Gogu Rădulescu

Gheorghe "Gogu" Rădulescu (5 September 1914 – 1991) was a Romanian journalist, economist, and high-ranking figure of the communist regime. Of mixed Romani and Russian heritage, he began his leftist and anti-fascist militancy in the early 1930s, while a student at the Commercial Academy in Bucharest. He established a Democratic Students' Front, which embarked on a direct confrontation with the fascist Iron Guard, as well as with the conservative establishment of the Romanian Kingdom; supported by the clandestine Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and its Union of Communist Youth (of which he was a member from 1933), Rădulescu networked with moderate leftists and independents. In 1935, he organized a training camp in Moieciu, which was nearly broken up by the Gendarmes. In 1937, he was kidnapped and tortured by Iron Guard affiliates, and then also expelled from the Communist Youth for his apparent insubordination. Taking his doctorate in 1938, Rădulescu worked as a researcher for the Institute of Economic Conjecture, under his communist friend Belu Zilber.

During the early stages of World War II, Rădulescu was called to serve as a Lieutenant in the Romanian Land Forces. He deserted shortly before, or during, Operation Barbarossa (June 1941), surrendering to the Red Army. He was granted the same status as Romanian prisoners of war, and was transported to camps deep inside the Soviet Union. In 1943, he was recovered by the PCR's exile wing, or "Muscovite faction", and was tasked with recruiting Romanian captives for the Tudor Vladimirescu Division. Rădulescu returned in 1946, two years after the Soviet conquest of Romania, and was integrated into the country's new administrative apparatus. He was allowed to join the PCR (or "Workers' Party") in 1949, the year when he also rose to the position of Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade. In 1952, he was caught up in the roundup of alleged "right-wing deviationists" and wreckers of the economy, and arrested by the Securitate; he was allowed to preserve a teacher's post, and was slowly reintegrated politically, then fully rehabilitated, with the onset of Romanian de-satellization.

Rădulescu became a Minister of Internal Trade in 1956, but established his international profile from 1959, when he was Minister of Trade, and then of Foreign Trade, as well as serving continuously as Deputy Prime Minister in 1963–1979. Embraced by Nicolae Ceaușescu and his national-communists, who took control of the PCR in 1965, Rădulescu was granted a quasi-permanent seat on the Central Committee and its Politburo (or "Executive Committee"). He played a part in socialist industrialization by 1970, when he was instrumental in prospecting international markets, especially in developing countries, as well as in negotiating loans with the French Rothschilds. Later that decade, he renounced his positions in government, and was instead assigned to lead the Higher Court of Financial Control. Spurred on by his novelist wife Dorina, and already cultivating the poet Miron Radu Paraschivescu, he established his own literary circle, or "court", centered on his rural property in Comana. Rădulescu both undermined and selectively enforced communist censorship—specifically, against his ideological enemy Mircea Eliade; he was seen in the writers' community as rather more liberal than the standard nomenklatura.

As protector of the România Literară circle, with a say in the affairs of the Writers' Union, Rădulescu emerged as a selective critic of national-communism—while also fully participating in Ceaușescu's personality cult. In 1986, he took a public stand against "Protochronism", which he controversially depicted as an offshoot of interwar fascism. The Securitate followed closely his contacts with other political figures, noting him as a probable conspirator against the regime and a critic of its austerity policies; Rădulescu was still present by Ceaușescu's side throughout the Romanian Revolution of 1989, though he advised against its violent repression. He was immediately after captured and indicted for genocide and economic crimes by the National Salvation Front, but escaped prosecution due to his poor health, and died at a nursing home in 1991. The controversy—surrounding his political positioning, his cultural profile, and his role in various intrigues—was prolonged over the following decades.