Vasile Luca

Vasile Luca (born László Luka; 8 June 1898 – 23 July 1963) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian and Soviet communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) from 1945 and until his imprisonment in the 1950s. Noted for his activities in the Ukrainian SSR in 1940–1941, he sided with Ana Pauker during World War II, and returned to Romania to serve as the minister of finance and one of the most recognizable leaders of the Communist regime. Luca's downfall, coming at the end of a conflict with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, signaled that of Pauker.

He was married to Elisabeta Luca (née Betty Birnbaum), a volunteer in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, who was also imprisoned following her husband's arrest.

A native of Szentkatolna (or Sâncatolna - present-day Catalina) in Transylvania (at the time part of Austria-Hungary), Luca was an ethnic Hungarian of the Székely community, of "proletarian" origin, Luca was sometimes, and most probably erroneously, identified as Jewish by some Romanian historians and journalists) or Transylvanian German.

In the period following the Aster Revolution, as Transylvania's administration was taken over by Romania, he joined Károly Kratochwill's non-communist Székely Division (formed inside Hungary by Hungarian Transylvanian refugees). which tried to oppose the Romanian military. After the Romanian Army crushed the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Luca arrived to Braşov and began working for the Romanian Railways, attempting to align railworkers' trade unions with the Profintern. Luca later admitted that, in Leninist terms, he had been mistaken to leave the Division — after allegedly being persuaded to do so by a group of workers in Satu Mare —, as he had missed an opportunity to carry out "revolutionary work under party directives", although he confessed that he had been denied membership of the Hungarian Communist Party.

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