Propaganda and international affairs Born in
Bucharest, Niculescu-Mizil was raised in a left-wing milieu, with both his parents being activists of the
Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSDR) and the
Socialist Party of Romania (PS). His father,
Gheorghe Niculescu-Mizil, was reportedly a shop assistant, trade unionist, and self-taught poet, known for contributing to PSDR and PS gazettes, from
România Muncitoare to
Socialismul, and eventually joining the outlawed Communist Party (PCdR or PCR). He was kept under surveillance by the secret police (
Siguranța Statului), was prosecuted during the famous
Dealul Spirii Trial, and stood as a pro-communist candidate during the
1922 election. According to their official biographers, Gheorghe and his wife Eufrosina Cotor Niculescu-Mizil ran a PCdR meeting house during
World War II, as opponents of the
Ion Antonescu dictatorship. Paul Niculescu-Mizil was a student at the military officers' school in
Ploiești during the war, and right after
King Michael's Coup, his unit was sent to help retake
Northern Transylvania. Joining the Communist Party (later "Workers' Party", PMR) in 1945, that year he became head of the student association at the
Commercial and Industrial Academy and editor of
Tinerețea newspaper. In 1951, he joined the editorial board of the magazine
Lupta de Clasă. He taught at the
Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy from 1946 to 1950, and was deputy rector and rector there between 1950 and 1954. He entered the PMR's history institute in 1954, holding positions near the top. He was also on the faculty of the
C. I. Parhon University, teaching
Marxism–Leninism. He headed the PMR's propaganda and agitation section between 1956 and 1965, While he and his colleague
Pavel Țugui promoted a less rigid view of the party's role in culture than their predecessors, who included
Mihail Roller, they nonetheless touted a form of communism that was, in the view of political scientist
Vladimir Tismăneanu, "arrogant, intransigent and suspicious of any
revisionist heresy". Until the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in 1965, Niculescu-Mizil was a consistent supporter, and helped distance Romania from the
Soviet Union beginning in 1964. After leaving the propaganda section, he sat on the central committee's secretariat, supervising the party's sections for ideology and for international relations (1965–1972); on the executive committee (1965–1989); and on the permanent presidium (1969–1974). In February 1968, he headed the Romanian delegation to a meeting in
Budapest that made preparations for the following year's
International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties. There, he made a striking gesture, leaving the room in protest at Soviet attacks on Romania's position of defending the principle of equality and independence within the global communist movement, in particular
Czechoslovakia's right to carry out the reforms of the
Prague Spring. After the
fall of the
communist regime in 1989, he was initially in the leadership of the
National Salvation Front, but pressure from civil society groups quickly saw him ejected. He was arrested and sent to prison, accused of direct involvement in repressing revolutionary activities in
Timișoara and Bucharest, and was incarcerated until 1992. Together with
Ion Iliescu, who was marginalized during the 1970s, he was among the less dogmatic figures around Ceaușescu. In his last years, he actively attempted to justify the communist dictatorship for the national values he claimed it upheld. Alongside other top party activists, including
Manea Mănescu,
Ștefan Andrei, and
Dumitru Popescu, he promoted the idea of a break between the "
Comintern" phase of the 1950s and the later national communism, allegedly patriotic and enlightened. Although he sought to avoid what Tismăneanu calls the "police-state brutalities and asphyxiating dogmatism of a sclerotic ideology", his defense of the system ignored its classically Stalinist features such as
censorship, the
Securitate secret police, and hyper-bureaucratic planning. Hence, it was situated within the same intellectual constraints as the
Letter of the Six. He and his wife Lidia had six children. Of these, a son (Serghei) and two daughters (Donca and Lidia) were biological children, while two sons and a daughter were adopted. Adopting children was fashionable among party elites at the time and helped solidify his position. His granddaughter, through Lidia, is
Oana Niculescu-Mizil, herself a politician. Donca was in a ten-year relationship with Nicolae and
Elena Ceaușescu's son
Nicu; Elena disapproved and intervened to end the romance. Later, Niculescu-Mizil and Nicu Ceaușescu were cellmates at
Jilava Prison for six months. Serghei is considered the rebel of the family. ==Notes==