Boris Stefanov

Boris Stefanov (also known as Boris Ştefanov, Draganov or Dragu; Bulgarian: Борис Стефанов Матеев, "Boris Stefanov Mateev"; 1893-?) was a Romanian communist politician, who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR or PCdR) from 1936 to 1940.

Biography

Early life and activism

Stefanov was born into a rich, ethnically Bulgarian landowning family in Dobrudja, the region straddling Romania and Bulgaria, ["Disgraced Romanian..."] and spoke fluent Romanian. [Tismăneanu, p.95] He was nephew of the socialist activist Christian Rakovsky, [Ţiu] and engaged in activities for regional self-determination ("see Internal Dobrujan Revolutionary Organisation"). He reportedly went into bankruptcy, and had to renounce much of his inheritance. [Tismăneanu, p.313]

Having also joined the Socialist Party of Romania (PS), Stefanov became a successful candidate for Parliament, but, together with Gheorghe Cristescu and Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea, he was not validated into office. [Ţiu] He later became critical of the PS' moderate wing, and supported a Bolshevik program, becoming one of the PCR's founding members. [Tismăneanu, p.95] At the time, he began campaigning for a land reform, arguing that the one planned by the Alexandru Averescu government and carried out by Ion I. C. Brătianu was far from sufficient. [Tismăneanu, p.74]

Indicted in the Dealul Spirii Trial and subject to an amnesty, [Tismăneanu, p.72] Stefanov was elected to the General Council of the Party at its second Congress of 1922, and, during the same year, he represented the minor faction in the Chamber of Deputies, and was its envoy to the Comintern. [Tismăneanu, p.74, 75, 77, 95; Ţiu]

tefanov and Romanian Communism

Although, like Cristescu, he was criticized by the Comintern for his allegedly minimalist outlook, [Tismăneanu, p.78] he rose to the leadership of the PCR soon after the party was outlawed in 1924, and was known at the time under various pseudonyms (including "Popescu", "Draganov", and "Dragu"). [Frunză, p.40, 53] Again arrested in 1926, after a Siguranţa Statului crackdown, [Diac; Ţiu] Stefanov was among those exposed after authorities pressured one of his comrades to hand out the names of all PCR leaders. [Diac] Supported by the International Red Aid with interventions from Marcel Pauker, he was nonetheless sentenced for treason during a trial he faced in Cluj (the other person indicted, Vasile Luca, was acquitted). [Ţiu]

After many party activists, including the entire Politburo, took refuge to the Soviet Union, Stefanov, who was eventually set free, stood as leader of the local Secretariat (together with Pavel Tcacenko). [Diac; Tismăneanu, p.80, 86, 90, 118] He maintained his leadership position after Vitali Holostenco was appointed general secretary, although he ensured close contacts with David Fabian, Holostenco's rival. [Tismăneanu, p.86]

Stefanov led the Romanian delegation to the Fifth and Seventh Comintern World Congresses, after the formation of "Popular Fronts" was decided by Joseph Stalin; despite his foreign origin, he was perceived as a local member of the PCR, and became general secretary with the deposition of Alexander Stefanski (part of a Soviet-endorsed move allowing more autonomy to the Romanian section). [Frunză, p.40, 53; Tismăneanu, p.95-96] Subsequently, he engaged in a campaign against alleged Trotskyists, mirroring Soviet measures that led to the Great Purge; a committed Stalinist, he accused both Elena Filipescu and Marcel Pauker of having sided with Leon Trotsky. [Ţiu]

Although himself under suspicion from Soviet overseers, he fled to Moscow in 1938, after PCR activities had been made virtually impossible by authorities of the National Renaissance Front. [Ţiu]

Exile and later polemics

Removed from the party's leadership in 1940, he was denounced in 1951 by the Central Committee of the PCR, which accused him of having been "divorced from the working class", of having introduced the theory of "neo-serfdom" ("see Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea"), as well as of having advocated a "liquidationist" policy of a united front with bourgeois parties in 1927. ["Disgraced Romanian..."] The actual leadership of the PCR inside Romania was taken over by Bela Breiner. [Ţiu]

Stefanov was a friend of Georgi Dimitrov, who is credited with having rescued him from an almost certain doom after 1938. [Ţiu] He spent the last decades of his life living in exile in Sofia, Bulgaria. ["Disgraced Romanian..."] In subsequent periods, Stefanov's image and status remained the subject of allegations inside Communist Romania: in 1961, the high-ranking Communist activist Valter Roman, who had been himself disgraced and rehabilitated by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, spoke out against former Communist politicians who had been purged at various stages, Stefanov included; he was interrupted by Petre Borilă, who notably added a claim that Stefanov had admired Nazism and had seen in it a path to a socialist economy. [Roman]

On his 80th birthday in 1963, the Bulgarian Communist government awarded Stefanov the country's top prize, the "Order of Georgi Dimitrov". ["Disgraced Romanian..."] The award was viewed as a deliberate attempt to irritate Romania's leadership, and a sign of cooling relations between the PCR and the Bulgarian Communist Party. ["Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Communist Party"; "Disgraced Romanian..."]

Notes

References

* [http://www.kampanyarchivum.hu/files/300/8/3/6-4-27.html "Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Communist Party", September 11, 1964, at "Elektronikus kampánylevél-archívum"]
* [http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/108-5-153.shtml "Disgraced Romanian Decorated in Bulgaria F-80", September 4, 1963, at the "Open Society Archives"]
*ro icon Cristina Diac, [http://www.jurnalul.ro/articol_25792/lupta_pentru_putere_in_partidul_comunist.html "Lupta pentru putere în Partidul Comunist" ("The Power Struggle inside the Communist Party")] , in "Jurnalul Naţional", January 12, 2005
*Victor Frunză, "Istoria stalinismului în România" ("The History of Stalinism in Romania"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
*ro icon Valter Roman, [http://www.sferapoliticii.ro/sfera/113/art10-document.html "Address to the Party Leadership"] (December 1961), at "Sfera Politicii"
*Vladimir Tismăneanu, "Stalinism pentru eternitate", Polirom, Iaşi, 2005 ISBN 973-681-899-3 (translation of "Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism", University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003, ISBN 0-52-023747-1)
*ro icon Ilarion Ţiu, [http://www.jurnalul.ro/articol_35563/aliatul_lui_stalin.html "Aliatul lui Stalin" ("Stalin's Ally")] , in "Jurnalul Naţional", June 7, 2005