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| ICONIC FIGURES OF COMMUNISM IN ROMANIA: ANA PAUKER 16/03/2009 |
| (2009-03-16) |
| Last updated: 2009-03-16 14:50 EET |
Political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu has defined the Romanian Communist Party, PCR, as a messianic sect. The comparison is aimed to illustrate the small dimensions of this party, whose members fiercely believed in ideology. Tismaneanu’s definition is partly true. PCR was made up mostly of communists from the Jewish, Hungarian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian minorities, that’s why Romanians believed it had little to do with their aspirations. In spite of this poor representation, PCR had several Romanians among its prominent figures. Gheorghe-Gheorghiu Dej was the most important of them. Ana Pauker, Stefan Floris and Vasile Luca were other communist personalities whose role in implementing the communist regime in the country was at least as important as that of the Romanians.
Ana Pauker was a Romanian communist leader in the interwar period and in the 1940s. Born on February 13th, 1893, into a poor Orthodox Jewish family from Vaslui county, in eastern Romania, under the name of Hannah Robinsohn, Pauker was a teacher with a Jewish school in Bucharest. She embraced socialism at an early age and later married engineer Marcel Pauker, together with whom she had two children, Vlad and Tatiana. Between 1920 and 1930 Ana Pauker visited the Soviet Union and toured Europe, serving the interests of the Communist International (Comintern). She was arrested twice in Romania for communist propaganda: in 1922, together with her husband, Marcel Pauker, then again in 1935. In 1941 she was forced into exile to the Soviet Union. She returned to Romania in 1944 and was seen as the Soviets’ right hand. She was deputy PM and foreign minister of the Petru Groza government. She came into conflict with Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej over the party’s leadership and in 1952 she was ousted from public life. She died of cancer in 1960, after other former opponents of Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, such as Stefan Floris and Lucretiu Patrascanu had been liquidated. She was one of the toughest figures of the Romanian communism, that’s why she was nicknamed 'skirted Stalin'.
Ana Pauker’s daughter, Tatiana (Tania) married physician Gheorghe Bratescu in 1949. In 1994, Radio Romania’s Oral History Center had the opportunity to record Tatiana’s and Gheorghe’s confessions about several aspects from Ana Pauker’s past. Gheorghe Bratescu referred to the origins of the conflict with Dej, which broke out in the fall of 1947, during a meeting with Stalin in Moscow.
“Stalin told Dej: 'I believe comrade Pauker and comrade Luca are familiar with your proposals'. Ana looked at Gheorghiu who then said: 'We haven’t yet consulted with them; we were just about to …'. Stalin replied: 'Formulate the proposals you have made!' Very embarrassed, Gheorghiu said: 'Given the overall situation in the country and the people’s prejudices we have suggested that the comrades should enter diplomacy.' Ana was nominated for the position of ambassador to Moscow and Luca to Budapest. Stalin looked very dissatisfied with the entire situation and told Gheorghiu: 'Our party is a class party not a race party!'Following that meeting, in November 1947 things seemed to fall into place. Ana Pauker became foreign minister and Luca finance minister. 10 years later Ana believed she had to deal with a typical Stalinist maneuver: wherever there was a party leadership, there was tension, if not even discord.”
Ana Pauker, an intellectual, was in very good relations with lawyer Lucretiu Patrascanu, another opponent of worker Dej. Rivalries within the PCR had developed between intellectuals and workers, on the one hand, and between the Romanian communists and those who came to the country with the soviet army. Gheorghe Bratescu recalls a meeting between Ana Pauker and Lucretiu Patrascanu.
“In 1945 Ana hosted the New Year’s Eve party at her home. Romanian PCR leaders and Soviet representatives in the Allied Control Commission were among the guests. The guests started singing proletarian marches and prison songs. Patrascanu, also attending the party, told Ana he was going to leave. She replied: 'How can you leave when all comrades are here? You can see they’re having a good time, they’re enjoying themselves.' He answered: 'That’s one of the reasons I can’t stand this party anymore.' Ana asked him: 'Don’t you like it?' He said: 'I can’t understand how come you like it, how can you be comfortable among such basic people, lacking in any elevated attitude.' He told Ana he was going to visit some left-wing intellectuals who were also organizing a party. Ana explained to us that he was unable to sit at the table with comrades, with party members!”
Ana Pauker was accused of many things, even of having informed on his husband, to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs - NKVD, which accused him of Trotskyism and killed him in 1938 during the Great Purge.
None of these suppositions is supported by evidence. What’s sure is that the support she enjoyed in the USSR saved her from a humiliating end in the conflict with Dej. But that did not improve Romania’s situation at all.
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