18 Facts About Vasile Luca

Vasile Luca was married to Elisabeta Luca, a volunteer in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, who was imprisoned following her husband's arrest.

Vasile Luca was an ethnic Hungarian from the Szekely community, of "proletarian" origin.

Vasile Luca was sometimes erroneously identified as Jewish by some Romanian historians and journalists, or as a Transylvanian German.

Vasile Luca soon adhered to the larger maximalist wing of the former Socialist Party of Romania, which had established the Romanian Communist Party, and became an associate of Imre Aladar.

In 1924, as the party was outlawed and forced into the underground, Vasile Luca was elected secretary of the Brasov regional committee.

Vasile Luca was serving time in Cernauti, having been found guilty of attempt to cross the border between the Kingdom of Romania and the Ukrainian SSR, when the Soviet Union annexed Northern Bukovina.

Vasile Luca reoriented himself in the aftermath of the Great Purge.

The Trotskyist journal the New International accused Vasile Luca of having participated in a supposed deportation of almost 30,000 citizens from Northern Bukovina to the Asiatic republics of the Soviet Union.

Vasile Luca enlisted in the Red Army, helped recruit Romanian prisoners of war to form the Tudor Vladimirescu Division, and then returned to Romania with the Soviet troops in late 1944.

Vasile Luca later stated that he had been disappointed in the fact that local forces under King Mihai I had taken the initiative in ousting Antonescu and aligning the country with the Allies, arguing that the PCR was supposed to await the Soviets' presence.

Vasile Luca became involved in all major conflicts between the PCR and the traditional opposition forces, the National Peasants' Party and the National Liberal Party: he gave inflammatory speeches on the issue of Northern Transylvania's return to Romania, on projects regarding the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as well as on collectivization.

Vasile Luca directed the forced transition to collective farming, and kept his ministerial office after the proclamation of the People's Republic.

Vasile Luca was arrested in the same month, some days after his deposition and political indictment.

Vasile Luca's interrogation, approved and supervised by Soviet advisors, involved aspects of his past: it was alleged that, as a youth, he had taken part in conflicts opposing the Szekely Division and the communists on the side of the former, that he had been recruited by the Romanian secret police in the early 1920s and had thus infiltrated the PCR, and that he had been paid to encourage fighting inside the party.

In one of those letters, Vasile Luca argued against his conviction for economic sabotage, saying that all the decisions he took were under the guidance and supervision of the Soviet counsellor at the ministry, and the legislation that he had worked on had been approved by the PCR.

In 1952, charges against Vasile Luca implicated Teohari Georgescu, who was accused of impaciuitorism and admitted to "not having seen the gravity of Vasile Luca's deeds" in a futile effort to save himself from incarceration.

Pauker herself claimed that she had suspected Vasile Luca of attempting to topple Gheorghiu-Dej, and argued that her Jewish origins and Vasile Luca's Hungarian roots had made them the target of Soviet suspicion, as well as unpopular inside Romania.

The investigation revealed major irregularities and a pattern of abusive measures, including the direct implication of Gheorghiu-Dej, Iosif Chisinevschi, and Securitate chief Alexandru Draghici, into the proceedings, as well as inhumane treatment to which Vasile Luca had been subjected.