Corneliu Coposu, who had friendly contacts with Pătrăşcanu at the time, attested that the latter had been selected by the Soviets as representative of the Communists ( during negotiations in Cairo, Nikolai Novikov, the Soviet ambassador to Egypt, had reportedly first mentioned Pătrăşcanu's name to Barbu Ştirbey for further contacts ).

Pătrăşcanu authored the proclamation to the country which the King read on National Radio immediately after the coup, and, confronting the new Premier Constantin Sănătescu, imposed himself as a PCR representative on the delegation that signed Romania's armistice with the Soviets, on September 12, 1944.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No piece of evidence or confession was provided until after May 1952 — that is, after the purge of Ana Pauker and Teohari Georgescu, who were accused by the chief Soviet adviser to the Interior Ministry, Alexandr Mihailovich Sakharovskii, of having " sabotaged and postponed investigations " in the Pătrăşcanu case.

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.

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 ).

Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu (; November 4, 1900 – April 17, 1954 ) was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania ( PCR ), also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist.

Pătrăşcanu, who probably attempted to become general secretary early in 1944 ( before Gheorghiu-Dej secured the position for himself ), was considered leader of the party's Secretariat Communists ( perceived as less willing to follow Stalin's directions ).

The actions taken against Pătrăşcanu and others 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, Calmanovici, Victoria Sârbu ( who had been Ştefan Foriş ' lover ), and Alexandru Ştefănescu.

In his most important volumes ( most of which attracted public attention only after 1944 ), Pătrăşcanu combined his commitment to Marxism-Leninism with his sociological training, producing an original outlook on social evolution ( focusing on major trends in Romanian society from the time of the Danubian Principalities to his day ).

Contradicting the Social Democratic ideologists Lothar Rădăceanu and Şerban Voinea ( whom he accused of having lost contact with the working class ), Pătrăşcanu theorized that the Romanian petite bourgeoisie was shrinking under pressure from successful capitalists, while rejecting the notion that civil servants belonged to the middle class.

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 Marcus ), 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 ).

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

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 ).

Pătrăşcanu ( together with Emil Bodnăraş, who maintained links with the Soviets ) represented the Communist Party during the clandestine talks with the National Liberal and National Peasants ' parties, aimed at overthrowing the Antonescu dictatorship.

It is apparent that Pătrăşcanu was alarmed by Pauker's close cooperation with Soviet overseers, and especially by her tight connection with Dmitry Manuilsky ; it was also contended that Pauker was intrigued by Pătrăşcanu's self-promotion in front of Soviet overseers during late 1944.

Arguing in favor of a Romanian communist society during the late 1940s, Pătrăşcanu indicated a series of essential steps to this goal: after discarding all legislation passed by the Ion Antonescu regime and purging the administrative apparatus, a political amnesty was to be declared, all properties upwards of 50 hectares were to be confiscated, the National Bank passed into state property while trade unions came under government supervision and a new labour code was enforced, and civil liberties were enhanced.

Elena Pătrăşcanu was also a party activist, and was instrumental in maintaining links between her husband and other Communist leaders during the early stages of World War II.

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 ).

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.

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.

Pătrăşcanu put pressure on King Michael to sign legislation that went against the letter of the 1923 Constitution, which contributed to the latter's decision to initiate the " royal strike " ( a refusal to countersign documents issued by the Groza executive ).

Responding to Hungarian-Romanian clashes, Pătrăşcanu gave a speech in the city of Cluj, one in which he attempted to identify communism and patriotism.

A party committee which included Ion Popescu-Puţuri 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.

According to Pătrăşcanu, Moldavia and Wallachia had forsaken feudalism by the mid 18th century, maintaining instead a form of serfdom which had not been affected by the reforms of Hospodar Constantine Mavrocordatos.

While endorsing some aspects of Dobrogeanu-Gherea's theories regarding the ways in which serfdom was allegedly prolonged, in a discreet form, even after the 20th century, Pătrăşcanu challenged his refusal to investigate the effects of capitalism in rural areas.

According to Pătrăşcanu, the establishment of estate leaseholders, which he viewed as the cause for the 1907 revolt and other, more minor, peasant rebellions, was not a sign of prolonged feudalism, but one of capitalist penetration into agriculture.

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.

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.

The day after the SSI began its inquiry, Pătrăşcanu attempted suicide by slitting his veins with a smuggled razor blade ; upon his recovery, he tried to take his life a second time by swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills.

In time, authorities also alleged that, before 1944, Pătrăşcanu, like Zilber, had acted as an agent of Siguranţa Statului.

Pătrăşcanu contended that the first relevant social conflict had occurred in 1821, at the time of Tudor Vladimirescu's Wallachian uprising.

The Wallachian revolution of 1848, the most successful of similar revolts at the time, was, according to Pătrăşcanu, a mature reaction of bourgeois circles against boyar supremacy (" it only sought [...] to replace a minority with another "), but was generally not opposed to preserving an estate-based economy.

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.

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

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.

Caragiale's short stories and novellas have inspired authors such as Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Gheorghe Brăescu, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, Dumitru D. Pătrăşcanu, I. Peltz, and, in later decades, Radu Cosaşu, Ioan Lăcustă, Horia Gârbea and Dumitru Radu Popa.

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.

Although, overall, Pătrăşcanu was argued to have been much less revolutionary-minded than various other PCR ideologues, his original perspective on Marxism remained strongly connected with party doctrine in its most essential points ( 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 ).