Founded in 1910 at the initiative of the
Socialist Union of Romania, a loose alliance of socialist clubs formed across Romania around the magazine
România Muncitoare, it also acted as the political wing of the local
trade union movement. The party viewed itself as a successor to the
Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party, the latter having disbanded in April 1899 after a conflict between its
reformist wing (deemed "
generoșii" - "the generous ones"), which left in order to join the
National Liberal Party, and the
Marxist groups. Appealing to a relatively small
working class population, whose political power was further restricted by the
income-based voting system, the PSD was unable to attain any major electoral success. Nevertheless, it led an active campaign for better working conditions, land reform and peace. The party's
anti-militarist stance led it to condemn both Romania's participation in the
Second Balkan War and, after the start of
World War I, the
social patriotic stance of Western social-democratic parties. Accordingly, it proposed a
federalist solution for the complicated ethnic situation in the
Balkans, and, after some internal debates, joined the
Zimmerwald movement. Neutral at first, by 1916 Romania's government was increasingly open to participation in the war on the
Entente side, and decided to crack down on the socialist movement, brutally repressing a
pacifist demonstration in
Galați in June. The PSD was banned outright when the country declared war on the
Central Powers later that year. With a significant part of the members drafted (including the general secretary,
Dimitrie Marinescu, killed in action), the party was only able to retain a clandestine activity in the main industrial centres of the country, such as
Bucharest,
Iași and the
Prahova Valley. The PSD's situation further deteriorated after the disastrous
Romanian Campaign resulted in the southern half of the country falling under the military occupation of the Central Powers. Paradoxically, the socialists fared somewhat better in the occupied territories, where the
occupation army, at the intervention of German social-democrats, gave them some leeway, even allowing the reopening of the Bucharest workers' club. The 1917
February Revolution led to a reactivation of the Romanian workers' movement, and its subsequent radicalisation. The Bucharest clandestine group, led by
Alecu Constantinescu and
Gheorghe Cristescu, emerged as the "
maximalist"
Central committee for anti-war and anti-imperialist action, also coordinating the "intimate councils" active in
Ploiești and
Câmpina. The radicals in
Moldavia, area still under government control, were able to gain the sympathy of the Russian soldiers present in the region as Romania's allies, which provided them with some freedom of action. The Romanian authorities however quickly reacted, imprisoning the socialist leaders
Christian Rakovsky and
Mihail Gheorghiu Bujor, and assassinating
Max Wexler. As a result, most revolutionary socialists fled government persecution to
Russia. Establishing their headquarters in
Odessa, the main centre of the Romanian refugees in Southern Russia, they created the
Romanian Social-Democratic Action Committee under the leadership of Bujor,
Alexandru Nicolau and
Ion Dic-Dicescu, and re-established the official party press by publishing
Lupta. Soon after the
October Revolution, the Odessa committee rallied behind the
Bolsheviks. The Bucharest committee also saluted the Revolution and condemned the
humiliating peace between Romania and the Central Powers, leading the Germans to reverse their earlier policies and imprison all pre-war socialist leadership in May 1918. Nevertheless, the changing tide of war resulted in a weakening of the German grip on the region, allowing for the re-emergence of the trade unions in the occupied territories beginning with late spring. In the meantime, in April 1918, the moderate social-democrats remaining in
Iași, led by
Litman Ghelerter and
Ion Sion, also regrouped the local party sections into the
Moldavia Regional Committee. Faced with pressure from the increasingly radical working class, the government was forced to allow the Committee to function semi-legally. The
armistice between Germany and the Allies in November 1918 finally allowed the PSD to emerge from clandestine activity. On November 28, the Bucharest group, headed by
Ilie Moscovici and Cristescu, organised a provisional executive committee, including both radicals and moderates, began publishing
Socialismul as the official party journal, and succeeded, in relatively short time, in re-opening party sections in the Prahova Valley and the port towns on the
Danube. Soon afterwards, the party decided to break with what it saw as the failure of the Second International by rebranding itself as the
Socialist Party of Romania. ==Notable members==