Ioan Flueraş
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Ioan Flueraş or Fluieraş (November 2, 1882—1952) was a Romanian social democratic politician and a victim of the communist regime.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early activities
Born in Chereluş, Arad County, in Transylvania - which was at the time part of Austria-Hungary -, he trained as a wheelwright and settled in Arad, where he became active in socialist circles. In 1901, he joined the Socialist Democratic Party, which soon reformed itself as the Social Democratic Party of Transylvania and Banat, and began contributing to its press in Hungary; he unsuccessfully ran in elections for the Hungarian Parliament.
Between 1906 and 1914, he was editor in chief of Adevărul (the party newspaper), until it was closed down by Hungarian authorities, and was one of the party's Romanian section leaders. Living in Budapest, Flueraş was conscripted after the outbreak of World War I, and worked for the Austro-Hungarian Air Service in a factory on Csepel Island.
[edit] Transylvanian politics
In the summer of 1918, he and Iosif Jumanca became involved in reestablishing Adevărul, which, inspired by the Fourteen Points, became connected with the fight for emancipation of Romanians in Transylvania and Banat, and their eventual union with Romania. Before the Aster Revolution, Flueraş and Jumanca were charged with contacting the Romanian National Party, negotiations which led, in early October, to the creation of Consiliul Naţional Român Central (CNRC, the Central Romanian National Council). The CNRC was instrumental in convoking the Alba Iulia Assembly of December 1, 1918, one which confirmed Transylvania's secession from the Hungarian Republic, and its will to join with Romania; Flueraş was the Assembly's vicepresident, and subsequently served as Chief of Department for Social security and Hygiene in the Directory Council (the de facto government of the region, led by Iuliu Maniu).
On the very day of the Alba Iulia Assembly, he was elected general secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Transylvania and Banat. In 1920, he was one of Romania's envoys to the Paris Peace Conference.
[edit] Inter-war Romania
In late 1918, the Transylvanian and Banat socialists agreed to join the newly-founded Socialist Party of Romania (PSR) as a distinct section. Alongside Gheorghe Cristescu, Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea and others, Flueraş was a delegate to the Second Congress of the Comintern in Moscow, where the matter of the PSR's joining of the international body and its support of Bolshevik lines were debated. The Transylvanian delegates and, as a former member of the Directory Council, Flueraş first and foremost, were the target of Nikolai Bukharin and Christian Rakovsky's attacks, given that they supported a Greater Romania in front of Bolshevik principles; upon their return, despite protests by Gheorghe Cristescu, Flueraş, Leon Ghelerter, Gheorghe Popovici, and others were expelled from the PSR, now reformed as the Romanian Communist Party (PCR).[1]
After the reestablishment of the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSD) as a socialist group opposed to the PCR, Flueraş served several terms as a party representative to the Chamber of Deputies of Romania. He settled in Bucharest in 1922, and worked for the Labor Ministry; when the authoritarian regime of King Carol II was imposed in 1938, he remained active in the guilds established by the new corporatist structure, but retreated from public life during World War II.
[edit] After World War II
In 1944, after the royal coup that toppled Ion Antonescu's pro-Nazi regime and placed Romania in the Allies camp, he helped in the refounding of the PSD as a legal party, but remained opposed to the growing Soviet influence which had found its advocates inside his political group (the wing led by Lothar Rădăceanu and Ştefan Voitec), and remained loyal to Constantin Titel Petrescu. He thus refused office in the Petru Groza government, and split with the PSD to become active in Petrescu's independent faction.
He was arrested in late 1948, falsely presented as a dissident PSD member,[2] tried, and held in various prisons inside the country, where he was routinely tortured, being ultimately murdered in Gherla.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- (Romanian) Eugen Denize, "Comunismul românesc de la începuturi până la moartea lui Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej. Câteva consideraţii" in Memoria
- Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România, Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
- (Romanian) Alexandru Roz, Ioan Flueraş, un lider social-democrat mort în închisorile comuniste
- (Romanian) Traiul şi sfârşitul lui Ion Flueraş la Gherla, in Memoria, 2/2002
