Boris Stefanov

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Boris Stefanov (also known as Boris Stefanov Mateev and Boris Ştefanov; Bulgarian: Борис Стефанов Матеев; 1893-?) was a Romanian communist politician, who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR or PCdR) from 1936 to 1940.

1 Biography
2 Notes
3 References

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and activism

Stefanov was born into a rich ethnically Bulgarian landowning family in Dobrudja, the region straddling Romania and Bulgaria,^[1] and spoke fluent Romanian.^[2] He was a relative of the socialist activist Christian Rakovsky,^[3] and engaged in activities for regional self-determination (see Internal Dobrujan Revolutionary Organisation). He apparently went into bankruptcy, and had to renounce much of his inheritance.^[4]

Having also joined the Socialist Party of Romania (PS), Stefanov became a successful candidate for Parliament, but, together with Gheorghe Cristescu and Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea, he was not validated into office.^[5] He later became critical of the PS' moderate wing, and supported a Bolshevik program, becoming one of the PCR's founding members.^[6] At the time, he began campaigning for a land reform, arguing that the one planned by the Alexandru Averescu government and carried out by Ion I. C. Brătianu was far from sufficient.^[7]

Indicted in the Dealul Spirii Trial and subject to an amnesty,^[8] Stefanov was elected to the General Council of the Party at its second Congress of 1922, and, during the same year, he represented the minor faction in the Chamber of Deputies, and was its envoy to the Comintern.^[9]

[edit] Stefanov and Romanian Communism

Although, like Cristescu, he was criticized by the Comintern for his allegedly minimalist outlook,^[10] he rose to the leadership of the PCR soon after the party was outlawed in 1924, and was known at the time under various pseudonyms (including Popescu, Draganov, and Dragu).^[11] Again arrested in 1926, after a Siguranţa Statului crackdown,^[12] Stefanov was among those exposed after authorities pressured one of his comrades to hand out the names of all PCR leaders.^[13] Supported by the International Red Aid with interventions from Marcel Pauker, he was nonetheless sentenced for treason during a trial he faced in Cluj (the other person indicted, Vasile Luca, was acquitted).^[14]

After many party activists, including the entire Politburo, took refuge to the Soviet Union, Stefanov, who was eventually set free, stood as leader of the local Secretariat (together with Pavel Tcacenko).^[15] He maintained his leadership position after Vitali Holostenco was appointed general secretary, although he ensured close contacts with David Fabian, Holostenco's rival.^[16]

Stefanov led the Romanian delegation to the Fifth and Seventh Comintern World Congresses, after the formation of Popular Fronts was decided by Joseph Stalin; despite his foreign origin, he was perceived as a local member of the PCR, and became general secretary with the deposition of Alexander Stefanski (part of a Soviet-endorsed move allowing more autonomy to the Romanian section).^[17] Subsequently, he engaged in a campaign against alleged Trotskyists, mirroring Soviet measures that led to the Great Purge; a committed Stalinist, he accused both Elena Filipescu and Marcel Pauker of having sided with Leon Trotsky.^[18]

Although himself under suspicion from Soviet overseers, he fled to Moscow in 1938, after PCR activities had been made virtually impossible by authorities of the National Renaissance Front.^[19]

[edit] Exile and later polemics

Removed from the party's leadership in 1940, he was denounced in 1951 by the Central Committee of the PCR, which accused him of having been "divorced from the working class", of having introduced the theory of "neo-serfdom" (see Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea), as well as of having advocated a "liquidationist" policy of a united front with bourgeois parties in 1927.^[20] The actual leadership of the PCR inside Romania was taken over by Bela Breiner.^[21]

Stefanov was a friend of Georgi Dimitrov, who is credited with having rescued him from an almost certain doom after 1938.^[22] He spent the last decades of his life living in exile in Sofia, Bulgaria.^[23] In subsequent periods, Stefanov's image and status remained the subject of allegations inside Communist Romania: in 1961, the high-ranking Communist activist Valter Roman, who had been himself disgraced and rehabilitated by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, spoke out against former Communist politicians who had been purged at various stages, Stefanov included; he was interrupted by Petre Borilă, who notably added a claim that Stefanov had admired Nazism and had seen in it a path to a socialist economy.^[24]

On his 80th birthday in 1963, the Bulgarian Communist government awarded Stefanov the country's top prize, the "Order of Georgi Dimitrov".^[25] The award was viewed as a deliberate attempt to irritate Romania's leadership, and a sign of cooling relations between the PCR and the Bulgarian Communist Party.^[26]