Wikipedia

Ana Pauker

See also:Pauker (disambiguation)andPauker (surname)

Ana Pauker(bornHannah Rabinsohn;13 February 1893 – 3 June 1960) was a Romaniancommunistleader and served as the country'sforeign ministerin the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ana Pauker became the world's first female foreign minister when entering office in December 1947. She was also the unofficial leader of theRomanian Communist Partyimmediately afterWorld War II.

Ana Pauker
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office
30 December 1947 – 9 July 1952
PresidentConstantin Ion Parhon
Petru Groza
Prime MinisterPetru Groza
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Preceded byGheorghe Tătărescu
Succeeded bySimion Bughici
Personal details
Born
Hannah Rabinsohn

(1893-02-13)13 February 1893
Codăești,Vaslui County,Kingdom of Romania
Died3 June 1960(1960-06-03)(aged 67)
Bucharest,People's Republic of Romania
Political partyRomanian Communist Party
Other political
affiliations		Social Democratic Party of Romania
Socialist Party of Romania
SpouseMarcel Pauker
Domestic partnerEugen Fried
ChildrenTanio, Vlad, Tatiana, Masha (Maria), Alexandru (adopted)
Residence(s)Bucharest,Switzerland, Paris,Berlin,Vienna, Moscow
OccupationCommunist activist
ProfessionTeacher
ParentsSarah and (Tsvi-)Hersh Kaufman Rabinsohn
Signature

Biography

edit

Early life and political career

edit

Pauker was born on 13 February 1893 into a poor, religiousOrthodox Jewishfamily inCodăești,Vaslui County(in centralMoldavia), the daughter of Sarah and (Tsvi-)Hersh Kaufman Rabinsohn.[1]Her father was a traditional slaughterer and synagogue functionary, her mother a small-time food seller. They had four surviving children; two more died in infancy.

As a young woman, Pauker became a teacher in a Jewish elementary school inBucharest.While her younger brother was aZionistand remained religious, she opted for Socialism, joining theSocial Democratic Party of Romaniain 1915 and then its successor, theSocialist Party of Romania,in 1918. She was active in the pro-Bolshevikfaction of the group, the one that took control after the Party's Congress of 8–12 May 1921 and joined theCominternunder the name of Socialist-Communist Party (future Communist Party of Romania). She and her husband,Marcel Pauker,became leading members.

Pauker and her husband were arrested in 1923 and 1924 for their political activities and went into exile inBerlin,Paris, andViennain 1926 and 1927. In 1928, Pauker moved to Moscow to join theComintern'sInternational Lenin School,which trained seniorCommunistfunctionaries. In Moscow she became closely associated withDmitry Manuilsky,theKremlin'sforemost representative at theCominternin the 1930s.[2]

Communist leadership position

edit

Ana Pauker went to France, where she became an instructor for theCominternbeing also involved in the communist movement elsewhere in theBalkans.Upon returning to Romania in 1935, she was arrested and shot in both legs when she tried to flee. Ana Pauker was the chief defendant in a widely publicized trial with other leading communists and was sentenced to ten years in prison. In May 1941, the Romanian government sent her into exile to theSoviet Unionin exchange forIon Codreanu,a former member ofSfatul Țării(the parliament of Bessarabia that voted forunion with Romaniaon 27 March 1918), who was detained by the Soviets after their occupation ofBessarabiain 1940. In the meantime, her husband had fallen victim to the SovietGreat Purgein 1938. Rumors abounded that she herself had denounced him as aTrotskyisttraitor;Cominternarchival documents reveal, however, that she repeatedly refused to do so.[3]

Vasile Luca,Constantin Pîrvulescu,Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu,Pauker,Teohari Georgescu,Florica Bagdasar,andGheorghe Vasilichiat aRomanian Communist Partymeeting in October 1945

In Moscow, she became the leader of theRomanian communistexiles who later on became known as the "Muscovite faction".She returned to Romania in 1944 when theRed Armyentered the country, becoming a member of the post-war government, which came to be dominated by the communists. In November 1947, the non-communist foreign ministerGheorghe Tătărescuwas ousted and replaced by Pauker, making her the first woman in the modern world to hold such a post.[4]

But it was her position in the Communist Party leadership that was paramount. Although she declined to become the General Secretary of theRomanian Communist Partybecause she was a woman,[citation needed]and an intellectual, and had proposed the Romanian workerGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dejfor the job instead,[5]Pauker formally held the number-two position in the Party leadership and was a member of the four-person Secretariat of the Central Committee. "Arguably the Jewish woman who achieved the most political power in the 20th century,"[6]Ana Pauker was widely believed to have been the actual leader of the Romanian communists in all but name during the immediate post-war period.[7]In 1948Timemagazine featured her portrait on its cover and described her as "the most powerful woman alive" at that time.[8]Infamous as the "Iron Lady" of Romanian Communist politics, she was universally seen as unreservedlyStalinistand as Moscow's primary agent in Romania.[contradictory]

Unquestionably, Ana Pauker played a pivotal role in the imposition of communism on Romania. At the same time, however, she emerged as a force for moderation within the Romanian communist leadership during the early postwar period. Pauker was certainly complicit in the extensive purges and arrests in 1945 of tens of thousands of Romanians who were linked to the fascistIon Antonescuregime. Yet, by August 1945 Pauker and interior ministerTeohari Georgescureleased all but two to three thousand of those arrested, offering amnesty to any member of the fascistIron Guardwho had not committed serious crimes and who would turn in his weapons.[9]In late 1944 or early 1945, she pushed for creating a more broad-based coalition with theNational Peasants' Partyand theNational Liberal Party,but was overruled byJoseph Stalin;hence, the Communist-led government created in March 1945 comprised a more restrictive coalition with a faction of the National Liberals led byGheorghe Tătărescu.[10]

During this same period, Pauker also pursued what she later described as "a type ofSocial Democraticpolicy "of mass recruitment of as many as 500,000 new Communist Party members without strict verification, including many former members of theIron Guard.[11]This policy would later be the subject of an attack on Pauker during her purge,[12]and it was quickly overturned. Many of those who entered the party during Pauker's mass recruitment campaign would be purged between 1948 and 1950, and mass arrests would return with a vengeance in 1947 (including members of the National Peasants' Party and the National Liberal Party, as well as the amnestied members of the Iron Guard).[13]Although she acceded to Soviet orders to arrest the leaders of the non-communist opposition,[14]Pauker reportedly opposed the arrests of prominent National Peasants' Party officialsCorneliu Coposuand Ghiță Pop[15]and appealed to the presiding judge of the trial of National Peasants' Party leaderIuliu Maniufor leniency in his sentencing.[16]

Antonín Zápotocký,Petru Groza,and Pauker in 1948

Reviewing her record during the early postwar years, the historianNorman Naimarkobserved that Pauker's "policies in the period 1945–1948 are remarkably similar to those of the Polish leaderWładysław Gomułka.She encouraged coalitions with the 'historical' parties, urged compromises with 'bourgeois' politicians, and sought to deflect the persecution of social democrats and liberals. "[17]

These contradictions would intensify as the regime became more Stalinist underCold Warpressures from 1947 on. Ana Pauker was a steeled and tested Stalinist who was "fanatically loyal to Stalin and the Soviet Union", who once admitted that "[i]f a Soviet official told me something, it was the gospel for me... If they had told me that the USSR needed it, I would have done it... [I]f they had told me to throw myself into the fire, I would have done it".[18]Nevertheless, Pauker paradoxically promoted a number of policies counter to those of the Kremlin during theCominformperiod of "highStalinism",when theSoviet Unionimposed a single, hegemonic line on all its satellites. In 1948 she opposed the verification and purge of the large number of members who entered the Communist Party during the mass recruitment campaign, even though theCominformhad ordered such a verification in every Bloc country.[19]In 1949 she opposed the construction of theDanube-Black Sea Canal,even though, according to her own testimony,Stalinhad personally proposed the project.[20]In 1949–52 she opposed the purging of the Romanian veterans of theSpanish Civil WarandFrench Resistanceas part of Moscow's bloc-wide campaign againstJosip Broz Titoor - at the very least - took no part in their repression, as they were not purgeden massein Romania until a few months after Pauker's downfall.[21]And she was reported by colleagues and associates to have resisted Stalin's plans to have Justice MinisterLucrețiu Pătrășcanuput on trial, and was accused by theSecuritate's chief Soviet adviser of having "sabotaged and postponed investigations" in the Pătrășcanu case.[22](This remains a subject of debate among historians,[23]for there is a dearth of evidence in the Romanian archives on Pauker's position on Pătrășcanu, because all transcripts ofPolitburodiscussions on the Pătrășcanu inquiry were summarily destroyed on the orders of General SecretaryGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.[24])

Pauker c. after 1945

In addition, Pauker supported, and helped facilitate, the emigration of roughly 100,000 Jews to Israel from the spring of 1950 to the spring of 1952, when all otherSoviet satelliteshad shut their gates to Jewish emigration, and as Stalin's policies regarding population control and strict restrictions on emigration and travel were increasingly tightened.[25]Moreover, she firmly opposed forcedcollectivizationthat was carried out on Moscow's orders in the summer of 1950, while she was in aKremlinhospital undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Angrily condemning such coercion as "absolutely opposed to the line of our party and absolutely opposed to any serious Communist thought",[26]she allowed peasants forced into collective farms to return to private farming and effectively halted additionalcollectivizationthroughout 1951.[27]This, as well as her support beginning in 1947 for higher prices for agricultural products in defiance of her Soviet "advisers",[28]along with her favoring the integration ofkulaksinto the emerging socialist order,[29]led Stalin to charge that Pauker had fatefully deviated into "peasantist, non-Marxist policies".[30]

Pauker's "Moscow faction" (so called because many of its members, like Pauker, had spent years in exile in Moscow) was opposed by the "prison faction" (most of whom had spent the Fascist period in Romanian prisons, particularly in theDoftana Prison). Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, thede factoleader of the "prison faction", had supported intensified agriculturalcollectivization,[31]pushed forLucrețiu Pătrășcanu's trial and execution,[32]and was a rigid Stalinist; however, he resented some strains of Soviet influence (which would become clear at the time ofde-Stalinizationwhen, as leader ofCommunist Romania,he was a determined opponent ofNikita Khrushchev).[33]

Downfall and scapegoating

edit
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej,Pauker,Vasile Luca,andTeohari Georgescuat theGreat National Assemblyin April 1951

Gheorghiu-Dej profited from theanti-Semitismin Stalinist policy closely linked toJoseph Stalin's increasing paranoia, actively lobbying Stalin to take action against the Pauker faction. Gheorghiu-Dej travelled to Moscow in August 1951 to seek Stalin's approval for purging Pauker and her allies in the Secretariat (Vasile LucaandTeohari Georgescu).[34]But archival evidence has ledVladimir Tismăneanuto conclude that "Ana Pauker's downfall did not occur merely, or even primarily, because of Gheorghiu-Dej's skillful maneuvering—as some Romanian novels published in the 1980s would have us believe—but foremost because of Stalin's decision to initiate a major political purge in Romania."[35]Pauker, Luca, and Georgescu were purged in May 1952, consolidating Gheorghiu-Dej's own grip over country and Party.

The charges against Ana Pauker increasingly focused on her positions onZionismand Israel. She was accused of supporting "the subversive and espionage activities of the Israeli Legation and of theZionistsin the country ", of making secret commitments to Israeli diplomats, of displaying a" nationalist attitude on the emigration ofJewsto Israel ", and of divulging secrets to" the enemy "(the United States) through its principal agent," international Zionism. "[36]

Pauker was arrested on 18 February 1953 and subjected to tightened interrogations and a soft form of torture in preparation for a show trial, as had occurred withRudolf Slánskýand others in thePrague Trials.[37]After Stalin's death in March 1953 she was freed from jail and put underhouse arrestinstead—the result of the direct intervention ofVyacheslav Molotov,who reportedly acted on the insistence of his wifePolina Zhemchuzhina,a friend of Pauker's and herself freed from prison soon after Stalin's death.[38]When another Party leader informed Pauker of Stalin's death, she burst into tears—prompting her colleague to quip: "Don't cry. If Stalin were still alive, you'd be dead."[38]

Following theTwentieth Party Congressin Moscow there were fears that Khrushchev might force the Romanian Party to rehabilitate Pauker and possibly install her as Romania's new leader. Gheorghiu-Dej went on to accuse her,Vasile Luca,andTeohari Georgescufor their alleged Stalinist excesses in the late 1940s and early 1950. The period when all four were in power was marked by political persecution and the murder of opponents (such as the infamousbrainwashingexperiments conducted atPitești prisonin 1949–1952). Gheorghiu-Dej, who had as much to account for, used moments like these to ensure the survival of his policies in a post-Stalinist age.

Later life

edit

In 1956, she was summoned for questioning by a high-level party commission, which insisted that she acknowledge her guilt. Again, she claimed she was innocent and demanded that she be reinstated as a party member, without success.

During her forced retirement, Pauker was allowed to work as a translator from French and German for the Editura Politică publishing house.

Death

edit

In the spring of 1959, Pauker was diagnosed with a terminal recurrence of cancer. She died on 3 June 1960 of cardiac arrest, after the cancer had spread to her heart and lungs.[39]

Analysis

edit

Ana Pauker was recast by Romania's leaders in the official party history as having been a staunch ultra-orthodox Stalinist, even though she had opposed or had attempted to moderate a number of Stalinist policies while she was in a leadership position. As the historian Robert Levy concluded: "No other communist leader save Tito has been shown to have resisted the Soviet-imposed line [during the Cominform period of" high Stalinism "] as she did—whether oncollectivisation,the fight against thekulaksand the urban bourgeoise, the prosecution ofLucrețiu Pătrășcanu,the purge of theSpanish Civil WarandFrench Resistanceveterans, the dimensions of theFive-Year Plan,the staging of a show trial of Romanian Zionists, or the facilitation of mass Jewish emigration ".[40]

Legacy

edit

Ana Pauker's legacy in Romania today is still tainted by the attempt ofruling partypropagandists in the 1950s and 1960s to scapegoat her as the leader responsible for the crimes of the early Communist period. For instance, she is often referred to in Romania as "Stalin with a skirt" (Stalin cu fustă).[41]Film director Radu Gabrea, who completed a feature-length documentary on Pauker in 2016,[42]suggests that this demonising of Pauker is only possible because Pauker was a woman and of Jewish origin, and that it reflects the widespread antisemitism in Romania.[43]

As historian Robert Levy put it: "Long the party's propagandists' scapegoat as the source of all the horrors of the Stalinist period, Ana Pauker continues to be vilified in post-communist Romania as the party leader most culpable for the post-war years' repression. But the truth is that this perpetually contradictory figure, though a Stalinist herself, and one who played a key role in imposing Communism on Romania, paradoxically presented an alternative to the rigid, harsh Stalinism that soon emblemised Romanian party life and left a hidden legacy as a persistent patron of Romania's peasantry within the communist hierarchy. The fall of Ana Pauker was a significant step in a process that precluded any reformist leadership from prevailing in Romania and fated its citizens to endure the extreme hardship that would culminate in theCeaușescuregime. "[44]

Family

edit

Marceland Ana Pauker had three children:

  • Tanio (1921–1922);
  • Vlad (1926–2016);
  • Tatiana (1928–2011).

Though it was long alleged that she denounced the father of her three children as aTrotskyite,[45]Cominternarchival documents reveal, however, that she repeatedly refused to do so.[3]

Ana Pauker had a fourth child, Masha (1932–2020), fathered by the Czech-Jewish CommunistEugen Fried;Masha (Maria), who was born in Moscow, was raised in France by her father.[46]Pauker adopted a fifth child, Alexandru, in the late 1940s.

Notes

edit
  1. ^Ştefan Bosomitu; Luciana Jinga (2023)."Ana Pauker (1893–1960): The Infamous Romanian Woman Communist Leader".In Francisca de Haan (ed.).The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World.Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 141–166.doi:10.1007/978-3-031-13127-1_6.ISBN978-3-031-13127-1.
  2. ^Robert Levy,Ana Pauker: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist,Berkeley:University of California Press,2001,ISBN0-520-22395-0,pp. 15–16, 39, 45–47.
  3. ^abLevy, pp. 64–66. Levy's findings are based on documents in the Comintern and the Romanian Communist Party archives.
  4. ^"Female Foreign Ministers".guide2womenleaders.Retrieved24 December2018.
  5. ^Levy, pp. 71-72.
  6. ^Paula E. Hyman, "Romanian Leader's Political Biography Explores the Costs of Party Loyalty,"The Forward,October 5, 2001, pp. 13-14; reprinted inHaaretz,October 12, 2001.
  7. ^Levy, p. 2.
  8. ^"A Girl Who Hated Cream Puffs",Time,20 September 1948
  9. ^Levy, p. 75.
  10. ^Levy, p. 74.
  11. ^Levy, pp. 74–75.
  12. ^The final report of the Party Commission investigating Pauker (issued in 1954) concluded that Pauker's opening of the Party's gates to Iron Guard members and "other groups" in 1945 was one of the two primary components of Pauker's "counterrevolutionary line." The second was her promotion of mass Jewish emigration to the newborn State of Israel.--Levy, pp. 177, 339, note 112.
  13. ^Vladimir Tismaneanu,Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism,Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 92–93, 127.
  14. ^Levy, pp. 86.
  15. ^Corneliu Coposu,Dialoguri,with Vartan Arachelian (Bucharest, 1993), pp. 66–67.
  16. ^This was revealed byIon Cârja,the secretary general of the Association of Writers in Transylvania, who was himself arrested in 1949. --Ion Cârja,Canalul Morții,(Bucharest, 1993), p. 173. The judge was ColonelAlexandru Petrescu.
  17. ^Norman Naimark,Slavic Review,Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer 2002), p. 389.
  18. ^Levy, pp. 3, 157.
  19. ^Levy, pp. 87, 285, note 147 and 148.
  20. ^Levy, pp. 88, 286, note 158.
  21. ^Levy, pp. 153–162.
  22. ^Levy, pp. 134–152.
  23. ^Vladimir Tismaneanu,Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism,p. 116.
  24. ^"Report on the Party Commission Established to Clarify the Situation of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, submitted to the Party Leadership on June 29, 1968," Executive Archive of the Central Committee of the R.C.P., pp. 43–44; cited in Levy, p. 149, 321, note 137.
  25. ^Levy, pp. 166–180
  26. ^Levy, pp. 108–109
  27. ^Levy, 109–111. Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery concur on this point: Ana Pauker, they write, "consistently fought for a gradualist strategy once the Soviets insisted that Romania collectivize [in 1948]." --Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery,Peasants Under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949–1962,Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 105.
  28. ^Levy, pp. 91–93
  29. ^Levy, pp. 118–119
  30. ^Levy, pp. 199–200.
  31. ^Kligman and Verdery,Peasants Under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949–1962,pp. 105, 201–202.
  32. ^Tismaneanu,Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism,pp. 118–119.
  33. ^Vladimir Tismăneanu,Gheorghiu-Dej and the Romanian Workers' Party: From De-Sovietization to the Emergence of National Communism,(Working Paper No. 37) Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., 2002.
  34. ^George H. Hodos,Show trials: Stalinist purges in Eastern Europe, 1948–1954,Praeger,New York, 1987. p.103.ISBN0-275-92783-0;Levy, p. 199.
  35. ^Vladimir Tismăneanu,Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism,p. 133.
  36. ^Levy, pp. 214, 217.
  37. ^Levy, pp. 214, 218, 358, note 198.
  38. ^abLevy, p. 219.
  39. ^Levy, pp. 224–225.
  40. ^Levy, pp. 233–234.
  41. ^"Ana Pauker –" Stalin cu fustă "".historia.ro.Retrieved24 December2018.
  42. ^"Aarc.ro - Totul despre filmul românesc".aarc.ro.Retrieved24 December2018.
  43. ^"Regizorul Radu Gabrea naște din nou controverse: Ana Pauker ar fi rămas pe nedrept în istorie cu statutul de criminală".Romanian Television.Archived fromthe originalon 11 September 2019.Retrieved22 November2016.
  44. ^Levy, p. 238.
  45. ^Carr, William Guy (2013).Pawns in the Game.San Diego, California: Dauphin Publications Incorporated.ISBN9781939438034.OCLC870339535.
  46. ^Amalric, Jaques (10 February 1997)."Livre. La biographie d'Eugen Fried".Libération(in French).Retrieved5 February2021.

References

edit
edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ana_Pauker&oldid=1248313085"