LucreÃÂiu PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu (; 4 November 1900 â 17 April 1954) was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania (PCR), also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at the University of Bucharest. PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu rose to a government position before the end of World War II and, after having disagreed with Stalinist tenets on several occasions, eventually came into conflict with the Romanian Communist government of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. He became a political prisoner and was ultimately executed. Fourteen years after PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's death, Romania's new communist leader, Nicolae CeauÃÂescu, endorsed his rehabilitation as part of a change in policy.
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was born in BacÃÂu to a leading political family, as the son of Poporanist figure Dimitrie D. PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu (LucreÃÂiu's mother, LucreÃÂia, was a scion of the Stoika family of Transylvanian petty nobility). He became a Poporanist and later a socialist in his youth, joining the Socialist Party of Romania in 1919, and working as editor of its newspaper, Socialismul (1921). Professionally, he was educated at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Law, from which he graduated in 1922, and at Leipzig University, earning his PhD in 1925.
He had an intense journalistic activity. Collaborator in numerous newspapers, where he published his articles under various pseudonyms: M Andreescu; Bercu; R. Boldur; Coca; V. Dragomir; Fischer; GhiÃÂÃÂ; Grigorescu; Ion. C. Ion; N. Lascenco; Mihalcea; Miron; Victor MÃÂlin; A. Moldoveanu; Andrei Moldoveanu; L. D. PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu; StÃÂtescu; Titu; Vrabie and with the initials A. M and L. D. P.
Increasingly radical after the success of the October Revolution, he was one of the original members of the PCR (known as PCdR at the time) in 1921. PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, Elek Köblös, and Ana and Marcel Pauker were the representatives of the group to the 4th Comintern Congress in Moscow (NovemberâÂÂDecember 1922). Back in Romania, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was arrested and imprisoned at Jilava in 1924 (the year when the party was outlawed); he went on hunger strike until being relocated to a prison hospital.
At the Kharkiv Congress of 1928, where he was present under the name Mironov, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu clashed with the Comintern overseer BohumÃÂr à  meral, as well as with many of his fellow party members, over the issue of Bessarabia and Moldovenism, which was to be passed into a resolution stating that Greater Romania was an imperialist entity. PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu argued:
<blockquote>Moldovans are not a nation apart andâÂÂfrom a historical and geographical point of viewâÂÂMoldovans are the same Romanians as the Romanians in Moldavia [on the right bank of the Prut River]. Thus, I believe that the introduction of such a false point renders the resolution itself false.</blockquote>
With Imre Aladar, Eugen Rozvan, and two others, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in May 1931 as a candidate for the Workers and Peasants' Bloc, an umbrella group masking the outlawed party. Later in the same year, the 5th Party Congress (held in Soviet exile, at Gorikovo), chose him among the new Central Committee members while Alexander Stefanski rose to the position of general secretary.
In 1932, he was involved in polemics at the Criterion group, where he and his collaborator Belu Zilber defended a Stalinist view of Vladimir Lenin in front of criticism from the right-wing Mircea VulcÃÂnescu and Mihail Polihroniade, as well as from the Austromarxist perspective of Henri H. Stahl.
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu again served as the PCdR's representative to the Comintern in 1933, and 1934 (remaining in Moscow until 1935); Stelian TÃÂnase argues that during this time he developed doubts about Stalinism itself. During the following years, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu continued to prioritize opposition to fascism, and remained active in the PCR. In 1936, he was heading the defense team of PCR members who were facing the much-publicized Craiova Trial, but was himself denounced as a communist and consequently handed the position to Ion Gheorghe Maurer.
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was imprisoned during World War II and, after August 1940, spent time at the Târgu Jiu internment camp with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and the "prison faction" of the Party (the communists inside Romania, virtually all imprisoned at various stages of the war, as opposed to those who had taken refuge inside the Soviet Union).
Like his fellow activist Scarlat Callimachi, he was set free by the National Legionary Government while the fascist Iron Guard, which allied Romania with Nazi Germany, was trying to preserve good relations with the Soviet Union. He subsequently followed orders from Teohari Georgescu to re-create a defunct outlet of the party, the cultural society Amicii URSS ("Friends of the USSR").
In 1941, following the Legionary Rebellion, he was again arrested by the regime of ConducÃÂtor Ion Antonescu. After a release from camp for health reasons in 1943, he was under house arrest in Poiana ÃÂapului; allowed to settle in Bucharest later in that year, he remained under supervision until May 1944.
According to Ioan Mocsony Stârcea, marshal of King Michael I's court between 1942 and 1944, he met PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu in April 1944 in order to mediate an agreement between the monarch and the Communists regarding a pro-Allied move to overthrow Antonescu and withdraw Romania, which was fighting the Soviets on the Eastern Front, from the Axis.
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu (together with Emil BodnÃÂraÃÂ) represented the Communist Party during the clandestine talks with the National Liberal and National Peasants' parties, aimed at overthrowing the Antonescu dictatorship. Corneliu Coposu, who later claimed had friendly contacts with PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu at the time, also claimed that the latter had been selected by the Soviets as representative of the Communists (during negotiations in Cairo, Nikolai Novikov, the Soviet ambassador to Egypt, had reportedly first mentioned PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's name to Barbu ÃÂtirbey for further contacts). It was also at this time that Gheorghiu-Dej and BodnÃÂraÃÂ, together with Constantin Pîrvulescu and Iosif RangheÃÂ, toppled the general secretary ÃÂtefan ForiÃÂ, and assumed leadership of the party (Gheorghiu-Dej had probably attracted PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's support for the planned move as early as 1943).
According to Mocsony Stârcea, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was responsible for a compromise between the Communist Party and institutions of the Romanian monarchy (allegedly assuring the king that it was not his party's intent to proclaim a republic without a previous referendum on the matter). Coposu also claimed that, through PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, the Communist Party had entered negotiations with the other opposition groups and informed them of abandoning its previous theses of the future Romanian state.
The collaboration led to the arrest of Ion Antonescu and Mihai Antonescu at the Royal Palace in Bucharest, during the 23 August Coup (1944). PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu (together with Belu Zilber) authored the proclamation to the country which the king read on National Radio immediately after the coup, and, confronting the new Premier Constantin SÃÂnÃÂtescu, imposed himself as a PCR representative on the delegation that signed Romania's armistice with the Soviets, on 12 September 1944. Present in Moscow, he contacted Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca through their overseer Andrey Vyshinsky, reestablishing communication between the two major sections of the PCR. PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu joined the Central Committee in 1945âÂÂafter having returned to Romania with the Red Army late in 1944âÂÂand was largely responsible for the success his party had in controlling Romania's legal framework for the following years.
During Soviet occupation, he served on the Romanian Politburo from 1946 to 1947 and held power in the new governments, as Minister without Portfolio (1944) and Minister of Justice (1944âÂÂ1948). PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, who attempted to become general secretary early in 1944 (before Gheorghiu-Dej secured the position for himself), was considered leader of the party's "Secretariat Communists" (perceived as less willing to follow Stalin's directions).
After the ascension of the Petru Groza government, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was also one of the initiators of purges and persecutions, being responsible for dismissing and arresting members of the civil service who were considered suspect, for the creation of the Romanian People's Tribunals, as well as the appointment of prosecutors (promoting Avram Bunaciu, ConstanÃÂa CrÃÂciun, and Alexandra Sidorovici).
Citing a statement by PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu rendered by The New York Times, British Trotskyist commentator Tony Cliff extended his critique of the people's democracies of the Eastern Bloc to the realm of justice systems and retribution for war crimes. According to the American newspaper, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu had reassured media that "industrialists, businessmen and bankers will escape punishment as war criminals"; Cliff also argued that the new course in justice had failed to alter what he saw as Romania's "bureaucratic and militarist character". Indeed, under PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, Romania was the only country in Eastern Europe to initiate only a small number of court proceedings against accused war criminals and collaborators. This declaration of practically singular responsibility allowed many of those guilty of war crimes and collaboration to escape punishment in postwar Romania. The postwar regime "went easy" on the mass of genocidal antisemites, sentencing them to relatively minor punishments. Early amnesties were often granted. For example, on 1 June 1945, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu successfully had 29 death sentences commuted by the King.
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu put pressure on King Michael to sign legislation that went against the letter of the 1923 Constitution, which contributed to the latter's decision to initiate the "royal strike" (a refusal to countersign documents issued by the Groza executive).
During the late 1940s, he is thought to have begun expressing his opposition to strict Stalinist guidelines; at the same time, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu had become suspect to the rest of the party leadership for his intellectual approach to socialism. Gheorghe Apostol, a collaborator of Gheorghiu-Dej's, later expressed a particular view on the matter of PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's relations with the rest of the party: <blockquote>He was a reliable party intellectual. But he was also a very arrogant man, self-important, intolerant, and unwilling to communicate with his party comrades. And yet, Gheorghiu-Dej treasured him. Between '46-'48, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu changed quite a lot."</blockquote>
Around February 1945, he began to fear the possibility that Emil BodnÃÂraÃÂ was planning his assassination and that he intended to blame it on political opponents of the Communist Party (as a means to direct sympathy towards the latter group). He suspected that BodnÃÂraÃÂ had chosen to back Gheorghiu-Dej (allegedly fearing that PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was betraying the fragile alliance established before the fall of ÃÂtefan ForiÃÂ). Consequently, he attempted to block BodnÃÂraÃÂ's rise to power, and denounced his reputedly corrupt activities as Secretary in the Interior Ministry to the other members of the leadership.
Historiography is divided over the possibility of PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu having initially allied himself with the PCR's second in command, Ana Pauker, in her post-war confrontation with Gheorghiu-Dej. It is apparent that PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was alarmed by Pauker's close cooperation with Soviet overseers, and especially by her tight connection with Dmitry Manuilsky; it was also contended that Pauker was intrigued by PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's self-promotion in front of Soviet overseers during late 1944. Under arrest, however, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu asserted that he was closest to Pauker and Teohari Georgescu among the Romanian party leaders.
Although, overall, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was argued to have been much less revolutionary-minded than various other PCR ideologues, his original perspective on Marxism remained strongly connected with party doctrine in its most essential points (including his intense advocacy of collectivization, using statistics to point out the existence of a class of chiaburi, the Romanian equivalent of the Soviet kulaks). He showed himself surprised when informed that the Soviet Union had planned a rapid communization of the country, and dismissed Vasile Luca and Pauker's vocal support for the latter policy. Instead, he argued in favor of "making a distinction inside the bourgeoisie", and opening the Communist Party to collaboration with the National Liberal Party. Based on this, he denounced Pauker's agreement with Gheorghe TÃÂtÃÂrescu's National Liberal dissidence (the National Liberal Party-TÃÂtÃÂrescu, which he called "a gang of con artists, blackmailers, and well-known bribers").
A serious break with the party line occurred in early 1946, when PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu decided to take initiative and intervened in the standoff between King Michael I and the Petru Groza executive (an episode colloquially known as greva regalÃÂ, "the royal strike"); with the help of Lena Constante, he approached the anti-communist figures Victor RÃÂdulescu-Pogoneanu and Grigore Niculescu-BuzeÃÂti, calling on them to convince the monarch to resume communications with his government.
During the campaign preceding the rigged elections of 1946, he was actively involved in the PCR's electoral campaign in Transylvania, and, after drought and famine surfaced in several other areas of Romania, he attempted to persuade the peasants of Arad County to sell their wheat harvest to the government, to be used as aid. Received with suspicion, he later reported that he had eventually been able to carry out the task.
Responding to Hungarian-Romanian clashes, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu gave a speech in the city of Cluj, one in which he took a Romanian patriotic/nationalist standpoint against separatist aspirations. It stated: <blockquote>In the name of the government and of the PCR, I raise my voice against border changes [in connection with the disputed status of newly-recovered Northern Transylvania]. Democratic Romania ensures equal rights to coinhabiting nationalities, but the Magyar population needs to understand that its belonging to the Romanian state is definitive. Nobody has the right to debate our borders.</blockquote>
He ran for the position of deputy in Arad County, and won through various electoral frauds (in Arad's case, forty inspectors nominated by the government had sole control over counting and recording the results).
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu soon received harsh criticism from Gheorghiu-Dej, who branded the views expressed as "chauvinism" and "revisionism". In parallel, the National Peasants' Party, as the main force opposing the PCR, published praises of PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu in its paper Dreptatea, until PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu met with the editor, Nicolae Carandino, and explained that such articles were harming his image inside the Communist Party. Nevertheless, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's writings of the time show that, in contrast with his 1928 point of view, he had largely accommodated âÂÂLeninistâ principles regarding the national issue as well as the Soviet stance regarding Bessarabian topics, although he used more neutral terms than the ones present in official propaganda, and was known to have deplored the unwillingness of the PCR to reduce and refine its internationalist policies.
In 1946-1947, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was nevertheless a member of the TÃÂtÃÂrescu-headed Romanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, and, in fact, one of the signatories of the Peace Treaty with Romania. According to Belu Zilber, during this time, he read Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon (a glimpse into forced confessions alluding to the 1936-1937 Moscow Trials, the book was banned throughout the Eastern Bloc). The attitudes he expressed in Paris were considered nationalist by his Soviet overseers, and he himself complained to Gheorghiu-Dej about the party's suspicion surrounding his diplomatic activities.
He was progressively marginalized inside the Party: his texts became subject to censorship and, on public occasions, his name was mentioned after those of less significant politicians. The Communist press virtually ceased referring to PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu as "comrade", and used instead the more distant formula "Professor PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu", at the same time as Gheorghiu-Dej's speeches on combating internal currents of the Party. The VIth Party Congress in February 1948 did not confirm his Central Committee membership, and in the months following the event, he was removed from government office.
Belu Zilber claimed that having himself been subject to suspicion and marginalisation, he had attempted to warn PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu of the change in climate, and had asked him to consider fleeing the Eastern Bloc, only to be stiffly rebuffed. Zilber was eventually arrested in February 1948, on suspicion that he had been a SiguranÃÂa Statului agent infiltrating the party.
On 28 April 1948, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was arrested and came under the investigation of a party committee, comprising the high-ranking Communists Teohari Georgescu, Alexandru DrÃÂghici, and Iosif RangheÃÂ; interrogations were occasionally attended by Gheorghiu-Dej. His file indicates that the secret police (which was soon to become the Securitate) had been keeping him under surveillance from as early as the summer of 1946.
In the fall of 1949, Gheorghiu-Dej (apparently contradicting the committee's conclusions) ordered PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's transfer into the custody of the Secret Service of the Council of Ministers (SSI) under the provisional charge that PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu had not reported various political crimes. A report on "Titoism" and collaboration with the maverick Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was presented to the Cominform: it placed PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, the Hungarian Republic's László Rajk, and Bulgaria's Traicho Kostov in the same camp, as "imperialist agents" (see TitoâÂÂStalin split, Informbiro). The investigation also implicated Remus Koffler, who had been imprisoned in 1944, during the confrontation between Gheorghiu-Dej and ÃÂtefan ForiÃÂ.
The day after the SSI began its inquiry, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu attempted suicide by slitting his veins with a smuggled razor blade; upon his recovery, he tried to take his life a second time by swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills.
Immediately after his second suicide attempt, the PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu inquiry was transferred to the Interior Ministry, where it was suspended for a six-month period to enable officers to determine a factual basis in the case. When the inquiry resumed in February 1951, Interior Minister Teohari Georgescu ordered that the detainees in the case were not to be physically coerced, in stark contrast to the expressed instructions of the ministry's chief Soviet adviser, Aleksandr Sakharovsky, to do everything necessary to determine the guilt of the accused. In the summer of 1951 Teohari Georgescu, together with his deputies Gheorghe Pintilie and MiÃÂu Dulgheru, reached the conclusion that there was no basis to continue PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's prosecutionâÂÂand did so while the Soviet advisers were away on their summer vacation. When the advisers returned, they angrily vetoed any closing of the PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu inquiry.
It was in 1951 that PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu responded to the charges voiced by Gheorghiu-Dej after the Cluj incident, indicating that he had attempted to "answer to the Hungarian revisionist campaign", as well as to aid his party in competing with the appeal of the National Peasants' Party among Romanians in Transylvania (to "take the weapon that was Transylvania away from Maniu supporters' hands"). He also criticized his own advocacy of a PCR alliance with the National Liberal Party.
He was accused of having been financed by "bourgeois" figures during the electoral campaign, and even of having been bought by agents of the United States or of planning, together with Ioan Mocsony Stârcea and Titoist agents, an "imperialist" insurrection in SÃÂvârÃÂin. The latter allegation also surfaced in the parallel investigations of Koffler and Emil Calmanovici.
Serious questions remain on the positions of the various Romanian Communist leaders on the PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu case. The matter has not been satisfactorily resolved in the Romanian archives, for the simple reason that all records and transcripts of Politburo and Secretariat discussions on PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu were summarily destroyed on Gheorghiu-Dej's orders. In any case, no piece of evidence or confession was obtained by the inquiry until after May 1952, after the purge of Ana Pauker and Teohari Georgescu, who were accused by the Soviet adviser Sakharovskii of having "sabotaged and postponed investigations" in the PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu case. The Central Committee plenum that purged them assigned the PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu investigation to a team of Securitate officials and their Soviet advisors, directly supervised by Alexandru DrÃÂghici, Alexandru Nicolschi, and Vladimir Mazuru. Under this new team, torture and beating began to be employed in interrogations in the PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu case for the first time in the fall of 1952. In time, authorities also alleged that, before 1944, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, like Zilber, had acted as an agent of SiguranÃÂa Statului.
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was kept in detention until 1954, when he was executed on 17 April with Koffler at Jilava Prison, near Bucharest, after a show trial overseen by Iosif ChiÃÂinevschi. It is possible that he was tortured throughout the questioning conducted on direct orders from the Securitate's Alexandru DrÃÂghici, and there have been rumours that he had one leg amputated before his trial. Researcher Lavinia Betea notes however that, when his and Koffler's body where exhumed in 1968, both their skeletons were complete. Moreover, she concludes that, unlike the case of other defendants, physical violence was never used against PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu or his wife. The execution took place in the courtyard of Jilava Prison; Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed in his book, Cartea neagrÃÂ a SecuritÃÂÃÂii, that PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was shot in the back of the head by a Securitate colonel.
In preparation for the procedures, the Securitate took direct inspiration from the Slánský trials in socialist Czechoslovakia (where a team of Romanian officers had been sent to take notes) and, possibly, from the Soviet Trial of the Twenty One (which was allegedly used as template for Calmanovici's fabricated confession).
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu refused to be represented by a lawyer, and even to organize his own defense. Aside from some outbursts against the prosecutors, he stated:
<blockquote>I have nothing to say, except [that I] spit on the charges brought against me.</blockquote>
The actions taken against PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu and others signaled the start of a wave of arrests and prison sentences, including that of his wife, as well as those of Harry Brauner, Lena Constante, Petre Pandrea (who was PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's brother-in-law), Herant Torosian, Mocsony Stârcea, Calmanovici, Victoria Sârbu (who had been ÃÂtefan ForiÃÂ's lover), and Alexandru ÃÂtefÃÂnescu. In preparation for the trial, the Securitate organized interrogations of political detainees or suspects (Gheorghe TÃÂtÃÂrescu, who testified against PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu and was the target of a sharp rebuke from the latter).
Belu Zilber, the first of the group to give in to Securitate pressures and confess to the charges, was verbally attacked by PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu inside the courthouse â PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu notably accused him of having invented the entire conspiracy account. Records of their various interrogations show that both he and Calmanovici identified Emil BodnÃÂraàas the main instigator of their downfall. Reportedly, Zilber had the following opinion of PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu: "He was anti-Stalinist and anti-Russian, but for the sake of power he would sign on any Stalinist ineptitude and wickedness. I think his only purpose in life, more than socialism, was to enter history."
He was posthumously rehabilitated in April 1968 by Nicolae CeauÃÂescu, in the latter's attempt to discredit his predecessors and establish his own legitimacy. The main target of this campaign, as indicated by a Central Committee resolution, was DrÃÂghici: <blockquote>[...] the party leadership has uncovered the anti-party line which Alexandru DrÃÂghici, encouraged by servile, uncultured, and decaying elements, has introduced to the [Securitate] bodies' activities, attempting to remove them from party control and to erect them into supreme bodies standing above party and state leadership, thus causing serious harm to activity in various domains, including that of scientific research.</blockquote>
A party committee which included Ion Popescu-PuÃÂuri investigated the matter of his arrest and interrogation, concluding that evidence against PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was fabricated, that he had been systematically beaten and otherwise ill-treated, and that a confession had been prepared for him to sign. This was coupled with various irregularities in procedures (such as the court having been given only 24 hours to assess evidence from years of investigation, and the death penalty having been decided by the party leadership before being imposed on the panel of judges). Evidence was also presented that some of the false confessions were designed as political weapons in internal party struggles (implicating names of politicians who were not facing trial at the time).
At the Party Plenum in late April 1968, CeauÃÂescu used PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's case and other ones to single out the negative influence of DrÃÂghici and Iosif ChiÃÂinevschi, while also placing suspicion on Emil BodnÃÂraÃÂ and Gheorghe Apostol, who had approved of PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's purge. All of them were required to express "self-criticism", while Gheorghiu-Dej was condemned for having "initiated and overseen" the measures.
CeauÃÂescu profited on the enduring perception of LucreÃÂiu PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's activities as patriotic and verging on dissidence, while shadowing his fundamental role in the creation of the new penal system in Romania. In fact, although he was frequently quoted and displayed by the regime, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's life was usually described in brief and vague sentences. In popular discourse, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was also largely identified with positive causes, and remained among the most popular Communist figures after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 toppled the regime. Streets in Sector 3 of Bucharest and in BacÃÂu were named after him.
In his most important volumes (most of which attracted public attention only after 1944), PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu combined his commitment to Marxism-Leninism with his sociological training, producing an original outlook on social evolution (focusing on major trends in Romanian society from the time of the Danubian Principalities to his day).
Aside from its support for communist tenets, his work shared many characteristics with the prominent currents of the Romanian sociological school (notably, the attention paid to prevailing social contrasts in a peasant-dominated environment), and made occasional use of material provided by Dimitrie Gusti's comprehensive surveys.
According to PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, Moldavia and Wallachia had forsaken feudalism by the mid 18th century, maintaining instead a form of serfdom which had not been affected by the reforms of Hospodar Constantine Mavrocordatos. He argued that, whereas feudalism was supported by metayage, legislation passed by Mavrocordatos had endorsed and prolonged corvées, a system consecrated in the 1830s by the new Organic Statute. In his view, capitalism had manifested itself mainly as a reactionary force inside Romanian economy during the time of Phanariote rules. Thus, despite characteristic underdevelopment (which he also noted), the local economy had not contrasted with the stages postulated by Marxian economics.
PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu contended that the first relevant social conflict had occurred in 1821, at the time of Tudor Vladimirescu's Wallachian uprising. He rejected the notion that, despite Vladimirescu's statements to the contrary, the rebellion had a peasant character, and argued instead that it was evidence of low-ranking boyars and merchants ("the embryo of a class, that was to become the bourgeoisie") attempting to emancipate themselves from Ottoman pressures. In his view, its nationalist character (see Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire) had been manipulated by high-ranking boyars as a measure to dissuade adverse reactions to privileges.
The Wallachian Revolution of 1848, the most successful of similar revolts at the time, was, according to PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, a mature reaction of bourgeois circles against boyar supremacy ("it only sought [...] to replace a [privileged] minority with another"), but was generally not opposed to preserving an estate-based economy. He similarly rejected Junimea's traditional criticism of post-1848 realities, indicating that, in its theory of "forms without substance", the group had failed to note that, as a means to preserve several conservative tenets, Westernization in Romania had willingly, and not accidentally, adopted an incomplete form.
In analyzing the history of liberalism and radicalism in Romania, he concluded that many of the most extreme social reformists had rallied in opposition to land reform (he saw this phenomenon as having made possible the toppling of Romania's Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, whom he saw as a supporter of industrialization). He extended this criticism to socialist groups other than his own, arguing that the prevalent reformism was "the cult of legalism".
These views placed PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu in opposition to other left-wing authors in Romania â namely, the influential Poporanists, most of whom had emphasized various contradictions between the Marxian model and local realities, using Junimea's theory as a fundament (aside from PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's own father, these included his contemporary Virgil Madgearu and, to a certain degree, the Marxist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea). In parallel, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's theories were in sharp contrast with those held by advocates of economic liberalism, and especially with ÃÂtefan Zeletin's.
As part of his reflection on post-1900 realities, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu contended that, relatively delayed in comparison to economies of the Western world, Romania had become subject to "primitive accumulation of capital", where the role of colonialism was taken by exploitation of the peasantry. Like Madgearu, he appealed to the works of Rudolf Hilferding, but used them as a basis to argue that foreign capital was being accumulated inside Romania, and only transferred further through a limited number of industries. The Marxist historian Henri H. Stahl has challenged this particular thesis, calling it "highly questionable".
While endorsing some aspects of Dobrogeanu-Gherea's theories regarding the ways in which serfdom was allegedly prolonged, in a discreet form, even after the 20th century, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu challenged his refusal to investigate the effects of capitalism in rural areas. According to PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, the establishment of estate leaseholders, which he viewed as the cause for the 1907 revolt and other, more minor, peasant rebellions, was not a sign of prolonged feudalism, but one of capitalist penetration into agriculture. Contradicting the Social Democratic ideologists Lothar RÃÂdÃÂceanu and ÃÂerban Voinea (whom he accused of having lost contact with the working class), PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu theorized that the Romanian petite bourgeoisie was shrinking under pressure from successful capitalists, while rejecting the notion that civil servants belonged to the middle class.
Arguing in favor of a Romanian communist society during the late 1940s, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu indicated a series of essential steps to this goal: after discarding all legislation passed by the Ion Antonescu regime and purging the administrative apparatus, a political amnesty was to be declared, all properties upwards of 50 hectares were to be confiscated, the National Bank passed into state property while trade unions came under government supervision and a new labour code was enforced, and civil liberties were enhanced. Ultimately, a new people's democratic government was to be imposed, removing all forms of antisemitism and chauvinism from public discourse and preserving good relations with the Soviet Union. Polemically, PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu theorized that all these steps were "democratic-bourgeois", and not socialist in their essence.
The arguably most influential of PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu's writings remains his analysis of the Romanian intelligentsia, part of . Transcending Leninist rhetoric, the work postulates a characteristic inability of Romanian intellectuals in sacrificing petty politics for the common good, and argues that Romanian elites, while in subservience to the State, have traditionally been attracted to extremism. On one instance in 1945, when theorizing about intellectual déclassés, he proposed their neutralization and systematic supervision.
LucreÃÂiu PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was married to Elena, born Herta Schwamen, who had a career as a stage designer (employed, with Lena Constante, by the ÃÂÃÂndÃÂricÃÂ Theater in Bucharest). Elena, who was Jewish, avoided the first wave of official antisemitic persecutions at the end of the 1930s (under the Octavian Goga government) by converting to the Romanian Orthodox Church (she was baptized by the socialist sympathiser Gala Galaction).
Elena PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu was also a party activist, and was instrumental in maintaining links between her husband and other Communist leaders during the early stages of World War II. Implicated in the trial and forced to testify against LucreÃÂiu PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, she was given eight years in prison. She spent over a year of that sentence at DumbrÃÂveni Prison, together with Victoria Sârbu and Lena Constante.
The PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanus had no children.
Titus Popovici's play ("The Power and the Truth"), published in the early 1970s (staged by Liviu Ciulei and filmed, in 1971, by Manole Marcus), centers on the character Petrescu, largely based on PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu, who is persecuted by the party secretary Pavel Stoian (a disguised reference to Gheorghiu-Dej), while living to see his hopes for a better future fulfilled by Mihai Duma (standing for CeauÃÂescu). For a while after its publication, was translated into several languages and used as official propaganda in cultural contacts with the outside world.
In his 1993 film The Mirror (, also known as ), Sergiu Nicolaescu cast ÃÂerban Ionescu as PÃÂtrÃÂÃÂcanu.