00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page i Ana Pauker 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page ii 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page iii Ana Pauker The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist Robert Levy UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley . Los Angeles . London 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page iv Frontispiece: Ana Pauker, 1926. Courtesy of Tatiana Bra˘tescu and Gheorghe Bra˘tescu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2001 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levy, Robert, 1957–. Ana Pauker: the rise and fall of a Jewish Communist / Robert Levy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-520-22395-0 (cloth: alk. paper). 1. Pauker, Ana, 1893–1960. 2. Romania— Politics and government—1944–1989. 3. Cabinet officers—Romania—Biography. 4. Communists—Romania—Biography. 5. Jews—Romania—Biography. I. Title. dr267.5.p38 l48 2001 949.803Ј1Ј092—dc21 [b] 99-087890 cip Manufactured in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 10987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). ᭺ϱ 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page v To Mary and Isaac Rosenberg 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page vi Last, but most certainly not least, there was Ana Pauker.... I have always felt when I was with her that she was like a boa constrictor which has just been fed, and therefore is not going to eat you—at the moment! Heavy and sluggish as she seemed, she had all that is repellent and yet horribly fascinating in a snake. I could well imagine, simply from watching her, that she had denounced her own husband, who in consequence was shot; and my further acquaintance with her showed me the cold and dehumanized brilliance by which she had reached the powerful position she occupied. Ileana, Princess of Romania, Archduchess of Austria, I Live Again 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page vii Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Early Years 15 2. In the Movement 33 3. In Power 68 4. The Agriculture Secretary 90 5. Party Purges 134 6. Jewish Emigration 163 7. “The Empress’s Brother” 183 8. The Purge 194 Epilogue 221 Appendix: Biographical Notes 239 Notes 255 Bibliography 369 Index 387 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page viii 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page ix Illustrations Frontispiece. Ana Pauker, 1926 Following p. 162 1. Map of Romania, 1944–51 2. Ana Pauker, 1913 3. Ana Pauker with her daughter Tatiana, ca. 1928–29 4. Marcel Pauker at Magtitogorsk, USSR, ca. 1931–32 5. Ana Pauker speaking at her trial, Craiova, Romania, 1936 6. Marcel Pauker in a Soviet prison, March 1938 7. Ana Pauker in prison, 1938 8. Hersh Rabinsohn, Ana Pauker’s father 9. Lucret¸iu Patras¸canu and Teohari Georgescu, May 1, 1946 10. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, 1946 11. Ana Pauker receiving a foreign delegation, November 1947 12. Ana Pauker, official portrait, 1948 13. Prime Minister Petru Groza and Ana Pauker at a rally honoring Georgi Dimitrov, July 1949 14. Ana Pauker at the Palace of the Republic, May 9, 1948 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page x x Illustrations 15. Ana Pauker presenting a decoration at the Palace of the Republic, May 9, 1948 16. Ana Pauker speaking at a cultural delegation, May 1948 17. Ana Pauker at the opening of the Congress of the Union of Young Workers, March 3, 1949 18. Rally celebrating the International Day of Women, March 1950 19. Propaganda cartoon against kulaks, December 1950 20. Meeting of the Great National Assembly, April 5–7, 1951 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page xi Acknowledgments This project has been long in the making and has benefited from the gen- erous assistance of friends and colleagues on three continents. In Ro- mania, I would like to cordially thank Marius Oprea, Claudiu Secas¸iu, Professor Florin Constantiniu, Mircea Chirit¸oiu, Mircea Suciu, Stelian Tanase, Dan Fârnoaga˘, Alice Dumitrache, Lya Benjamin, Harry Kuler, Alexandru Nistor, Alexandru S¸iperco, Tania S¸iperco, Eduard Mezin- cescu, Dr. Agnes Mures¸an, George Macri, Rodica Radu, Mihai Pelin, Gheorghe T¸ut¸ui, Gheorghe Niacs¸u, Florin and Liliana Balteanu, Mihaela Arsene, Aurelia Albu, Sorin Cozmanciuc, and the staffs of the foreign office of the Romanian Academy and the Nicolae Iorga Histori- cal Institute. Particular thanks and appreciation go to Dr. Gheorghe and Tatiana Bra˘tescu, whose support and assistance have been incalculable. In Israel, I am deeply indebted to my brother Neal Levy, Orna Sas- son, Ze’ev Dunie, Liviu Rotman, Shlomo Leibovici, Jean Coler, and particularly Sorin Toma. Heartfelt thanks also go out to Michel and Marie Birnbaum and Cristina Boico in Paris. On this continent, I would first like to thank Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, who has generously offered invaluable scholarly direction and assistance since the inception of this project in the 1980s. He has graciously shared vitally important documents from Ana Pauker’s in- quiry file, which had been denied me for more years than I care to re- member. I am also very grateful to Sheryl Levy-North, Dumitru Cercel, Georgiana Fârnoaga˘, Barbara Bernstein, David Hirsch, Vera Wheeler, xi 00-C1478-FM 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page xii xii Acknowledgments Professor Anna Igra, Professor Sharon Gillerman, Professor Steven J. Zipperstein, Professor Barisa Krekic, Professor Michael Heim, Jane Stewart, Marcia Rorty, Ilie Zaharia, and Josef Bujes. Special thanks and appreciation go out to my mentors Professors Ivan T. Berend and Gail Kligman, for their enduring support and intellectual guidance. Finally, I’d like to wholeheartedly thank my loving parents, Rose and Ben Levy, and my comrades-in-arms, Erica Silverman and Dorothy H. Rochmis, for everything. 01A-C1478-INT 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page 1 Introduction In September 1948 there appeared on the cover of Time magazine the portrait of a solid and imposing middle-aged woman—her expression stout and angry, her hair pushed back and unkempt, and her strong, almost menacing presence easily confirming the description Time would make of her: she was, it declared, “the most powerful woman alive.” In a feature of its own a few months later, Life magazine would describe her as having “undeniable strength. Her voice is deep, her tone confi- dent, her manner brisk. She is an extraordinarily dynamic woman.” 1 To a leading Israeli diplomat, she was “a true Minister” who conspicuously stood out from the many ministers he dealt with at that time; to a rep- resentative of an international Jewish organization, she was an “excep- tional” figure next to whom Golda Meir paled in comparison; and to a Zionist activist who had been a childhood friend but was later impris- oned by her regime, “[s]he was fascinating—full of spirit and utterly de- voted to her ideals. If [she] were alive now and came through this door into my house, I would welcome her with all my heart.” 2 Other ac- counts were far less flattering: to one observer, she was “a grim, clever and evil woman”; to another, a “ruthless female ..., a vain, violent and unprincipled figure.” 3 From any perspective, however, she was an ob- ject of fascination whose story had all the makings of a good drama: the daughter of poor religious Jews rising to the pinnacle of power in a country traditionally disdainful of both Jews and women. She was, of 1 01A-C1478-INT 11/22/00 12:42 PM Page 2 2 Introduction course, Ana Pauker—then the great “Red Matron” of the Soviet bloc, and the star in the skies of Communist Romania. Officially Romania’s Foreign Minister from 1947 to 1952—the first woman in the modern world ever to hold such a post—Pauker was ac- tually the unofficial head of Romania’s Communist Party immediately after the war and for a number of years was the country’s true behind- the-scenes leader. Always one of the first to be mentioned in the long list of outstanding revolutionary women, Pauker, unlike a Rosa Luxemburg or a Dolores “La Passionaria” Ibarruri, made it to “the top”—the first and the last woman to do so in the Communist world. Yet today, also unlike Luxemburg or Ibarruri, Pauker has all but disappeared from his- tory. Discredited as a long-standing Stalinist leader, she is now barely known outside Romania. Few contemporary adherents of progressive or leftist politics seem ever to have heard of her, while many feminists, even those seeking to reclaim past matriarchs as today’s role models, have no idea who she was.4 At the same time, Pauker is largely absent from Jewish historiogra- phy. This was, perhaps, a consequence of the conventional view of Jewish Communists as “non-Jewish Jews” who readily discarded their identities and abandoned their people for revolutionary universalism.5 No longer Jewish protagonists pursuing particularly Jewish goals, they were considered outside the purview of Jewish history. Indeed, Jewish historians regarded Pauker much as Israeli Prime Minister David Ben- Gurion depicted her in 1949: “This daughter of a Jewish rabbi now liv- ing in Israel is endeavoring to destroy the Jewish community in her country. To her any Jew is a Fascist. She would like to bring famine to [Israel] in order to curb the wish of Jews to come here.” As one scholar recently noted, Ana Pauker came to be known as an “archetype of self- hatred” among Jewish Communists.6 In Romania, on the other hand, Pauker has become a mythic figure symbolizing the perceived predominance of Jews in Romanian Commu- nism, as well as the terror and repression of the Stalinist years.