Ghiță Moscu (born Gelbert or Gelber Moscovici, also known as Alexandru Bădulescu, russian: Александр Саимович Бадулеску; 1889 – November 4, 1937) was a

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

and communist activist, one of the early leaders of the Romanian Communist Party and its permanent delegate to the

Third International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by a ...

. He was executed in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

during the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...

Biography

Political section of the Turkestan Front, 1919-1920

He was born in a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family in Băiceni, near Iași, in north-eastern Romania. He was the son of an immigrant petty merchant who had fought in the Romanian Independence War. A student of the Iași superior school of commerce until 1910, in 1906 Moscu joined the local socialist ''

România Muncitoare ''România Muncitoare'' ("Working Romania" or "Laborer Romania") was a socialist newspaper, published in Bucharest, Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eas ...

circle'', where his older brother,

Ilie Moscovici Ilie B. Moscovici (also known as Tovilie; 28 November 1885 – 1 November 1943) was a Romanian socialist militant and journalist, one of the noted leaders of the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSDR). A socialist since early youth and a party ...

, a future leader of the

reformist Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement. Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can ...

Romanian Social Democratic Party, was already active. Involved in the youth section, he contributed to the creation of the Circle for the Socialist Education of the Youth, which included young workers as well as school students. Moscu represented the socialists of

Pașcani Pașcani () is a city in Iași County in the Western Moldavia region of Romania, on the Siret river. , it has a population of 33,745. Five villages are administered by the city: Blăgești, Boșteni, Gâstești, Lunca, and Sodomeni. The city der ...

at the 1910 Congress reorganizing the

Social Democratic Party of Romania The Social Democratic Party ( ro, Partidul Social Democrat, PSD) is the largest social democratic political party in Romania and also the largest overall political party in the country, aside from European Parliament level, where it is the seco ...

, before being drafted in the autumn of the same year, and participating as a soldier in the

Second Balkan War The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 ( O.S.) / 29 (N.S.) June 1913. Serbian and Greek armies r ...

. After demobilization, he moved to

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

, where he started working for an insurance company and joined the local socialist section. During the years before the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Moscu was engaged in the pacifist anti-war movement, writing articles in the socialist youth press. In 1915, at the fourth Congress, where he participated as a delegate for

, Moscu was elected in the party's control commission. In August 1915 he was also elected in the Committee of the newly created commercial employees' trade union. Other political position held during this period include membership in the local Trade Union Commission, the Bucharest Party Committee and the commission for the ideological control of the party's press. During the war, Moscu gradually moved toward communism, being engaged with the "

maximalist In the arts, maximalism, a reaction against minimalism, is an aesthetic of excess. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist motto "less is more". Literature The term ''maximalism'' is sometimes associ ...

" group that chose to continue its activity clandestinely in German-occupied Romania. In 1918 he was arrested in Bucharest by the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

military administration and sentenced to four and a half years confinement in

Jilava Jilava is a commune in Ilfov county, Muntenia, Romania, near Bucharest. It is composed of a single village, Jilava. The name derives from a Romanian word of Slavic origin ( Bulgarian жилав ''žilav'' (tough), which passed into Romanian as '' ...

for spreading a manifesto saluting the Russian Revolution. Set free in November 1918, he was arrested again the following month on charges of "attack on public security", after the reinstalled Romanian authorities opened fire on demonstrating workers during a general strike. Moscu left the country in March 1919 and, after a brief internment at

Užice Užice ( sr-cyr, Ужице, ) is a city and the administrative centre of the Zlatibor District in western Serbia. It is located on the banks of the river Đetinja. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 59,747. The C ...

, made his way to Austria, where he re-established contact with the Romanian movement. In November he represented the youth wing of the

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of t ...

in the

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

Congress that created the Communist Youth International, signing its founding manifesto in the name of the ''Working Youth'' of Romania. After a failed attempt to return to Romania in the summer of 1920, Moscu was finally able to do so during autumn. In Bucharest he became one of the main supporters of the creation of a Communist Party, also organising a conference of the clandestine communist factions in Iași during the spring of 1921. In June 1921 he left Romania for

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

with his wife Clara (also known under the pseudonym ''Ana Bădulescu''). Moscu, who had by the time adopted the name ''Bădulescu'', headed the Romanian delegation to the Third Congress of the Communist International (Comintern), being elected a member of its

Executive Committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...

(ECCI), as the sole Romanian representative. At the same Congress his wife was elected in the

International Communist Women's Secretariat The Communist Women's International was launched as an autonomous offshoot of the Communist International in April 1920 for the purpose of advancing communist ideas among women. The Communist Women's International was intended to play the same r ...

. Afterwards, the couple moved to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

, and was active in the Comintern press. Designated the Romanian representative to the

Balkan Communist Federation The Balkan Federation project was a left-wing political movement to create a country in the Balkans by combining Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. The concept of a Balkan federation emerged in the late 19th century from ...

in 1922, Moscu moved to Bulgaria, where the latter organisation had its headquarters. Following the Balkan Conference held in Moscow in autumn 1923, he settled in the Soviet Union and was appointed deputy rapporteur of the ECCI for the Balkan countries. In 1924 he was admitted in the

Bolshevik Party " Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first)Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspaper ...

, and later that year participated in Romanian Communist Party's third congress, which took place in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. During most of the interwar, Moscu remained the RCP permanent delegate to the Comintern, and in 1927 he was also appointed a member in the Balkan Secretariat of the Comintern. In 1929, during the intense factional fights which divided the Romanian Communist Party, Moscu left the Comintern apparatus and, after taking some university courses in commerce, he led the international section of the Soviet National Committee of Standardization. After September 1932, when the section was disbanded, he worked as the assistant manager of the international section of the

People's Commissariat for Communications of the USSR The People's Commissariat for Communications of the USSR (russian: Народный комиссариат связи СССР) was the central state agency of the Soviet Union for communications in the period 1932 to 1946. The Commissariat admini ...

. Temporarily excluded from the Communist Party, Moscu had to leave this position and start working as a consulting editor for the ''Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR''. Expelled again from the Party in 1935, he was eventually killed in 1937, during the

, accused of creating a spy ring inside the ECCI. He was later rehabilitated, first in the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

and then in

, during the de-stalinization campaigns in the Eastern Bloc.

Footnotes

References

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moscovici, Gelbert Bolsheviks Executive Committee of the Communist International Expelled members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Great Purge victims from Romania Jewish socialists Jews executed by the Soviet Union Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union executed by the Soviet Union People from Iași County People of the Russian Civil War Romanian Comintern people Romanian communists Romanian emigrants to the Soviet Union Romanian Jews Romanian journalists Romanian military personnel of the Second Balkan War Romanian pacifists Social Democratic Party of Romania (1910–1918) politicians Romanian trade unionists Socialist Republic of Romania rehabilitations Soviet journalists Male journalists Soviet politicians Soviet rehabilitations 1889 births 1937 deaths 20th-century journalists