Alexandru Drăghici

Alexandru Drăghici (September 27, 1913 – December 12, 1993) was a Romanian communist activist and politician.

In 1930 or 1934 he joined the banned Communist Party (PCR, later PMR).

As recalled by Brătescu, Drăghici had a conflict with party boss Vasile Luca, who objected to the idea of incorporating the Workers' Youth into the Bureau, and who singled out Drăghici for his incompetence in controlling "Progressive Youth" organizations during the 1930s.

Also according to Brătescu, Drăghici played a role in increasing the PCR's control over student activists, and then in persecuting non-communist fraternal bodies such as YMCA Romania.

From 1931, he took part in rail workers' strikes, being one of the communist youth leaders at the Bucharest railway yards.

Being part of the PCR's proletarian wing, he quickly ran into trouble for illegal political activity.

He was arrested in 1935 and tried in the 1936 Craiova Trial alongside future rival Ana Pauker, receiving a sentence of 9 years and 3 months imprisonment and being labeled a "notorious communist".

He spent time at Doftana, Jilava, and Caransebeș prisons before being transferred in April 1944 to the prison camp at Târgu Jiu.

While incarcerated, he joined the PCR nucleus formed around future leader Gheorghiu-Dej, while at the same time becoming a rival to Gheorghiu-Dej's successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu.

For decades, Gheorghiu-Dej played one against the other, as a method of controlling each potential rival.

Drăghici, who enjoyed prison seniority over Ceaușescu, was for a while Gheorghiu-Dej's cellmate, and allegedly acted as his personal servant.

Drăghici was freed right after the King Michael Coup in August 1944.

By March 1945, he had been assigned to service the PCR's central committee (CC).

He took up office as head of its Youth Bureau, working alongside G. Brătescu, the future historian of medicine, and C. Drăgan.

Benefiting from his CFR and Caransebeș pedigree at a time when Gheorghiu-Dej's faction turned into a nomenklatura, Drăghici became an alternate member of the CC in October 1945.

From May 1945 to June 1946, he served as a public prosecutor at the Romanian People's Tribunals.

This court was tasked with investigating war crime cases, specifically those related to the Holocaust in Romania.

Researchers note that the Bucharest section, where Drăghici had been assigned, sentenced surprisingly few people (187, compared to the 668 sentenced in Cluj), and the punishments were generally lighter.

Drăghici was elected to the Assembly of Deputies in the 1946 general election.

He rose to full member in February 1948, after the establishment of a communist regime.

At the PMR's political and administrative section, Drăghici was adjunct (until August 1948) and director (1948–1949).

He was president of the latter body from December 1949 to January 1950, and sat on its presidium from 1965 to 1968.

He was Interior Minister in 1952 and from 1957 to 1965, and State Security Minister from 1952 to 1957.

In these capacities, he exercised control over the Securitate secret police during a period of active repression against other Communist Party members, anti-communist resistance members and ordinary citizens.

An industrial worker by profession, Drăghici made his entry into the underground communist movement around the age of twenty.

He was arrested for illegal political activity, and spent time in prison before and during World War II.

He was close to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's communist faction, and, as such, rose quickly through the Communist Party ranks.

He joined the repressive apparatus shortly before the Romanian communist regime was officially established.

Drăghici was infamous especially for the various campaigns he initiated against selected groups that resisted Marxist-Leninism.

He began early on, with purges of the youth movements and teaching staff, joined in the denunciation of Ana Pauker's communist faction, and then focused his attention on the Hungarian-Romanian community.

Drăghici is also remembered for his participation in the show trial of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, his quashing of the "Ioanid Gang", and his clampdown on religious groups—both Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox.

Both Gheorghiu-Dej and Drăghici opposed de-Stalinization, but their talk of national communism and socialist patriotism signaled Romania's emancipation from the Soviet Union.

Drăghici still had important assignments after Gheorghiu-Dej's death, but was bitterly opposed to emerging communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Ceaușescu used his influence in the party to incriminate Drăghici of all publicly known Securitate crimes, then deposed him.

Drăghici was not brought to justice, but lived in anonymity in the Bucharest area from 1968 to 1989.

After the overthrow of communism, he lived his final years in Hungary with his family, despite Romanian efforts to have him extradited.

Shortly before his death, a trial held in absentia convicted him of incitement to murder.

Drăghici was born into a peasant family in the Tisău Commune, Buzău County.

He attended four grades of primary school and four years of vocational school, becoming a locksmith and mechanic for the Romanian Railways (CFR).

He represented the Hunedoara and Bacău areas in the Assembly of Deputies as well as in the Great National Assembly until 1968.