Early activities Rătu's birthplace was
Bălți (
Byeltsi), a city in the
Bessarabia Governorate,
Russian Empire, where his father, Nikolai Ivanovich Oigenstein (or
Nicolai Ivanovici Oighenstein), worked as a pharmacist. The Oigensteins were Russian-educated
Jews, and did not speak
Romanian until ca. 1920. Some communist sources suggest that Răutu was born in the
Kingdom of Romania, at
Fălticeni, but this account is either misled or misleading. Lev Nikolayevich (later
Leonte or
Leonea) was the eldest of three brothers; Dan (later Dan Răutu) was the second-born; the third brother, Mikhail, would later take the name of Mihail "Mișa" Oișteanu. Lev witnessed the birth of
Greater Romania from Bălți, where he remained until his high-school graduation. He later relocated to the
Bukovina region, and, in 1928, was in
Bucharest, the national capital. The future ideologist entered the
University of Bucharest to study mathematics, but never graduated. (He may also have spent a while at the
Bucharest Medical School.) From 1925 to 1934, young Oigenstein made his living as a private tutor, active in Bălți,
Cernăuți, and finally Bucharest. He entered the
Communist Youth in December 1929 and the party itself in 1931; his brother Dan headed the Communist Students Organization from 1932, and was accepted into the party in 1933. In the years when the Romanian Communist Party (PCR, later "Workers' Party", or PMR) was banned, Lev was editor of the party organ
Scînteia and worked with
Ștefan Foriș,
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu,
Valter Roman,
Sorin Toma, Mircea Bălănescu and Tatiana Leapis (later Bulan). Leapis was Răutu's first wife, but left him for Foriș. Characterized as intelligent, ironic and well-informed, Răutu preferred to read
Russian and Soviet literature. but despised most forms of
continental philosophy and
modernism. Political scientist
Vladimir Tismăneanu describes Răutu as comparable with some other Eastern European dogmatic
Stalinists, from
Jakub Berman and
József Révai to
Kurt Hager. In this definition, Răutu was a "self-hating intellectual". Historian
Lucian Boia believes that, in adopting communism, Răutu forfeited his Jewishness and "became abstract", an "ideological soldier". Tismăneanu also notes that Răutu separated from his Jewish roots very early in life, growing up into
Russian culture, condemning all expression of Jewish nationalism, and becoming classifiable as a "
non-Jewish Jew". Likewise, historian Lucian Nastasă describes Răutu as one of the Romanian communists who were "less dominated by the obsession of ethnic affiliation (the religious one being entirely excluded by the aggressive atheism promoted in the Soviet Union)"; Răutu and others were instead animated by their "obedience to the Soviet Union." Communist
Silviu Brucan, who worked under Răutu and was also Jewish, recalls that PMR leader
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej had a condescending view of Răutu as "Jewish and culturally Russian". Răutu was first tried for sedition while still in the Communist Youth: on August 20, 1930, a Bessarabian tribunal validated arrest warrants for "the Oighenștein brothers", during a round-up of communists and alleged Soviet spies. Lev was consequently sentenced to a one-year prison term. He was for a while held in
Chișinău jail, then moved to
Doftana prison, in the company of other PCR militants, becoming acquainted with many of Romania's future political bosses. Shortly after being released, in 1932, he was again on trial: until 1934, he was again in prison, first at the penitentiary facility of Cernăuți and then at
Jilava Prison. This episode ended with him becoming an activist for the communist committee in Bucharest, and head of its
Agitprop section. Implicated in the communist underground and working for the
International Red Aid, she found employment with a clinic ran by physician
Leon Ghelerter, himself politically active with the
United Socialists. As recounted by Sorin Toma, in 1936 or 1937 Răutu personally witnessed, and excused, Foriș's mental breakdown. During early 1937, the two men oversaw the expulsion from the party of a young novelist,
Alexandru Sahia, whom they depicted as an infiltrator. Following the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War, Răutu was among those tasked with recruiting Romanian leftists for the
International Brigades. This was one of his final activities in Greater Romania. Answering a call for repatriation, Răutu and Natalia emigrated to the
Soviet Union following the
1940 occupation of Bessarabia. Before leaving, he entrusted his documents to Foriș's lover and secretary, Victoria Sârbu. Although Jewish, Răutu was not dissuaded by the interval of
Nazi–Soviet cooperation: once relocated to the
Moldavian SSR, he was made co-editor of
Pămînt Sovietic ("Soviet Land"), a propaganda magazine. Counted as a Soviet citizen throughout the war, he may have also been an ideological instructor for the
Bessarabian Communist Party. Little is known about the couple in the months that followed the
Nazi and Romanian attack on the Soviet Union. They escaped Bessarabia, and fled further inland. Răutu himself reported having worked as a mere laborer at two sand quarries and a
kolkhoz, between 1942 and 1943. He and Natalia had two children, both of whom died, probably of hunger, during the months of Soviet retreat.
Communist rise At some point (perhaps in 1943), Răutu became head of the
Radio Moscow Romanian-language division, making him a favorite of exile faction leader
Ana Pauker's, together with Valter Roman and
Petre Borilă. According to sociologist and former communist
Pavel Câmpeanu, he owed Pauker not only his career, but also his life, since she had made sure that Răutu and the others were never called up for active duty. This assignment also placed Răutu in direct contact with some of Pauker's colleagues in the
Comintern: he replaced
Basil Spiru, of
Marx University fame, and was supervised by
Rudolf Slánský. His other job was as book editor for the
Foreign Languages Publishing House. and becoming one of the most active contributors to
Contemporanul monthly. The Romanian-sounding surname of
Răutu, picked out after a
Romanianization policy was imposed by the PCR doctrinaires, may have been borrowed from the novels of Lev's one favorite Romanian author,
Constantin Stere. Under this signature, he published in mid-1946 a brochure called
Problemele democrației în lumina marxismului ("Problems of Democracy as Highlighted by Marxism"). Communist writer
Miron Radu Paraschivescu welcomed the work as a keynote on the
people's democracy, as "informed by the Soviet nationalities policy". Răutu was among the most vocal critics of multiparty, pluralist democracy, together with Brucan, Paraschivescu, Sorin Toma,
Ștefan Voicu,
Nestor Ignat,
Nicolae Moraru, and
Traian Șelmaru. Răutu later recruited the core of the PMR's ideologists from his group. Răutu's
Scînteia articles were noted for their bitter irony and for the vehemence of the insults they addressed to political enemies, in particular the
National Peasants' Party and its organ
Dreptatea. The Oigenstein family was becoming integrated into the
nomenklatura and lived in villas located near the political epicenter that was the
Primăverii compound: Londra Street, then Turgheniev Street. Lev and Natalia had two daughters: Anca, born 1947, and Elena ("Lena"), born 1951. According to Câmpeanu, Răutu now illustrated the "abundance of Jews within the structures of Romania's emergent Stalinism"—though the overall Jewish community had few communists, the propaganda apparatus was subject to an "overwhelming Jewification". Câmpeanu proposes that the most likely explanation for this fact is that the two men "preferred to work with people of their own ethnicity, a preference that may have been strengthened by the existence of some older personal relations." He finds that this was an anomaly, since, in other branches of the party, apostate Jews would resort an antisemitism which was "more cynical, aggressive and capricious than the native variant". '', May 1948 In his other main capacity, Răutu helped set up and guide the PCR's Agitprop, or "Political Education", Section. It came into existence in November 1945, with Răutu still serving as its deputy chief—Colonel Mihail Florescu was its inaugural chairman. On March 27, 1947, he lectured at
Dalles Hall about the superiority of
Socialist Realism, which he identified as being rooted in
19th-century French literature and
dialectical materialism. Răutu took over as full leader of Agitprop in 1948, just months before the kingdom was replaced with a
communist state, officially at the request of communist-controlled trade unions. The Agitprop Section embodied the PMR's control over the
Education and
Culture ministries, the
Romanian Academy, the
Radio Broadcasting Committee and
cinema studios, the
AGERPRES agency, the
Writers' Union and the
Artists' Guild, and even
sporting associations and clubs. From June 1948, Răutu also joined the editorial staff of a newly reestablished literary magazine,
Viața Romînească. That same month, he lectured at the Soviet–Romanian House of Friendship about Russian philosopher
Vissarion Belinsky. Already in 1947, Răutu organized Agitprop's unified offensive against the nearly dissolved "
reactionary" forces: the National Peasants' Party, framed during the
Tămădău Affair; the
National Liberal Party-Tătărescu, which Ana Pauker had pushed out of the coalition government; and the dissident
Social Democrats, who were vetoing proposals to merge into the Communist Party. His orders were for communist propaganda to focus on condemning the
Western Allies and their
Marshall Plan (
see Vin americanii!), and on supporting the supposed growth in industrial production from homegrown socialist sources. Additionally, Răutu joined Pauker in combating the spread of
Zionism, signing the party's 1948
Resolution on the National Issue, which assured the
Romanian Jews that their national identity would not be jeopardized under Marxist rule.
Establishing cultural dominance Răutu was delegated by the communist workers of Bucharest to represent them at a congress preparing the ground for the Social Democrats' absorption into the Workers' Party; this inaugural meeting was held at
Mihai Viteazul High School on January 24, 1948. Speaking on the occasion, he paid homage to Gheorghiu-Dej as the "living symbol of Romanian proletarian combativeness", and announced reforms such as the
nationalization of industry, to be undertaken by the "Party of the working class". He served as a member of the unified central committee (February 24, 1948 – June 13, 1958), also joining the
orgburo (January 24, 1950 – April 19, 1954). His credentials came from the communist essay
Împotriva cosmopolitismului și obiectivismului burghez în științele sociale ("Against
Cosmopolitanism and
Bourgeois Objectivism in Social Science"), published by the party press and
Lupta de Clasă journal in 1949. This work introduced Romanians to
historical materialism and a ''
partiinost''' analysis of cultural or scientific matters, borrowing Soviet criticism of "
bourgeois pseudoscience": against
genetics,
neo-Malthusianism,
Indeterminism, and in large part against "cosmopolitan" social thinkers (
Ernest Bevin,
Léon Blum,
Harold Laski). The two centuries of
Romanian philosophy, from the advocates of
Westernization (
Titu Maiorescu) to the radical
nativists (
Nae Ionescu), were dismissed as irrelevant to the real priorities of Romanian workers, with Răutu firmly rooting Romania's past in
Slavic Europe. Likewise, the right-wing historian
Gheorghe I. Brătianu was depicted as both a "
Hitlerite" and a puppet of "
American imperialism". Răutu's text is regarded by Tismăneanu as an "embarrassing" contribution to the field, and described by historian Leonard Ciocan as the origin of "
manichean" methodology and "typically Stalinist" discourse in Romanian social science. The direct inspiration for such contributions was Soviet culture boss
Andrei Zhdanov, whose
anti-formalist and anti-individualist campaigns he would try to replicate in Sovietized Romania. Since 1948, he had been preoccupied with eradicating "decadent" literature and art, including urban-themed modernism, but also informed his subordinates not to allow a resurgence of ruralizing traditionalism. He declared Zhdanov's "bitter criticism" of composer
Dmitri Shostakovich to be a "profound" positive example: "Take the gloves off, let's start criticizing [as well]. Here too we can learn from the Soviets." Also then, he ordered a selection of publishing houses and literary magazines that followed a "just line", and set aside funds for financing writers who had internalized the Workers' Party principles and "stepped down from the ivory tower". On November 2, 1948, Răutu himself took a position on the steering committee of the
Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union. as a villain plotting the invasion of Romania (
East German cartoon, presented to Gheorghiu-Dej on his 50th birthday, 1951) As part of their propaganda campaigns, Răutu and Chișinevschi created a heroic image of
Alexandru Sahia, who had died short after his 1937 expulsion, and whose supposed ideological faults had been excused. A notorious experiment approved by Răutu, and brought to life by Sorin Toma, was the campaign against celebrated poet
Tudor Arghezi, attacked as a "decadent" and subsequently banned for a number of years. Looking back on the events in 1949, the Agitprop chief told his subordinates: "[Writers] who are still enemies must be stomped upon without mercy. Arghezi, who has not changed, not even today, I have fulminated." Other targets were literary critics
Șerban Cioculescu and
Vladimir Streinu, both depicted as ill-adapted to the spirit of
socialist patriotism. In 1949, when Răutu began his purge of academia, one of the first to fall was literary historian
George Călinescu, a professor at the University of Bucharest, who, although left-wing, was not considered a true communist. As such figures were sidelined, Răutu himself was given the Chair of
Marxism-Leninism at Bucharest University, which he kept from March 1949 to May 1952. In April 1949, Răutu was one of the Romanian delegates to the
Congress of Advocates of Peace, seconding
Mihail Sadoveanu (who reputedly eclipsed him), afterwards helping to organize the Congress' Romanian chapter. From March 1950, Răutu and
Miron Constantinescu were called upon by Pauker to organize the ideological retraining of various writers who had been excluded from the party—
Eusebiu Camilar,
Vladimir Cavarnali,
Lucia Demetrius,
Mihu Dragomir,
Coca Farago,
Alexandru Kirițescu,
Sanda Movilă,
Ioana Postelnicu,
Zaharia Stancu,
Cicerone Theodorescu, and
Victor Tulbure. Navigating his course between the warring PMR groups of Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej, Răutu established his reputation during the fall of a third faction,
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu's "Secretariat" group. Already in
Împotriva cosmopolitismului..., Răutu called his rival an "
enemy of the working class", and a defamer of Marxist values. As noted by Tismăneanu, he applied "his proverbial zeal" to condemning Pătrășcanu's entire political activity. Also in 1949, Romania began the
collectivization of agriculture, with Răutu called in for ideological support. His articles in
Scînteia produced definitions of
chiaburi (the Romanian version of
kulaks, or wealthy peasants), which prioritized their status as employers of farmhands and owners of business, rather than the surface of land they owned. Some two years later, he suggested that Romania still had to deal with the existence of
chiaburi as the "largest capitalist class". He was similarly involved in ensuring a mass circulation for
Petru Dumitriu's
Drum fără pulbere, made infamous with its parochial depiction of construction work on the
Danube–Black Sea Canal—and for glossing over the fact that most workers were political prisoners. In 1951, Răutu also proposed to have the work filmed (though his move was defeated after opposition mounted by the novelist
Marin Preda). With the
Tito–Stalin split, Răutu became involved in exposing supposed "
Titoist" infiltration in Romania, ordering a tight monitoring of
Tanjug propaganda, and then a Romanian Agitprop project focused on vilifying
Yugoslavia. As part of this effort, he commissioned
Titus Popovici to write a play specifically against Titoism. In parallel, he took over supervision of the nominally independent left-wing daily
Adevărul, overseeing its liquidation in 1951, and was involved in establishing the network of "people's councils", which cemented the communist grip on city and village administration during late 1950. On October 5, 1950, he was assigned to the central committee of the communist-led
People's Democratic Front.
Pauker's fall and "processing" campaign Răutu first impressed critics of the regime by being able to survive Pauker's downfall (1952), and was one of the very few of the wartime exiles not to be designated a "
Right deviationist". A theory first advanced by political scientist
Ghiță Ionescu is that Gheorghiu-Dej relied on the party's "Bessarabian wing" to conspire against Pauker. This faction included Răutu, Borilă, and
Emil Bodnăraș, all of whom enjoyed support from the emerging Soviet leader,
Nikita Khrushchev. Together with Constantinescu as the other PMR intellectual, Răutu initiated the campaign to purge all other supposed inner-party oppositionists, drafting the PMR resolution on
prelucrări ("processing", a euphemism for "interrogations"). In his speeches to the PMR sections, Răutu described the cadre verification policy as inspired by the
19th CPSU Congress and its talk of "ideological work" being paramount in the consolidation of socialism. He declared Pauker a saboteur of collectivization, and her associate
Vasile Luca guilty of "criminal activity". In large part, "processing" meant a clampdown on writers with supposed (and supposedly concealed) "
fascist" sympathies. A communist-turned-dissident poet,
Nina Cassian, recalls: "Leonte Răutu—[...] dominated these scatty, vulnerable, terrified and confused beings—the artists and the writers, producing tragedies and comedies, stagings glories and stigmatization, paralyzing one's morality, activating another's immorality". Cassian was targeted as a critic of the regime, and kept under surveillance for her "negative influence" on other literary figures, including Preda, who was at that time her lover. One author to escape from Răutu's campaigns was modernist left-winger
Geo Dumitrescu, whom poet
Eugen Jebeleanu defended, at the last moment, against claims that he had been working for far-right newspapers during the war years. Senior writers George Călinescu and
Victor Eftimiu were accused of concealing Social Democratic sympathies; in 1951, Călinescu tried to ingratiate himself with Răutu by proposing him for admittance into the Romanian Academy, commending his essay on
Joseph Stalin's contribution as a linguist. Meanwhile, historian
Constantin Daicoviciu, a former member of the
Iron Guard fascist movement, was found to be an embarrassment for the communist-run peace committees and banned from politics. Paradoxically, other areas under Răutu's control escaped such purges, and former far-right affiliates such as
Octav Onicescu and
Ion Barbu pursued their scientific careers with little standing in their way. Răutu built himself a new power base comprising noted Agitprop figures, some of whom were also writers and journalists. The prominent ones were Moraru, Șelmaru,
Savin Bratu,
Ovid Crohmălniceanu,
Paul Georgescu,
Nicolae Tertulian and
Ion Vitner. Over the years, his deputies included Roller,
Ofelia Manole,
Paul Niculescu-Mizil,
Nicolae Goldberger (a member of the
politburo since the 1930s),
Manea Mănescu (in charge of science),
Cornel Onescu and
Pavel Țugui (later expelled from the party for having concealed his youthful sympathy for the Iron Guard). Some of his other favorites, including
Constantin Ionescu Gulian (recovered from an initial put-down for his "cosmopolitan" discourse) and
Ernő Gáll, became the official interpreters of
Marxist philosophy. Before and after 1952, Răutu's program was rigidly and thoroughly Stalinist. As such, Tismăneanu writes, he spearheaded the most damaging campaigns in the cultural field, "designed to terrorize Romania's intellectual class": "the destruction of Romanian Academy research institutes, the [Academy's own] mutilation, the forced Sovietization—[...] the gaudy kowtowing at Russian culture (as it had been defined under the Stalinist canon)—[...] the promotion of fanatics, of the ideologically possessed, impostors and dilettantes, to high cultural offices". In private diaries which recorded his critique of the regime, writer
Pericle Martinescu spoke about Răutu's contribution to the "criminal combat" for "liquidating the old world." As he notes, a March 1952 article by Răutu condensed "an entire mass-murdering action against the Romanian people". and being met by party officials, including Răutu (second row, middle, with
Ghizela Vass and
Mihail Roller on either side behind him) Răutu's monopoly on the humanities is also credited with having incapacitated the development of independent ideas in Romanian philosophy and sociology, as well as with the near-complete elimination of psychology as a credible academic subject. Instructed by Gheorghiu-Dej, the Agitprop chief even targeted Romania's pre-communist Marxist current as the school of "
Menshevism"—announcing, in 1951, that
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, the father of Romanian
social democracy, was worthy of condemnation. Conversely, he and Ionescu Gulian attacked the conservative opinion-maker and Gherea's rival, Titu Maiorescu, as the icon of bourgeois conformity. The neotraditionalist philosopher
Lucian Blaga, a contemporary of Răutu's, was also vilified. Blaga was the target of ominous commentary in the communist newspapers, singled out for revenge by the communist poet
Mihai Beniuc, and ultimately derided in public by Răutu. Other main targets of Răutu's
communist censorship were
Tudor Vianu,
Liviu Rusu (depicted as too idealistic) and Blaga's in-law
Teodor Bugnariu. Răutu demanded that Rusu write an article condemning Maiorescu through the lens of Marxism-Leninism. A young scholar at the time,
Mihai Șora described Răutu as the object of a fearful myth: "a censor with such keen eyes, that one will find it impossible to slip by [and] a very cultivated man, finding great pleasure in reading bourgeois, Western etc. literature, the very same one he will publicly condemn." Pursuing his ideological condemnation of philology, which in 1951 had seen him calling for a ban on works by
Ferdinand de Saussure, Răutu arrived at imposing Stalin's own tract,
Marxism and Problems of Linguistics. Marxist linguists who were not keen on adopting Stalin's perspective, including
Alexandru Rosetti,
Alexandru Graur and
Iorgu Iordan, were investigated for "enemy-like activity" and left virtually unemployed until 1954. Meanwhile, Răutu was censuring some of Roller's extreme positions in historiography, organizing a panel of historians, who were encouraged to discuss their problems; a review session was held in November 1954, and resulted in much loss of prestige for Roller. At that stage, the young communist activist
Nicolae Ceaușescu was reporting to Răutu in matters of sport. Their activity included a 1953 investigation of the
Central Army Club, suspected of "caste-like" factionalism and of "placing [its] interests above the interests of national sport." From January 1956 to 1959, the two men also oversaw a Party Commission for Nationality Issues, which assessed the communization of
ethnic minorities.
"Anti-Revisionism" Răutu was still unchallenged as cultural policymaker even after
Stalin's death, although the Romanian regime contemplated structural changes. After 1956, essentially his only superior within the party was Gheorghiu-Dej, who cared little for cultural intrigues. At the VIIth party congress on December 28, 1955, Răutu became an alternate member of the politburo. Shortly after, he began an investigation into the activities of
Nicolae Labiș, the disillusioned Marxist poet. Răutu signaled Labiș's fall into disgrace, declaring his piece "Murdered Albatross" to be pessimistic and unworthy of "building-sites that construct socialism." in October 1956. These include the elimination of Russian-language courses and a reduction of Marxist studies, as well as a restoration of free speech The tensions between Gheorghiu-Dej and Khrushchev, who had risen to a paramount position in the Soviet Union, were highlighted during the
Hungarian revolution of 1956. Romania participated in the punitive expedition against
Hungary. Răutu himself reported that the general public felt that Romania suffered "because of the terrible boners made by the Soviets in Hungary." Documenting the reorientation of the mid-1950s, scholar
Ken Jowitt included Răutu and Gheorghiu-Dej's economic adviser,
Alexandru Bârlădeanu, among the PMR "regime figures" who mediated "between the progressives and the Stalinists." When Gheorghiu-Dej, who played the two factions against each other, decided to overturn some of the Zhdanovist measures adopted in the 1950s, he even described Răutu and Roller as responsible for the PMR's frail relationship with the Romanian intellectuals. Răutu had another close call at the Party Plenary of June 1957: Chișinevschi and Constantinescu were both attacked by Gheorghiu-Dej as "
liberal socialists" and "
revisionists", then expelled from the party's inner core. Even though he was one of Chișinevschi's confidants (and Natalia Răutu was Chișinevschi's secretary), Răutu managed to survive the incident and preserved his standing. He expressed full support for Gheorghiu-Dej, and was even tasked by the communist leader with redacting the Plenary documents for public view. He collaborated on this project with Ceaușescu, who was one of Gheorghiu-Dej's trusted men. In early 1957, Răutu probed the Artists' Guild, allegedly entrapping
M. H. Maxy, the painter and communist activist, into an "unmasking" session during which anti-Stalinists were allowed to have their say; the episode was cut short by another painter,
Corneliu Baba, who spoke in favor of both artistic freedom and leniency toward Maxy. Răutu's only potential rival was
Grigore Preoteasa, who joined the central committee's secretariat in charge of ideology shortly after Chișinevschi was sidelined. As Tismăneanu notes, this was a chance for Romanian culture to be revisited "with a modicum of decency". However, Preoteasa's death that November allowed Răutu undisputed control over culture. Răutu personally witnessed the fatal accident, which took place on a plane taking the delegation to
Moscow's
Vnukovo Airfield. He and Preoteasa took turns playing chess with Ceaușescu before the failed landing. Răutu was injured, and had to be hospitalized. This hiatus brought an unexpected relaxation of censorship, which notably allowed ethnologists to write about the traditional Romanian dwellings (a theme that Răutu would have otherwise proscribed) and translators to focus on contemporary literature. Upon returning, the PMR ideologist heralded an all-out
anti-revisionist campaign: his May 1958 speech began with attacks on the anti-Soviet
Internationalist Communist Union, Hungarian revolutionaries and "liberal theories"; went on to criticize Stalinist "dogmatism" and the "
personality cult"; and eventually listed Romanian philosophers and artists who had deviated into one field or the other. Răutu reassessed his own political positioning, depicting Chișinevschi as a morbid Stalinist and himself as a balanced figure. He then helped Gheorghiu-Dej deal with the apparent opposition of old-time communists, deciding in May 1958 that the association of former prisoners of fascism was "petty bourgeois" in nature, and needed to be dissolved. During June, he and Gheorghiu-Dej produced a case against the PMR veteran
Constantin Doncea, who had been tempted to question Gheorghiu-Dej's claims of revolutionary primacy. Răutu labeled Doncea a
Titoist, then introduced claims that Doncea had followers in the cultural sphere—a pretext for the verification of writers who still harbored modernist ideas. This happened even as Răutu drafted a confidential note about improving relations with Yugoslavia and toning down anti-Titoist propaganda. In summer 1958, he went public with his critique of Roller, who had allegedly permitted his subordinates to publish complaints against Gheorghiu-Dej. In a contrary move, Răutu intervened to sideline several of Roller's emerging critics, including
Andrei Oțetea. Though not involved directly in the controversy, he sent one of his associates to act as Oțetea's ideological supervisor; according to historian
Șerban Papacostea, this unnamed figure had little competence in the scholarly field, noted among his peers for being unable to properly date events such as the
Treaty of Passarowitz. The PMR cultural activists, Răutu included, also masterminded the
show trial of philosopher
Constantin Noica, writer
Dinu Pillat and other literary dissidents, all of them brutalized by the
Securitate secret police. He preserved much of his great influence, from directing the censorship apparatus (officially placed under
Iosif Ardeleanu) to putting out
Scînteia (approving each issue before it went into printing).
Transition to national communism Between June 13, 1958 and June 25, 1960, Răutu was only a junior member of the central committee. While the regime veered into
de-satellization and
Stalinized national communism, he and Niculescu-Mizil were asked by Gheorghiu-Dej to press the Soviets into recognizing Romania's role in the defeat of Nazism. They raised the issue at an international congress of communist historians in 1959, when they informed their Soviet counterpart, N. I. Shatagin, that they expected a revision of the Soviet official line. Niculescu-Mizil sees his boss as partly responsible for transmitting Romania's new terms to the
Comecon and the
Warsaw Pact, whose sessions he attended in 1961–1963. In tandem, Răutu engineered some of the newer campaigns to quash alternative culture, indicating suspects to the Securitate. These included: communist writers
Alexandru Jar and
Gábor Gaál, attacked for having demanded
de-Stalinization; modernist sculptor
Milița Petrașcu, "unmasked" as an opponent of the regime in a humiliating public session; and classical composer
Mihail Andricu, castigated for having revealed his appreciation for the West. Răutu's own push for retaining the Socialist Realist canon with a reprint of
Drum fără pulbere was quietly defeated in early 1959 by his own subordinate, Țugui. While overseeing the cultural purges, Răutu networked between Gheorghiu-Dej and
Soviet Ambassador Alexei Yepishev. The latter congratulated the PMR for its "extremely valuable initiative" in exposing Petrașcu, noting that the Soviets could learn from the example. Historian Stefano Bottoni argues that, in Jar's case, Răutu may have set a trap for Jar personally, by inviting his former friend to state openly his contempt for the PMR line. Răutu also refused to reinstate the modernist poet-translator
Ion Vinea, calling him artistically irrelevant and an agent of
British Intelligence. In 1960, he returned to the George Călinescu issue, accusing him of deviating from the PMR program. Răutu's men suggested that, as a novelist, Călinescu had portrayed the Iron Guard in too light tones; Călinescu made a personal appeal to Gheorghiu-Dej, who treated him with noted sympathy. Later in 1960, Călinescu was allowed to lecture at the university, but still not reinstated as professor. Tasked by the politburo with controlling the
Romanian Jewish community, Răutu became a denouncer of the "
Ioanid Gang". This name was applied to a cell of Jewish anti-communists who managed to rob the
National Bank of Romania; captured, they were also accused of having plotted Răutu's murder. Such issues troubled the cultural ideologist: Răutu looked on as the Jews, discriminated against by the PMR's
antisemitic lobby, registered for mass emigration to
Israel. Răutu asked the party leaders not to strip all those who applied of their Romanian citizenship, and, responding to Gheorghiu-Dej's antisemitic comments, concluded that Romanian communism had failed at integrating the Jewish minority. Eventually, Răutu resigned himself to adopting Gheorghiu-Dej's view. He is purported as the author of a
Jewish self-hatred catchphrase, taken up by the (predominantly Romanian PMR) leaders: "Jews should lose their habit of controlling things". As the party began expelling significant numbers of its Jewish members, a confidential note circulated at the top confirmed that, even in 1958, Răutu was expressing strongly antisemitic feelings. According to one eyewitness account, Răutu attacked artist Iosif Molnár for having illustrated the Romanian edition of ''
Anne Frank's Diary'' with a stylized
yellow badge. Instead of seeing this as a symbol of the
Holocaust, Răutu accused Molnár of promoting
Zionism, then ordered him to attend a "
self-criticism" session. Brucan recounts that Gheorghiu-Dej exhibited "lucidity" in noting that Răutu was downplaying both his Jewishness and his Russian mannerism. Brucan himself notes that Răutu had "systematically removed all Jews" from the Agitprop department, and "went as far as to pretend that he could not speak Russian" when receiving Soviet visitors. Similarly, Răutu was among those sent in to pacify the
Hungarian Romanian minority, and (Bottoni writes) played "the role of a nationalist", airbrushing
Romanianization measures, demanding action against the "hostile elements" supporting
Hungarian nationalism, and participating in the disestablishment of
Bolyai University. From September 1959, controlling the spread of "
bourgeois nationalism" among the Hungarians was a permanent task, assigned to a PMR committee presided over by Ceaușescu and Răutu—its other job, of promoting minority interests, was entirely ceremonial. Allegedly, the two men also had differences of opinion: in January 1961, the censorship apparatus, probably instigated by Răutu, attempted to institute a ban against
Aurel Baranga's play,
Siciliana; Ceaușescu, who admired Baranga's work, intervened to block the attempt. Răutu was reintegrated as a full member of the central committee on June 25, 1960, Some
liberalization measures were being unveiled, and Răutu, officially introduced as a member of the MAN, found himself included in Gheorghiu-Dej's official delegation to the
United States. He accompanied Gheorghiu-Dej to
New York City for the Fifteenth Regular Session of the
United Nations General Assembly, held in September 1960. The
elections of March 1961 saw Răutu taking another deputy's seat, for southern
Bacău. As such, he was directly involved in drafting
Romania's socialist constitution. He was notoriously silent as his former colleagues and favorites were pushed into retirement (Moraru, Țugui, Vitner)
Between Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceaușescu In 1961, Răutu and Ceaușescu helped publicize the claim that Romania's issue with the "personality cult" was associated with Pauker, whereas Gheorghiu-Dej and the other leaders of the party had received, and were deserving of, the people's genuine love. Soon after, Răutu and
Paul Cornea were also tasked with convincing the writing team behind the film
Tudor that the lead female part should go to
Lica Gheorghiu, who was Gheorghiu-Dej's daughter. Having sidelined Sorin Toma, Răutu revised his stance on the "decadent" poets, welcoming back into the spotlight modernists like Arghezi and
Ion Barbu, and even describing himself as a protector of artistic autonomy. In 1962, he tacitly approved of the PMR's policy of politically (re)integrating some of Romania's more popular traditionalist intellectuals. However, Răutu and other PMR leaders also singled out the Writers' Union chief, novelist
Zaharia Stancu, as a political suspect. According to literary historian
Cornel Ungureanu, Răutu stated the point discreetly, "without aggravating the Great Chief" (that is, Gheorghiu-Dej, who believed Stancu to be an earnest fellow communist). By then, Răutu was receiving letters from politically suspect writers such as
Păstorel Teodoreanu and
George Mărgărit, who asked to be reinstated, as reeducated but starving men. Răutu still silenced critiques of Stalinism, but only by proxy. In 1963, on Răutu's orders, Romania became, with
Albania, the only
Eastern Bloc country not to publish a vernacular translation of
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's
Ivan Denisovich. In mid-1963, Gheorghiu-Dej confronted Khrushchev at a secretive meeting at
Scroviștea, with both Răutu and Ceaușescu present. The PMR leadership sought to persuade Soviet leaders to dismantle its
KGB network in Romania, with Khrushchev denying its very existence. In tandem, both men were called upon to investigate Maria Sîrbu, who had published an atlas on
Soviet economy which showed
Moldovans as the native inhabitants of
Western Moldavia—a Soviet and
Greater Moldovan point of view. Also that year, Niculescu-Mizil sought and obtained support from Răutu in establishing the world-affairs magazine
Lumea, with Ivașcu, the former political detainee, as an editor. This publication was an explicit alternative to the local edition of
Novoye Vremya, intended as a hint that Romania was no longer tributary to Soviet foreign politics. By 1964, when Gheorghiu-Dej signaled Romania's full detachment from the de-Stalinized Soviet Union, Răutu was again called upon for ideological maneuvering. Gheorghiu-Dej sided with
Red China in the
Sino–Soviet divorce, and Răutu helped redact the "April Theses" recognizing "the sovereign rights of each socialist state". He was afterward heard stating his disgust for past Sovietization, leaving readers shocked with his comments on those "who have shamefully kowtowed at even the most insignificant Soviet creation"; he also praised "national values" in the scientific field. He enabled Gheorghiu-Dej's anti-Hungarian rhetoric by sending him a report on the nationalistic statements made by various Hungarian authors and tolerated by the
Hungarian communist government. Răutu also looked on as the regime allowed a partial recovery of his philosophical bugbears (Dobrogeanu-Gherea, then Maiorescu) and a controlled familiarization with Western literature or modernism. Despite his concessions to localism, the Bessarabian communist still looked to the Soviet hardliners for inspiration, and was considered by his peers a Stalinist survivor, à la
Mikhail Suslov; he was also compared with Hungary's
György Aczél. Răutu is said to have been thankful that Chișinevschi was out of politics altogether, but was embarrassed by Miron Constantinescu's re-admittance into the
nomenklatura; in front of other party figures, the two men acted like good friends. The party even selected Răutu to inform his nominal enemy that he had been widowed, Sulamita Constantinescu having been stabbed by her own daughter. Oțetea, who had finally been successful in toppling Roller from his position of Marxist historiographer, is said to have described Răutu as "the most intelligent of the communist leaders, but a bastard". In 1964, while carrying on with his other functions, Răutu was serving as general secretary of the Foreign Trade Ministry. Conflicted by his own social and ethnic origins, helps account for his longevity in public life. Holding approximately equal party ranks, the two men and their families were also recipients of a luxury trip to France, arranged by Gheorghiu-Dej and with television presenter
Tudor Vornicu as their guide. Răutu managed to impress Ceaușescu, even though the latter was not just fearful of the PMR prison elite, but also a nationalist with antisemitic reactions. (1965). Răutu is front row, first from right Răutu authored Gheorghiu-Dej's official obituary, as published by
Scînteia, and oversaw the funeral ceremony. After Ceaușescu's ascent in 1965, Răutu's was inducted into the central committee secretariat (elected March 22). He joined Ceaușescu on his first-ever mission as general secretary, namely a meeting with the scientists' community, where they had talks with
Petre Constantinescu-Iași,
Horia Hulubei, and
Ilie Murgulescu. He also served on the party's executive committee from July 23, 1965 to November 28, 1974, one of several figures promoted as a direct result of Gheorghiu-Dej's death. When the new leader decided to reformulate Communist Party historiography, Răutu was among those tasked with compiling the short course in such a way as to describe the various ideological slips under Gheorghiu-Dej. Researched during 1965, the book was never completed. The same year, Răutu witnessed as Baranga stepped in to impose censorship in theater, by arguing that all plays by
Eugène Ionesco other than
Rhinoceros needed to be withdrawn from the national repertoire. Baranga cited Răutu as an authority on this issue but, as historian Cristian Vasile notes, this may have been tongue-in-cheek. In 1966, Ceaușescu presented Răutu with the
Tudor Vladimirescu Order, 1st Class; Răutu was additionally a "Hero of Socialist Labor" from 1964. While reconfirmed in his executive functions at the party congress in 1965, Răutu was no longer a rapporteur, his position filled by the younger
Dumitru Popescu-Dumnezeu. His promotion to the secretariat also required him to relinquish his long-held position at Agitprop, on April 1, 1965. His immediate successor was his own protegé
Ion Iliescu, the former student organizer (and future Ceaușescu opponent).
Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy The year 1966 marked a low point in Răutu's career, as he was only tasked with supervising the interior commerce department and the Communist Youth's
Pioneer branch. According to Tismăneanu, Răutu spent much of the interval reading up on political literature, including
Neo-Marxist authors frowned upon by the regime (
Herbert Marcuse). In January 1967, he gave approval to publish the popular history review,
Magazin Istoric. As noted by its editor, Titu Georgescu, Răutu had to be persuaded by more sympathetic party figures, including Niculescu-Mizil and
Ștefan Voitec. Also according to Georgescu, Răutu signed off on an order to double
Magazin Istorics circulation, but did so without realizing that the review was already published in 60,000 copies. That year, he was similarly defeated in his attempt to prevent the regime from publishing a posthumous edition of Călinescu's main literary tract,
Istoria literaturii. Răutu's standing was again recognized in November, when he accompanied Ceaușescu to Moscow for the
October Revolution's fiftieth anniversary, and on December 8, when he and Niculescu-Mizil were made supervisors of the Agitprop section. At the central committee plenary of April 1968, Ceaușescu acknowledged Răutu and
Valter Roman as rapporteurs on the social and economic education of Romanian youth, which they had deemed unsatisfactory. In August 1968, Ceaușescu increased his popularity by refusing to sanction the
Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia—effectively a standoff with the Soviet Union. As reported by Securitate sources, he came to be well-liked by anti-communist Romanians living in the West, though they feared that the deadlock would end in a Soviet coup, with Răutu at its helm. For his part, Răutu joined other party leaders in condemning the invasion (calling it "an act of great cynicism"). In mid-1969, he was quietly removed from his position within the secretariat, though not from the executive committee. On March 13, 1969, Ceaușescu appointed him
deputy prime minister, in charge of supervising education. He served as such until April 24, 1972, when he became rector of
Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy. In February 1970, he was officially recommended for membership of the new Academy of Social and Political Sciences, formed by Constantinescu—one of the old Stalinists to be inducted, he served there alongside non-communists such as Daicoviciu,
Mihai Berza, and
Henri H. Stahl; both he and Constantinescu attempted "a sort of modernization of party propaganda", aimed at getting youth interested in Marxism-Leninism. Răutu had by then shown personal initiative in interpreting the party line and even anticipated Ceaușescu's ideological permutations. After the
July Theses of 1971 put a stop to liberalization and introduced the more repressive phase of national communism, he welcomed Ceaușescu's commands as "a model in Marxist-Leninist analysis" and the subjugation of culture to political economy as "an active, revolutionary, attitude"; he also informed the party that the time had come for himself to reexamine his past and determine his own "mistakes". In late 1972, he supported and obtained a ban on
Liviu Ciulei's production of
The Government Inspector, which he and other party men regarded as too forward, following a negative report from Baranga. Ciulei himself argued that his work was only targeted because of a "showdown" between Răutu and Popescu-Dumnezeu—since the latter had actively promoted the play. Niculescu-Mizil was Răutu and Iliescu's successor at the Agitprop section, which now ran a more covert form of censorship. Răutu moved on to the lavishly furnished and overbudgeted Gheorghiu Academy, where Mihail Oișteanu was already serving as a teaching cadre. Here, Răutu set up a "Laboratory for Research into Contemporary Historical Progress", dedicated to defending communist dogma against "the illusion of
technocracy". Tismăneanu argues that this think tank was merely "bizarre"; he describes Răutu's theories as "clichés" or "platitudes". In April 1973, Răutu went to
East Germany, speaking at an international conference which marked 125 years since
The Communist Manifesto. In early September of that year, he attended a meeting of communist-party schools convened by
Jan Fojtík and
Ladislav Hrzal in
Prague; in November, he was in
Paris, a guest of the
Institut Maurice Thorez. Literary scholar
Nicolae Manolescu recalls catching a glimpse of him in the seaside resort of
Neptun, at some point in the mid 1970s. He "was sitting in a deckchair, reading French and American magazines. Even back when he was head of agitprop, Leonte Răutu, the intelligent and cultured man that he was, had access to all sources of cultural information that so many Romanian intellectuals could only long for." At that stage Răutu was assigned to the Party and State Committee which organized the
15th International Congress of Historical Sciences (Bucharest, 1980), which Ceaușescu intended to use for broadcasting
Dacianist theories. , 1st Class, from Ceaușescu's hands In tandem, Răutu continued to serve in the MAN—after
elections in March 1975, he served a term for northern Bacău. At the XIIth Party Congress in 1979, he issued a spontaneous and violent attack against fellow PCR veteran
Constantin Pîrvulescu, who had taken the floor to ad-lib about Ceaușescu's separation from Marxism. In a February 1980 speech that saw print in
Scînteia, he gave his retouched version of communist history: claiming to have been one of the first communists to take note of young Ceaușescu's "exceptional courage and brilliant intelligence", he extended his gratitude to "my beloved Comrade Nicolae Ceaușescu" for taking on the role of ideological guide in the eyes of "each and all party activists". Răutu was returned to the MAN during
elections in March 1980, this time from the
Aiud constituency. Also that year, he received two of Communist Romania's major distinctions: the
Star of the Socialist Republic, 1st Class (granted, on his 70th birthday, for merits "in constructing the multilaterally developed socialist society"), and the 25th Anniversary of the Motherland's Liberation Medal. From the early 1970s, Răutu was practically a widower. Natalia Răutu, plagued by episodic
migraines since the 1940s, was diagnosed with
viral encephalitis after slipping into a
coma; she was kept under specialized care at
Elias Hospital but never recovered, dying on January 21, 1975.
Downfall and final years Soviet archives suggest that, from as early as the 1940s, Răutu was one of the Romanian communists who had secretly broken with party discipline by asking Moscow to intervene in Romania's internal problems. In the late 1970s, Brucan spoke at the
University of Architecture, where he was openly asked by one student if Romania would ever press at the UN for the return of Bessarabia. According to his own recollections, Brucan entertained the question; this alarmed both the Securitate and Răutu as "irredentist propaganda", but Ceaușescu overruled them, explaining that Brucan had done nothing wrong. A Securitate operative reported in August 1979 that Răutu and
Ghizela Vass were perceived by at least one source as nomenklatura contacts for the
KGB and the
StB. According to such rumors, the two had "friendly meetings" with KGB sources and with each other, discussing "changes to the external agenda of our party and state." In her 2010s recollections, historian Cornelia Bodea accused Răutu and Roman of making repeated attempts to prevent her from publishing evidence that some 40,000 Romanians had been massacred during the
Hungarian Revolution of 1848; this incident formed part of renewed tensions between Hungary and Romania, which were carried into the field of history-writing.
Ceaușescu's austerity policy had already caused a rift between Romania and the West, prompting the regime to fall back on a stricter application of Marxist-Leninism. In March 1981, communist potentate
Gogu Rădulescu informed his friends that, as a result of this transition, Răutu "jumped up" in political importance. Also that year, Răutu approved a request by Romanian-born scholar
Lilly Marcou, who intended to do her research at Ștefan Gheorghiu. As Marcou reports: "[Răutu] allowed me to do my work, and helped me with it. [...] I had a meeting with the heads of departments, with the researchers at [this] institution, and I told them what I believed on what was happening in Romania: that it was a shame and a great bane for the country that all around I saw portraits of the Ceaușescus, that they were all one could see on TV etc. I spoke about that at the very core of the party. No one answered, but neither did they threaten me or contradict me." Around that time, Răutu's son-in-law Andrei Coler and his daughter Lena applied for emigration to the United States. Reportedly, news of this unprecedented act infuriated Ceaușescu, who "was bedridden for four days on the advice of his doctors"; Răutu himself tried to underscore his loyalty by asking that his relatives'
Romanian passports be "frozen". In retribution for the Colers' move, but also accused of not having fulfilled his own political tasks, Răutu was made to present his resignation from the party's central committee; he was also made to renounce his rectorate in August 1981. Officially, his demotion was effective on November 26, which was also the day on which Răutu was removed from the party's executive committee, alongside
Virgil Trofin. Niculescu-Mizil, who had advanced to the party's central leadership, recalls his opposition to Răutu's removal, claiming to have personally reminded Ceaușescu that Răutu had fully supported him in 1964. On November 22, 1984, Răutu was also altogether eliminated from the central committee, with his employment being recorded as "publicist" for the final years of his life; he was also no longer presented as a candidate in the
MAN elections of 1985. This ouster left the former ideologist entirely isolated, a recluse on the Romanian political scene. In his report for the exile station
Radio Free Europe,
Noël Bernard assessed: "Nobody is going to shed tears over the fall of Leonte Răutu." Bernard also derided the communists' hypocrisy: Răutu, he noted, had been forced out because his daughter emigrated; Miron Constantinescu advanced steadily, his own daughter a mentally disturbed
matricide. In an October 1984 conversation with literary critic
Dan Culcer (published in 1999), sociologist
Zoltán Rostás argued that Răutu's ouster marked a peak in Ceaușescu's "
Romanianization" policy. According to Rostás, the Ștefan Gheorghiu group was cultivating "Marxist information and criticism", thus hampering the "purity and ideological unity of Ceaușescuist thought"—the experiment required that Răutu be sidelined. Theater historian Mircea Morariu also notes that Răutu was made an example of, whereas Baranga, whose son Harry had also emigrated, had been spared persecution. Tismăneanu adds: "The 'perfect acrobat' [fell] victim to the very dialectical-Balkanic mechanism that he so decisively helped generate [...] Răutu had been thrown into the grim anonymity that had consumed the last years of his so many associates in youthful daydreaming." Răutu moved out into a regular house of protocol, and worked for the party's own History Institute. His last years were allegedly marked by panic and confusion: although it gave him pleasure to see
Ceaușescu being tried and executed during the
Romanian Revolution of 1989, that event saw the formal destruction of a political and symbolic structure to which he had dedicated his life. An unverifiable rumor even places him among the dejected old-generation communists who prepared their return under a "
Constantin Dăscălescu Government". Reportedly fearing anti-communist repression, Răutu supported Iliescu, his former employee at the Agitprop Section, whom the Revolution had propelled to the rank of
President. Iliescu later acknowledged that he felt respect for Răutu. The
post-revolutionary republic did not impinge on the privileges he had gained, as an old communist militant, under Gheorghiu-Dej. Legally included in a category of "
antifascist combatants", he continued to receive a large pension and was eligible for special medical care. Răutu gave his only in-depth interview to Pierre du Bois, a Swiss political scientist, acknowledging that the communist system had produced tens of thousands of victims but expressing no remorse. He died shortly after, in September 1993, ==Legacy==