George Ivașcu

George Ivașcu (most common rendition of Gheorghe I. Ivașcu; July 22, 1911 – June 21, 1988) was a Romanian journalist, literary critic, and communist militant. From beginnings as a University of Iași philologist and librarian, he was drawn into left-wing antifascist politics, while earning accolades as a newspaper editor and foreign-affairs journalist. As editor of Manifest magazine, he openly confronted the Iron Guard and fascism in general. In the mid-1930s, he became a member of the Romanian Communist Party (PCdR), though he maintained private doubts about its embrace of Stalinism. Despite enjoying protection from the more senior scholar George Călinescu, Ivașcu was persecuted, and went into hiding, during the first two years of World War II. He reemerged as a pseudonymous correspondent, then editorial secretary, of the magazine Vremea, slowly turning it away from fascism. In parallel, he also contributed to the clandestine left-wing press and supported the resistance groups, preparing for an Allied victory.

Shortly after the pro-Allied coup of August 1944, Ivașcu was assigned to the Information Ministry, and took up work in agitprop. His career in the bureaucracy continued for a while under the communist regime (established during the early days of 1948), but Ivașcu soon after found himself exposed to accusations of perfidy, marginalized, and eventually investigated. Due in large part to a case of mistaken identity, he was prosecuted for fascism and war crimes, and spent almost five years in confinement. Released and rehabilitated by the same regime, his alleged compromises with both fascism and communism have been at the center of controversies ever since. He was also confirmed as an informant of the Securitate, which some of his fellow prisoners had always suspected.

In his later years, Ivașcu profited from liberalization and, as editor of Contemporanul, Lumea, and România Literară, allowed nonconformist talents to express themselves with confidence. He is credited with having advanced the careers of young critics such as Nicolae Manolescu, as well as with having recovered repressed authors such as Ștefan Augustin Doinaș and Adrian Marino. Ivașcu himself oscillated between national communism and Western Marxism. He took his Ph.D. with a thesis covering the entire classical period of Romanian literature, sparking polemics over its perceived endorsement of national-communist propaganda. In parallel, his tolerance of dissent irritated the regime, and Ivașcu was pushed back into accepting and even promoting communist censorship during the final two decades of his life.