Leonte Răutu was a Bessarabian-born Romanian communist activist and propagandist, who served as deputy prime minister in 1969–1972. He was chief ideologist of the Romanian Communist Party during the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and one of his country's few high-ranking communists to have studied Marxism from the source. Răutu was of Jewish origin, though he embraced atheism and anti-Zionism. His adventurous youth, with two prison terms served for illegal political activity, culminated in his self-exile to the Soviet Union, where he spent the larger part of World War II. Specializing in agitprop and becoming friends with communist militant Ana Pauker, he joined the Romanian section of Radio Moscow.
Răutu's official photograph, taken April 15, 1967
Josip Broz Tito as a villain plotting the invasion of Romania (East German cartoon, presented to Gheorghiu-Dej on his 50th birthday, 1951)
March 1953: Gheorghiu-Dej (front row) returning from Stalin's funeral and being met by party officials, including Răutu (second row, middle, with Ghizela Vass and Mihail Roller on either side behind him)
Ceaușescu and other Communist Party leaders on a visit to the Mureș-Magyar Autonomous Region (1965). Răutu is front row, first from right
Ștefan Foriș was a Hungarian and Romanian communist journalist who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party between December 1940 and April 1944. Born a Transylvanian Csángó and an Austro-Hungarian subject, he saw action with the Hungarian Landwehr throughout World War I. While training in mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University, he affiliated with the Galileo Circle and, moving to the far-left, entered the Hungarian Communist Party in late 1918. During the brief existence of a Hungarian Soviet Republic, he joined the war against Romania (1919), but subsequently opted to settle in the Romanian Kingdom, at Brașov. Foriș emerged as a local leader of the Socialist Party, largely failing at convincing his subordinates to join the PCR upon its creation (1921). He took up underground work even before the PCR was formally outlawed, while establishing his public profile as an accountant and a correspondent for moderate left-wing newspapers—including Adevărul and Facla.
Union of Communist Youth manifesto against the National Renaissance Front and for "avoiding war", put out in Bessarabia in 1940
Skulls of Foriș, Nicolae Pârgariu, and another male victim (possibly Petre Melinte), dug up and photographed during the rehabilitation of 1968