188-190
  26. ^ Cioroianu, p.232
  27. ^ Frunză, p.214-215
  28. ^ Cioroianu, p.226, 232-233; Frunză, p.227, 471
  29. ^ Cioroianu, p.226-227
  30. ^ Cioroianu, p.92-93, 175, 177, 195, 222, 234-235, 262; Tismăneanu, p.114
  31. ^ Apostol, in Antoniu et al.
  32. ^ Cioroianu, p.177, 184-195
  33. ^ Cioroianu, p.179
  34. ^ Cioroianu, p.225-226
  35. ^ Pătrăşcanu, June 1946, in Betea, p.37
  36. ^ Betea, p.38-39
  37. ^ Gheorghiu-Dej during a PCR Central Committee plenum, November 1946, in Frunză, p.362, in Tismăneanu, p.114
  38. ^ Betea, p.37
  39. ^ Cioroianu, p.224, 246-247, 261
  40. ^ Cioroianu, p.247, 253-254
  41. ^ Boia, p.275; Cioroianu, p.261-262
  42. ^ Cioroianu, p.241-244, 255-256, 261-262
  43. ^ Cioroianu, p.241, 248-251, 254-255
  44. ^ Cioroianu, p.252
  45. ^ Zilber, rendered in Tismăneanu, p.75, 114
  46. ^ Frunză, p.359-360; Tismăneanu, p.114
  47. ^ Betea, p.37
  48. ^ Frunză, p.362
  49. ^ Frunză, p.360-361
  50. ^ Drăgoescu, p.23; Frunză, p.363
  51. ^ Cioroianu, p.201; Drăgoescu, p.23
  52. ^ Drăgoescu, p.23
  53. ^ Drăgoescu, p.24
  54. ^ Tismăneanu, p.106
  55. ^ Frunză, p.402
  56. ^ Pătrăşcanu, in Betea, p.37
  57. ^ Betea, p.36, 37; Drăgoescu, p.24
  58. ^ Betea, p.39
  59. ^ Drăgoescu, p.24, 25
  60. ^ Drăgoescu, p.24-25; Ioniţoiu
  61. ^ Drăgoescu, p.25-26; Ioniţoiu
  62. ^ Drăgoescu, p.25; Frunză, p.408-409
  63. ^ Pătrăşcanu, in Drăgoescu, p.26
  64. ^ Frunză, p.401, 409; Ioniţoiu
  65. ^ Cioroianu, p.228; Ioniţoiu
  66. ^ Boia, p.256; Cioroianu, p.233
  67. ^ Analele Institutului de Studii Istorice şi Social-Politice de pe lângă CC al PCR, in Müller, p.62
  68. ^ Drăgoescu, p.23
  69. ^ Drăgoescu, p.25
  70. ^ Drăgoescu, p.25
  71. ^ Drăgoescu, p.26
  72. ^ Boia, p.256; Cioroianu, p.233; Müller, p.61
  73. ^ Cioroianu, p.223-224,230-231
  74. ^ Cioroianu, p.256
  75. ^ Cioroianu, p.256-259, 260
  76. ^ Antoniu et al.
  77. ^ Ioniţoiu
  78. ^ Cioroianu, p.229-230
  79. ^ Cioroianu, p.229

[edit] References

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