Mircea Vulcănescu

Mircea Aurel Vulcănescu (3 March 1904, Bucharest – 28 October 1952, Aiud) was a Romanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher and sociologist, and convicted war criminal.

He studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1925. He was then more attracted to sociology, due to his field experiences (monograph campaigns) under the coordination of professor Dimitrie Gusti. Gusti became one of his most admired mentors, alongside Nae Ionescu. He was also Gusti's assistant at the University of Sociology in Bucharest. He started working towards a Ph.D. degree in law and sociology at the University of Paris, but dropped out later.

From June 1935 to September 1937 he was director of the Customs Service, while in 1940 he was director of Public Debt Department. From January 27, 1941 to August 23, 1944, he was undersecretary at the Ministry of Finance, in the Ion Antonescu government.

After King Michael's Coup, he was arrested on August 30, 1946, tried as a war criminal, and sentenced on October 9, 1946 to 8 years in prison. However, the trial is in itself a controversial one, since the judiciary regime suffered from the influence of the communist party and, consequently, from the Soviet occupation. Vulcănescu was convicted for ”permitting the entry of the German army on the country's territory" and for "declaring or continuing the war against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Nations".

Nicolae Mărgineanu, a teacher at the King Ferdinand I University of Cluj-Napoca and a post-mortem member of the Romanian Academy, claimed that the accusations that were brought against Vulcănescu were false and that he was a victim of the Communist regime., as part of a larger scheme of the regime whose aim was to slowly kill of Romanian intellectuals, especially those who opposed the regime.

...
Wikipedia