Socialist Party of Romania

[3] In 1915, at a time when Romania kept its neutrality, the PSDR, led by the revolutionary-minded Marxist Christian Rakovsky, played a prominent part inside the anti-war Zimmerwald Movement.

Following the February Revolution, Rakovsky was set free by Russian troops present in Iaşi, and took refuge in Odessa — he became active in revolutionary politics against the Romanian state, and joined the Bolsheviks.

[4] As a member of the Rumcherod authority in Odessa, he joined with Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor, Alexandru Nicolau and Ion Dic Dicescu's short-lived Romanian Social Democratic Action Committee in planning an insurgency,[6] before being driven out by a German military intervention.

[14] In May 1919, delegates of the Transylvanian and Bukovinian groups began negotiations with the PS to form a single political movement, and elected representatives to the newly created General Council of the Socialist Party.

In 1920 the party sent representatives to the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern in Moscow, were they engaged in prolonged talks over the issue of affiliation with Christian Rakovsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Nikolai Bukharin.

[33] Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Popovici, and Cristescu met with Lenin,[34] who urged them to adopt the resolution in this form, while allegedly making some promises to preserve a certain degree of autonomy for the Romanian group.

[36] At the same time, the maximalist wing, led by Cristescu (who renounced his reserves after first engaging in a heated polemic with Rozvan),[37] passed the resolution to join the Comintern and accept Lenin's 21 points.

[38] The Cominternist motion was drafted with support from 18 out of 38 members of the General Council,[39] and submitted to the Congress which took place after May 8, with the maximalist faction adopting the name of Socialist-Communist Party (PCdR).

[39] Commenting on the success of Leninist delegates, historian Adrian Cioroianu and journalist Victor Frunză both attributed it to manipulation of inner-party electoral procedures rather than actual appeal.

[45] The procedures were cause for much deliberation: according to his own testimony, the reformist Şerban Voinea, who translated Lenin's 21 points, was accused of having fabricated them as a means to give the Bolsheviks bad press (a fellow delegate shouted that "It was absolutely impossible for the Third International to have voted such a text, with such conditions"),[46] while Boris Stefanov allegedly heckled him, suggesting Voinea leave the PS and join the National Liberal Party ("[he] kept shouting at me [...]: «To the Liberals!

[46]Romanian Army regulars headed by a Royal Commissioner stormed into the Sfântul Ionică building at 15:00 on May 12, 1921; all 51 Socialist-Communist delegates were separated from the group, arrested, and transported to the penal facilities of Jilava and Văcărești.

[48] The intervention occurred at a time when the floor was taken by Köblös, the PS delegate from Târgu Mureș, who was much later accused of conspiring with the authorities, based on speculation that his speech was in fact a signal.

[49] Authorities prosecuted those arrested (as many as 300 in one account)[50] in the Dealul Spirii Trial, and attempted to connect them with Max Goldstein, a terrorist of uncertain affiliation who had detonated a bomb inside the Romanian Senate on December 8, 1920.

[53]The instigator for the move was Constantin Argetoianu, Minister of the Interior in the Alexandru Averescu People's Party cabinet, who later admitted that the arrest lacked legal grounds.

[39] He also stated that he had given Cristescu approval for the Congress as a means for the arguably illegal motion to be discussed,[39] and evidenced that he had planned to arrest the leaders based on his belief that, once this was accomplished, "all agitation will crumble like an edifice raised on sand".

[57] At the 3rd Comintern Congress in July, Karl Radek reported that the Russian Bolshevik government and the international group at large continued to recognize the Socialist-Communist leaders in prison as the official executive body of the Romanian party.

Reestablished in January 1922 and led by Ilie Moscovici, Litman Ghelerter and Constantin Popovici,[64] the PS continued to have nominal existence after it merged into the newly created Federation of Romanian Socialist Parties or FPSR (May 1922).