Emil Bodnăraş

Emil Bodnăraș (10 February 1904 – 24 January 1976) was an influential Romanian Communist politician, an army officer, and a Soviet agent. He was involved in many of the events of Communist Romania, thus making him a complex figure of Romanian Communism.

Bodnăraș was born to a Ukrainian father and a German mother in 1904, in Iaslovăț, Suceava County, Bukovina, then under Austrian rule. His military career as an artillery officer was interrupted by a conflict with a member of the Romanian Royal House. He was transferred to a garrison in Bessarabia where he was contacted by Communist elements, became a Soviet spy and defected to the USSR in 1931. He returned to Romania in 1935 and fulfilled different special missions for Soviet military intelligence. Caught by accident, Bodnăraș was sentenced to ten years in prison. Imprisoned at Brașov, Doftana and Caransebeș, he entered the Romanian Communist Party in 1940 becoming a key figure in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's faction. He was released in 1942.

In 1944, Bodnăraș, together with Iosif Rangheț and Constantin Pîrvulescu, was a key participant in the political elimination and physical isolation of Ștefan Foriș, the General Secretary of the Party. The three of them dominated the leadership of the Party until Dej's escape from prison in August of the same year. After the massive bombing of Bucharest on 4 April 1944, Bodnăraș and Rangheț captured Foriș and forced him to sign his deposition at gunpoint.

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