User:Anonimu/Romanian Resistance

=Patriotic Fighting Formations=

The Patriotic Fighting Formations (Formațiunile de luptă patriotice, FLP), sometimes referred to as Patriotic Guards (Gărzile Patriotice), were a communist paramilitary force active in Romania in the closing phases of World War II. Comprising workers from the industry along with members of the Romanian Communist Party who had evaded internment, the formations were the main group to organise armed resistance in Nazi-aligned Romania; the FLP had an important role in the aftermath of King Michael's Coup, taking into custody former dictator Ion Antonescu and supporting the Romanian Army in its operations to neutralise German forces in Bucharest and other cities of Romania. Expanding rapidly after the coup, the formations were used by the Communist Party as a pressure group to increase its influence in the government and in industrial enterprises. After their dissolution, many of the members went on to join the armed forces, the police or the security services, where they continued to promote the interests of the Party.

Background
Already in the late 1930s, the clandestine Communist Party of Romania (PCR) discussed plans for paramilitary "workers' and peasants' formations", meant to protect it from the various fascist paramilitary groups. At that moment the party decided against organising its own force, choosing instead to infiltrate government-sponsored paramilitary organisations (the mandatory pre-military training groups, the civil defence and even Straja Țării), hoping to impress upon them an anti-fascist direction. The communists were unable to attract the major legal parties towards their popular front policy as Romania was rapidly sliding into Nazi Germany's influence, and consequently failed to mount practical resistance to the successive royal and fascist dictatorships. After the Iron Guard took power in September 1940, the Bucharest section did call for creating its own self-defence teams, with some success being reported by the party's youth wing among the industrial workers in the city. A major change in the party's stance only intervened after Ion Antonescu decided Romania's participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, when the PCR was the only party to formally condemn the move, issuing a call for "bread and peace, national independence and national liberty". Thereupon, on 6 September 1941, its Central Committee issued a resolution proposing a platform for a "single national Front of the Romanian people". The points of the platform included: stopping the war with the Soviet Union and joining the Allies in the fight against "Hitlerism", ejecting the German troops from Romania in order to restore national independence, overthrowing Antonescu and installing a government comprising all "patriotic forces", rejecting the Second Vienna Award and liberating Northern Transylvania, stopping terror measures and restoring democratic rights and liberties, improving the living conditions of the working masses, and stopping the persecution of Jews and ethnic-based discrimination. Though initially the PCR considered its main task to be "clarifying" the masses through propaganda, it did not exclude the creation of partisan groups and called on the troops of the Romanian Army to rebel against the government and take arms against the Germans. As early as August 1941, the newspaper Presa liberă put out by the communists in Timișoara demanded that Romanians take arms against the "fascist beasts" and create military partisan groups. The aforementioned September 1941 resolution proclaimed "armed fight against Hitler's army" a duty for every Romanian patriot, calling on the people to organise sabotages and join partisan forces. The call was repeated in a resolution issued in January 1942, which also listed other resistance strategies: refusing requisitioning and conscription for the front, desertion, sabotaging materiel transports and the war industry, calling for better working conditions, petitioning the authorities through cultural and religious organisations, and organising street demonstrations. Taking advantage of the general mood in the army, as disobedience acts were on the rise and conflicts between the Romanian and German units began to surface, the Communist Party was able to establish contacts within several military units and commands. Nevertheless, as many of the communist and antifascist activists had been either arrested or interned in work camps, the party made no serious attempts to organise open resistance, and the few isolated efforts (such as Filimon Sârbu, the Panet group and Petre Gheorghe) failed: Siguranța, the Romanian secret police, discovered such groups in the preparations phases and consequently captured and executed the organisers. Later historiography would blame the failures on the fascist terror, the conditions of Romania's participation in the anti-Soviet war and PCR's outlawing long before the start of the war.

In its attempts to overthrow Antonescu and take Romanian into the Allied camp, the Communist Party sought contacts with the various political organisation clandestinely active in Romania. The National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) and the Brătianu faction of the National Liberal Party (PNL), the main pre-war bourgeois parties, had created an informal alliance, with the first party taking the leading position. The two parties, tolerated by the Antonescu government, nominally supported a return to a parliamentary regime and re-alignment with the Western Powers and opposed the increasing German influence over the country, however their practical conduct was inconsistent. Thus, both parties had agreed with the installation of the Antonescu government in September 1940 and had welcomed Romania's participation in the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, with some of their leaders (such as PNȚ vice-president Ion Mihalache) even volunteering for the front. Nevertheless, resenting the Nazi control and opposing a war against the Western Powers, the parties gradually moved to an anti-Antonescu position. Already in December 1941, PNȚ representatives contacted the United States intelligence services and indicated party president Iuliu Maniu would support the overthrow of the Romanian dictator. The PNȚ leader however preferred a limited military coup, advising against a popular uprising which, he feared, the bourgeois parties would not be able to control. The two parties supported this position for much of the war, hoping to be able to replace Antonescu using their supporters in the upper echelons of the government and in the army. While the activity of the party leaders was mostly limited to sending letters to Antonescu protesting the totalitarian regime and the German expansion in Romania and requesting the return of the troops behind the 1939 border, individual members also intervened in favour of arrested antifascists activists and used their positions in government and the industry to stall German requests. Excluding a collaboration with the communists and opposing any armed action that could empower the masses, by 1943 the party leaderships also began to fear an insurrection would open the country to a Soviet occupation. The young King Michael I also resented the mostly ceremonial position he was relegated to by Antonescu, although he formally supported most of the dictator's endeavours. The Axis failure to secure a rapid victory by the end of 1941 and the US intervention in the war provoked concern at the royal court, reinforcing its traditional pro-British position and widening the rift with the military dictator. The King's entourage refrained from any open opposition until "more favourable circumstances", hoping the monarchy would be able to regain its influence with Ango-American support. Beginning with 1942, the court rekindled contacts with the bourgeois opposition parties, and the King attempted to distance himself from Antonescu through generic calls for peace made on official occasions. During 1943, the King and his councillors also took a more pronounced position against the war. After convincing Maniu that any initiative against Antonescu was doomed to fail without the support of the King, the court and the PNȚ coordinated their steps, with little practical results. The court, also benefiting from the contacts the PNȚ and the two PNL factions had in the military, began to attract around the King an expanding group of generals and high officers who opposed Antonescu and the alliance with Germany, as the Army was seen as the only force capable to overthrow the military dictator while preserving the social regime.

The change of fortunes on the Eastern Front following the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad encouraged the PCR to strengthen its efforts to create a coalition against Antonescu and his Nazi allies. In June 1943, the party issued a platform for the Anti-Hitlerite Patriotic Front which, beside the objectives already put forward in the 1941 platform, explicitly called for winning the sympathy of officers and soldiers and the creation of partisan groups. The international situation also forced the bourgeois parties to open exploratory talks with the communists. Although they preferred the Antonescu government led the country out of the war and afterwards resign in favour of a civilian government, during the May 1943 discussions, the PNȚ and PNL delegations, headed by Maniu, allowed for some coordination with the communists in mobilizing masses during a prospective regime change. This position was construed by the communist delegates as Maniu's intention to use the groups controlled by the communists as "shock troops". Maniu firmly rejected any sabotage or paramilitary activity unless guarantees could be provided against Hungary, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. The later condition was however problematic for the communists, as they opposed a war against the Soviets. During renewed talks between Maniu and Petru Groza at the end of 1943, the former ultimately rejected any mass action against the war. PCR's platform was however accepted by several left-leaning groupings which joined the Anti-Hitlerite Patriotic Front: the Ploughmen's Front, the Union of Patriots (UP), the Union of Hungarian Workers of Romania and the Socialist Peasants' Party. Consequently, the Front's manifestos printed in România Liberă, UP's clandestine newspaper, included calls for armed action. Some of these calls specifically targeted the army, both common soldiers and officers of all levels, urging them to join the "patriots" and turn their weapons on the Germans and the traitors in the government. The Social Democratic Party (PSD), purged by 1943 of collaborators with the various dictatorships, had also agreed in September 1943 to participate in the Anti-Hitlerite Patriotic Front, however its leadership backtracked once it became clear that the bourgeois parties would not support the new structure. Under pressure from the rank-and-file and faced with the Soviet advance on Romania's pre-war territory in April 1944, the leadership eventually accepted PCR's proposal to create a Single Workers' Front (FUM). The FUM manifesto, issued on May Day 1944, requested the restoration of labour rights (8 hour work day, freedom of speech and association, release of antifascist detainees, autonomy of the workers' social security institutions) and called on all social classes to support the overthrow of the military-fascist dictatorship, the restoration of national independence, the end of Romania's participation in the war on Germany's side, and the creation of a democratic regime under a government comprising all antifascist forces. Supporting a re-alignment with the Allies, the FUM manifesto also suggested several actions to attain its objectives: armed resistance against the Nazi forces, sabotage, and the wrecking of the "German war machine". Since the FUM excluded the other minor parties in the Anti-Hitlerite Patriotic Front, these, along with PCR, PSD, the Tătărescu faction of the PNL and the rump Democratic Nationalist Party, constituted the National-Democratic Coalition on May 26, 1944. A group of officers in the King's entourage, led by Constantin Sănătescu, had also started contacts with communists. After initial contacts in December 1943, the group actively sought the PCR's collaboration once the Soviets entered Romanian territory, in April 1944. According to Liveanu, the court's motivation was two-pronged: it wanted to prevent the communists from coordinating a popular anti-monarchic movement and it hoped that, through their close relationship with the Soviet Union, they could secure better armistice conditions with the Allies. The PCR was also interested in the collaboration with the King, as the latter still commanded significant allegiance among the general population, provided legal ground for the overthrow of Antonescu, and, most importantly, ensured the collaboration of at least part of the upper echelons of the Army in the anti-German action.

Organisation
The origin of the Patriotic Fighting Formations is traced to the "military apparatus" of the Communist Party, established as a distinct structure in the second half of 1942. The role of the apparatus was organising a clandestine network of activists to be used in sabotage and partisan activity. The network was to comprise "patriotic groups" active in the industry and the state administration, including among its ranks not only workers, but also artisans, intellectuals, peasants and civil servants. The Central Committee of the party decided that initial work would be concentrated in Bucharest, the country's capital, and gradually expand in the rest of the country. The Committee also directed the Ilfov party section to start recruiting volunteers for armed fight against the government. The preparations and accompanying propaganda initiated by the various party cells also alerted the Siguranța: in a June 1943 report of its Turnu Severin section, the secret police informed about the arrangements made by the PCR towards the creation of partisan groups for use in sabotage against the war production. A plenary meeting of the PCR Central Committee held in the same month designated the organisation of support groups within the army and of sabotage and partisan "patriotic groups" as the main task of the party. A newly prepared handbook on party work during wartime envisioned that the groups were to be organised by neighbourhood in urban areas, while in the villages the help of antifascist teachers and students would be sought; recruitment in the military was to be done initially on individual basis, with study groups of at most 3-4 men created only after each of them had been initiated into conspiracy rules. Patriotic groups within the army were tasked with instigating collective refusal to leave for the front, mass desertions and refusal to fight against the Soviets.

Though the goal to create paramilitary groups was reaffirmed in party documents throughout 1942 and 1943, the results were meagre. The apparent lack of success on the issue of armed resistance further strained the relations among the factions existing within the party. Blaming the failures on the central leadership hiding in Bucharest, in the autumn of 1943 the "prison faction", which included communists interned in various camps and prisons, issued its own action plan for the creation of armed groups and "intensifying partisan activity". In November 1943 the leadership of the "military apparatus" was taken over by Emil Bodnăraș, who, while still at large, was close to the "prison faction". The Central Committee agreed to discuss the proposed action plan, which envisioned a hierarchical organisation based on existing regional and local party committees. The paramilitary organisation would be headed by a "Special Central Commission" comprising five sections (intelligence, communications, operations, political work and supply), with the structure replicated at local level. Effective military action was to be directed by the operations section, and was to be done by sabotage teams, groups and detachments, with a special role assigned to partisan formations. The detachment was the highest level and included two to four groups, which in turn comprised two to four teams made of four people each. Nevertheless, in order to reduce exposure to potential betrayals, the teams were to be the only permanent structures, the upper levels only being constituted when required by specific tasks. In a January 1944 document, the Central Committee required that regional and county secretaries personally instruct the volunteers and select leaders for the teams, leaders who would remain the sole point of contact once the teams became operative. The other party activists were required to continue their political work and individual sabotage actions, however they had to concentrate on the military tasks once included in an operative team. By early 1944 the apparatus had only succeeded in organising a few teams, lack of success Bodnăraș attributed at the time to the "critical political and organisational situation within the party". Soon afterwards, Bodnăraș was pivotal in deposing PCR's general secretary, Ștefan Foriș, on April 4, 1944, and joined the new interim leadership of the party.

The April 1944 change in leadership boosted the efforts of "military apparatus", which, by May, was in the process of organising the Patriotic Fighting Formations Command and several regional offices (Oltenia, Dobrogea, Moldova, Banat and Burzenland). The core of the FLP Command comprised Bodnăraș, Ștefan Mladin and Ion Chioreanu. The renewed calls for all social categories to create armed detachments were now accompanied by practical measures such as preparing caches of arms, ammunitions and clothing. Shock teams were to be organised and prepared to take command of workers' militias when weapons would become available. A May 1944 document indicated that the FLP Command had assigned overseers in seven settlements in the region of Oltenia and had already began to stockpile weapons. In a meeting during the same month, the "military apparatus", which now included 26 members, estimated the party could count for the FLPs on a total force of 6,500 and discussed the creation of an operational base in the mountains of Oltenia, where the anti-Antonescu forces could retreat in case of a failed insurrection. The rapprochement between the PSD and PCR during that month also led many social-democratic workers to join the FLPs. In a June 5 report, the Siguranța indicated that the FLPs were even able to attract members of the PNȚ. By the assessment of Bodnăraș, while the FLP included many communists and social-democrats, by the time of the insurrection most of the volunteers had no party affiliation.

In late spring and throughout the summer of 1944, Bucharest, as the most important industrial centre and seat of the main government institutions, was at the centre of the PCR's efforts. Few days after the creation of the FUM, the Grivița railway yard antifascist committee issued its own manifestos, calling on railway workers to organise patriotic groups and sabotage deliveries to the front. Similar flyers were distributed in the following period in the other large enterprises in Bucharest, as well as in the factories of Brașov, Reșița, Timișoara and Turnu Severin. New patriotic formations were created in the large industrial enterprises of the Romanian Railways, Malaxa, Lemaitre, Public Transport Company, Grozăvești Power Station and the Mociorniță factory. A report prepared in October 1944 indicated that by early June the FLP Command was able to command and supply with munition seventeen shock teams (six of them in Bucharest), mainly by recruiting workers in the heavy industry through the efforts of the Patriotic Union. The FLP central command assigned trusted communists to lead the FLP organisation in each of the four administrative divisions of Bucharest, however FLP team and group leaders were also recruited from antifascists unaffiliated with the PCR. An extensive network of agents ensured coordination within Bucharest, and contacts were also established along the main routes linking Bucharest with the rest of the country. Such support points were organised in Alexeni, Fetești, Preasna, Găiseni, Șirna and Bucov; beside the contact person, these points also included up to four armed peasants. The commanders of the four FLP sections in the city reported on June 22, 1944 that they had been able to muster 61 teams and 122 patriotic groups, reaching 160 FLP teams by August 5. On August 5 the military plan for battle was finalised with the creation of a fifth, reserve FLP detachment and specific missions being assigned to each of the detachments for the moment of the insurrection. In the meantime, the FLP command was also discussing coordination with the group of high officers opposed to Antonescu. In a June 15 meeting with Chief of Staff of the Bucharest Military Command Dumitru Dămăceanu, Bodnăraș boasted that the party would be able to provide at least 10,400 workers to join the Army in overthrowing the authoritarian government and fighting the Germans. The insurrection plan presented to the anti-Antonescu coalition by the PCR in July 1944 provided for 200 patriotic teams to be used for blockading military objectives in Bucharest, and required conspirators in the Army to provide them with 2,500 rifles, 50 submachine guns and 5,000 grenades. The October 1944 report indicated that, by August 23, the number of combat-ready teams in Bucharest had reached fifty.

Intense activity also took place outside the capital, with FLP units organised in Ploiești and the surrounding industrial region along the Prahova Valley, in Brașov, Iași, Buhuși, Turnu Severin, Constanța and Banat. The government unwittingly helped the organisation by evacuating several enterprises towards the interior of the country. Already at the end of 1943, the Craiova police noted that Mihail Cruceanu had come to the city as a delegate of the PCR's central command and was organising the local party cell, which the police reported to comprise 57 "adherents" and a large number of "sympathisers". Towards the end of spring 1944 Mihail Roșianu, secretary of the Oltenia regional committee, had organised several FLPs and was stocking materiel with the help of Manole Bodnăraș (Emil's brother), who led a patriotic group within the 3rd Bombardment Fleet. In an August 1944 report, the regional committee indicated it would be able to support an armed insurrection with several hundred FLP members throughout Oltenia. The military group of Craiova was also responsible for the escape of several communist activists from the Târgu Jiu camp, notably Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, leader of the "prison faction". Especially active was the Banat regional committee, which in March 1944 organised a distinct resistance committee comprising, among others, Leontin Sălăjan and Ilie Drăgan. The committee distributed flyers in Timișoara and the surrounding region calling for the organisation of "secret groups of armed patriots". The newly created patriotic groups were multi-ethnic in character, including, besides ethnic Romanians, locals of Serbian, Hungarian and German origin. The committee also handed out weaponry to party members in Timiș-Torontal after successfully infiltrating the 2nd Cavalry and the 5th Huntsmen regiments in the city. During the summer of 1944 patriotic teams were also constituted at several refineries along the Prahova Valley (Vega, Orion, Columbia, Româno-Aemricană, Steaua Română, Astra, Concordia and Moreni). Due to high German troop concentration in the area, the commander of the 5th Territorial Corps, a member of the anti-Antonescu conspiracy, took steps to include these paramilitary groups in the army's plan for the insurrection. In Dobruja, the communist Victor Dușa and the UP member Alexandru Şteflea established contacts among the workers of the Constanța Shipyard, the railway yard, the petrol depots, as well as among the civilian sailors. Near the front-line, at Iași, a local FLP command was also created, arming local groups with materiel abandoned near the battlefields. The FLPs prevented the retreating Germans from setting on fire oil and cereal depots and, after the Soviet army captured the city in the first days of its August offensive, they were tasked with guarding a number of enterprises and institutions, transporting the wounded, clearing the rubble and ensuring supply to the civilian population. Throughout the country, patriotic groups were also created in other army units, including the 1st Air Transmissions (Bucharest), 20th (Turnu Măgurele) and 34th Infantry and 3rd Pioneers regiments. These groups provided the FLPs with arms both before and during the insurrection. The Air Transmissions group, comprising 15 members, provided the paramilitaries with 50 pistols and a significant quantity of bullets. The efforts didn't go unnoticed by the police and the Siguranța, several reports from the period indicating "large scale preparations" for sabotage and rebellion, especially in the areas with significant war industry. Some captures were also made during July, such as a stack of dynamite and fuses at Piatra Neamț and a large quantity of explosives in the industrial area of Reșița. A June 1944 order of the commander of the 11th Infantry Division noted that communist agents had been intensifying propaganda among civilians and the military, targeting especially soldiers on leave, sent on commission or recently returned from the front. Similar reports were also issued by the military staff of the 2nd Infantry Division. On 16 July, the Siguranța indicated that the PCR had made extensive preparations for a major action that was to be coordinated with the expected Soviet offensive. The General Police Directorate reported to the Council of Ministers on 9 August 1944 that the PCR was making consistent efforts to gather weapons for its resistance groups, including spending large sums of money.

In the weeks preceding the date set for the insurrection, the FLP command instructed its members to refrain from individual terrorist acts against German troops or government institutions in order to prevent the squandering of its forces and avoid attracting the attention of the secret police. Their tasks were to be limited to recruiting, distribution of antifascists flyers and, in very specific cases, sabotage acts. The missions assigned to the FLP teams for the insurrection included surveillance of German objectives, ensuring the security of anti-fascist activists and the premises of the democratic groups, participation in clearing German troops, arresting German agents, clearing the rubble resulting from the air raids, evacuating the wounded and supporting army transports. By the end of July, the FLPs shock teams had a strength of 300 in Bucharest and 500-600 elsewhere in the country, with further 2,000 workers in Bucharest prepared to join these teams during the insurrection. The PCR "military apparatus" organised its own intelligence service, collecting data about government officials, Nazi commanders, owners of the pro-German press and other political figures. The intelligence, issued in periodical reports at least since 17 June, was also shared with the military committee of the anti-Antonescu coalition and was used during the planning of the insurrection. The PCR was also responsible for forging various documents for use by the anti-fascists: its special section reported on 6 August that it had been able to manufacture hundreds of ID cards, citizenship cards, birth, marriage and medical certificates, leave tickets and service records.

Sabotage

 * A3/62 (=R1/63?), R1/64?, R3/64, R4/65?, S4,7?,8/74, S5/75
 * CFR, miners: A3/64
 * Ironworks, arms: A5/64

Arad
A police report for the Arad county noted on 4 October 1940 an increase in communist activity against the legionary government, with propaganda spread by small cells or on individual level. The communist youth wing was particularly active during year, however it was confronted with a major setback in October with the arrest of 23 year old Ocskó Terezia in Arad. Member of the PCR Banat regional committee since 1938 and instructor for propaganda and organizational tasks, she was captured while establishing contact with the local trade unions. Tortured by the Legionary Police, Ocskó was ultimately assassinated on 16 October, after refusing to divulge information regarding the communist organization. The arrest of 5 activist, workers at Astra, followed on 23 December 1941.

By 1943, there were 11 party cells in the main enterprises of Arad (five at Astra, three at the Romanian Railways workshop, one each at I.T.A, the local power plant and the sugar factory), with a further four cells based on the city's neighbourhoods. The number of cells active in the the county's various towns and villages also increased during the year: besides the ones already existing in Pecica, Lipova, Chișineu-Criș, Aradul-Nou, Frumușeni, Bârzava, Glogovăț and Târnova, new cells were created in Șicula, Șiria, Pereg, Macea and Nădlac. The Curtici section, named "Red Ooctober" and comprising 11 members in 1943, was particularly active. A major loss was the capture of Szabó Árpád on the night of 26/27 February 1943. Szabó, who had also been active in the communist movement in Northern Transylvania, had been sent by the Timișoara regional party section to organise distribution of propaganda in Arad; after successfully participating in the distribution of leaflets on the night of 25/26 January, he was apprehended just as he was preparing another action. Searching the house of Victor Hofler, who had ben sheltering Szabó, the police found a printer, 500 flyers for immediate distribution as well as 800 leaflets prepared for later. It was established that Szabó, Hofler and 3 other workers had directly participated in the the printing of propaganda materiel. By late February, 30 other communist supporters had been arrested throughout the town. Szabó himself was severely beaten by the Siguranța of Arad and consequently died while awaiting trial in Timișoara, where he had been transferred on 8 March. The whole PCR Arad county committee was arrested towards the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944.

Other organisations aligned with the communists were also active in the county throughout the war. The Ploughmen's Front (FP), through their contacts with the heads of the local recruitment office, managed to delay or avoid sending new troops to the frontline and, during 1943, coordinated with the railway workers in Arad. While working in the countryside to attract new supporters towards the envisioned Antifascist Patriotic Front, the FP leader Miron Belea was arrested on 7 October 1943. A Patriotic Women's Committee was established in 1942, and, though never becoming a mass organisation, it managed to attract several women to the anti-war demonstration organised by the communists. The local Union of Hungarian Workers of Romania (MADOSZ) section, led in 1942-1943 by Szabó Árpád and later by Palásthy Lajos, worked primarily among the local Hungarian minority, fighting against the isolationism championed by the community's leaders and promoting collaboration with Romanian workers. The Arad section, which had its own cells at Astra and I.T.A, as well as a printing machine, was among the most active in southern Transylvania. A communist group, comprising 15 to 20 activist, had been active among the Jewish community since 1940. Within the German community, an anti-Hitlerite committee comprising 10-15 members, led by Philipp Geltz, had been established by 1942. The committee was however soon dissolved after the police operated multiple arrests, including Geltz, and was only re-established at the beginning of 1944.

Communists were also active among the army and enlisted personnel headed for the front, a military collective having been established already in 1941. Through contacts in the army units stationed in Arad and Lipova, they were able to obtain weapons and ammunitions from the military depots. Propaganda directed at the military encouraged refusal to leave for the front, desertion, escape across enemy lines and joining the partisans in front areas. Around the same time, the Arad PCR organisation took steps to arrange the escape of arrested communists and create Patriotic Fighting Formations.

Passive resistance also emerged among non-communists: a group relaying news and commentary broadcasted by the Radio London and Radio Moscow was organised around publicist Karoly Iosif on 21 June 1941. Initially distributing the information on a personal basis, by February 1942 it had established a complex network based on subscriptions. The circle disbanded in September 1942 after the police arrested Karoly and 7 other conspirators. Dissatisfaction inside the county's German community began to surface in 1942, as many withdrew from or refused to pay their fees to the government-sanctioned German Ethnic Group. Throughout 1943, the Romanian authorities noted that the German population refused conscription to the Waffen-SS and preferred being drafted into the Romanian Army. In one instance in Sântana, the wives of SS-conscripted soldiers attacked the homes of the local Nazi leaders, forcing one of them to vacate the village.

By 1944, PSD organizations had been revived in most of the county, and a county committee of the United Workers' Front, reuniting the two parties, had been established before August. Propaganda work increased towards the summer, the PCR and its supporters publishing and distributing more than ten illegal newspapers, along with leaflets and manifestos. Manifestos spread in Arad during the months of May and June, called upon the Romanian people to chase away the "Hitlerite hordes", install a "people's government" and establish a "Free Romania". At the beginning of August, state authorities reported the workers at Astra were favourably commenting German losses on the front, and expressed their hope that Germany would lose the war and the proletarians will come to power in Romania.

Sabotages were organised at various enterprises, including the I.T.A and the CFR workshops. At Astra workers destroyed the large drills used in the manufacturing process of mine throwers, while in the Curtici railway station local workers and peasants attacked a German transport of cereals and foodstuff, emptying many of the railcars. Such acts continued, in spite of instructions, issued on 4 May by the regional police inspectorate, requesting energetic measures to prevent large-scale sabotage.

Bucharest
According to Vasile Vâlcu, during early 1941 a "group of patriots", including among its ranks several workers, blew up a depot storing land mines in Mogoșoaia. A sabotage group comprising several drivers was organised by the Bucharest section of the PCR and used to cut communication and electrical lines used by the German military units. A group led by a worker at the Grozăvești Power Station was tasked with preparing explosives and incendiary devices, some of which were sent to the Dâmbovița County for use against the oil wells in the region. Another group comprised members of the PCR and the Union of Communist Youth (UTC) working in the Grivița railroad workshops; this group was however discovered in 1942 and its leader, Ion Suciu, was sentenced to death, while the others received 15 years of forced labour each. The Kornhauser-Paneth group prepared explosives and incendiary devices for use against ammunition trains. Discovered by the secret police, the five members of the group were captured, tortured, and ultimately executed on November 7, 1941. In all, between January 1941 and September 1942, 143 communists were brought before the courts, with 19 sentenced to death and 78 to long prison terms and/or hard work. Thousands more were arrested and interned in concentration camps.

Banat
A4/62

Dobruja
Several sabotage actions took place in the port of Constanța, where an important German force was concentrated. As soon as Romania invaded the Soviet Union, Filimon Sârbu, who had been active in the anti-fascist movement since the mid 1930s, convened a meeting with four other UTC members in order to prepare a plan for the struggle against the war; the group was discovered and put to a summary trial, with Sârbu executed on 19 July 1941 and the others sentenced to between 15 and 20 years of forced labour each. In October 1941, two communist activists set fire to the German Army stables in the city. Other actions took place in the port itself, in the shipyards, and at the oil depots. At the request of the central leadership, the Dobruja regional section of the PCR redoubled its efforts towards creating an effective resistance beginning with February 1943. Consequently, during the night of 23/24 April a sabotage group led by Mesia Hacerian set on fire the depots of the Kriegsmarine, causing extensive damage. The group had received training and materiel in Bucharest and sought to maximise the effect of the attack by simultaneously plastering the city with calls for peace and sabotage against the war machine. In the following round-up the Siguranța, supported by the Gestapo, arrested 80 communists and antifascists, including the regional PCR secretary, Victor Dușa. Ultimately, 27 activists were put to trial following several days of torture. The trial lasted until 18 October 1943, when three of the defendants were sentenced to death, two to 25 years of hard labour, 13 to between 8 and 15 years of hard labour, and six to shorter prison terms. None of the accused was older than 30. Though contact between the central leadership and local groups was lost, sabotage actions continued, and on 23 December 1943 a group caused a train to jump off the tracks near Năvodari, hampering the German efforts to build shore fortifications. After re-establishing communication in February 1944, most efforts went towards recruiting supporters in the local army units. Contacts were established with commanding officers in the 9th Division and within the general staff of the Sea Division. A patriotic group, initially comprising 5 officers, was formed in the Romanian Navy, and similar groups appeared in the 34th and 40th Infantry regiments, the 9th Cavalry regiment, and the seaplanes unit. A sergeant from the 9th Cavalry regiment, together with several soldiers, helped gather weapons, ammunition and grenades, mostly from the war booty, and stockpiled them in a house provided by the PCR in Constanța. According to Ion Eremia, one of the conspirators in the army, by August 23rd 1944, the cache allowed the arming of several hundred workers' guards in the region.
 * A6/64, A4/70

Iași
A1/64

Ilfov
The main forms of antifascist resistance in the Ilfov and Giurgiu counties were distributing manifestos and sabotages. Already in 1940, the Ministry of Interior requested the local prefect to take actions to curb the intense communist propaganda, as it was beginning to spread into the army units quartered in the region. In the Vlașca County (covering most of the current Giurgiu county), 41 people were arrested in December for possession of communist manifestos. Towards the end of the same month, anonymous letters were distributed in the villages of Joița and Mitreni calling for the overthrow of Antonescu and the Iron Guard dictatorship.

Sabotage, directed primarily against the German units stationed in the region, become more common beginning with 1941: several telephone and telegraph military lines were cut at the end of March in and around Giurgiu, forcing the Romanian Gendarmerie to install permanent guards along communication lines. As recorded in Gendarmerie reports, the PCR directed its cadres to set up groups of young sympathisers to draw stencils against capital punishment and distribute anti-German and pacifist flyers, as well as to encourage concrete acts of resistance, especially among the families of mobilised soldiers. By the beginning of 1942, the Bucharest Police was keeping under surveillance 10 communists in Giurgiu; one of them was eventually arrested and interned in the Târgu Jiu camp in July. The communist movement in the region suffered a major blow when the secretary of the PCR Ilfov chapter, Petre Gheorghe, was also arrested and, following a brief trial on 6 August, executed. Sabotage nevertheless continued: on 3 May 1942 a group of workers at the Danubiana sugar factory damaged an oil tank, spoiling most of its contents, an explosion took place at a depot of anti-tank mines in Mogoșoaia, while 240 train carriages loaded with ammunitions blew up in Rudeni on 1 August. On 4 November, the oil tanker Torino, loaded with 320 tons of diesel fuel, blew up in Giurgiu, the flames also engulfing 13 other tankers moored in the port. Attacks against German communication lines continued, resulting in loss of around 3 km of telegraph and telephone lines in 60 different incidents throughout the year.

In spite of police actions, communist activity increased in 1943, with 20 communist sympathisers identified by police records at the sugar factory, and a further 15-16 among the employees of the Giurgiu port authority. By August, communists managed to recruit sympathisers among the rural population, with a teacher from Stănești arrested as he was organizing a local party cell. Passive resistance also spread: gendarmes reported in May 1943 that peasants in Brâncoveni presented unusable goods for requisitioning, workers in the Cioroiu industrial area and clerks of the oil companies were favourably commenting on the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, and locals in Giurgiu showed sympathy towards a column of Serbian POWs passing through the city. The Romanian General Staff reported that resentment towards the German army was also present by July among the soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division. Working women were encouraged by the communists to send delegations and petitions to the authorities requesting no further troops be sent to the frontline and the ones already there be returned. By November, the police had arrested in Giurgiu two workers representatives and a communist activist, all of whom were later interned in the Târgu Jiu camp; another communist worker in Oltenița was denied entrance to the port after being deemed "dangerous to the state's security". Sabotage also continued: the German military telegraph line from Giurgiu to Bucharest was cut on 20 April, a few days later passenger ship Mihai Viteazu sank off Isaccea after the explosion of an "infernal machine" onboard, while in November 1943 workers on the Giurgiu-Ruse oil pipeline stuffed wood and stones inside the pipes. In January 1944, the PCR central leadership instructed local supporters to commit sabotage by avoiding work or by damaging workpieces and machinery in military enterprises. Antifascist and anti-war actions also took place in Sitaru, in villages around Ghimpați and Bucharest and in Manasia, where funds were collected for the Soviet POWs employed in construction work in Militari. By the summer of 1944, the Bucharest Gendarmerie reported that communist activists were working "almost in the open", "instigating, agitating, distributing manifestos, urging people to rebellion, passive resistance, sabotage, wrecking, indiscipline, civil disobedience and anarchy, disorder and unrest". A support point for the Patriotic Fighting Formations was also organised at Alexeni, while the villagers in Coșereni maintained contacts with the FLPs active in Bucharest.

Prahova Valley
A4/59

Northern Transylvania
MM: A4/62

Others
The PCR was the first party to protest Romania's participation in the anti-Soviet war, and the only one to issue calls for open resistance against the military-fascist dictatorship, for its overthrow, and against collaboration with Nazi Germany.
 * R3/84

On the other hand, the main pre-war parties, the PNL and PNT, refused to engage in open opposition against the Antonescu regime and its alliance with Hitler. As the Axis held the supremacy on the European theatre during the first part of the war, their leaders adopted a policy of "preserving the forces" in expectation of a possible upset of forces that would result in a victory of the Allies. Thus, while the leaders of the PNL and PNT protested against the territorial losses of 1940, they refused to risk war in order to defend Romania's borders; furthermore, they refused Antonescu's offer to join a coalition cabinet, perceived as incapable of resisting further German demands, thus paving the way for the collaboration between Antonescu and the openly fascist Iron Guard. While sending numerous private letters of protest to Antonescu demanding him to defend the political and economic interest of the Romanians against Axis penetration and to act toward revising the Second Vienna Award, they nevertheless supported the policy of guaranteeing the interests of Romanian and Hungarian industrialists and great landlord across the new boundary of Transylvania. At the end of June 1941, the leaders of the PNL and the PNT expressed their agreement to Romania's participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union, though they indicated that Romanian troops should stop at the Dniester; as a sign of support, vice-presidents of the two parties, Ion Mihalache and Gheorghe Bratianu, volunteered for the front.

Once Romanian troops crossed the Dniester, facing calls in the Hungarian press for the annexation of the whole of Transylvania, the strong British condemnation of the Axis campaign against the Soviet Union and the creation of the British-Soviet alliance, the PNT and PNL began to demand that Romania exited the war or at least Romanian units retreated within the pre-war borders. The two parties gradually began to dissociate themselves from the Romanian dictator, criticising his decision to continue Romania's engagement until the final defeat of the Soviet Union, his arrest of the pro-British groups of Rică Georgescu and Păsătoiu, and the negative effects German penetration in the Romanian economy had on the business interests of industrialists and bankers associated with the two parties.

Balkans

 * R2/73, R1/77

Partisan groups
Beside the shock teams in the industrial centres, which remained passive while preparing for a general insurrection, several partisan groups become active during the summer of 1944, most notably the Mărăști group in the Semenic Mountains and Carpați group in the Piatra Mare Mountains. Other groups were active in the Bucegi, Buzău and Vrancea mountains, on the Ploiești-Brăila main line, in Maramureș and in the Iron Gates area. Members were primarily workers, deserters and peasants who evaded conscription. The Mărăști group was organised by the Banat regional committee, under the supervision of Sălăjan, and had its base in Văliug, near the Bârzava headwaters. The "resistance committee" included Drăgan, railway worker Ștefan Plavăț and lieutenants Pavel Popa and Pavel Dumitru, who helped gather a significant cache of arms and munitions. The group was discovered by the government authorities in the final phases of its organisation and was attacked on 18 June by the Gendarmerie. Though the authorities succeeded in capturing part of its supplies (including 21 ZB machine guns, 5,000 cartridges, a heavy machine gun, and a submachine gun) and killing Plavăț in a gunfight, the committee was able to recover some of the weapons and deliver them to the FLPs elsewhere in Banat. The wave of arrest that followed in Timișoara, Bocșa, Reșița and Anina prevented the immediate organisation of a new partisan detachment. However, by the of July a new group was active under the leadership of Lina Hoblea in the area of the Iron Gates (Ciuchici, Naidăș and Radimna), near the Yugoslav border. One one occasion, this group was able to liquidate a German patrol of four.

Preparation for a group of partisans targeting the oil-producing regions began in winter 1944 in the Soviet Union, seeking to deny the Germans the use of Romanian oil. A group of volunteers was recruited from among Romanian POWS and political refugees and received special instruction in "antifascist schools". They were also joined by Romanians who had fought as part of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. By spring, an extensive cache of weapons and explosives devices (delay-action magnetic mines, TNT with Bickford cords, track-destroying mines) had been gathered, along with Romanian military uniforms. While most materiel was stolen from Romanian depots, the magnetic mines had to be specifically produced. The volunteers constituted the Carpați partisan group, led by railway worker Ilie Bădică, which, after reaching Romania during May, was active between June and August 1944 sabotaging numerous oil transports. The group also included two Russian radio-telegraphists. Primarily acting along the Câmpina-Brașov railway, it also staged attacks on the Făurei-Galați and București-Slatina railways. Their main base was on the Piatra Mare Mountains, providing easy access to the Timișu de Sus railway station, with a secondary base set on the mountain looking over the Posada-Valea Largă line. This provided them with mobility, as members of the group could use trains to quickly move along the extensive railway network in the area. Initially riding German personnel trains disguised as Romanian soldiers, the partisans switched to clandestinely riding freight ones when Germans forbade Romanian access on their carriages. The partisans avoided direct confrontation with the authorities and sought to mine the oil transports soon after their formation, generally acting in groups of three. Coordination with the central PCR leadership was provided through Iosif Rangheț and two safehouses in Bucharest were used for contacts.

The initial tactic of the Carpați group was to use primarily delay-action mines in order to hinder the efforts to locate the bases of the group. Thus, their first attack took place in Brazi against a train composed of tank wagons and timed so that the explosion would only took place once the train was in Yugoslavia. The second attack followed soon, the group successfully mining a train transporting 42 tanks filled with gasoline in Brașov. In its actions, the group used 45 delay-action mines to damage sixteen trains, with only one exploding six hours early. By late June, the Ploiești regional police inspectorate identified Piatra Mare Mountains as the base of group, however its assault on June 27 failed to capture any of the fighters. On 13 July, in spite of a heavy German guard, the partisan group succeeded in blowing up a tank car between Comarnic and Valea Largă and provoked a further explosion at the latter station, setting ablaze three tank cars and six cars transporting oil and gasoline. The explosions, which disabled all rail transports for twenty hours, resulted in increased surveillance of the area and forced the group to adapt its tactics. As noted by the Gendarmerie in a report at the end of July, the partisan group was also responsible for the sabotage of an oil railway transport at Tăbărăști on 24 July, and the arson of three gasoline cars near Câmpina on 25 July. Renewed efforts to capture the partisans during late July resulted in open confrontation with the gendarmes and mountain huntsmen troops, the partisans ultimately leaving the area in groups of two to three. Throughout its activity, the Carpați partisan group, comprising around 15 people, only suffered two losses, with Octavian Goidea and Ion Ion being shot in direct confrontation with the authorities. Members of the group saw renewed combat immediately after the coup of August 23rd, when several of them joined local FLPs.

Romanians in Soviet partisan and volunteer units. Partisans in USSR, Czechoslovakia, and France: A 6/1961.

Coup against Antonescu
During 1943, the PNȚ and PNL extended their diplomatic contacts in the West, negotiating the terms of an armistice and requesting the Western Allies landed troop in the Balkans before the Soviet had the occasion to enter the area. Fearing the conditions of the armistice would severely damage their popularity, the leaders of the two parties hoped they could convince the Antonescu government to sign it instead; the overthrow of the military dictator was to take place only if the latter refused to leave the Axis and Anglo-American troops would be present in the area. Beginning with December 1943 Antonescu also indicated, through PNȚ and PNL channels, his intention to sign an armistice as long as Anglo-American troops would reach Romania before the Soviet army. Barbu Știrbey, representing the "opposition" in the Cairo talks with United Nations, indicated the two parties would support Antonescu's action to take Romania out of the Nazi-led alliance without directly participating in the government that would apply the armistice conditions. As Soviet troops entered Romanian-controlled territory during the Uman–Botoșani Offensive in March 1944, the two parties became more optimistic regarding the outcome of a coup. In a meeting following the Soviet armistice offer of April 1944, the PNȚ and PNL agreed that, as the Soviet advance could not be avoided any more, a German action to oppose the coup could be quickly countered by the Romanian action with the support of a Soviet assault. On April 14, Maniu indicated to the Western Allies that Romanian troops would fight the Nazis only if the latter refused to leave the country after the armistice, and furthermore demanded that no Allied army enter parts of Romania outside the region of Moldavia unless explicitly requested so by the government. On the other hand, he demanded that the Anglo-American Command sent to Romania two airborne divisions, antitank cannons and ensured air support. By late April, Antonescu also backtracked on his offer, refusing an armistice without effective Anglo-American troop support.

Under the guidance of industrialist Ioan I. Mocsony-Stârcea, the court envisioned a military coup against Antonescu to be led by general Constantin Nicolescu, commander of an army corps, that would replace the dictator with a government headed by Maniu. The conspirators failed to inform the general about his supposed role until March 1944; Nicolescu rejected the plan, rebutting that Maniu and the army corps he commanded were insufficient for a successful action. Under the counsel of Nicolescu and other high officers close to the Palace, the King renounced the plan for an exclusively military coup. In April, Maniu proposed that the King arrested Antonescu in case the latter refused to sign the armistice, with opposition parties creating in such case a government in exile in the Soviet-controlled northern Moldavia. Several other plans also projected any action to take place near the front-line in Moldavia, however Maniu ultimately rejected them as the German brought new forces in the area. Thus, by the end of May, while the bourgeois parties did not abandon the objective to replace Antonescu, no effective plan had been conceived. Romania's continued participation in the war on the side of Germany in the face of an expected Allied victory also began to undermine the popular positions of the monarchy and the opposition parties. A report prepared for a prospective Crown Council on May 3, 1944 noted that the King's formal support for Antonescu and the German alliance would "naturally" lead the Romanians to look for "new forms of social and political organisation", potentially endangering the very survival of the monarchy. Similar concerns were also raised among the PNȚ leadership: internal memos during the month of July 1944 indicated the rank-and-file were anxious about the perceived passivity of the party and especially of its leader, Maniu.

During talks in April 1944 the PCR proposed the creation of a new government among the troops near the front line, supported by mass uprisings in Bucharest and other major centres, however this solution was abandoned after Sănătescu's visit to the front, where he found German troops interleaved between Romanian formations. Consequently, PCR representative Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu proposed a coup in Bucharest on the background of a general insurrection and requested that the King delegated a high officer to prepare a plan along the communists; the King agreed and delegated general Gheorghe Mihail in this capacity. During late May and early June the group around King Michael proposed that Antonescu be replaced with a pro-German politician, Ion Gigurtu, in a government dominated by officers close to the court, hoping this would allow the Romanian Army to prepare for resistance without alarming Germany. In case the Gigurtu cabinet would have not approved of an armistice on a short term, he would have been replaced by an opposition government with the task of taking the country out of the war. The court also proposed that Romania remained neutral in case the Germans voluntarily retreated from the country within a short period of time. According to Dămăceanu's recollections in 1964, Pătrășcanu had personally suggested to the court the communists could accept the "Gigurtu plan". Such proposals were however strongly criticised by PCR delegate Bodnăraș during the meeting of June 13/14 June and were ultimately abandoned in favour of an insurrection with mass civilian support to take place simultaneously across the country. The court also accepted the creation of Military Committee reuniting high officers loyal to King Michael (generals Mihail, Grigore Vasiliu Rășcanu and colonel Dămăceanu) and representatives of the PCR. In order to counteract local German superiority in Bucharest and other centres (in Dămăceanu's appraisal, the Germans dominated the Romanians two to one), the military members of the Committee also included the communist-controlled FLPs in their planning. The Committee's work was based on a plan for military actions in Bucharest and the Prahova Valley that had been drafted in May by a group headed by Sănătescu. According to the agreement between the high officers and the communists, the insurrection was to take place only after the Committee would gather data about the mood among the soldiers and the general population, the numeric strength of Romanian troops and FLPs and their materiel, the attitudes of the commanders of large army units, as well as the strength of the German forces present in Romania. It was envisioned that the insurrection would take place during the imminent Soviet offensive in the southern part of the Eastern Front, and it was hoped that the Western allies would be able to provide air support or even three airborne brigades. The PCR, aware of the negotiations initiated in Cairo by the bourgeois parties, condemned their intention to support Antonescu in case he approved an armistice. On March 22, 1944, România Liberă, the clandestine journal of the Anti-Hitlerite Patriotic Front, announced that Romania would only exit the war when the government will be forcefully overthrown, and put responsibility on Maniu and Brătianu for any further suffering of the populace. On April 24, the PCR sent an ultimatum to the PNȚ leadership, indicating that, unless the bourgeois parties join an anti-German coalition, the communist would act on their own and would consider the other parties as saboteurs of the anti-Hitlerite forces. Maniu finally agreed to re-open talks with the PCR, reportedly in order to prevent it from acting too radically on its own. Using his contacts with Edvard Beneš, Tătărescu sent in July 1944 a message to the Soviets, proposing that the National-Democratic Coalition sent an envoy to Moscow to negotiate an armistice with the Allies. The positive reply of the Soviets was however postponed by PNȚ associate Grigore Niculescu-Buzești until August 18. Informed about these attempts to negotiate directly with the Soviets, the PNȚ and the PNL feared the Coalition would form on its own a government that would receive Allied recognition. Furthermore, the bourgeois parties also expected collaborating with the communist would provide better armistice conditions, as the Normandy landings shattered any hopes of Western landing in the Balkans. Historian Vasile Liveanu credited the creation of the FLP, the only paramilitary force active at the time, with influencing the bourgeois parties and the military group around King Michael into collaborating with the communists, as the former believed the latter would attempt a coup on their own. As a result of the talks between the various anti-Antonescu groups, the National Democratic Bloc (BND) was established by the PCR, PNȚ, PSD and the Brătianu faction of the PNL. The agreement, published on June 20, 1944, provided for an immediate armistice with the United Nations, liberating Romania from the German occupation, joining the war on the side of the Allies, restoring national independence, installing a democratic regime, all conditional upon the overthrow of the Antonescu dictatorship. The same day, the Allies were notified through the representatives in Cairo that King Michael and the Bloc will support an insurrection against Antonescu. This stance, notably different from the limited coup previously envisioned by the King and bourgeois parties, is seen by Liveanu as an indication of the significant position gained by the communists inside the Bloc. The Allies were also enquired about the support they could provide in line with the military plan prepared by the Military Committee. In spite of this declaration, the PNȚ and the PNL continued their pressure on Antonescu to sign the armistice as leader of the Romanian government. Several meetings took place in July and August 1944 between the representatives of the two parties and Antonescu, however the latter rejected the proposal on every occasion.

Beginning with the month of June successive talks took place between the high officers of the Military Committee and the representatives of the PCR (primarily Emil Bodnăraș), the communists being credited by Dămăceanu with significant influence over the work of the committee.} Among the problems discussed in the June 15 meeting were the arrest of Antonescu and his supporters in the government and the anti-German actions. The same issues, along the creation of the new government, were also dealt with in a list of proposals presented by Bodnăraș during the July 27 meeting. In the meantime, the PCR also stepped up its propaganda efforts to enrol civilians in the FLPs and strengthen the anti-German mood amongst the troops. While the Army was to bear the brunt of the anti-German military actions, the FLPs were also included in the general plan of the insurrection. At another July meeting, civilian support was explicitly agreed, as army units were to clean up German troops behind the front line, possibly with the support of Soviet armour. At the same time, the Romanian Army, along with POW volunteers troops organised by the Soviets, was to prepare for the capture of Northern Transylvania and further collaborate in the Soviet offensive in Transylvania and Hungary. By the end of July, the military details of the plan had been decided, however the political arrangements were still debated. While the communists and the court supported a civilian coalition government of the BND, the PNȚ and PNL requested a military cabinet to lead the insurrection and sign the armistice, in order to minimize the political fallout. During the July 27 meeting between the communists, the high officers and several councillors of the King, the date for the insurrection was set for August 15, however the King's entourage requested it be postponed during the August 9/10 meeting. The PCR grudgingly accepted but notified the other conspirators that, in case of any further delay, it would act on its own. In Liveanu's opinion, the PCR was most likely planning for an alternative solution involving the National-Democratic Coalition. The new date for the overthrow of Antonescu was set on 26 August, date that was also reported by Maniu to Allied representatives in Cairo in the morning of 23 August. The start of the Jassy–Kishinev Offensive on 20 August and the perspective of Romanian territory becoming a war zone triggered new meetings between the representatives of the BND, the Military Committee and the King's councillors during the nights of 20/21 and 21/22 August; though Pătrășcanu insisted on the urgency of the matter, the previously established date was confirmed. Political issues re-emerged during a new meeting of the BND in the morning of 23 August: while the PCR proposed Maniu headed a government of the Bloc, the PNȚ leader insisted instead that Antonescu should be the one to sign the armistice. Without the knowledge of the PCR, during the very time PNȚ vice-president Mihalache and PNL vice-president Gheorghe I. Brătianu were meeting again with Antonescu, who finally accepted to sign the armistice, conditional on the two parties' signed agreement with the conditions. Though promised such a document by evening, after the discussion Antonescu held a cabinet meeting which decided resistance plans against the Soviet offensive, planning to continue the war until it received Germany's agreement for an armistice. The royal court, fearing Antonescu would leave for the front and would lose the occasion to arrest Antonescu in Bucharest, decided to act immediately, reaching an agreement with the communist representatives. Antonescu was arrested by the Palace Guard during a meeting with the King, moments after he rejected the latter's demand to sign an immediate armistice.

During the second week of August 1944, the FLP Command organised several meetings, assigning tasks and supplies to its teams.

Already on August 23 the Bucharest Military Command granted the FLPs freedom of movement during the curfew, while on August 25 the High General Staff ordered the Fifth Army Corps to formally coordinate its actions with the FLP. As the insurrection date had been moved ahead and the victory against German troops inside Romania was unexpectedly swift, the FLPs were only able to reach their full strength after the success of the insurrection. Nevertheless, in the period following the coup they became increasingly significant on the political scene, being used by the PCR to organise street demonstrations and rapidly expand its influence in the factories.

The members of FLPs would further serve the party in its efforts to impose a left-wing government, achieved in March 1945, as well as in the consolidation of its power after that date.

=Solomon Timov=

Solomon Timov (Соломон Самуилович Тимов; born Tinkelman; June 16, 1898 - August 17, 1943) was a Bessarabian-born Romanian and Soviet communist activist, economist and journalist. Although living in exile in the Soviet Union since 1923, he was one of the Romanian Communist Party's main theorist of the agrarian question and a member of its central leadership in the 1930s. Arriving in France shortly before World War II, he was briefly active in the French Resistance before being captured and sent to his death in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Early life and activism
Born into the large family of a Jewish craftsman in Rezina, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire (nowadays in Moldova), Timove became during his teens a Bolshevik sympathiser. In early 1918, as a civil war was ravaging Russia, Romanian troops intervened in his native region, with one of the stated objectives being preventing its takeover by the Bolsheviks. Timov took arms and joined a local volunteer group opposing the Romanian advance, however, lacking a central command and support from the outside, the groups where quickly defeated, and Bessarabia was proclaimed united with Romania in March, driving the Bolshevik movement underground. Becoming a member of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks), Timov was one of the organisers of the local underground chapter of the Komsomol. Consequently, at the December 1919 Chişinău founding conference, he was elected into the organisation's regional committee, along with Samuil Bubnovsky, Pavel Tcacenco and others, and in June 1922 he was its delegate to the First Balkan Conference of the Young Communist International.

During the early 1920s, Timov settles in Romania's capital, Bucharest, where he enrolled in the local university, becoming one of the leaders of the communist-inspired Society of Bessarabian Students. Around the same time, the Third International (Comintern) had agreed to the merger of the Bessarabian underground organisation into the Communist Party of Romania. Joining the latter party in 1922, Timov was selected as one of its representatives to the Vienna-based Balkan Communist Federation, participating at the Federation's fourth and fifth conferences and bringing his contribution to several of the adopted resolutions.

Soviet exile
Increasingly encumbered by the harassment of the Austrian police, alerted about his political activities by the Romanian consulate, Timov obtained party approval for emigration to the Soviet Union, arriving in Moscow during the autumn of 1923. There he enrolled into the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, which he would graduate in 1925. In the mean time, he continued his activism, writing for the Soviet press about the developments in Romania and especially in Bessarabia. Thus, during the 1924 Soviet-Romanian diplomatic negotiations, Timov supported the Soviet call for a plebiscite to decide the final fate of his native region. He was also vocal in condemning the brutal suppression of the Tatarbunary Uprising by the Romanian authorities in the autumn of that year, with his articles and internationally-distributed brochures serving to engender a strong movement of protest against government repression among sympathetic intellectuals from Western Europe. In February he was one of the signatories of a memorandum that called for the creation of a national territory for the Moldovans living compactly in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, near the Romanian border, meant as a point of attraction for the Moldavians in Bessarabia. The memorandum, also signed by other Bessarabian communists such as Grigory Kotovsky and Tcacenco, and Romanian political refugees like Ion Dic Dicescu and Alexandru Nicolau, resulted in the creation of an autonomous oblast in March, promoted to the status of autonomous republic in the aftermath of the Tatarbunary Uprising. Timov also joined the Association of the Bessarabians of the USSR, contributing to the organisation's journal, Krasnaya Bessarabiya ("Red Bessarabia").

=Romanian Revolutionary Peasants' Party=

The Romanian Revolutionary Peasants' Party (Partidul Ţărănesc Revoluţionar Român, Румынская революционная крестьянская партия) was a Bolsheviks-aligned agrarian party established in Russia in the aftermath of the October Revolution by Romanian refugees and Transylvanian Romanians captured as Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war. Active primarily in Moscow and among the Romanians in Russian POW camps, it edited its own Romanian language newspaper, Foaia ţăranului (Крестьянская Газета, "The Peasant's Gazette"). In late 1918 the party joined former members of the Odessa-based Romanian Social-Democratic Action Committee to create the Romanian group of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks). In early 1919, as some of its members had repatriated after the end of the war, the party was re-established in Nagyvárad (Oradea), at the time part of the Hungarian Democratic Republic, and was active in agitprop activity in the neighbouring rural areas, rallying with the Hungarian Republic of Councils. The party was disbanded following the occupation of the region by the Romanian Royal Army, during its intervention against Hungary.

Recreation in Hungary
As the four years of war had taken a heavy toll on Austria-Hungary, the country saw a resurgence of the workers' movement. This not only bolstered the position of the Social Democratic Party, but also encouraged the workers, empowered by the Russian October Revolution, to create revolutionary-minded groups. Already by April 1918, the Hungarian communists in Soviet Russia had set the socialist revolution in Hungary as their main objective. The reformist manifesto issued by the leadership of the MSzDP in October 1918 was therefore a cause of great dissatisfaction: judging it as a proof that the party had betrayed the proletariat, the Béla Kun-led communists decided to repatriate in order to form a Communist Party that would lead the working class towards revolution. The communists originating in the Transleithanian parts of Empire convened in Moscow on November 4 and elected a Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Hungary in order to coordinate the repatriating activists. Keeping in line with the principle of proletarian internationalism, people from all the nations of the Hungarian Kingdom were included, with each national group being assigned to the parts of the Kingdom in which their ethnic brethren constituted significant communities. The Romanians, being represented in the Committee by Ariton Pescariu and Emil Bozdog, former leaders of the Romanian Revolutionary Peasants' Party, were consequently assigned to Eastern Hungary and Transylvania. With Romanian troops occupying the latter beginning with mid-November, the Romanian communists were active primarily in Budapest and the Romanian-inhabited territories under the control of the more benevolent Hungarian Democratic Republic, in the Bihar, Szatmár and Szilágy counties.

= = //TO DO

Checklist MELLPPS

 * Constantin Agiu, 1891-1961
 * Vasile Anagnoste, 1975-1963
 * Nicolae Ardeleanu, 1903-1970
 * Constantin Balmuş, 1898-1957
 * Solomon Barbu, 1904-1965
 * Baruh H. Berea, 1893-1941
 * Iosif Bogdan, 1912-1962
 * Bela Breiner, 1896-1940
 * Nicolae Bucur, 1906-1938
 * Mihail Gh. Bujor, 1881-1964
 * Paul Bujor, 1862-1952
 * Emil Calmanovici, 1896-1956
 * Ion Călugăru, 1902-1956
 * Iosif Chişinevschi, 1905-1962
 * Mihail Ciobanu, 1900-1963
 * Alecu Constantinescu, 1873-1949
 * Ilie Cristea, 1892-1958
 * Gheorghe Crosnef, 1896-1937
 * Voicu Daciu, 1900-1952
 * Constantin David, 1908-1941
 * Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, 1855-1920
 * Alexandru Farcas, 1900-1963
 * Leonte Filipescu, 1895-1922
 * Smaranda Florescu, 1882-1965
 * Ioan Fonagy, 1900-1929
 * Ştefan Foriş, 1892-1946
 * Ion C. Frimu, 1871-1919
 * Petre Gheorghe, 1907-1943
 * Ştefan Gheorghiu, 1879-1914
 * Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, 1901-1965
 * Nicolae Goldberger, 1904-1970
 * Petru Groza, 1884-1958
 * Gheorghe Ionescu, 1913-1970
 * Marin Ionescu, 1896-1964
 * Marin Florea Ionescu, 1899-1967
 * Teodor Iordăchescu, 1884-1958
 * Gospodin Iordanof, 1902-1957
 * Barbu Lăzăreanu, 1991-1957
 * Haia Lifşiţ, 1903-1929
 * Vasile Luca, 1898-1963
 * Mihail Macavei, 1882-1965
 * Cocu Mănescu, 1912-1957
 * Ada Marinescu, 1904-1941
 * Costea Mirel, 1907-1951
 * Alexandru Moghioroş, 1911-1969
 * Nicolae Mohănescu, 1914-1942
 * Maria Moraru, 1911-1958
 * Mihail Moraru, 1892-1955
 * Panait Muşoiu, 1864-1944
 * Gheorghe Niculescu-Mizil, 1886-1945
 * Eufrosina Cotor, 1902-1954
 * Iancu Olteanu, 1881-1968
 * Lilli Paneth, 1911-1941
 * C. I. Parhon, 1874-1969
 * Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, 1900-1954
 * Ana Pauker, 1894-1960
 * Dumitru Petrescu, 1906-1969
 * Ilie Pintilie, 1903-1940
 * Ştefan Plavăţ, 1913-1944
 * Dumitru Pop, 1880-1963
 * Nicolae Popescu-Doreanu, 1897-1960
 * Constantin Popovici, 1876-1940
 * Grigore Preoteasa, 1915-1957
 * Lothar Rădăceanu, 1899-1955
 * Iosif Rangheţ, 1904-1952
 * Mihail Roller, 1908-1958
 * Leontin Sălăjan, 1913-1966
 * Simion Stoilov, 1887-1961
 * Pompiliu Ştefu, 1910-1942
 * Constantin Trandafirescu, 1896-1970
 * Gheorghe M. Vasilescu-Vasia, 1891-1929

//to write

Before October

 * Teodor Diamant
 * Ştefan Petică #/?
 * Romanian Revolutionary Military Committee / Romanian Social Democratic Action Committee
 * Alter Zalic
 * Gheorghe Niculescu-Mizil #
 * Iancu Olteanu (Ioan Gh. Olteanu) #/?

After October

 * work on Ecaterina Arbore, Joseph Boczov, Ghita Moscu, Gheza Vida, Ilie Moscovici
 * Elena Pavel
 * Elena Filipovici (or Elena Filipescu?)* (#)
 * David Fabian* (#) * (#)
 * Coloman Müller #
 * Dumitru Grofu* (#)
 * Constantin Ivănuş #
 * General Council of Unitary Trade Unions
 * General Council of Trade Unions/General Confederation of Labour (Romania)


 * Ocsko Tereza

//to find sources
 * Alexandru Iliescu #
 * Bela Breiner #
 * Mihail Cruceanu
 * Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi
 * Gheorghe Vasilescu-Vasia
 * Mihail Macavei
 * Gyárfás Kurkó

//to asses
 * Suzana Parvulescu
 * Vasile Tudose
 * Constantin Godeanu
 * Ludovic Minschi (#)
 * Iacob Schaschek (#)
 * Gheorghe Stroici (#)
 * Heinrich Sternberg, Solomon Schein, Marcel Leonin
 * Jenő Kovács Katona

//"unitarists" and right-wing
 * Litman Ghelerter
 * Ion Sion
 * Leon Gheller (Litman Geller?) (??)
 * Theodor Iordăchescu

//DRO
 * Дочо Михайлов
 * Димитър Дончев
 * Георги Кроснев
 * Върбан Петров

Resistance

 * Petre Gheorghe #
 * Andrei Bernat ?
 * Lazăr Grünberg ?
 * Joseph Clisci ?
 * Iosza Bela ?
 * Ada Marinescu ?
 * Vasile Tudose ?
 * Elena Sîrbu ?
 * Bela Breiner ?

=PCR Victims in the Great Purge=
 * Marin Stepan Semyonovich [Marcel Pauker]
 * Born in 1896, Romania, Bucharest, higher education; performing individual tasks of the ECCI. Shot 16 August 1938.


 * Eugen Rozvan (rehab)


 * Nicolea-Konitz Pierre Iosipovich (?Jacques Konitz - rehab)
 * Born in 1895, Romania, employee of the Comintern. Shot 14 July 1938


 * Badulesku Alexander Saimovich [Gelber Moscovici] (rehab)
 * Born in 1889, Banceni (Romania), Jew, secondary education, expelled from the CPSU (B) in 1935 (a former member of the Social Democratic Party of Romania, Romanian MP) dismissed as consulting editor in "Publishing a partnership of foreign workers in the USSR" for 5 months before his arrest. He was arrested on August 15, 1937. Sentenced: ECCU USSR November 4, 1937, "Creating spy organization in the ECCI". Shot on November 4, 1937 Place of burial: Moscow, Don Cemetery. Rehabilitated 25 July 1956 ECCU USSR.


 * Ardelean Stepan Ivanovich (??)
 * Born in 1896, Urlyanka (Urleasca?), Braila county; lower education and a member of the VKP (b) and CP Romania; 1st GPP im.Kaganovicha: locksmith. He was arrested on March 12, 1938. Sentenced: Commission NKVD May 29, 1938, "Counterrevolutionary activity". Shot on June 10, 1938 Place of burial: Moscow Region., Butovo. Rehabilitated December 2, 1965


 * Tatarov Alexei Mihailovich [Timotei Marin] (rehab)
 * Born in 1897, Bessarabia, Orhei county, Kipeshka; Moldavian, higher education and a member of the CPSU (b), (former member of the CP Romania), authorized by the group Glavlit politredaktsii Goslitizdat. Sentenced: ECCU USSR March 19, 1938, "Espionage".Shot on March 19, 1938 Place of burial Moscow Region., Kommunarka. Rehabilitated 12 December 1956 ECCU USSR


 * Palanker Shel Abramovich (??)
 * Born in 1896, Orhei District (Bessarabia), the town Telenesti, Jew, self-taught education, a former member of the CP Romania. He was arrested on March 17, 1938 Sentenced: Commission of the NKVD of the USSR Prosecutor and May 20, 1938, "was recruited in 1932 for espionage work in favor of Romania" Shot on June 4, 1938 Place of burial - the burial place - Moscow Region., Butovo. Rehabilitated in September 1970


 * Goldin Iacov Vladimirovich (??)
 * Born in 1903, Chisinau (Bessarabia), Russian, secondary education, CP member Romania; 1st trolleybus park: the driver. He was arrested on February 25, 1938. Sentenced: Commission of the NKVD of the USSR Prosecutor and 2 August 1938, "Spying for Romania". Shot on August 16, 1938 Place of burial Moscow Region., Butovo. Rehabilitated February 3, 1958


 * Adolf Kristin [Leon Lichtblau] (rehab)


 * Dobrogeanu Alexander Konstantinovich [Dobrogeanu-Gherea] (rehab)
 * Born in 1879, Ploesti Romania, higher education and a member of the CPSU (b) (a former member of the Social Democratic Party of Romania, Romanian MP) before retiring editor in "Publishing partnership foreign Workers in the USSR ". He was arrested on September 9, 1937. Sentenced: ECCU USSR November 4, 1937, "Links with Romanian participation in the exploration and counterrev subversive terrorist organization" Shot on November 4, 1937 Place of burial Moscow, Don Cemetery. Rehabilitated 20 October 1956 ECCU USSR.


 * Albinescu Mihail Dimitrievich [Izo Iţcovici]
 * Born in 1904, Modus, Romania, Jew, higher education and a member PCR and member of the CPSU (b), the Institute of World Economy: Art. Researcher. He was arrested on December 18, 1937 Sentenced: Commission NKVD May 20, 1938,"Espionage and sabotage activities in favor of Romania" Shot May 31, 1938 Place of burial Moscow Region., Butovo. Rehabilitated October 6, 1956.


 * Olodovsky-Grinshpun Petr Markovich (??)
 * Born in 1900, Chisinau, a Jew, a secondary education and a member of the CPSU (b), (former member of the CP of Romania, the German CP) Chief Energy Department Building and room management of the Red Army. He was arrested on October 19, 1937. Sentenced: ECCU USSR December 26, 1937, "Participation in the military-fascist conspiracy" Shot on December 26, 1937 Place of burial Moscow Region., Kommunarka. Rehabilitated in August 1956, the Soviet Union ECCU.


 * Dic Ivan Osipovich (rehab)
 * Born in 1893, Bucharest, Romania, higher education and a member of the CPSU (b) Deputy Head of the Central Office of National Economic Accounting Gosplan. He was arrested on April 5, 1937. Sentenced: ECCU USSR January 4, 1938, "Espionage". Shot on January 4, 1938 Place of burial - the burial place - Moscow Region., Kommunarka. Rehabilitated in June 1956, the Soviet Union ECCU.


 * Diamandeski Teodor Spiridonovich [Diamandescu] (rehab)
 * Born in 1895, Romania, Romanian, Arrested in 1936. Sentenced: three at NKVD in Dalstroy November 10, 1937. Shot on December 5, 1937. Rehabilitated in January 1956


 * Nicolau Alexander Aleksandrovich (rehab)
 * Born in 1890, in Bucharest, Romania, higher education and a member of the CPSU (b), (former member of the French and Romanian Socialist Party), a teacher of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages ​​.He was arrested on August 14, 1937. Sentenced: ECCU USSR September 27, 1937, "Spying and involvement in counterrev terrorist organization". Shot on September 27, 1937 Place of burial: Moscow, Don Cemetery. Rehabilitated 15 September 1956 ECCU USSR.


 * Zalic Alter Abramovich (rehab)
 * Born in 1889, Romania Jew, higher education and a member of the CPSU (b), the editor and translator of "Publishing partnership of foreign workers in the USSR" He was arrested on August 14, 1937. Sentenced: ECCU USSR September 27, 1937, "Participation in espionage and sabotage organization". Shot on September 27, 1937 Place of burial Moscow, Don Cemetery. Rehabilitated 20 October 1956 ECCU USSR


 * Petraru-Ziss Petu Vasilievich [Petre Zissu] (rehab)
 * Born 1901 DOB, Romanians, a member of the Communist Party of Romania, the assistant to the foreign literature publishing the Executive Committee of the Communist International; sentenced to death June 28, 1937 by the Military Tribunal of the Kiev military district for participation in subversive terrorist organization.


 * Ciobanu, Maria Ivanovna [Filippovici Elena] (rehab)
 * Born in 1903, a Romanian, a member of the Communist Party of Romania, the representative of the Executive Committee of the Communist International; condemned to death December 15, 1937 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR for participation in subversive terrorist organization.


 * Keblesh Elek Baltazarovich [Elek Koblos]
 * 1887 born, Hungarian, General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, the representative of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, sentenced to death October 9, 1938 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR for spying and involvement in subversive terrorist organization. December 8, 1956 the Military Board of the USSR Supreme Court reinstated.


 * Blank Gustav Leonardovich [David Fabian] (rehab)
 * Born 1895, Hush, Romania, a Jew, a Romanian citizen (have a residence permit for foreigners), from a family of big traders expelled from the CPSU (b) 10.x-'37 as a Trotskyist. Editor of "Publishing company of foreign workers in the USSR" Arrest: 09/25/1937; Convicted. 02/12/1937 Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. .spying and involvement in KR terrorist organization. Shot 9/12/1937. The place of execution: Moscow region, Kommunarka. Rehabilitation December 1956 ECCU USSR.
 * "Romanian intelligence agent in 1920 recruited intelligence resident in Vienna RADOYU, with a train in the Soviet Union, a delegation from the soc. Party of Romania. From then until the time of arrest was actively espionage work in the Soviet Union, carrying out recruitment of new individuals. They were recruited by the ECCI PCR representative BADULESKU. Trotskyist party counter-revolutionary nationalist organization. On the instructions of the organization, has entered into a terrorist group in Moscow, preparing the murder of one of the leaders of the Communist Party-b and the Soviet government. Damning evidence confessed spies and terrorists BADULESKU & Dobrogeanu. SPY, the Trotskyists, participant KR ORGANIZATION."

Rehab

 * Ecaterina Arbore # (ru.wiki)
 * Imre Aladar
 * Ioan Dic-Dicescu #
 * Tudor Diamandescu #
 * Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea #
 * Elena Filipovici #?
 * David Fabian (Finkelstein) (Gustav Blank 1928-1937) #
 * Dumitru Grofu
 * Jacques Konitz #
 * Elek Koblós #?
 * Leon Lichtblau #
 * Marcel Leonin
 * Gelber Moscovici (Ghiţă Moscu) #
 * Alexandru Nicolau #
 * Marcel Pauker #
 * Eugen Rozvan #
 * Alter Zalic #
 * Petre Zissu #?
 * Timotei Marin #

=David Fabian=

David Fabian, born Finchelştein, also known as Gustav Blank (Густав Леонардович Бланк; November 24, 1897 - December 9, 1937), was a Romanian journalist, socialist and later communist leader. Editor of Socialismul, the organ of the Socialist Party of Romania, and regular contributor to Lupta de clasă, the party's theoretical journal, he was one of the main supporters of the affiliation to the Third International during the debates that preceded the transformation of the party into the Romanian Communist Party (PCdR) in 1921. Fabian was arrested several times for his beliefs, and fled the country in 1925, after being sentenced to ten years in prison for his membership in the by-then illegal PCdR. While in exile, he was part of editorial board of the re-founded Lupta de clasă, and took a seat in the Political Bureau of the party, organised outside Romania due to severe persecution by the government. As Comintern influence over the party increased towards the end of 1920s, Fabian, by then living in the Soviet Union, was marginalised, being removed from the leadership and losing his position as editor. He returned to active party work in 1932, as part of a committee tasked with translating into Romanian the classics of Marxism-Leninism. He was the managing editor of the projected twelve-volume Romanian translation of Lenin's works, however, in 1937, during the Great Purge, he was accused of Trotskyism and counter-revolutionary activity, arrested and shot shortly after. Fabian was posthumously rehabilitated in the Soviet Union during the De-Stalinization, and later also in the Communist Party-led Romania.

=Andrei Ionescu=

Andrei Ionescu (December 24, 1874 - May 4, 1943) was a Romanian trade unionist, and socialist and communist militant. Active in the Romanian labour movement since its early phases, he was a leading member of the socialist organisation in the major ports of Galaţi and Constanţa, coming at times in conflict with the national socialist leadership. Supporting the transformation of the movement into the Comintern-affiliated Communist Party of Romania, he followed the latter into illegality, suffering persecution from state authorities. Beatings during arrests would lead to a severe deterioration of his health condition, and ultimately to his death.

First contacts with the socialist movement
Andrei Ionescu was born in a working class family in Galaţi, Romania's main port at the time. He completed primary school in 1887, and, lacking the material means needed for further education, he entered as apprentice in a local carpentry workshop. Attracted by the socialist ideas, he regularly participated in the conferences organised by the local Workers' Club after the creation of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR), holding in 1896 a conference on the relation between workers' parties and "boyar parties". As party member, Ionescu participated in the organisation of May Day celebrations, strikes, and electoral campaign. Between 1899 and 1901 he was drafted in the Romanian Army, and afterwards started working as carpenter foreman on a sea-going vessel. In this period he had the occasion to learn several foreign languages, and make contacts with socialist-minded workers in several European ports. According to his daughter, during his voyages Ionescu also met Lenin, who at the time was self-exiled in Western Europe.

Returning to Galaţi in 1905, Andrei Ionescu soon joined the leadership of the local Workers' Club, which had survived PSDMR's dissolution in 1899. Soon after, the "România Muncitoare" circle entrusted him with the organisation of the emerging workers' movement in Constanţa, Romania's new burgeoning port. During the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt the local socialist club decided to declare a general strike in support of the peasants. Andrei Ionescu left for Bucharest to present the club's decision to the General Commission of the Trade Unions, and to protest to the Interior Ministry the prefects's decision to ban public meetings and street demonstrations. Back in he Galaţi, he was made member of the team negotiating worker's demand with the factory owner and the local authorities. Afraid of the collaboration between revolting peasants and the workers, the latter conceded several rights for the workers. However, as the government's brutal intervention was able to put down the peasant's rebellion, Ionescu and 50 other workers were arrested and imprisoned.

Relations with Romanian Social Democratic Party
Set free soon after, Ionescu was part of the socialist delegation to the second Conference of trade unions and socialist circles that took place in his Galaţi, opening its works. He was elected member in the General Commission of the Trade Unions, which also included Alecu Constantinescu and Ştefan Gheorghiu. The conference also named him part of the Romanian delegation to the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International, along Constantinescu, Christian Rakovsky and N. D. Cocea. In Stuttgart, he sat on the commission on colonial problems. Ionescu was again imprisoned on his return to Romania.

Between 1908 and 1910, different views on the tactics to be used by the workers and the relation between the socialist movement and the trade unions led to a split between the central leadership of the socialist movement and the Galaţi movement, led by Andrei Ionescu and Garibaldi Constantinescu. As a result, at the February 1910 Congress that reorganised the Romanian Social Democratic Party, the Executive Committee found Ionescu and G. Constantinescu guilty of "dissident attitude", and excluded them from the party. The conflict between the central leadership and the Galaţi section was eventually settled with the meditation of veteran socialist Mihail Gh. Bujor, and the two dissidents were accepted back into the party in June 1911. Due to continued persecution from the local authorities, Ionescu decided to leave Galaţi for Constanţa, where he concentrated on the organisation of the local movement, limiting his involvement in national politics. In 1916, when Romania entered World War I on the side of the Entente, he was mobilised and send to the front line.

Support for communism and later life
After the war, at the end 1918, Ionescu returned to Constanţa, to find the workers' movement disorganised by the two years of Central Powers occupation. He helped recreate the trade unions of the port workers, organised the local section of the Socialist Party of Romania (PSR), and led several strikes. Furthermore, in the 1919 and 1920 general elections he was the PSR candidate for the Constanţa constituency of the Parliament of Romania. In 1921 he headed the local delegation of the party to the May Congress, that resulted in the major split in the party. Ionescu was elected vice-president of the Congress' Bureau, and led the works on May 9. On May 11 he sided with the majority, speaking for unconditional affiliation of the party with the Third International (Comintern) and the creation of the Communist Party of Romania (PCdR). The authorities clamped down on the Congress the following day, arresting all Communist delegates. In an attempt to associate them with the terror attack of the anarchist Max Goldstein, all the arrested became defendants in the Dealul Spirii Trial. Among the imprisoned, Andrei Ionescu declared a hunger strike, protesting the abuses that took place in the Jilava and Văcăreşti prisons, and signed a protest letter addressed to the Assembly of the Deputies. During interrogation, he reject the accusations of "crime against state security", and acknowledged his vote for the affiliation with the Comintern. Ionescu was eventually set free at the end of 1922, along with 37 other militants, and returned to Constanţa, where he was met with enthusiasm by the local workers.

Between 1922 and 1923, Ionescu organised several conferences for the workers at the Constanţa headquarters of the PCdR. Subject were varied, and included non-political topics such as geology, zoology, history and palaeontology. Following the outlawing of the party in 1924, he continued his activity among the workers, although his work was severely hampered by the persecution by the authorities. He was imprisoned for two months in 1930 on accusations of "communism". Along Filimon Sârbu and other local left-wing activists, Ionescu was in 1935 one of the founders of Constanţa Committee for the defence and support of the antifascist political prisoners. His activity in the committee resulted in 1936 in a new trial, a military tribunal condemning him to 6 months of imprisonment and stripping him of political rights for 3 years. Ionescu was set free in 1937, only to be soon arrested again. Severe beating during this last arrest left him seriously ill, forcing him to limit his participation in the workers' movement. In the days preceding the celebration of May Day in 1943, the police was ordered to arrest him and intern him in a labour camp. However, on the day of the arrest, the responsible officers concluded his condition prevented him from any political activity and the transfer to the camp would endanger his life; as a consequence he was not apprehended. Ionescu died soon after, on May 4.

As the communists gained power in Romania in the late 1940s, Andrei Ionescu was one of the activists highlighted by the propaganda. A bust was dedicated to him in Constanţa, however it did not survive the ideological purge that followed the regime change in 1989.

=Timotei Marin=

Timotei Marin (Тимофей Фьодорович Марин, also known as Tataru, Tătărescu and Aleksey Tatarov, Алексей Михайлович Татаров; June 12, 1897 - March 19, 1938).

Timotei Marin was born on June 12, 1897, in the Bessarabian village of Kipeshka, in a peasant family. His father, Teodor Marin, had reportedly fought on the Romanian side during the Romanian War of Independence. Timotei, the second of the three children of the family to survive childhood, received his primary education in Pochaev, in the Ukraine, where his older brother Chiril was a teacher. He continued his studies at the Kishinev Theological Seminary, where he had received a scholarship. In 1913, dissatisfied with the bad quality of the food served to the boarding students, Marin, along with Ipolit Derevici and two other colleagues, organised a protest against the seminary's management. As a result, Marin lost his scholarship and his accommodation, but was allowed to continue his studies. The four students had to rent a room in Kishinev, and it was here that their landlord, a shoemaker, introduced them to the works of Russian socialists Georgi Plekhanov and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. According to his deposition during the 1922 trial, during this period Marin also befriended Pan Halippa, who provided him with texts from the Romanian literature, and inspired him to work towards the emancipation of the Bessarabian peasants.

During the March 1924 Vienna negotiations between the Romanian and Soviet governments, Marin's articles supported the necessity of a plebiscite to determine the final fate of Bessarabia, position also taken by the Soviet delegation. He further condemned the continued state of siege in Bessarabia, the corrupt administration the Romanian government had installed in the region, as well as the supposed economical plunder taking place there. In this context, he also reaffirmed the Communist Party's support for the full right of self-determination for all the regions that had become part of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I.

He was arrested on November 9, 1937, during the Stalinist purges, and on March 19, 1938, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR convicted him to death on charges of espionage. He was executed on the same day at Kommunarka, near Moscow. Marin was posthumously rehabilitated by a decision of the Soviet Supreme Court on December 12, 1956, and by a Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in April 1968.

Background
rise of the far right; Romanian-German treaty March 23, 1939 ->Romanian economy virtually subjugated; neutrality declared Sept. 18 1939; out of League of Nations July 10, 1940; abdication of Charles -> national legionary state +Antonescu ( with experts from PNL and PNT in the economical domains); constitutional guarantees eliminated; legionary police abuses; antifascists interned at Doftana, Galata, Caransebes; political leaders assassinated; October 1940, 2 german divisions enter Romania under the pretext of training the army, soon their number exceeds the one agreed in March 1939; main occupation zones: Bucharest, Prahova Valley; November 23, 1940, Romania in Tripartite Pact; half a million german troops in winter 1940/1941 -> used to occupy Yugoslavia and Greece; spring 1940, another 10 german division on the Soviet border; barbarossa

1940

 * November 10: 10 Communist killed in earthquake at Doftana: Ilie Pintilie, Ianoş Herbak/Herbah (1911-1940), Andrei Prot (1905?-1940, French engineer), Ivan Galuzinschi (1901-1940), painter Gheorghe Paloş, student & conductor Itzo Salamander, Vasile Pop, Alexandru Nikonov (brother of Serghei Nicolau); possibly also G. Zambori, I. Rebac,, S. Cleiman, V. Melihov, M. Gofman, P. Martiniuc, E. Biederman, A. Ciobotaru; Petru Onufrienco possibly killed in the period, though not in the earthquake
 * Novemebr 26: 64 antifascist executed at Jilava

1941
generals Ciuperca and Oraseanu oppose continuing war -> sacked by Antonescu
 * March 2: antitank mines depot in Mogosoaia blown up;
 * April-May: strikes in the mining industry
 * June 22: Filimon Sarbu arrested;
 * July 8 - resistance program by PCR;
 * Sept 6: "platforma program" by PCR. goal: stopping war with USSR and joining the SU,UK, Pl and Cz-Sk against Nazis; means: stopping war production and preventing war transports to the front; driving out german troops; overthrowing traitor Antonescu and new grand coalition government; liberating the people of Northern Transylvania from Hitlerist yoke; stopping plundering in Bessarabia and persecuton of Jews; no terror and mass killing; general amnesty; no more concetration camps;
 * November: Francisc Panet
 * Dec 7 - war declaration by the UK

Sabotages:
 * blown up: arms factory in Avrig; several ammunition trains in Ploiesti-Triaj
 * derailment of german military train on Bucharest-Constanta line
 * several oil wells in Prahova and Dambovita set ablaze
 * all the period: industrial sabotage at IAR Brasov (non-functional airplanes sent to the front) and Constanta Workshop (ships repairs delayed)

Clandestine anti-war journals and manifests by the PCR; June 1941 - June 1944: 86,000 sentences for desertion handed out by Martial courts

1942

 * January: 27 antifascist sentenced at Bucharest
 * March 11, derailment of 2 German convoys at Nicolina-Iasi
 * May: typography workers Stefan Pompiliu and Nicolae Mohanescu executed; 19 antifascist sentenced at Brasov
 * July: Army Arsenal in Targoviste set ablaze, ammunition depot near Buzau blown up (July 11)
 * August 20-21, phone line with Germany cut
 * September 13, two military trains collide at Socola-Iasi
 * November 3, sabotage at Podul Iloaiei
 * fall: 6 oil tankers in Giurgiu on fire
 * December 27: 30 soldiers executed at Ghencea

Prolonged war in the USSR: discontent in the army; numerous indiscipline cases, refusal to participate at army operations;

tensions between Romanian and German troops:
 * fall 1942 German soldiers attack the companies of the 5th Infantry regiment for refusal to participate in anti-Soviet attack; German send notes to Antonescu requiring subordination of troops;
 * Sept 25 - Oct 10 1942 : XIX Infantry division and III Fusilers division refuse to attack Soviets in the Caucasus

1943

 * february: Petre Gheorghe, leader of PCR Bucharest executed
 * July: 35 soldiers executed at Ghencea
 * production dropped by 30% at Simeria
 * August: German Aviation Command reports several sabotages on the telephone line
 * September 18: Romanian POWs in the Soviet Union request to establish volunteer regiments against the Axis; approved in October: "Tudor Vladimirescu" organized by the end of the year.
 * peasant hide cereals from war requisitions, refuse to pay taxes
 * widespread desertions
 * the General Staff reports growing communist influence among workers in arms industry


 * 1942-1943: Maniu and Bratianu send secret letters tot he king and Antonescu to stop the call back the troops; they begin negotiations with the US


 * summer 1943: Antihitlerist Patriotic Front formed by Ploughmens Front, Patriots Union, Socialist Peasan't Party, Madosz

1944

 * March: 54 antifascist and 300 Soviet POW murdered in the Ribnita jail
 * April: 69 scholars of the Romanian Academy request immediate stop of the war on the side of Hitler (Parhon, Cernatescu, Lupu, Ralea, Profiri, Nicolau, A. Rosetti, Balmus, Titeica, Daicoviciu, Otetea)
 * grassroots antiwar movments: women request return of husbands from the front
 * Soviet proposal to join the Allies, refused by Antonescu on April 12;
 * Soviet cross the Prut on April 17, liberate Northern Moldavia
 * Partisan groups are formed in Vrancea, Parang
 * 12 partisan groups parachuted in Romania by the Soviets (Spanish Civil War vets, militants, POWs)
 * Romanians participated in 5 other Soviet-supported partisan groups in Czechoslovakia and Transcarpathia
 * June 1944 - "Marasti" partisan group in Banat led by Stefan Plavat (PCR)
 * "Carpati" partisan group in Prahova Valley destroys 12 fuel trains for the front
 * June 20 National Democratic Block: PCR, PSD, PNT, PNL
 * July 16: deserters are to be shot, reprisals against families

Strikes:
 * Timisoara ("Standard" factory);
 * Astra Arad (April 1943);
 * Glass factroy Tomesti (May 1942)
 * Bucharest ( Wolf, Lemaitre, Arsenal factories)
 * Ploiesti (Concordia)
 * (Jiu Valley (july 1941-aug 1942)
 * CFR (Brasov-Sibiu)
 * oil pipes Constanta-Cernavoda (fall 1942)
 * Sandulesti (jan 1943)
 * arms industry in Ploiesti (March 1943)

Other Actions
Pravda of May 7, 1942 / TASS : London corespondent of United Press reports:
 * partisans derailed German military train off Craiova, 70 soldiers dead
 * attacked a German Military Command in Bucharest, capturing large quantities of arms
 * set on fire a tanks transporting train