Vitali Holostenco or Holostenko was a Romania

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 and 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....

 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...

 politician. He used several pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

s, among which Barbu and Petrulescu.

Early life

Born in Bessarabia

Bessarabia

Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

 while it was part of Imperial Russia, he was a student 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....

 during the 1920s. Holostenco joined the Socialist Party of Romania

Socialist Party of Romania

The Socialist Party of Romania was a Romanian socialist political party, created on December 11, 1918 by members of the Romanian Social Democratic Party , after the latter emerged from clandestinity...

 and was one of the members to vote for its transformation into the Socialist-Communist Party (future 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...

, PCdR) in May 1921. He was immediately arrested alongside the new formation's leadership, and faced prosecution in the Dealul Spirii Trial, being detained in 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...

 for the following year.

Upon his release, he fled to the Soviet Union, becoming the protégé of Christian Rakovsky

Christian Rakovsky

Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist...

, and climbed in the hierarchy of the Communist Party of Ukraine. His return to Romania is still mysterious - in 1927, Holostenco was already general secretary

General secretary

-International intergovernmental organizations:-International nongovernmental organizations:-Sports governing bodies:...

 of the Romanian party. The emerging Soviet leader Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 had taken care to tighten his grip on the select group of Romanian leaders, trusting Vitali Holostenco to enforce the Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

 thesis on the Romanian state's heterogeneous character (with the need for the liberation of oppressed people it ruled over). Reaction to this goal had already provoked a crisis within the Party: in 1924, Gheorghe Cristescu

Gheorghe Cristescu

Gheorghe Cristescu was a Romanian socialist and, for a part of his life, communist militant. Nicknamed "Plăpumarul" , he is also occasionally referred to as "Omul cu lavaliera roşie" , after the most notable of his accessories.-Early activism:Born in Copaciu Gheorghe Cristescu (October 10, 1882...

 had left the PCdR without its leadership after being expelled for refusing to take the directives.

Political role

Holostenco could not finish the assignment of unifying the Romanian prison faction (most of its members either were serving or had been serving time in jail) with the wing inside the Soviet Union. More attached to the latter, he faced the virulent opposition of Marcel Pauker

Marcel Pauker

Marcel Pauker was a Romanian communist militant and husband of the future Romanian Communist leader Ana Pauker....

. Pauker had been involved in countless political battles inside Romania, and aimed at being the next general secretary. Stalin decided to reject both options, and called Marcel Pauker to the Soviet Union (assigning him mundane tasks), while replacing Holostenco with Alexander Stefanski.

Holostenco was recalled in 1931, and was executed during the Great Purge

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

. The charges brought against him are not known, but several things would have made Holostenco an unlikely survivor. Beside his association with Rakovsky (probably creating the suspicion that he was a supporter of the Left Opposition

Left Opposition

The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...

), he had become of no use to Stalin after the Popular Front

Popular front

A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...

doctrine re-oriented the Comintern.