Dealul Spirii Trial

Dealul Spirii Trial (Romanian: Procesul din Dealul Spirii) was a political trial conducted by a military tribunal in the Kingdom of Romania. 271 members of the Communist Party of Romania were accused of treason after voting for the inclusion of the party into the Third International. The defendants were convicted and later pardoned.

The trial was the first step of the repression of communists in the Kingdom of Romania. Less than two years after the trial, the parliament voted a total ban of the Communist Party and communist ideology; for the next two decades, the government enforced a violent repression against the communists and labour unions.

A number of politicians and intellectuals, including Nicolae Iorga, Dem I. Dobrescu and Iuliu Maniu voiced their discontent over the lack of constitutional basis for the trial.

On May 12, 1921, the last day of the Congress of the Romanian Socialist-Communist Party, the party leaders (including Gheorghe Cristescu, Moscu Kohn, Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor and Elek Koblos), as well as a large number of communist sympathisers were arrested by gendarmes and police who broke into the hall.

They were held for eight months in miserable conditions, the detention being extremely tough for all of them, being tortured and not being allowed to have visits from the relatives. They were forced to work for the military, cleaning up the latrines and the courtyards of the barracks.

The communists were put into a joint trial with Max Goldstein, an anarchist who bombed the Senate, killing three people.

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