Valter Roman: Difference between revisions

Valter or Walter Roman (born Ernst or Ernő Neuländer; October 9, 1913-November 11, 1983) was a Romanian communist politician, activist, soldier and engineer, one of the high-ranking members of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and active inside several other communist parties during his lifetime (the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the French Communist Party, and the Communist Party of Spain).

He was the father of Petre Roman, himself a politician of the post-1989 period.

Biography

Before and during World War II

Born in Nagyvárad (today Oradea, part of Austria-Hungary at the time), he was the child of Jewish parents whose first language was Hungarian. In later testimonies, he indicated that his ethnic background was not interly relevant to him: "Germans said I was a Hungarian, Hungarians that I was Romanian, Romanians said that I was Jewish, but Jews said I was a communist, although I was not yet one at the time".

Roman obtained an degree in Electrical engineering in Brno, Czechoslovakia.

Initially active inside the PCR's agitprop section, he was a volunteer in a Romanian artillery unit of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War — according to one source, it was then that he first adopted the name Valter Roman, while also using the pseudonym bore the name G. Katowski. Roman was wounded twice before leaving for the Soviet Union.

Roman worked at the Kalinin plane factory in 1938-1941, and later for one of the Comintern sections, and, during World War II, for the Institute for Scientific Research (1941–1945). At the time, Roman also headed the Romanian-language radio station of the Comintern (România Liberă), broadcasting propaganda against the regime of Ion Antonescu and Romania's actions on the Eastern Front as a n ally of Nazi Germany (see Romania during World War II). He returned to Soviet-occupied Romania in July 1945, as the political locum tenens of General Mihail Lascăr, commander of the Soviet-organized Horia, Cloşca şi Crişan Division.

High profile

Under the communist regime, Roman became a Romanian Army general (Major General after May 1, 1948) with political responsabilites (Chief of the Army Directorate for Education, Culture, and Propaganda, 1946; Chief of the Superior Political Direction of the Romanian Army and Chief of Staff, 1947-1951), and Minister of Telecommunications (March 29, 1951-January 24, 1953).

Close to the Ana Pauker "Muscovite wing" of the PCR, he came into conflict with the leadership around Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Purged from the PCR and Army on charges of "Titoism" and "espionage", he was rehabilitated after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. He was also head of Editura Politică (1954-1983).

In 1956 and 1957, as a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, Valter Roman was involved in deciding Romanian policies in regard to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which threatened to spark similar actions in Romania: after the Red Army invaded Hungary, he accompanied Gheorghiu-Dej and the writer Mihai Beniuc and other local Communists to Budapest, where the three of them reviewed the situation and expressed approval of Soviet policies. Later on, he was involved in interrogating Imre Nagy during his detainment in Snagov, while also ensuring contacts between Nagy and Soviet officials.

In 1961, he was also among the Party leaders who spoke out against Iosif Chişinevschi and other former leaders who had been since marginalized (including Pauker, whom he accused of having maintained contacts with Soviet police chief Lavrentiy Beria, Boris Stefanov, whom he accused of sympathioes with Nazism, and Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu). He also rallied with Gheorghiu-Dej's views on De-Stalinization, claiming that Pauker's fall had been a sign of Romania parting with Stalinism. At the time, he argued that Pauker and her collaborator Vasile Luca had viewed him with suspicion, based on his participation in the Spanish Civil War.

After Gheorghiu-Dej's death, he approved of the change in course indicated by Nicolae Ceauşescu, and joined in condemning the 1968 Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia (at the time, he notably quoted Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's statement that "socialism and truth are inseparable"). Elected to the Central Committee on July 24, 1965, he was in office until his death.

A Hero of the Socialist Labor, Roman was also employed as a University professor.

Controversies

Several aspects of Roman's past remain under dispute.

In 2000, investigations by Russian historian Tofik Islamov concluded that, after Soviet authorities charged Maxim Litvinov to investigate the issue of Northern Transylvania, disputed between Romania and Hungary, Roman approached the commission in late 1944 with plans to have Transylvania declare itself independent (under a common guarantee from the Soviets and Western Allies). Petre Roman has repeatedly contested the conclusion, advancing documents which, he argued, proved that his father was in favor of Transylvania's status inside Romania.

In his own reply to Petre Roman's arguments, Islamov repeated his statements and contended that views such as those attributed to Valter Roman were commonplace among internationalists of the time. He also cited Roman's statement at the time, according to which he supported the idea that both Hungary and Romania had been guilty of waging war on the Soviet Union, that the region was "an ethnographic conglomerate", a tradition of regional sovereignty, Transylvania's economic independence and its status as "the most progressive part of the country".

In 2006, Petre Roman was involved in a polemic with former Securitate chief and defector Ion Mihai Pacepa over the extent to which Valter Roman took part in political repression on the wake of the Hungarian Revolution.

Works

Sociology of the science

• Revoluţia industrială în dezvoltarea societăţii ("The Industrial Revolution in Social Development")
• Eseuri despre revoluţia ştiinţifică şi tehnică ("Essays on the Scientific and Technical Revolution")

Memoir

• Sub cerul Spaniei ("Under the Skies of Spain")

References

• Template:Ro icon Valter Roman's speech and subsequent exchange of replies with other Communist leaders (December 1961), at Sfera Politicii: Part I, Part II
• Template:Ro icon Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania
• Template:Ro icon Tofik Islamov, "Scrisoare către Petre Roman" ("Letter to Petre Roman"), hosted by Provincia, August 19, 2000
• Template:Ro icon Paula Mihailov, "Figuri moscovite ale comuniştilor români" ("Muscovite Figures of the Romanian Communists") in Jurnalul Naţional, February 28, 2007
• Template:Ro icon Ion Mihai Pacepa, "Walter Roman - dedicat bolşevismului internaţional" ("Walter Roman - Dedicated to International Bolshevism"), in Ziua, September 8, 2006
• 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)
• Template:Ro icon Cristina Vohn, "Transilvania, în planurile URSS" ("Transylvania in the USSR's Plans"), in Jurnalul Naţional, February 16, 2006

Further reading

• Andreea Andreescu, Lucian Nastasă, and Andrea Varga (eds.), Minorităţi etnoculturale. Mărturii documentare. Maghiarii din România (1945-1955) ("Ethno-cultural Minorities. Documentary Evidence. The Magyars of Romania (1945-1955)"), CRDE Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2002 ISBN 973-85305-4-7
• Gheorghe Crişan, Piramida puterii ("The Pyramid of Power"), second edition, Pro Historia publishing house, Bucharest, 2004 ISBN 978-973-85206-9-1