Vasile Luca

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Vasile Luca (born Luka László; June 8, 1898—July 23, 1963) was a Romanian communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) from 1945 and until his imprisonment in the 1950s.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early activities 1.2 Prison and exile 1.3 Political leadership 1.4 Downfall 2 Rehabilitation 3 Notes 4 References

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early activities

A native of Szentkatolna (or Sâncatolna - present-day Catalina)^[1] in Transylvania (at the time part of Austria-Hungary), Luca was an ethnic Hungarian of the Székely community. In the period following the Aster Revolution, as Transylvania's administration was taken over by Romania, he joined Károly Kratochwill's Székely Division (formed inside Hungary by Hungarian Transylvanian refugees).^[2] After the Romanian Army crushed the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Luca took refuge in Braşov and began working for the Romanian Railways,^[3] attempting to align railworkers' trade unions with the Profintern.^[4] Luca later admitted that, in Leninist terms, he had been mistaken to leave the Division — after allegedly being persuaded to do so by a group of workers in Satu Mare —, as he had missed an opportunity to carry out "revolutionary work under party directives", although he confessed that he had been denied membership of the Hungarian Communist Party.^[5]

He soon adhered to the larger wing of the former Socialist Party of Romania, which had established the Romanian Communist Party. In 1924, as the party was outlawed and forced in the underground, Luca was elected secretary of the Braşov regional committee.^[6] In conflicts inside the party, he was punished by the Comintern supervisors and the Stalinist leadership, being recalled from his party functions^[7] and later required to display a dose of self-criticism.^[8]

[edit] Prison and exile

Arrested several times and sentenced to prison terms (notably defended by Ion Gheorghe Maurer during a 1938 trial),^[9] Vasile Luca was serving time in Cernăuţi, having been found guilty of attempt to cross the border between the Kingdom of Romania and the Ukrainian SSR, when the Soviet Union annexed Northern Bukovina (1940).^[10] He took up Soviet citizenship and sat on the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR; after the start of Operation Barbarossa, he was instrumental in the creation of a Romanian language section for Radio Moscow, broadcasting propaganda against the Ion Antonescu regime and its German allies (see Romania during World War II).^[11] At the time, he began his collaboration with Ana Pauker, who led the main cell of the PCR's "exterior wing", created by those who had taken refuge inside the Soviet Union.

He enlisted in the Red Army, helped recruit Romanian prisoners of war to form the Tudor Vladimirescu Division,^[12] and then returned to Romania with the Soviet troops in late 1944 (see Soviet occupation of Romania).^[13] Luca later stated that he had been disappointed in the fact that local forces under King Mihai I had taken the initiative in ousting Antonescu and aligning the country with the Allies, arguing that the PCR was supposed to await the Soviets' presence.^[14]

[edit] Political leadership

One year later, he became Party Secretary, and later became the Finance Minister and the Deputy Premier in the Petru Groza cabinet, being involved in all major conflicts between the PCR and the traditional opposition forces, the National Peasants' Party and the National Liberal Party: he gave inflammatory speeches on the issue of Northern Transylvania's return to Romania (recommending its postponing), on projects regarding the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as well as on collectivization.^[15] With those of Pauker, Teohari Georgescu, and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, his name was one of the most prominent in propaganda (including the famous collective slogan in incorrect Romanian Ana, Luca, Teo, Dej / Bagă spaima în burgheji^[16] — "Ana, Luca, Teo[hari], Dej / Scare the bourgeois").^[17] The group of leaders was active in supression of various inner-party political factions, starting with that of Ştefan Foriş, and continued with those of Remus Koffler and Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu.^[18]

He was personally charged with securing the brutal transition to collective farming,^[19] and kept his ministerial office after the proclamation of Communist Romania. Inside the Secretariat, he, Pauker and Georgescu eventually became the main obstacle in the way of Gheorghiu-Dej's policies.^[20]

[edit] Downfall

On the initiative of General Secretary Gheorghiu-Dej, he was purged from the party in May 1952 (formally, in August 1953),^[21] together with Pauker, after being charged, through the voice of Miron Constantinescu, with "grave deviations" and taking a "right wing opportunistic line, breaking away from the working classes" (see Right Opposition).^[22] His interrogation, approved and supervised by Soviet authorities,^[23] also involved aspects of his past: it was alleged that, as a youth, he had taken part in conflicts opposing the Székely Division and the communists on the side of the former, that he had been recruited by the Romanian secret police (Siguranţa Statului) in the early 1920s and had thus infiltrated the PCR, and that he had been payed to encourage fighting inside the party.^[24]

It is apparent that the purge was due to Luca's opposition to the devaluation of the Romanian leu, which had been ordered by the Soviet Union and carried out on January 28, 1952.^[25] In October 1954, he was sentenced to death for economic sabotage, but, after appealing to the PCR leaders, he had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment and hard labour,^[26] and died 11 years later in the prison of Aiud, having been kept in almost complete isolation.^[27] Twenty-nine of his subordinates — Ministry employees and Centrocoop workers — were arrested with him: only four of them were ever tried, but all were subject to torture.^[28]

In 1952, charges against Luca implicated Teohari Georgescu, who was accused of împăciuitorism ("appeasing attitude")^[29] and admitted to "not having seen the gravity of Luca's deeds"^[30] in a futile effort to save himself from incarceration. Pauker herself claimed that she had suspected Luca of attempting to topple Gheorghiu-Dej, and argued that her Jewish origins and Luca's Hungarian roots had made them the target of Soviet suspicion (she recalled having been told so by Andrey Vyshinsky), as well as unpopular inside Romania.^[31]

The entire works of Luca, Pauker, and Georgescu were removed from their places in officially-sanctioned libraries, and quotes from them were systematically deleted from reference works.^[32]

[edit] Rehabilitation

In September 1965, just two years after his death and a six months after the death of Gheorghiu-Dej, the change in tone signalled by Nicolae Ceauşescu, the new general secretary, led to the re-evaluation of Luca's case by a party commission that included Ion Popescu-Puţuri.^[33]

The investigation revealed major irregularities and a pattern of abusive measures, including the direct implication of Gheorghiu-Dej, Iosif Chişinevschi, and Securitate chief Alexandru Drăghici, into the proceedings, as well as inhumane treatment to which Luca had been subjected.^[34] It resulted in Luca's rehabilitation in 1968 (although the final verdict seemed to confirm that Luca had betrayed some of his comrades during his 1920s stay in Jilava prison).^[35]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• (Romanian) Excerpt from Ana Pauker's interrogation, in Sfera Politicii
• Dosarele Istoriei, 2/I, 1996:
  • Dragoş Drăgoescu, "Arma politică a reabilitărilor. Caruselul crimelor şi liderii comunişti români", p.20-34
  • Marius Oprea, "Radiografia unei înscenări. «Devierea de dreapta»", p.48-53
• (Romanian) Lavinia Betea, "Gheorghe Maurer – «aparător al comuniştilor»", in Jurnalul Naţional, February 9, 2005, and "Sovieticul Vasile Luca", in Jurnalul Naţional, November 15, 2005
• (Romanian) Ion Cristoiu, "România cu ochi albaştri - Pauker si Luca, interzişi", in Jurnalul Naţional, October 3, 2006
• Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România, Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
• (Romanian) Vasile Luca's autobiography, addressed to the Comintern, and other testimonies he gave, in Jurnalul Naţional, February 8, 2005
• Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003, ISBN 0-52-023747-1)