Miron Constantinescu

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Miron Constantinescu
Minister of Education
In office
19 August 1969 – 25 November 1970
Prime MinisterIon Gheorghe Maurer
Preceded byȘtefan Bălan
Succeeded byMircea Malița
Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee
In office
1945–1974
Personal details
Born(1917-12-13)13 December 1917
Communist Romania
Political partyRomanian Communist Party
SpouseSulamita Bloch-Constantinescu
Children2 daughters
ResidenceBucharest
Alma materFaculty of Philosophy of University of Bucharest
Occupationsociologist
Signature

Miron Constantinescu (13 December 1917 – 18 July 1974) was a

Nicolae Ceauşescu, he became a member of the Romanian Academy
.

Biography

Early life

Constantinescu was said to be born in

Chișinău, Bessarabia, at a time when the region was experiencing the aftermath of the October Revolution. (During the same month, the Moldavian Democratic Republic was proclaimed, leading to the union of Bessarabia with the Kingdom of Romania). According to fellow communist Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Constantinescu was born in Odesa.[1] Widely believed to be an illegitimate son of the geologist Gheorghe Munteanu-Murgoci,[2] Constantinescu retreated to a Romanian Orthodox monastery a short while after receiving his bachelor's degree.[3]

According to Bârlădeanu, Constantinescu used this period to decide between siding with the fascist Iron Guard and joining the PCR.[1] In 1935, he joined the Union of Communist Youth, UTC (youth wing of the PCR),[4] and became involved in agitprop campaigns.[5] During the 1930s, he attended the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, becoming one of sociologist Dimitrie Gusti's most notable students.[6]

With Bârlădeanu,

Constanța Crăciun, and others, Constantinescu founded the anti-fascist Frontul Studențesc Democrat (FSD, the Students' Democratic Front) in 1935.[7] The group was, in effect, an outlet of the Communist Party — its entire leadership continued to carry party work throughout the FSD's existence.[8] The following year, as the UTC was dissolved, Constantinescu was among the few of its members to continue political activity in PCR ranks.[9] In 1938, during the National Renaissance Front regime established by King Carol II, the Communist Party ordered him to reestablish the UTC.[9] He was among the few intellectuals at the forefront of party activities.[10]

World War II and Scînteia

In

Emil Bodnăraș faction while in detention, endorsing successful moves against rival leader Ștefan Foriș.[13]

Kept alongside other prominent activists in the Caransebeș Prison, where he is believed to have been included in Gheorghiu-Dej's projected Soviet-backed government,[14] he became the focus of attention from penal authorities after being caught while composing messages addressed to the outside (upon discovery, he attempted to swallow all the rolling papers he had written on).[15] Consequently, the administration separated Communist prisoners into two groups: Constantinescu's was sent to Lugoj prison.[15]

An editor in chief of the PCR's

personality cult around Gheorghiu-Dej, whose biography he helped falsify.[18] He was himself praised in the PCR press, and papers circulated the notion that he worked as much as 14 or 16 hours a day as a rule.[18] In February 1945, during street clashes between pro-Communist forces and authorities (leading to the fall of the Nicolae Rădescu cabinet), Scînteia published a claim that its editor had been the target of an assassination attempt.[19]

Through his editorials of 1947, Constantinescu signaled an attack on

National Liberal Party-Tătărescu and associate of the Communists in the Petru Groza government, who had criticized his allies' economic and social policies.[20]

Politburo and Planning Committee

Official tribune at the PCR–PSDR summit at Paris Cinema, October 23, 1946. Constantinescu is speaking; also pictured: Ștefan Voitec, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and Vasile Luca

Taking a seat on the

State Planning Committee in 1950, supervising the work of Soviet and Romanian politicians in creating the framework for a planned economy in Romania.[22]

After the outbreak of PCR inner conflicts between Ana Pauker's "Muscovite wing" and Gheorghiu-Dej's "prison faction", he kept a low profile, and did not take sides,[11] before approving of Gheorghiu-Dej's victory and joining the official delegation that announced it in Moscow[23] (he had also been the one to voice official accusations against Vasile Luca in February 1952).[24]

Surviving Pauker's fall, he personally witnessed the

SovRoms (enterprises which had placed a strain on Romanian economy, having directed its resources to the Soviet Union).[27] Constantinescu was also charged with carrying out Gheorghiu-Dej's program of partial rehabilitation offered to cultural figures such as the writer Tudor Arghezi, the philosopher Lucian Blaga, and the historian Constantin C. Giurescu.[28]

In the aftermath of the

Hungarian population.[29]

1956 clash with Gheorghiu-Dej

In 1956, together with the pro-Soviet

Alexandru Moghioroș to their cause.[32]

Accused of "attempt to direct the party towards

Andrei Oțetea at the time).[35] Active in the revival of sociology studies after the Stalinist period,[36] he was notably engaged with Henri H. Stahl on the Bibliotheca Historica Romaniae research project.[37]

Countering earlier accusations, Gheorghiu-Dej eventually included Constantinescu and Chișinevschi on various lists of "Stalinists", as well as accusing them of having supported the "Muscovite wing" in its alleged actions against the PCR itself.

Nicolae Ceaușescu was fully endorsing Gheorghiu-Dej's theories on the subject, and, initially indicating that, unlike the two opponents, he held Joseph Stalin in esteem, alleged that Constantinescu had little understanding of Marxist principles[39] (although his was, in all likelihood, much less significant).[40]

Rehabilitation and later life

Following Gheorghiu-Dej's death, Ceaușescu's rise brought a wave of

Ştefan Voitec
from 28 March until his death on 18 July.

Until his death, he was forced to cede part of his party status to Ceaușescu, who was officially praised for having reorganized the Union of Communist Youth in 1938, a task which had actually been carried out by Constantinescu.[9]

Personal life

His wife Sulamita, née Bloch, was herself a PCR activist. She died, in 1968, at the hands of Lena, their younger daughter (b. 1949[43])[44] (sources do not agree on the method used in killing — Sulamita Constantinescu was either hit with a clothes iron[45] or attacked with a knife or a hatchet).[46] Constantinescu's daughter was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and interned at a sanatorium in Câmpina (a gifted artist, she was allowed to continue painting,[47] and exhibited her works on hospital grounds).[48] According to one popular, but unconfirmed, rumor, the two women had been in love with the same unnamed man.[48]

Constantinescu's two sons, both named Horia,

appendicectomy;[49] the second-born froze to death while on a trip to the Bucegi Mountains.[50]

Constantinescu and Sulamita also had an older daughter, Ana.[43]

In fiction

Under the name Constant Mironescu, Constantinescu appears in the semi-autobiographical novel Luntrea lui Caron ("

Charon's Boat"), written by Lucian Blaga years after he was reinstated by Gheorghiu-Dej (the book was only published posthumously).[51]

Miron Constantinescu's stay in

Mircea Mureșan and starring Ion Besoiu, Emil Hossu, and Costel Constantin, was a romanticized depiction of the events.[15]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Bârlădeanu, in Diac
  2. ^ Cioroianu, p. 136-137; rendered as "Ilie Murgoci" in Mihailov Chiciuc and by Bârlădeanu, in Diac
  3. ^ Bârlădeanu, in Diac; Tismăneanu, p. 164.
  4. ^ Cioroianu, p. 136; Tismăneanu, p. 161.
  5. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 76.
  6. ^ Cioroianu, p. 136; Tismăneanu, p. 161, 260.
  7. ^ Frunză, p. 118; Mihailov Chiciuc; Tismăneanu, p. 267.
  8. ^ Frunză, p. 118-119.
  9. ^ a b c d e Tismăneanu, p. 161.
  10. ^ Ciachir; Tismăneanu, p. 112, 148, 160-162.
  11. ^ a b Cioroianu, p. 136.
  12. ^ Bosomitu, Ștefan (2012). "O poveste dintr-o iarnă. "Căderea" Regionalei comuniste "Dunărea de Jos" (ianuarie 1941)" . Archiva Moldaviæ. Iași: Romanian Society for Historical Studies. IV: 125-152.
  13. ^ Cioroianu, p. 49-50; Tismăneanu, p. 126, 161.
  14. ^ Cioroianu, p. 49-50.
  15. ^ a b c d Diac
  16. ^ Cioroianu, p. 136; Frunză, p. 242; Mihailov Chiciuc
  17. ^ Cioroianu, p. 136; Frunză, p. 113, 168-169, 226, 242, 254, 255; Tismăneanu, p. 88.
  18. ^ a b Mihailov Chiciuc
  19. ^ Frunză, p. 228.
  20. ^ Cioroianu, p. 96-97.
  21. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 161, 260.
  22. ^ Cioroianu, p. 75; Tismăneanu, p. 260.
  23. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 140, 161.
  24. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 128, 129.
  25. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 143-144.
  26. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 144, 162.
  27. ^ Cioroianu, p. 208.
  28. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 151, 183, 304.
  29. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 153.
  30. ^ Cioroianu, p. 136, 206-207; Frunză, p. 425; Tismăneanu, p. 145-147, 260.
  31. ^ Frunză, p. 425; Tismăneanu, p. 157-158.
  32. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 157-158.
  33. ^ a b Tismăneanu, p. 162, 260.
  34. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 149-152.
  35. ^ a b Cioroianu, p. 136; Tismăneanu, p. 162, 260.
  36. ^ Ioanid, p. 42; Tismăneanu, p. 260.
  37. ^ Ioanid, p. 42.
  38. ^ Frunză, p. 153, 425.
  39. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 161, 164, 177.
  40. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 164.
  41. ^ Cioroianu, p. 136, 399; Tismăneanu, p. 162.
  42. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 162, 260, 291.
  43. ^ a b Tismăneanu, Vladimir (2012). Lumea secretă a nomenclaturii-Amintiri, dezvăluiri, portrete. Humanitas. p. 245.
  44. ^ Ciachir; Cioroianu, p. 137; Mihailov Chiciuc; Tismăneanu, p. 260.
  45. ^ Cioroianu, p. 137.
  46. ^ Ciachir; Mihailov Chiciuc
  47. ^ Ciachir; Cioroianu, p. 137.
  48. ^ a b Ciachir
  49. ^ a b Tismăneanu, p. 260.
  50. ^ Cioroianu, p. 137; Tismăneanu, p. 260.
  51. ^ Tismăneanu, p. 304.

References

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