* 1900 – Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Romanian communist activist and sociologist ( d. 1954 )

* November 4 – Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Romanian communist activist and sociologist ( d. 1954 )

# The somewhat less firmly Stalinist " Secretariat Communists ", notably Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu had made it through the Antonescu years by hiding within Romania and had participated in the broad governments immediately after King Michael's 1944 coup.

He was first considered by the Communist Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu for the post of Premier in October 1944.

In Romania, Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca were arrested, with Pătrăşcanu being executed.

Occasionally, as in the 1936 trial of Romanian Communist Party ( PCR ) activists, including Ana Pauker, Alexandru Drăghici, and Alexandru Moghioroş in Craiova, he assisted Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu ).

The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed to have a conversation he had with Nicolae Ceauşescu, who told him about " ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill ": Laszlo Rajk and Imre Nagy from Hungary ; Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej from Romania ; Rudolf Slánský and Jan Masaryk from Czechoslovakia ; the Shah of Iran ; Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, President of Pakistan ; Palmiro Togliatti from Italy ; John F. Kennedy ; and Mao Zedong.

Ştirbey was one of the plenipotentiary signatories of Agreement ; the other signatories were Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Dumitru Dămăceanu, and Ghiţă Popp on the Romanian side, and Rodion Malinovsky on the Soviet side.

Parallel contacts were established, through Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu and Emil Bodnăraş, between the PCdR, the Soviets, and King Michael.

Pictured, left to right: Vasile Luca, Constantin Pîrvulescu, Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Ana Pauker, Teohari Georgescu, Florica Bagdasar and Gheorghe Vasilichi

On 6 March, Groza became leader of a Communist-led government and named Communists to lead the Romanian Armed Forces as well as the ministries of the Interior ( Georgescu ), Justice ( Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu ), Communications ( Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej ), Propaganda ( Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi ) and Finance ( Vasile Luca ).

During the period, the central scene of the PMR was occupied by the conflict between the " Muscovite wing ", the " prison wing " led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and the newly-emerged and weaker " Secretariat wing " led by Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu.

Soon after 1965, Ceauşescu used his prerogatives to convoke a Party Commission headed by Ion Popescu-Puţuri, charged with investigating both Stalinist legacy and Gheorghiu-Dej's purges: resulting in the rehabilitation of a large number of Communist officials ( including, among others, Ştefan Foriş, Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Miron Constantinescu, Vasile Luca, and Romanian victims of the Soviet Great Purge ).

She opposed the purging of the Romanian veterans of the Spanish Civil War and French Resistance as part of Moscow's bloc-wide campaign against Josip Broz Tito, as well as Stalin's plans to have former Communist leader Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu put on trial.

Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu in 1945

Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu was married to Elena, born Herta Schwamen, who had a career as a stage designer ( employed, with Lena Constante, by the Ţăndărică Theater in Bucharest ).

Implicated in the trial and forced to testify against Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, she was given eight years in prison.

Politică şi istoriografie: Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu " (" Cards on th Table.

Politics and Historiography: Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu "), p. 61-63

** " Antisovietismul lui Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu " (" Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu's Anti-Sovietism "), in Jurnalul Naţional, November 1, 2005

* Mihai Rădulescu, Tragedia lui Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu (" Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu's Tragedy "), interview with Corneliu Coposu

One of Gheorghe Tătărescu's last appearances in public was his stand as one of the prosecution's witnesses in the 1954 trial of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, when he claimed that the defendant had been infiltrated into the PCR during the time when he had been premier ( Pătrăşcanu was posthumously cleared of all charges ).

Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the de facto leader of the Prison faction, had supported intensified agricultural collectivization, pushed for Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu's trial and execution, and was a rigid Stalinist ; however, he resented some strains of Soviet influence ( which would become clear at the time of de-Stalinization when, as leader of Communist Romania, he was a determined opponent of Nikita Khrushchev ).

Following the Communist takeover, he was arrested and held as a political prisoner, while being called to testify in the trial of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu.

The agreement, favored by Ana Pauker, was vehemently opposed by another member of the Communist leadership, Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, who argued in favor of " making a distinction inside the bourgeoisie ", and collaborating with the main PNL, while calling Tătărescu's faction " a gang of con artists, blackmailers, and well-known bribers ".

According to Lucreţiu Mihăilescu-Bîrliba by the 2nd century AD, i. e. after the conclusion of the Dacian Wars, the draco symbol was assimilated in the Greco-Roman world with the Dacian ethnos.

* Henri H. Stahl, Gânditori şi curente de istorie socială românească (" Thinkers and Trends in Romanian Social History "), Cap. X: " Doctrina comunistă a lui Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu ( 1901-1954 )" (" The Communist Doctrine of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu ( 1901-1954 )")

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.

His plans for rapid communization also rose opposition inside the party — Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu is known to have advised against them.

In April, Pătrăşcanu was contacted by Ionel Mocsony Stârcea, baron de Foen, marshal of King Michael I's court 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.

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.

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.

Pauker was purged from the party ( along with 192, 000 other party members ); Pătrăşcanu was executed after a show trial.

In the latter capacity, he was the recipient of a 1963 letter by the British philosopher and activist Bertrand Russell, who pleaded with the Romanian authorities to free from jail Belu Zilber ( a victim of the conflict between the Party leadership and Pătrăşcanu, Zilber had been a political prisoner for sixteen years by then ).

The King named General Constantin Sănătescu as Prime Minister of a coalition government which was dominated by the National Peasants ' Party and National Liberal Party, but included Pătrăşcanu as Minister of Justice — the first Communist to hold high office in Romania.

It was also then that, through Pătrăşcanu and Alexandru Drăghici, the Communists consecrated their control of the legal system — the process included the creation of the Romanian People's Tribunals, charged with investigating war crimes, and constantly supported by agitprop in the Communist press.

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 petty nobility ).

Increasingly radical after the success of the October Revolution, he was one of the original members of the PCR ( known as PCdR at the time ) in 1921, 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.

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.

At the Kharkiv Congress of 1928, where he was present under the name Mironov, 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.

With Imre Aladar, Eugen Rozvan, and two others, Pătrăşcanu was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in May 1931 as a candidate for the Workers and Peasants ' Bloc, an umbrella group masking the outlawed party.

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 ).

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 ).