Dumitru Petrescu, believed to have been born Gheorghe M. Dumitru, also known as Gheorghe Petrescu and Petrescu-Grivița (10 May 1906 – 13 September 1969), was a Romanian general, trade union leader, and Communist Party (PCR) activist. After training as a metalworker in Grivița, he took to left-wing politics, joining the underground communist groups at some point before the railwaymen's strike of February 1933, which he helped organise together with Constantin Doncea and Gheorghe Vasilichi. Arrested by the Romanian Kingdom authorities in its wake, he received a 15-year prison sentence. He broke out of Craiova penitentiary a few months later, together with Vasilichi and Doncea, after overpowering a guard. With support from the International Red Aid, Petrescu made his way into Czechoslovakia, and then headed for the Soviet Union, where he lived until 1944. He worked in publishing and trained as a propagandist at the International Lenin School in Moscow.
During World War II, Petrescu was acknowledged as a member of the PCR's exile, or "Muscovite", faction, which gravitated around Ana Pauker. He helped rallying up Romanian prisoners of war for the Red Army's Tudor Vladimirescu and Horea, Cloșca și Crișan Divisions, emerging as a political commissar and lieutenant colonel. He 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. He 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. Although promoted to major general in 1948, and assigned seats in the Great National Assembly and the Central Committee, Petrescu was pushed aside by the Romanian People's Republic; he had only a brief involvement in the collectivisation of agriculture, as part of a commission that also included Pauker. His 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.
Petrescu displayed his loyalty in 1952, when he assisted Gheorghiu-Dej in toppling Pauker and her "Muscovites"; he himself was Minister of Finance in 1952–1955, replacing the disgraced "Muscovite" Vasile Luca. His administrative career peaked in 1955–1956, when he served as deputy prime minister. Outspoken in his criticism of Gheorghiu-Dej, Petrescu was identified as belonging to a "Doncea group" of factionalists, and expelled from the party in July 1956. He returned to favour in 1965, when Gheorghiu-Dej had died and Nicolae Ceaușescu, as the new general secretary, had introduced a more liberal political line. Reinstated and allowed back on the Central Committee, Petrescu served in various administrative positions, before emerging as vice-president Front of Socialist Unity (in 1968) and of the State Council (in 1969). Already terminally ill with cirrhosis, he died while vacationing in Karlovy Vary; his final assignment had been one of national importance, as a member of the Permanent Presidium of the PCR Politburo. He is remembered as a founding figure of CSA Steaua București and of its football club.
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Biography
Early career and trials
Born to proletarian parents in Bucharest, Petrescu was originally known as Gheorghe Dumitru, before adopting the alias he used in 1933 and throughout life (he was also known under the combined form "Gheorghe Dumitru-Petrescu"). Historian Dan Gîju reports that his exact name may be ultimately unknown, but that Romanian Police records had him as "Gheorghe M. Dumitru"—with the added initial of his carpenter father; Gîju notes a second alias used by the future general, namely "Petrusin". He was described in PCR propaganda as having "experienced from his early childhood terrible exploitation by the bourgeois-landowning regime"; historian Florin Șperlea describes his childhood as having been spent "in a working-class neighborhood", namely among employees of Căile Ferate Române (CFR, the national railway carrier). Young Dumitru-Petrescu trained as a manual worker. In 1918, he was an apprentice at the CFR yard in Grivița, but transferred to begin training as a printer at Editura Socec (to October 1920). He returned to the CFR as an metalworking lathe operator, fully employed there from October 1920 to August 1928. During that interval, he was listed as a trusted operative by the Union of Communist Youth, which he reportedly joined in 1922. His four-grade education was supplemented by night school, earning him a diploma in secondary-level commercial studies.
According to at least one account, Petrescu joined the fledgling PCR in 1924, and stayed with it after it was outlawed that same year; journalist Paula Mihailov suggests that he only joined in 1932. Petrescu's official records also suggests that he was a member of the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSDR) in 1927–1928, and that he then joined the Socialist Workers Party of Romania, with which he was still affiliated in October 1930; in these sources, his PCR membership is precisely dated to July 1932. By then, he had also affiliated with the "unitary trade union"—of which he was a general secretary from 1928.
In early 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Petrescu helped to organise the Grivița strike, as a leader of the Bucharest union council; this was the culmination of efforts that began in 1932, when Petrescu, together with Gheorghe Vasilichi and Constantin Doncea, considered making pushes for a general strike. A report by Siguranța agents suggests that non-communist members of the Grivița union regarded Petrescu and the others as their fellow workers, seeing them more favourably than "actual communists" such as Petre Gheorghe. A participant in the events, Vasile Bâgu, recalled in 1958 that Petrescu was involved in a warning strike of 28 January–2 February 1933, when he and Doncea, alongside Petre Gheorghe and Hugo Barani, were elected to a committee which presented the workers' demands to the CFR management.
Prison escape and Soviet relocation
Petrescu, Vasilichi and Doncea began plotting their escape in mid 1934. In 1968, Vasilichi recounted that the plan was hatched by the prisoners themselves, then submitted for approval by the PCR and the International Red Aid. According to him, it was only made feasible when they obtained to be transferred out of the Craiova stockade and into the regular prison facility, and then given approval for treatment at Filantropia Hospital of Craiova. They also won the confidence of their one guard, whom Vasilichi knew as "Ghiță", by allowing him to flirt with Craiova's young women, on a number of occasions, while they guarded themselves. The escape took place on 3 January 1935, when Petrescu's wife Ecaterina ultimately arranged for a getaway car to wait them as they went out for a morning walk—"the driver being recognisable for his holding a white flower." One of them would feign sickness, prompting the escort to seek assistance from the driver, upon which the four would overpower Ghiță with a handkerchief dipped in chloroform. They were relieved when, at the preordained moment for their sortie, the prison-warden ordered Ion Stoica to replace Ghiță, whom they had grown to like.
According to Vasilichi's account, it was he who feigned sickness and who used the chloroform—since Petrescu had not managed to use the handkerchief as instructed. Historian Ilarion Țiu questions at least part of Vasilichi's story, noting that all other records show Petrescu as acting sick. He writes: "It appears that this tiny detail mattered within the set of values of 'communist heroism' as a myth, and was a matter of prestige for Vasilichi." In 1956, Petrescu's lawyer Mihail Pompilian reportedly boasted that he had personally handled the affair, noting that Petrescu, Vasilichi and Doncea were scheduled to be treated for syphilis (which none of them really had) at a hospital in Craiova. After bribing their guard, who agreed to be "tied to a tree with his own belt", they fled the scene in a "black car, with a white chrysanthemum", arranged for them by Pompilian. Vasilichi notes that the car ran out of gas while nearing Bucharest, but that Petrescu was able to obtain some from a group of peasants. He and Doncea had subdued Ion Stoica, eventually abandoning him in the area—as Vasilichi recounts, they paid him 3,000 lei as a show of goodwill, rather than as a reward. Stoica was only considered an accomplice because he had lacked the foresight of hiding the money before reporting to the authorities in Bucharest. Stoica's subsequent testimony, which verifies some of these claims, identifies the exact location as being rural Băneasa.
The three fugitives separated from each other, and fled by taxi cabs to different hiding spots in Bucharest; they were given unexpected freedom of movement because Craiova's prison staff did not conceive that they had actually fled, and would not call for a stakeout. They were then transited through various "conspiratorial homes" in Bucharest, receiving material support from the International Red Aid. The authorities eventually apprehended Vintilă Ionescu, who confessed to having driven the getaway car, but would only admit to having been paid for the transport; a prison guard who had seen the car shortly before the escape reported that an unknown fifth man, possibly a PCR adviser, had been waiting in the car with Ionescu. Pompilian recalls that the driver, whom he does not name, was sentenced to two years in jail, while Pompilian himself was never suspected.
Commissar and Inspector
In mid 1941, Operation Barbarossa saw the Soviets entering World War II against the Axis powers, which included Romania—governed at the time by Ion Antonescu. In 1942, Petrescu set up a Romanian-language propaganda newspaper, Graiul Liber. The following year, he was co-opted to organise the Red Army's Tudor Vladimirescu Division (DTV), as a political commissar with the rank of major. As Șperlea writes, this activity included "touring the Romanian prisoner of war camps for a precise reason: to convince them that they should fight alongside the Red Army so as to bring down what they called the 'fascist Antonescian' regime." The goal of "improving anti-fascist work" among the prisoners had been set on 3–4 September 1943, at a conference organised in Krasnogorsk by Petrescu, Ana Pauker, and Gheorghe Stoica. Pauker played a key role in the events: "[she] proposed naming one of the divisions after the Romanian national figure Tudor Vladimirescu and reportedly played a key role in its formation, having convinced the first Romanian officers to take its command." Alongside Colonels Mihail Maltopol and Iacob Teclu, he put out the army newspaper Graiul Nou. In November 1943, after managing to recruit the entire population of a camp into a battalion, he was faced with insubordination by the newly-appointed commander, Boțoacă, who resented the red star insignia added on their Romanian uniforms. Reportedly, Petrescu intervened to have Boțoacă deposed and rearrested.
This period saw Petrescu rallying with the PCR's "Muscovite faction", which had regrouped around Pauker; Câmpeanu argues that Petrescu owed his life to Pauker, who shielded him from active duty on the Eastern Front. Tismăneanu lists Petrescu as a figure from Pauker's inner circle, which elaborated the strategy for a communist takeover in postwar Romania. On 1 December 1943, Petrescu was moved from the DTV to a parallel military unit, which was later known as the Horea, Cloșca și Crișan Division (DHCC), wherein he was a lieutenant colonel, tasked mainly with propaganda work. According to later denunciations, the DHCC commandant, Mihail Lascăr, confided to Petrescu about frustration with communist demands, and specifically with the soldiers' Sovietization: "What do the Russians want? That we shut down all the [military] schools?"
Petrescu returned to his native country with the Red Army, taking part in the Battle of Romania (1944). His units were never engaged in combat against the Romanian Land Forces, largely because of the 23 August coup, which deposed Antonescu and brought Romania under an anti-fascist coalition that included the communists. Petrescu and his staff arrived in Bucharest on 31 August, and immediately restored his links with the internal factions of the PCR. By late September, the DTV was fighting against the Wehrmacht and the Royal Hungarian Army in Northern Transylvania; its outstanding bravery was noted in 1996 by military historian Alesandru D. Duțu. On 29 September, Petrescu was at Holod, writing to Pauker that his unit had behaved "very well", but asking that the PCR intervene to curb Soviet arrogance, as well as to done down perceptions of the DVT as a "communist outfit". He also reported his dissatisfaction that the PCR's branches in Northern Transylvania were "small or even nonexistent."
Political rise
Petrescu held on to his ECP position before and during the establishment of a Romanian People's Republic on the early days of 1948—a stage when the PCR went as the "Workers' Party" (PMR), to signal its absorption of the PSDR. He was also a junior member of the PMR Central Committee (23 February 1948 – 24 January 1950), serving as a sectional leader in 1948–1951. On 3 January 1948, he spoke at the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company, announcing: "The Romanian people's army shall fight for the Republic's consolidation, for the happiness and welfare of all those who toil with their arms or their intellect, in the cities and villages alike." Petrescu ran in the legislative election of March 1948 on the People's Democratic Front (FDP) list, serving one full term in the Great National Assembly (MAN)—wherein he represented Gorj County. On 3 March 1949, he also joined the PMR Agrarian Commission, which was tasked with overseeing the collectivisation of agriculture. Its other members were Pauker, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Vasile Vaida, Pavel Chirtoacă, and Mircea Geoagiu. Shortly after, Chirtoacă reported complaints made privately by the more liberal communist Ion Gheorghe Maurer, who allegedly described collectivisation as a disaster which had caused peasants to "hate us all". Chirtoacă also quoted Maurer as saying that Petrescu, whom he dismissively labelled "The Platoon Leader", was not competent enough for the task.
On 5 July 1949, Petrescu was assigned Chairmanship of the MAN, a position he maintained to 28 December, when he was replaced by Alexandru Drăghici. Petrescu's military career saw his promotion to major general on 25 July 1948, when he was also assigned to work directly under the secretariat of the National Defense Ministry; before or after that date, for a few months, he was head of the Army's Political Directorate. On 15 December 1949, he passed into the army reserves. From 13 April 1948 to 9 March 1952, he was chairman for the State Committee of Industrial Supply. In June–July 1949, he returned to Moscow with a PMR delegation that also comprised Drăghici, Leonte Răutu, Simion Bughici, and Raia Vidrașcu; its mission was to study and copy the organizational methods of the Soviet Communist Party. On 24 January 1950, this exchange resulted in the formation of a Romanian Orgburo, with Petrescu as one of its 17 inaugural members. Though stripped of any real powers, it was mainly involved in creating the Romanian nomenklatura (a category of high-ranking communist bureaucrats, estimated by Petrescu himself as 17,900 to 20,000 people).
That same day, Petrescu was made a full member of the PMR Central Committee, maintaining his seat to 28 December 1955. He acknowledged the Agrarian Commission's disestablishment, and its replacement with a more centralised Agrarian Section of the Central Committee, under Pauker's direct watch. As Petrescu noted at the time, this tighter control was justified: "[T]he socialist transformation of agriculture does not happen by itself, for that task falls to the party and the proletariat. The initiative to move towards socialism does not belong to the peasants." On 26 January 1950, he was again proclaimed Chairman of the MAN, but only served to 29 May, when he was replaced by Doncea.
Downfall and final return
Petrescu's ministerial mandate ended on 4 October 1955, when he began his stint as Deputy Prime Minister of Romania—lasting to 11 May 1956. This appointment overlapped with an investigation about his alleged opposition to the party line: in early 1955, a commission of the PMR Politburo reported "on the anti-party activity of some party members"—including Petrescu, Maurer, Constantin Agiu, Mihai Levente, Bucur Șchiopu, Victor Dușa, and the ECP's Ion Eremia. Gîju believes that Petrescu was a victim of intrigues by Neuländer-Roman, "the Jewish internationalist, [who was] much more traveled, more learned, and shrewder". His 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" (munca de jos). His downfall continued in July 1956, when he was expelled from the PMR, alongside Agiu, Dușa, and Eremia. 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. Eremia, who was ultimately sentenced to 25 years of hard labour, sought clemency by admitting his guilt, and informed the PMR that Maurer was equally guilty; as he noted, the only one of the group to have refrained from protecting Maurer was Petrescu.
As noted by Neagoe-Pleșa: "Any criticism of the general secretary was taken as proof of factionalism", with the Petrescu expulsion being a "general warning" in this respect. Bârlădeanu reports overhearing Petrescu's criticism of Gheorghiu-Dej, but argues that these were a pretext. In his view, it was Petrescu's styling as "Petrescu-Grivița" that incensed the general secretary, and ultimately caused Petrescu's downfall. A younger communist potentate, Paul Niculescu-Mizil reports that Petrescu, an "exceptional man", had been "removed from political life [...] in order for Dej to overemphasize his own role in the struggles of 1933". Șperlea similarly writes: "The reason for Dumitru Petrescu's marginalization was that, when Dej was busy consolidating his own cult of personality, [...] the biography of railwayman Dumitru Petrescu, with his leading role in the struggles of February 1933, was an obvious hindrance". One account provided by Tismăneanu and historian Cristian Vasile centers on Petrescu and Doncea's archival interview with Mihail Roller, which fully recorded their doubts about Gheorghiu-Dej's contribution to the 1933 strike. In June 1958, Doncea was similarly punished, leading Gheorghiu-Dej's loyalists to suggest that the general had been part of a "Doncea group" of factionalists. The attack on Doncea and his supposed followers was spearheaded by Ceaușescu, and by the former "Muscovite" Răutu, who alleged that Petrescu and the others had endorsed a Romanian version of Titoism.
Legacy
In January 1970, the regime honoured Petrescu's memory by assigning his name to Bucharest schools (School No 175 and Lyceum No 40), as well as to streets in Bucharest, Oradea, and Sfîntu Gheorghe; the latter landmark, traditionally known as Tankó Street, had also bore the name of "Vasile Luca", and, after Luca's downfall, was known as "Progress Street". In May 1971, a bust of Petrescu, done by Doru Popovici, was erected at Chibrit Square in Grivița. During the 40th anniversary of the Grivița action in February 1973, Ceaușescu spoke of his "high regard" for the communist participants, including "some who are no longer alive—Gheorghiu-Dej, Dumitru Petrescu, as well as others."
Such honouring was largely reversed after the Romanian Revolution of 1989: at some point before 1999, the mausoleum was repurposed, and Petrescu's ashes, alongside those of virtually all his colleagues, were handed to their respective families. In December 1990, the new authorities in Covasna County decreed that Sfîntu Gheorghe's Dumitru Petrescu Street was to be renamed, alongside streets named for Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Its name was changed to "Vasile Goldiș Street", honouring a "prominent Romanian democrat". The issue created some controversy, since, although Goldiș was less offensive than Petrescu, both names were perceived as imposing Romanianization of a largely Székely-inhabited city. By 1999, it had been renamed after a Székely painter and heraldist, Ferenc Gödri. Oradea's Petrescu Street was renamed, after local politician Aurel Lazăr, in 1990. As argued in 2012 by Gîju, Petrescu's positive legacy at the CSA was overturned after the Revolution, when the sports base had "pretty much ran to waste".