Alexandru Nicolschi
Encyclopedia
Alexandru Nicolschi was a Romania
n communist
activist, Soviet
agent
and officer, and Securitate
chief under the Communist regime
. Active until the early 1960s, he was one of the most recognizable leaders of violent political repression.
(part of Imperial Russia at the time), he was the son of Alexandru Grünberg, a miller. In 1932, he joined the local section of the Union of Communist Youth
, a wing of the Romanian Communist Party
(PCR or PCdR); in 1933, due to his political activities, he was arrested and held for two weeks by the secret police
, Siguranţa Statului. Later in the 1930s, as associates of General Secretary
Vitali Holostenco
, he and Vasile Luca
were elected to the internal Politburo
(which was doubled by a controlling body inside the Soviet Union). In 1937, he joined the ranks of the Romanian Communist Party
. He did his military service in the Signal Regiment of Iaşi
in 1937-39, being discharged with the rank of corporal
. He subsequently worked for the telephone exchange in Chişinău.
In December 1940, following the onset of the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, Grünberg became a Soviet citizen, joined the NKVD
, and trained as a spy in Cernăuţi
. He was sent undercover into Romania on May 26, 1941,
carrying papers with the name Vasile Ştefănescu, and reporting on Romanian Army movements in preparation for Operation Barbarossa
(the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany
, in which Romanian troops, under the command of Marshal Ion Antonescu
, participated; see Romania during World War II
). He was apprehended by Romanian border guards after just two hours (according to subsequent reports, he was given away by the fact that he could not express himself in Romanian
; his case was investigated June 6-12 by the Special Investigations Service's Lieutenant Colonel Emil Velciu; Nicolschi confessed he had been recruited into Soviet intelligence by NKVD Captain Andreev. After a short trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment
and hard labor on August 7, 1941. He was sent to prison in Ploieşti
, and then Aiud
, where other Soviet spies, such as Vladimir Gribici, and Afanasie Şişman, were also held. It was during the time that he began using his adopted name, and passed himself off as an ethnic Russian
.
occupying Romania
on August 28, 1944, and benefited from a general amnesty
. In October, Nicolschi was incorporated into the police force
, becoming an inspector
, while, in parallel, he rose rapidly through the ranks of the PCR. In May 1945, just after the end of World War II
in Europe, he was present in Moscow
, where he was entrusted with the task of transporting Ion Antonescu
and his group of collaborators (Mihai Antonescu
, Constantin Pantazi, Pichi Vasiliu and others, all of whom had been captured by the Soviets) from Lubyanka
back to Romania. On April 9, 1946, it was he who signed the release papers when these prisoners were brought back to Romania by Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Rodin to face trial.
Under the Petru Groza
Communist-controlled government, Nicolschi was appointed head of the Detective
Corps. At the time, Nicolschi, together with Minister of the Interior Teohari Georgescu
, was contacted by Nicolae Petraşcu, a fascist
activist who oversaw the main interior branch of the Iron Guard
(claiming to represent Horia Sima
's exiled leadership of the movement). Petraşcu, who had just been arrested, offered his subordinates' support for the National Democratic Front, which was an alliance controlled by the Communists (in the process, he avoided a direct mention of the Communist Party, and later carried on parallel negotiations with the opposition National Peasants' Party
, PNŢ). Georgescu and Nicolschi agreed to the deal, and allowed Iron Guard's affiliates (the Legionaries) to emerge from the underground, awarding them identity papers and employment on the condition that they disarmed themselves. Georgescu was persuaded by Nicolschi to let Petraşcu go free; the minister later confessed that this was done on suspicion that the Iron Guard would otherwise provide support for the National Peasantist leaders: "The PNŢ's attempts, successful up to a certain extent, of attracting Legionaries into their party, [thus] giving them a legal possibility to act against the regime".
According to Georgescu, as a direct result of the understanding, as much as 800 Iron Guard affiliates applied for recognition, including a number of people who had "returned from Germany
after August 23, 1944, having diversion as their [original] purpose". In autumn 1945, the two Communist representatives intervened to have sizable groups of Iron Guard members set free from various labor camps, while Petraşcu was awarded a degree of liberty in resuming political contacts. On Georgescu's orders, Nicolschi drew up a list of Legionaries who had been imprisoned for lesser crimes under Ion Antonescu
's regime, a document which formed the basis of pardons. Most of the newly-released persons were subsequently kept under surveillance by Nicolschi and his Detective Corps. An unknown number of Petraşcu's supporters consequently joined the Communist Party, as part of a large wave of new members.
, Siguranţa Statului, where he and Serghei Nicolau led a Mobile Brigade, entrusted with silencing political opposition. The unit, which was to become an embryo for the Securitate, comprised an active cell of MGB
envoys. At the time, Nicolschi himself rose to the rank of Colonel
in the MGB.
With Alexandru Drăghici, Nicolschi ordered a wave of arbitrary arrests in 1946-1947, which, according to some sources, came to mark the lives of as many as 300,000 people. He also played a role in the killing of Ştefan Foriş
, who, after being toppled from his position as General Secretary, had been kept in seclusion; it was Nicolschi who ordered Foriş' mother to be drowned in the Crişul Repede
. In 1967, he indicated that one of his subordinates, a certain "comrade (Gavril) Birtaş" of the Oradea
section, had taken the initiative:
In early 1948, after the PCR forced King
Mihai I
to abdicate
, Nicolschi escorted the latter out of the country and as far as Vienna
. During May, Nicolschi, together with Marin Jianu, engineered a series of trials for sabotage
, which notably implicated the industrialists Radu Xenopol and Anton Dumitru, who were accused of having destroyed their own enterprises as a means to resist nationalization
.
Gheorghe Pintilie
(Pantelei Bodnarenko) became the first Director of this organization. The positions of Deputy Directors went to two Major General
s Nicolschi and Vladimir Mazuru, both of whom were also Soviet officers; nobody could be appointed to the Securitate's leadership without their approval. Together, they oversaw the creation of the massive Communist Romanian penal system and communist terror apparatus, starting in February 1950. As historian Vladimir Tismăneanu
argues, this was made possible by the Soviet agents and their relations with the group around emerging Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
: "if one does not grasp the role of political thugs such as the Soviet spies Pintilie Bodnarenko (Pantiuşa) and Alexandru Nikolski in the exercise of terror in Romania during the most horrible Stalinist period, and their personal connections with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and members of his entourage, it is difficult to understand the origins and the role of the Securitate".
Upon introducing the new Securitate policies, Nicolschi presented a series of ideological imperatives, resumed in sentences such as:
Involved in the interrogation of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
, he ensured Soviet intervention in the proceedings, and was personally responsible for the arrest of Lena Constante
. He also played a leading role in the brainwashing experiment provoked by the Communist authorities in 1949-1952 at the Piteşti prison
; he encouraged Eugen Ţurcanu
to carry out the task and carried out regular inspections, during which he would ignore evidence of torture
. In the inquiry preceding the show trial
for sabotage at the Danube-Black Sea Canal
, Nicolschi led a squad of torturers that was entrusted with obtaining forced confession
s from Gheorghe Crăciun and other employees.
As early as 1949, Nicolschi was arguably the first Securitate senior officer to become known for his brutality outside the Eastern bloc
. This came after a Romanian refugee to France
, Adriana Georgescu Cosmovici, recounted the manner in which, four years earlier, she had been tortured by team of which Nicolschi was a member, and indicated that the latter had been one of the three to have threatened her with guns.
's "Muscovite wing", Nicolschi maintained links with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
, and relied on his NKVD-MGB credentials to survive political turmoil caused by the fall of Pauker, Vasile Luca
, and Minister of the Interior Teohari Georgescu
. Pauker was officially accused, among other things, of having welcomed the Iron Guard
into the Party, although her degree of involvement in the deal remains disputed (while Nicolschi is credited with having initiated it, it was also proposed that his Soviet superiors had played a part in the decision).
He apparently rallied with Gheorghiu-Dej, and, despite the fact that he was still a Soviet citizen, he was decorated with the high distinction Steaua Republicii Populare Române. In 1953, he became a General Secretary in the Interior Ministry
. At around that time, his suspicion towards Gheorghiu-Dej allegedly led him to plant microphones
in the latter's office.
In 1961, after Gheorghiu-Dej began adopting anti-Soviet themes in his discourse, Nicolschi, promoted to Lieutenant General, was sidelined and forced into retirement, without being denied the luxuries reserved for the nomenklatura
. He lived through the Nicolae Ceauşescu
years, and died in Bucharest
, two years after the Romanian Revolution
, as the result of a heart attack
. This happened on the very same day he was presented with a subpoena
from the Prosecutor General, who had received a formal notification from the victims' families and the Association of Former Political Prisoners (Nicolschi was scheduled for hearings on April 17, 1992).
Alongside Pintilie and Mazuru, Nicolschi features prominently in theories that the early Securitate was controlled by ethnic minorities
(as notably voiced by the press of the ultra-nationalist
Greater Romania Party
). Referring to this, British
historian Dennis Deletant claims that of the total 60 leaders of the Securitate Directorate, 38 were ethnically Romanian
, while 22 were divided between 5 other communities (but in this statistic, Deletant counts Nicolschi as an ethnic Russian). He concluded that "the numbers drawn from ethnic minorities, although disproportionate, do not appear to be excessive". Deletant also is of the opinion that, while there is indication that the ethnic origin of top officials was obscured, "there is no evidence to suggest the 'Romanianisation
' of officers of other ethnic origins".
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
activist, Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
agent
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
and officer, and Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
chief under the Communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
. Active until the early 1960s, he was one of the most recognizable leaders of violent political repression.
Early life
Born to a Jewish family in TiraspolTiraspol
Tiraspol is the second largest city in Moldova and is the capital and administrative centre of the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic . The city is located on the eastern bank of the Dniester River...
(part of Imperial Russia at the time), he was the son of Alexandru Grünberg, a miller. In 1932, he joined the local section of the Union of Communist Youth
Union of Communist Youth
The Union of Communist Youth was the Romanian Communist Party's youth organisation, modelled after the Soviet Komsomol. It aimed to cultivate young cadres into the party, as well as to help create the "new man" envisioned by communist ideologues.-History:Founded in 1922, the UTC went underground...
, a wing of the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
(PCR or PCdR); in 1933, due to his political activities, he was arrested and held for two weeks by the secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, Siguranţa Statului. Later in the 1930s, as associates of General Secretary
General Secretary
The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...
Vitali Holostenco
Vitali Holostenco
Vitali Holostenco or Holostenko was a Romanian and Soviet communist politician. He used several pseudonyms, among which Barbu and Petrulescu.-Early life:...
, he and Vasile Luca
Vasile Luca
Vasile Luca was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian and Soviet communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party from 1945 and until his imprisonment in the 1950s...
were elected to the internal Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
(which was doubled by a controlling body inside the Soviet Union). In 1937, he joined the ranks of the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
. He did his military service in the Signal Regiment of Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
in 1937-39, being discharged with the rank of corporal
Corporal
Corporal is a rank in use in some form by most militaries and by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. It is usually equivalent to NATO Rank Code OR-4....
. He subsequently worked for the telephone exchange in Chişinău.
In December 1940, following the onset of the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, Grünberg became a Soviet citizen, joined the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, and trained as a spy in Cernăuţi
Chernivtsi
Chernivtsi is the administrative center of Chernivtsi Oblast in southwestern Ukraine. The city is situated on the upper course of the River Prut, a tributary of the Danube, in the northern part of the historic region of Bukovina, which is currently divided between Romania and Ukraine...
. He was sent undercover into Romania on May 26, 1941,
carrying papers with the name Vasile Ştefănescu, and reporting on Romanian Army movements in preparation for Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
(the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, in which Romanian troops, under the command of Marshal Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
, participated; see Romania during World War II
Romania during World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. Fascist political forces such as the Iron...
). He was apprehended by Romanian border guards after just two hours (according to subsequent reports, he was given away by the fact that he could not express himself in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
; his case was investigated June 6-12 by the Special Investigations Service's Lieutenant Colonel Emil Velciu; Nicolschi confessed he had been recruited into Soviet intelligence by NKVD Captain Andreev. After a short trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
and hard labor on August 7, 1941. He was sent to prison in Ploieşti
Ploiesti
Ploiești is the county seat of Prahova County and lies in the historical region of Wallachia in Romania. The city is located north of Bucharest....
, and then Aiud
Aiud
Aiud is a city located in Alba county, Transylvania, Romania. The city has a population of 28,934 people. It has the status of municipality and is the second-largest city in the county, after county seat Alba Iulia. The Aiud administrative region is 142.2 square kilometres in area.- Administration...
, where other Soviet spies, such as Vladimir Gribici, and Afanasie Şişman, were also held. It was during the time that he began using his adopted name, and passed himself off as an ethnic Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
.
Detective Corps
He was set free by the Red ArmyRed Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
occupying Romania
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
on August 28, 1944, and benefited from a general amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
. In October, Nicolschi was incorporated into the police force
Romanian Police
The Romanian Police is the national police force and main civil law enforcement agency in Romania. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform.-Duties:The Romanian Police are responsible for:...
, becoming an inspector
Inspector
Inspector is both a police rank and an administrative position, both used in a number of contexts. However, it is not an equivalent rank in each police force.- Australia :...
, while, in parallel, he rose rapidly through the ranks of the PCR. In May 1945, just after the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in Europe, he was present in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where he was entrusted with the task of transporting Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
and his group of collaborators (Mihai Antonescu
Mihai Antonescu
Mihai Antonescu was a Romanian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister during World War II.-Early career:...
, Constantin Pantazi, Pichi Vasiliu and others, all of whom had been captured by the Soviets) from Lubyanka
Lubyanka (KGB)
The Lubyanka is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. It is a large building with a facade of yellow brick, designed by Alexander V...
back to Romania. On April 9, 1946, it was he who signed the release papers when these prisoners were brought back to Romania by Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Rodin to face trial.
Under the Petru Groza
Petru Groza
Petru Groza was a Romanian politician, best known as the Prime Minister of the first Communist Party-dominated governments under Soviet occupation during the early stages of the Communist regime in Romania....
Communist-controlled government, Nicolschi was appointed head of the Detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
Corps. At the time, Nicolschi, together with Minister of the Interior Teohari Georgescu
Teohari Georgescu
Teohari Georgescu was a high-ranking member of the Romanian Communist Party.-Life:Born in Bacău, he was the third of seven children of Constantin and Aneta Georgescu. Georgescu, whose formal education ended after the fourth grade, began his career as an assistant in his father's store...
, was contacted by Nicolae Petraşcu, a fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
activist who oversaw the main interior branch of the Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
(claiming to represent Horia Sima
Horia Sima
Horia Sima was a Romanian fascist politician. After 1938, he was the second and last leader of the fascist and antisemitic para-military movement known as the Iron Guard.-In Romania:...
's exiled leadership of the movement). Petraşcu, who had just been arrested, offered his subordinates' support for the National Democratic Front, which was an alliance controlled by the Communists (in the process, he avoided a direct mention of the Communist Party, and later carried on parallel negotiations with the opposition National Peasants' Party
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
, PNŢ). Georgescu and Nicolschi agreed to the deal, and allowed Iron Guard's affiliates (the Legionaries) to emerge from the underground, awarding them identity papers and employment on the condition that they disarmed themselves. Georgescu was persuaded by Nicolschi to let Petraşcu go free; the minister later confessed that this was done on suspicion that the Iron Guard would otherwise provide support for the National Peasantist leaders: "The PNŢ's attempts, successful up to a certain extent, of attracting Legionaries into their party, [thus] giving them a legal possibility to act against the regime".
According to Georgescu, as a direct result of the understanding, as much as 800 Iron Guard affiliates applied for recognition, including a number of people who had "returned from Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
after August 23, 1944, having diversion as their [original] purpose". In autumn 1945, the two Communist representatives intervened to have sizable groups of Iron Guard members set free from various labor camps, while Petraşcu was awarded a degree of liberty in resuming political contacts. On Georgescu's orders, Nicolschi drew up a list of Legionaries who had been imprisoned for lesser crimes under Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
's regime, a document which formed the basis of pardons. Most of the newly-released persons were subsequently kept under surveillance by Nicolschi and his Detective Corps. An unknown number of Petraşcu's supporters consequently joined the Communist Party, as part of a large wave of new members.
Mobile Brigade
Nicolschi was later assigned General Inspector of the traditional secret policeSecret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, Siguranţa Statului, where he and Serghei Nicolau led a Mobile Brigade, entrusted with silencing political opposition. The unit, which was to become an embryo for the Securitate, comprised an active cell of MGB
Ministry for State Security (USSR)
The Ministry of State Security was the name of Soviet secret police from 1946 to 1953.-Origins of the MGB:The MGB was just one of many incarnations of the Soviet State Security apparatus. Since the revolution, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong political police or security force to support and...
envoys. At the time, Nicolschi himself rose to the rank of Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
in the MGB.
With Alexandru Drăghici, Nicolschi ordered a wave of arbitrary arrests in 1946-1947, which, according to some sources, came to mark the lives of as many as 300,000 people. He also played a role in the killing of Ştefan Foriş
Stefan Foris
Ştefan Foriş was a Romanian communist activist and journalist who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party between 1940 and 1944....
, who, after being toppled from his position as General Secretary, had been kept in seclusion; it was Nicolschi who ordered Foriş' mother to be drowned in the Crişul Repede
Crisul Repede
Crişul Repede is a river in Bihor county, Crişana, Romania and in southeastern Hungary . Together with the rivers Crişul Alb and Crişul Negru , it makes up the Three Criş rivers . These are considered the main rivers in the Crişana region of Romania...
. In 1967, he indicated that one of his subordinates, a certain "comrade (Gavril) Birtaş" of the Oradea
Oradea
Oradea is the capital city of Bihor County, in the Crișana region of north-western Romania. The city has a population of 204,477, according to the 2009 estimates. The wider Oradea metropolitan area has a total population of 245,832.-Geography:...
section, had taken the initiative:
"Comrade Birtaş had received the indication to talk to her and get her to return to Oradea and admit herself into an old people's home. Details of how Comrade Birtaş has accomplished the mission are not known to me."
In early 1948, after the PCR forced King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Mihai I
Michael I of Romania
Michael was the last King of Romania. He reigned from 20 July 1927 to 8 June 1930, and again from 6 September 1940 until 30 December 1947 when he was forced, by the Communist Party of Romania , to abdicate to the Soviet armies of occupation...
to abdicate
Abdication
Abdication occurs when a monarch, such as a king or emperor, renounces his office.-Terminology:The word abdication comes derives from the Latin abdicatio. meaning to disown or renounce...
, Nicolschi escorted the latter out of the country and as far as Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. During May, Nicolschi, together with Marin Jianu, engineered a series of trials for sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
, which notably implicated the industrialists Radu Xenopol and Anton Dumitru, who were accused of having destroyed their own enterprises as a means to resist nationalization
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
.
Securitate crimes
After the founding of the Securitate on August 30 of that year, Lieutenant GeneralLieutenant General
Lieutenant General is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages where the title of Lieutenant General was held by the second in command on the battlefield, who was normally subordinate to a Captain General....
Gheorghe Pintilie
Gheorghe Pintilie
Gheorghe Pintilie , was a Soviet intelligence agent, Romanian communist activist, and the first Director of the Securitate...
(Pantelei Bodnarenko) became the first Director of this organization. The positions of Deputy Directors went to two Major General
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...
s Nicolschi and Vladimir Mazuru, both of whom were also Soviet officers; nobody could be appointed to the Securitate's leadership without their approval. Together, they oversaw the creation of the massive Communist Romanian penal system and communist terror apparatus, starting in February 1950. As historian Vladimir Tismăneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
argues, this was made possible by the Soviet agents and their relations with the group around emerging Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
: "if one does not grasp the role of political thugs such as the Soviet spies Pintilie Bodnarenko (Pantiuşa) and Alexandru Nikolski in the exercise of terror in Romania during the most horrible Stalinist period, and their personal connections with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and members of his entourage, it is difficult to understand the origins and the role of the Securitate".
Upon introducing the new Securitate policies, Nicolschi presented a series of ideological imperatives, resumed in sentences such as:
"The rust of bureaucratBureaucratA bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can comprise the administration of any organization of any size, though the term usually connotes someone within an institution of a government or corporation...
ism has begun to gnaw at us [that is, the Securitate]. Our apparatus cannot be gnawed at, but this is an aspect [of things turned wrong]."
Involved in the interrogation of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
Lucretiu Patrascanu
Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania , also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at Bucharest University...
, he ensured Soviet intervention in the proceedings, and was personally responsible for the arrest of Lena Constante
Lena Constante
Lena Constante was a Romanian artist, essayist and memoirist, known for her work in stage design and tapestry. A family friend of Communist Party politician Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, she was arrested by the Communist regime following the conflict between Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej...
. He also played a leading role in the brainwashing experiment provoked by the Communist authorities in 1949-1952 at the Piteşti prison
Pitesti prison
The Pitești prison was a penal facility in Pitești, Romania, best remembered for the brainwashing experiment carried out by Communist authorities in 1949-1952...
; he encouraged Eugen Ţurcanu
Eugen Turcanu
Eugen Ţurcanu , Romanian political prisoner, was executed for his role in the Piteşti Experiment. Initially sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for his membership in the Iron Guard , Ţurcanu became the leader of a group of detainees whose role was to...
to carry out the task and carried out regular inspections, during which he would ignore evidence of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. In the inquiry preceding the show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
for sabotage at the Danube-Black Sea Canal
Danube-Black Sea Canal
The Danube – Black Sea Canal is a canal in Romania which runs from Cernavodă on the Danube to Agigea and Năvodari on the Black Sea...
, Nicolschi led a squad of torturers that was entrusted with obtaining forced confession
Forced confession
A forced confession is a confession obtained by a suspect or a prisoner under means of torture, enhanced interrogation technique or duress.Depending on the level of coercion used, a forced confession may or may not be valid in revealing the truth...
s from Gheorghe Crăciun and other employees.
As early as 1949, Nicolschi was arguably the first Securitate senior officer to become known for his brutality outside the Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
. This came after a Romanian refugee to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Adriana Georgescu Cosmovici, recounted the manner in which, four years earlier, she had been tortured by team of which Nicolschi was a member, and indicated that the latter had been one of the three to have threatened her with guns.
Inner-Party conflicts and retirement
Although an associate of Ana PaukerAna Pauker
Ana Pauker was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
's "Muscovite wing", Nicolschi maintained links with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
, and relied on his NKVD-MGB credentials to survive political turmoil caused by the fall of Pauker, Vasile Luca
Vasile Luca
Vasile Luca was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian and Soviet communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party from 1945 and until his imprisonment in the 1950s...
, and Minister of the Interior Teohari Georgescu
Teohari Georgescu
Teohari Georgescu was a high-ranking member of the Romanian Communist Party.-Life:Born in Bacău, he was the third of seven children of Constantin and Aneta Georgescu. Georgescu, whose formal education ended after the fourth grade, began his career as an assistant in his father's store...
. Pauker was officially accused, among other things, of having welcomed the Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
into the Party, although her degree of involvement in the deal remains disputed (while Nicolschi is credited with having initiated it, it was also proposed that his Soviet superiors had played a part in the decision).
He apparently rallied with Gheorghiu-Dej, and, despite the fact that he was still a Soviet citizen, he was decorated with the high distinction Steaua Republicii Populare Române. In 1953, he became a General Secretary in the Interior Ministry
Ministry of Administration and Interior of Romania
The Ministry of Administration and Interior of Romania is one of the fifteen ministries of the Government of Romania.From 23 August 1944 to 18 March 1975 the minister held the title of Minister of Internal Affairs, between 2004 and 2007, held the title of Minister of Administration and Interior,...
. At around that time, his suspicion towards Gheorghiu-Dej allegedly led him to plant microphones
Covert listening device
A covert listening device, more commonly known as a bug or a wire, is usually a combination of a miniature radio transmitter with a microphone. The use of bugs, called bugging, is a common technique in surveillance, espionage and in police investigations.A bug does not have to be a device...
in the latter's office.
In 1961, after Gheorghiu-Dej began adopting anti-Soviet themes in his discourse, Nicolschi, promoted to Lieutenant General, was sidelined and forced into retirement, without being denied the luxuries reserved for the nomenklatura
Nomenklatura
The nomenklatura were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the...
. He lived through the Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
years, and died in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, two years after the Romanian Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, as the result of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
. This happened on the very same day he was presented with a subpoena
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
from the Prosecutor General, who had received a formal notification from the victims' families and the Association of Former Political Prisoners (Nicolschi was scheduled for hearings on April 17, 1992).
Alongside Pintilie and Mazuru, Nicolschi features prominently in theories that the early Securitate was controlled by ethnic minorities
Minorities of Romania
Officially, 10.5% of Romania's population is represented by minorities . The principal minorities in Romania are Hungarians and Roma people, with a declining German population and smaller numbers of Poles in Bucovina...
(as notably voiced by the press of the ultra-nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
Greater Romania Party
Greater Romania Party
The Greater Romania Party is a Romanian radical right-wing, ultra-nationalist political party, led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor. The party is sometimes referred to in English as the Great Romania Party....
). Referring to this, British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
historian Dennis Deletant claims that of the total 60 leaders of the Securitate Directorate, 38 were ethnically Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, while 22 were divided between 5 other communities (but in this statistic, Deletant counts Nicolschi as an ethnic Russian). He concluded that "the numbers drawn from ethnic minorities, although disproportionate, do not appear to be excessive". Deletant also is of the opinion that, while there is indication that the ethnic origin of top officials was obscured, "there is no evidence to suggest the 'Romanianisation
Romanianization
Romanianization or Rumanization is the term used to describe a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by the Romanian authorities during the 20th century...
' of officers of other ethnic origins".