Gheorghe Apostol
| Gheorghe Apostol | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party | |
|
In office 1954–1955 |
|
| Preceded by | Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej |
| Succeeded by | Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
May 16, 1913 Tudor Vladimirescu, Romania |
| Died | August 21, 2010 (aged 97) |
| Nationality | Romanian |
| Political party | Communist Party of Romania |
Gheorghe Apostol (May 16, 1913 – August 21, 2010) was a Romanian politician, deputy Prime Minister of Romania and a former leader of the Communist Party, noted for his rivalry with Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Apostol was born near Tudor Vladimirescu, Galați County.
After training at the Căile Ferate Române (CFR) school, he worked in a CFR foundry in Galați. In 1932, Apostol met Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and became involved in the communist underground. He joined the Party in 1934 and became its link with the railway trade unions and minor left-leaning groups in Galați.
Arrested several times, Apostol was sentenced in 1937 to three years in prison, which he served in Galați and Doftana. His activities upon his release from jail got him interned in camps for political prisoners, at Târgu Jiu, Caracal, and Miercurea Ciuc. In August 1944, as the Red Army was approaching the Romanian border, Apostol and several communist figures who were being detained at Târgu Jiu escaped and made their way to the underground. This version of the story follows Apostol's official biography of the 1950s; photos taken upon the liberation of the camp (published in Dosarele Istoriei, for instance), allegedly showing him in the middle of the crowd of former prisoners, made some doubt this account.
He was among the most prominent collaborators of Gheorghiu-Dej. As members of the so-called prison faction, opposed to the large group of Party members who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union prior to 1944, Gheorghe Apostol and Gheorghiu-Dej walked the fine line between Stalinism and reformism. Thus, Communist Romania did not steer away from Soviet policies until 1953, and Gheorghiu-Dej even got Joseph Stalin's approval for the removal of rival Ana Pauker on charges of right wing deviance and cosmopolitism, as well as for the elimination of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu (a Romanian communist who was not completely loyal to the Party). After Stalin's death in 1953, the regime in Romania, headed by the same inner circle, was largely opposed to Nikita Khrushchev and de-Stalinization, while carrying out its own reforms and attempting to cut off most economic ties to the Soviet Union.
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