Valter Roman

Valter or Walter Roman (October 9, 1913 – November 11, 1983), born Ernst or Ernő Neuländer, was a Romanian communist activist and soldier.

[9] He returned to Soviet-occupied Romania in July 1945, as the political commissar for the Soviet-organized Horea, Cloșca și Crișan Division, commanded by General Mihail Lascăr.

[2] In 1956 and 1957, as a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, Valter Roman was involved in deciding Romanian policies in regard to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which threatened to spark similar actions in Romania.

[18] After the Red Army invaded Hungary, he accompanied Gheorghiu-Dej, the writer Mihai Beniuc, and other local Communists to Budapest, where the three of them reviewed the situation and expressed approval of Soviet policies.

An associate of Leonte Răutu,[21] Roman seconded Emil Bodnăraş in the 1959 process of writing and compiling Party history, with a mission to highlight both Gheorghiu-Dej's role in the 1944 toppling of Ion Antonescu's regime and the insurrectional character of the coup.

[3] After Gheorghiu-Dej's death, he approved of the change in course indicated by Nicolae Ceauşescu, and joined in condemning the 1968 Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia (at the time, he notably quoted Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's statement that "socialism and truth are inseparable").

By the 1970s, he was becoming opposed to the Ceauşescu leadership and questioned Leninism itself; a diary entry of 1975 shows that he resented the massive enrollment of obedient cadres into the PCR,[27] and speculated that "when Lenin elaborated the concept of the new-type party he took inspiration from, he also thought of Ignacio de Loyola, of his «company of Jesus», of what it represented from the point of view of discipline, of obedience, hence there later emerged many negative consequences and, first of all, the deterioration of human character, of human integrity".

[29] Petre Roman has repeatedly contested the conclusion, advancing documents which, he argued, proved that his father was in favor of Transylvania's status inside Romania.