Alexandru Drăghici

Alexandru Drăghici

Alexandru Drăghici (born September 27, 1913 in Tisău , Buzău County , Romania ; † December 12, 1993 in Budapest , Hungary ) was a Romanian communist activist and politician.

Life

The industrial worker Drăghici joined the communist underground at the age of 20. He and his future rival Ana Pauker were arrested for illegal political activity in 1935 , sentenced to over nine years in prison and only released after the coup on August 23, 1944 . As a confidante of the communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej , he rose quickly in the hierarchy of the Communist Party of Romania after the Second World War . Drăghici initiated targeted repressive campaigns against groups that were opposed to Marxism - Leninism . He had previously had youth movements and the teaching staff politically cleansed.

In 1952 and from 1957 to 1965 Drăghici held the office of Minister of the Interior. From 1952 to 1957 he was entrusted with the office of Minister for State Security. In both positions he controlled the Securitate secret police . During Drăghici's term of office, the repression of the Department of State Security ( Romanian Departamentul Securității Statului ) was directed not only against activists of the anti-communist resistance in Romania , but also served the political cleansing of the Communist Party and other sections of the population.

After his participation in a denunciation campaign against the then Foreign Minister Ana Pauker, the Hungarian community in Romania moved into state security attention in Drăghicis during the Hungarian popular uprising in 1956 , here in particular the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj . The uprising in the neighboring country was followed with sympathy by large parts of the Hungarian minority; whereupon the course of the Romanian leadership against the Hungarians tightened. Drăghici was involved in the show trial against Justice Minister Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu . Under his leadership, the band of bank robbers Banda Ioanid was arrested . He was considered a sharp opponent of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox Church .

Like Gheorghiu-Dej, Drăghici was an opponent of de-Stalinization , but both signaled Romania's emancipation from the Soviet Union through their national communism and socialist patriotism . After Gheorghiu-Dej's death, Drăghici found a bitter opponent in the rising communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu . Through his influence in the party, he managed to hold Drăghici responsible for all publicly known crimes of the Securitate. After this assignment of blame, Drăghici eventually withdrew from politics, but was initially not held accountable. Between 1968 and 1989 he lived anonymously in the Bucharest area and after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 moved to his family in Hungary, where he lived in Budapest until his death in 1993. The new Romanian authorities tried in vain to extradite him. Shortly before his death in 1993, Drăghici was found guilty in the absence of incitement to murder by a Romanian court.

literature

• Walter M. Bacon, Jr .: Romania. In: Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone (Ed.): Communism in Eastern Europe. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984, ISBN 0-7190-1704-1 , pp. 162-184, in English
• Luminiţa Banu, Florian Banu: Alexandru Drăghici la ora naţionalismului - popularizarea 'Declaraţiei din aprilie 1964' în structurile Mai (PDF; 2.7 MB), Caietele CNSAS , No. 3/2009, pp. 7-22, in Romanian
• Stefano Bottoni: Transilvania roşie. Comunismul român şi problema naţională 1944–1965 (PDF; 2.5 MB), Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities & Editura Kriterion, Cluj-Napoca, 2010, ISBN 978-606-92512-0-1 , in Romanian
• Gheorghe Brătescu, Ce-a fost să fie. Notaţii autobiografice , Humanitas, Bucharest, 2003, ISBN 973-50-0425-9 , in Romanian
• Constantin Grigore, Miliana Şerbu: Miniştrii de internal (1862–2007) (PDF; 1.8 MB) , Editura Ministerului Internelor şi Reformei Administrative, Bucharest, 2007, ISBN 978-973-745-048-7 , in Romanian
• George Enache: Represiunea religioasă în România comunistă. Studiu de caz: 'Rugul aprins' (PDF; 267 kB), University Galați (UGAL): Anale. Seria Istorie , Vol. III, 2004, pp. 135-153, in Romanian
• Elisabeta Neagoe: Raportul secret al lui Nikita Hruşciov şi efectele sale în România (PDF; 306 kB), UGAL: Anale. Seria Istorie , Vol. II, 2003, pp. 135-158, in Romanian
• Stelian Neagoe: Oameni politici români. Editura Machiavelli, Bucharest, 2007, ISBN 978-973-99321-7-2 , in Romanian
• Elis Neagoe-Pleşa: 'Camarila' lui Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (PDF; 195 kB). In: University of December 1st, Alba Iulia, Annales Universitatis Apulensis, Series Historica , No. 10 / I, 2006, pp. 147-163, in Romanian
• Liviu Pleşa: Dosarul de Securitate al istoricului Silviu Dragomir (PDF; 219 kB). In: University of December 1st, Alba Iulia, Annales Universitatis Apulensis, Series Historica , No. 90 / I, 2005, pp. 218-229, in Romanian
• Vladimir Tismăneanu: Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism. University of California Press , Berkeley, 2003, ISBN 0-520-23747-1 , in English
• Vladimir Tismăneanu, Cristian Vasile: Perfectul acrobat. Leonte Răutu, măştile răului. Humanitas, Bucharest, 2008, ISBN 978-973-50-2238-9 , in Romanian
• Alexandru Draghici , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 47/1968 of November 11, 1968, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Kunze: Nicolae Ceaușescu: A biography. Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-211-8 , p. 132.

Web links

Commons : Alexandru Drăghici  - collection of images, videos and audio files