48 Facts About Dumitru Petrescu

Dumitru Petrescu, believed to have been born Gheorghe M Dumitru, known as Gheorghe Petrescu and Petrescu-Grivita, was a Romanian general, trade union leader, and Communist Party activist.

Dumitru Petrescu broke out of Craiova penitentiary a few months later, together with Vasilichi and Doncea, after overpowering a guard.

Dumitru Petrescu worked in publishing and trained as a propagandist at the International Lenin School in Moscow.

Dumitru Petrescu helped rallying up Romanian prisoners of war for the Red Army's Tudor Vladimirescu and Horea, Closca si Crisan Divisions, emerging as a political commissar and lieutenant colonel.

Dumitru Petrescu had a mainly political role in the Soviet conquest of Romania, upon which he was integrated into the Romanian Land Forces, serving as a coordinator of cultural and propaganda efforts, leading toward their transformation into the Romanian people's army.

Dumitru Petrescu followed the Romanian army and the Vladimirescu units as they crossed into Northern Transylvania and Hungary, recording his troops' initial bravery and subsequent breakdown during the Battle of Debrecen.

Dumitru Petrescu's marginalisation occurred largely because the communist leader, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, had a more modest pedigree in the railways movement than either Petrescu or Doncea, and as such resented their visibility.

Outspoken in his criticism of Gheorghiu-Dej, Dumitru Petrescu was identified as belonging to a "Doncea group" of factionalists, and expelled from the party in July 1956.

Dumitru Petrescu returned to favour in 1965, when Gheorghiu-Dej had died and Nicolae Ceausescu, as the new general secretary, had introduced a more liberal political line.

Dumitru Petrescu is remembered as a founding figure of CSA Steaua Bucuresti and of its football club.

Dumitru Petrescu was described in PCR propaganda as having "experienced from his early childhood terrible exploitation by the bourgeois-landowning regime"; historian Florin Sperlea describes his childhood as having been spent "in a working-class neighborhood", namely among employees of Caile Ferate Romane.

Dumitru Petrescu returned to the CFR as an metalworking lathe operator, fully employed there from October 1920 to August 1928.

In early 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Dumitru Petrescu helped to organise the Grivita strike, as a leader of the Bucharest union council; this was the culmination of efforts that began in 1932, when Dumitru Petrescu, together with Gheorghe Vasilichi and Constantin Doncea, considered making pushes for a general strike.

Sociologist Vladimir Tismaneanu argues that Dumitru Petrescu spent time in Doftana Prison, where he became a supporter of Gheorghiu-Dej, who had been prosecuted for the Grivita strike, and who was emerging as leader of a PCR faction.

The mass trial began on 17 July 1933 at the military tribunal of the 2nd Army Corps, in Bucharest; Dumitru Petrescu was represented in court by lawyer Iosif Sraier.

Dumitru Petrescu himself was "almost defiant" in his addresses to the court, alleging that his judges were mere lackeys for the government and the ruling classes.

Historian Ilarion Tiu questions at least part of Vasilichi's story, noting that all other records show Dumitru Petrescu as acting sick.

Vasilichi notes that the car ran out of gas while nearing Bucharest, but that Dumitru Petrescu was able to obtain some from a group of peasants.

In Romania, Dumitru Petrescu left his wife and two young daughters, who were cared for by Pompilian's father.

Dumitru Petrescu was mainly employed at either the Foreign Languages Publishing House or the State Publishing House, until being recruited by the PCR's foreign bureau, and assigned to work for Radio Moscow during the early stages of World War II.

Giju rates his work for that station and in print media as "anti-Romanian propaganda", arguing that Dumitru Petrescu was "most likely" employed by the Red Army, specifically the 6th Combined Arms Army's political directorate.

In 1942, Dumitru Petrescu set up a Romanian-language propaganda newspaper, Graiul Liber.

On 1 December 1943, Dumitru Petrescu was moved from the DTV to a parallel military unit, which was later known as the Horea, Closca si Crisan Division, wherein he was a lieutenant colonel, tasked mainly with propaganda work.

Dumitru Petrescu returned to his native country with the Red Army, taking part in the Battle of Romania.

Dumitru Petrescu asked that the DVT be withdrawn from the front for him to reimpose discipline.

Dumitru Petrescu became involved with Romania's steady communisation, which began with the imposition of a pro-Soviet government on 6 March 1945.

Dumitru Petrescu endured as the army's Inspector for Education, Culture and Propaganda and chief editor of the official newspaper Glasul Armatei, being advanced to brigadier general on 14 July 1947.

Dumitru Petrescu was assisted at the ECP by Corneliu Manescu, who, despite being considered a political suspect, had escaped the "verification" campaign and was helping Gheorghiu-Dej form an independent connection between the PCR and the Chinese Communist Party.

Dumitru Petrescu personally oversaw the content of libraries and magazines that soldiers could access; ahead of the legislative election in November 1946, he instructed his officers to make sure that soldiers had a "political attitude" that was favourable to the PCR.

Dumitru Petrescu became the CSA's first honorary president, and, in 1947, helped to secure a top-level spot for the ASA football club.

On 5 July 1949, Dumitru Petrescu was assigned Chairmanship of the MAN, a position he maintained to 28 December, when he was replaced by Alexandru Draghici.

That same day, Dumitru Petrescu was made a full member of the PMR Central Committee, maintaining his seat to 28 December 1955.

Dumitru Petrescu acknowledged the Agrarian Commission's disestablishment, and its replacement with a more centralised Agrarian Section of the Central Committee, under Pauker's direct watch.

Dumitru Petrescu was a titular minister from 9 March 1952, immediately after Luca had been ousted, officially for his delays in enforcing a monetary reform.

In May 1952, Dumitru Petrescu assisted Gheorghiu-Dej in defeating and sidelining Pauker.

Giju believes that Dumitru Petrescu was a victim of intrigues by Neulander-Roman, "the Jewish internationalist, [who was] much more traveled, more learned, and shrewder".

Dumitru Petrescu's term was ultimately cut short by the peaceful purge, consecrated on 17 April 1956, when the entire Politburo asked him to step down and take up "grunt work".

Dumitru Petrescu's downfall continued in July 1956, when he was expelled from the PMR, alongside Agiu, Dusa, and Eremia.

Dumitru Petrescu was personally accused of having spoken out against democratic centralism during his conversations with other party figures; he tried to fight the accusations, asking that his case be handled by the entire Politburo, rather than by a selection of investigators.

Dumitru Petrescu was rehabilitated and reinstated in May 1965, months after Gheorghiu-Dej's death from cancer; the reassessment of his case was ordered by General Secretary Ceausescu, now a partial revisionist.

On 30 December 1965, Dumitru Petrescu took over as chairman of the State Committee for Occupational Safety, representing Romania at the International Labour Organization conference in Geneva.

Dumitru Petrescu then served as first secretary of the Labor Ministry, from 9 February 1968 to 13 March 1969.

Dumitru Petrescu was additionally head of the General Directorate of the National Stockpile, from 3 April 1968 to 15 March 1969.

In December 1968, Dumitru Petrescu became vice-president of the PCR-led Front of Socialist Unity, elected to a similar position on the State Council in 1969.

Dumitru Petrescu died a month and a day after his promotion, at a hospital in the Czech city of Karlovy Vary.

In May 1971, a bust of Dumitru Petrescu, done by Doru Popovici, was erected at Chibrit Square in Grivita.

In December 1990, the new authorities in Covasna County decreed that Sfintu Gheorghe's Dumitru Petrescu Street was to be renamed, alongside streets named for Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

Oradea's Dumitru Petrescu Street was renamed, after local politician Aurel Lazar, in 1990.