Early years Born in
Bârlad, Cocea claimed lineage from the lesser
boyar aristocracy of
Moldavia. His father, Dumitru Cocea, was a
Romanian Land Forces officer, who would reach the rank of General. The Coceas descended from an 18th-century
Albanian Moldavian Serdar Gheorghe Cocea, but claimed lineage from a 16th-century soldier in the armies of
Michael the Brave. Although he made his name as a writer and journalist, his most ardent wish was to become an actor. During the late 1890s, young Cocea was in
Bucharest, attending the
Saint Sava National College, becoming close friends with two other students and future writers: one was Galaction, the other was
Vasile Demetrius. Another Saint Sava student,
Ion G. Duca (the
Prime Minister of Romania in 1933), was occasionally present among them, but political differences drew them apart with time. Despite oral tradition, Arghezi, who joined the Cocea group around the same time, may not have been a Saint Sava student at all: according to literary historian C. Popescu-Cadem, there is no record of him ever attending that institution. Cocea's own education was vague. He flunked out after the 3rd and 7th grades, was transferred to
Ploiești, then returned to Saint Sava only to pass reexamination. According to literary historian
Tudor Vianu, the four youths, including the "restless, daring and ingenious" Cocea, were mounting an independent protest against "
bourgeois" values. They literary taste favored
Symbolism,
Parnassianism and
literary naturalism, which they saw as modern shields against traditionalist culture. they soon joined efforts with the
Romanian Symbolist movement. All members of the group visited with the Symbolist doyen
Alexandru Macedonski, As his personal note, Cocea rebelled against paternal and institutional authority. Under the pen name
Nely, he published the defiantly erotic novel
Poet-Poetă (1898, with a preface by Galaction), that resulted in his near-definitive expulsion from public high school. Around the same time, Galaction married Cocea's cousin Zoe Marcou, a laicized
Romanian Orthodox nun; she would inspire him to become an Orthodox priest. was in France, undergoing specialization at the
University of Paris. At this stage in life, he was probably acquainted with the French roots of Romanian
radical liberalism, which infused his left-wing outlook. A sympathizer of the
Dreyfusards, he was also becoming interested in the various projects to transform the
Kingdom of Romania into a republic, in marked contrast to his father's ardent
monarchism. The family's French connections were preserved by the writer's siblings. Cocea's sister
Alice, the future comedian, was born in
Sinaia, where Dumitru Cocea was stationed in 1899, and also settled in France at a later date. but was later virtually inactive as a lawyer. Florica was born from Mille's first marriage, which ended in divorce, and had a sister, Margareta, married into the Messerschmitt family of German industrialists. Through Mille, Cocea became related to another Moldavian boyar family, the Tăutus. Cocea, with Arghezi, Demetrius and Galaction, stood out for marrying this political ideal with the artistic credo of Symbolism. This unusual vision was preserved in the magazine the three published together during 1904,
Linia Dreaptă ("The Straight Line"). In 1905, Arghezi left for Switzerland and entrusted Cocea with his collection of rare books. Cocea is said to have lost it, an event which marked the first of several disagreements between them. With the
March 1907 peasant uprising, N. D. Cocea's profile in political journalism was boosted. He is the probable source of a much circulated canard, taken up by
Adevărul, according to which Romanian authorities had killed 11,000 or more peasant insurgents. Cocea himself eventually settled for a death toll of 12,000, claiming that, "had the peasants' bodies been lined up and down on
Calea Victoriei",
Romanian King Carol I of Hohenzollern could have walked over to
Dealul Mitropoliei "on a soft rug of peasant flesh". His regional daily,
Dezrobirea ("The Emancipation"), was probably paid for by a local banker, Alphonse (or Alfons) Nachtigal. Cocea was eventually tried as an instigator, and sentenced to a term in prison. Upon his release, Cocea moved back to Bucharest, where he became a socialist orator, a
România Muncitoare editor, and a correspondent of the workers' journal
Viitorul Social. It was there that Russian socialist opinion leader
Vladimir Lenin publicized a thesis according to which the Romanian revolt and the
Russian Revolution of 1905 were similar, in both character and impact. The young activist was blending his socialism with a critic's interest in
modern art and
experimental literature. Literary historian
Paul Cernat argues that, like Symbolist poet
N. Davidescu, Cocea spent the 1900–1920 period disseminating
modernist literature "on all fronts". He made his name as an art critic by 1908, when, like Arghezi, he defended the Romanian
post-Impressionist art club, whose members were being marginalized by the
Tinerimea Artistică society; he also saluted
Iosif Iser's international post-Impressionist exhibit. Within a series of articles in
Pagini Libere journal, Cocea also explained his divorce with Symbolism and
Art Nouveau, concluding that they represented "the cosmopolitan class of sloth and of universal
parasitism". The following year, Cocea was assigned the art column of
Noua Revistă Română, an eclectic journal put out by Romanian thinker
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru. While there, he militated in favor of modernized art, urging artists to destroy "antiquated artistic formulas" and to subvert "the laws of nature".
Viața Socială According to Cocea's future friend and foe
Pamfil Șeicaru, 1910 was the time year Cocea, with
Christian Rakovsky,
Ecaterina Arbore,
I. C. Frimu and
Ilie Moscovici, was in the "chief of staff" of the newly created
Social Democratic Party of Romania. Cocea was additionally a member of the party's Social Studies Circle, furnishing its library and organizing its Kalinderu Church offices. In February 1910, Cocea and Arghezi set up a new periodical,
Viața Socială. The magazine, which received contributions from Dobrogeanu-Gherea, militated for
universal suffrage,
social equality and
land reform, while informing readers about world socialism. It enlisted collaborations from a number of
anti-establishment journalists, from
agrarian militant
Vasile Kogălniceanu and socialist physician
Tatiana Grigorovici to writers
Ion Minulescu,
Lucia Demetrius or
Constantin Graur, and republished contributions from some of Europe's known social critics:
Eduard Bernstein,
Rinaldo Rigola,
Vsevolod Garshin,
Leo Tolstoy,
Jean Jaurès,
Emile Vandervelde,
Hubert Lagardelle Other contributors were Arbore, Davidescu, V. Demetrius,
Traian Demetrescu,
Sofia Nădejde,
Vasile Savel and
Avram Steuerman-Rodion. Culturally, this moment saw Cocea and his friends coordinating the transition from Symbolism to the early 20th-century avant-garde. This move was also accelerated by art critic
Theodor Cornel, who was for while a staff writer for Cocea's publication. In his first
Viața Socială editorial, Cocea himself deemed Arghezi "the most revolutionary poet" of the period. However, his unilateral decision to publish Arghezi's "Evening Prayer", as an example of poetic rebellion, greatly enraged the expatriated author. They resumed their friendship only after Arghezi returned from his Swiss sojourn, and Cocea, with Galaction,
Dumitru Karnabatt and various others, frequented the salon formed in Arghezi's Bucharest home. Cocea was also witness when Arghezi wedded his long-term lover, Constanța Zissu (December 1912); the register describes him as "a journalist by profession, living at Polonă Street, 1." Through Galaction's interventions,
Viața Socială maintained links with the more mainstream and home-grown current on Romania's leftist scene,
Poporanism, as well as with the post-socialist magazine of Iași,
Viața Românească. It also published several poems by the young Poporanist
George Topîrceanu. Also in Iași, the
Viața Socială circle acquired a number of young disciples, involved in editing
Fronda and
Absolutio magazines:
Isac Ludo,
Eugen Relgis etc. Still, traditionalist critic
Ilarie Chendi notes,
Viața Socială as a whole failed, because the Symbolist and post-Symbolist contributors were not ardent socialists, and because no "notable poets or prose writers" could be found among the socialists. The same was observed in 1913 by critic Gheorghe Savul, who suggested that
Viața Socială took on Symbolists such as Davidescu for opportunistic reasons, since they also had an anti-bourgeois axe to grind, but that there was little else to unite its contributors. Cocea was by then frequenting the
anarchist boyar
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, an art patron, cultural innovator and personal friend of Arghezi. In 1911, he visited Italy together with Lagardelle, the French
Syndicalist militant, and personally met with liberal theorists
Benedetto Croce and
Guglielmo Ferrero, as well as with Syndicalist
Arturo Labriola and fellow journalist
Giuseppe Prezzolini.
Rampa and Facla (first edition) Back in Romania, Cocea launched
Rampa, a theatrical review originally published as a daily. His partner in this venture was a veteran of theatrical life,
Alexandru Davila. Cocea also set up the independent socialist newspaper
Facla. The latter, identified as Romania's first socialist and satirical magazine by Arghezi himself, was soon joined by the 18-year-old poet
Ion Vinea, as literary columnist and campaigner for post-Symbolist literature, with painters Iser and
Camil Ressu as illustrators. The other noted contributors to Cocea's publications were
Toma Dragu,
Saniel Grossman,
Camil Petrescu and
avant-garde critic
Poldi Chapier, whose 1912 article for
Rampa chronicled the international success of
Futurism. Also featured were poems and translations by the post-Symbolist
H. Bonciu. Cocea's own contributions include the chronicle of a play by
Henry Bataille and a salute to the "invincible spirit" of the
Portuguese republican revolution. Alongside renewed attacks on Romania's cultural traditionalism, Cocea and Arghezi initiated a lengthy campaign in favor of universal suffrage. Their articles and headlines were often
sensationalist and provoking, again focusing on Carol I, Romania's aging King. They often referred to the monarch as
Ploșnița ("The Tick"),
Gheșeftarul ("The Shop-Keeper") or
Neamțul ("The Kraut").
Facla, with media support from
Adevărul and the Romanian anarchist milieus, was taunting the authorities by staging its own mock trial for
lèse majesté. The ardent
antimilitarism of Cocea's
Facla articles, in particular his mockery of General
Grigore C. Crăiniceanu and his sons, had similar results: the journalist was handed a preemptive and dishonorable
military discharge. Culturally,
Facla was a leading adversary of traditionalist literature and of the
nationalist periodicals which supported it. Its attack was concentrated on
Drum Drept and
Convorbiri Critice magazines (the focus of Vinea's articles) and on
antisemitic historian
Nicolae Iorga, who had earlier dismissed
Facla as a venue for
Jewish Romanian interests.
Facla also inaugurated the conflict between Cocea and the
Viața Românească Poporanists. As a socialist, Cocea attacked the Poporanists for supporting artistic nationalism, and then for courting the mainstream
National Liberal Party. Cocea unsuccessfully presented himself as a Social Democratic candidate in the
elections of 1912, the first ones in Romania to be contested by an independent socialist party. However, he soon broke off from the party, and came to be considered a representative of the "bourgeois press" by his former socialist colleagues. One of them,
Constantin Titel Petrescu, informs that Cocea "could not live by the party discipline".
World War I, October Revolution and Chemarea At an early stage in
World War I, public opinion in neutral Romania was divided between the
Entente Powers and the
Central Powers, both of which held Romanian
irredenta. In this context, the
Francophile Cocea manifested himself as an outspoken partisan of Romania's alliance with the Entente. There followed a split between Cocea and his erstwhile partners Arghezi, Galaction and Bogdan-Pitești. The latter three were committed
Germanophiles who proceeded to publish their own review,
Cronica.
Chemarea, a mainly political magazine published by Ion Vinea in 1915, stood between the two groups, but was probably managed by Cocea, who allegedly came up with its name (lit. "the calling"). Cocea's friendship with Arghezi had again soured to the point of mutual hatred. In
Facla, Cocea made thinly veiled comments about the poet's mother, an unmarried woman, and suggested that the
Cronica staff "still lives on the morsels left over from Bogdan-Pitești's feasts". When the
1916–17 Campaign turned into a defensive war, N. D. Cocea joined the government and Land Forces on their retreat to
Western Moldavia. Reunited with Vinea, he helped publish a daily named
Deșteptarea ("The Awakening"), flirting with the Germanophiles and
Zimmerwald neutralists, hotly criticizing the Ententist and National Liberal establishment. However, he remained an outspoken critic of those public figures whom he perceived as German hirelings, including politician
Alexandru Marghiloman and
Arena newspaperman
Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo. Both of them were also affiliated with a wing of the
Romanian Freemasonry. A while after, Cocea made his way in the
Russian Republic, Romania's Entente ally, and settled in
Petrograd. His activities there included putting out the
French-language magazine, ''L'Entente'' ("The Entente"), which was financed by his old rivals, the Romanian National Liberals. As a resident of
Hotel Astoria, he witnessed first-hand the
October Revolution, and became a passionate supporter of the
Bolshevik cause. He later claimed to have been present, on Revolution day, in the
Petrograd Soviet hall, hearing the victorious speech of Bolshevik leader
Vladimir Lenin, and to have later attended the second
All-Russian Congress of Soviets. As a representative of the International Association for Information of the Labor Press of America, France, and
Great Britain, Cocea exchanged notes with Lenin. He interviewed Lenin about the Bolsheviks' goals, assuring him that his replies would be published verbatim. By the end of the year, Cocea had returned to Moldavia. Under his direction (December 1917 to February 1918),
Deșteptarea became a new edition of
Chemarea. It was often issued with large blank spaces, showing interventions by military censors. After advertising its "radical socialist" agenda,
Chemarea was promptly shut down by the
Alexandru Averescu cabinet. For this and other reasons, Cocea would later refer to Averescu as the organizer of "
White Terror" in Romania. Cocea was a strong critic of Romania's
separate armistice with Germany, In August 1918, he launched
Depeșa ("The Dispatch"), later published as a third edition of
Chemarea. A new presence on these two periodicals was writer
Jacques G. Costin, who produced several political pieces (including a renewed denunciation of Hefter-Hidalgo) and later the musical chronicle. Its other staff writers were young men who later built career in the political press, both left- and right-wing: Vinea,
Demostene Botez,
Alexandru Busuioceanu,
Cezar Petrescu,
Pamfil Șeicaru Chemarea survived until November 1, 1919—when its lampoon of Romanian King
Ferdinand I prompted the intervention of military censors. These publications were attempts to revive and radicalize the socialist literary press, that had virtually succumbed in Romania after the demise of
Faclas first edition. A
Marxist literary critic,
Ovid Crohmălniceanu, proposes that Cocea's renewed offensive missed the mark, lacking "a clear enough vision".
Parliamentary mandate Cocea was elected to the
Lower Chamber during the race of November 1919 (reelected during the
race of May 1920). He represented a non-partisan
electoral list for Bucharest (the Citizen's List), whose other two candidates, physician
Nicolae L. Lupu and lawyer
Constantin Costa-Foru, also won seats. Although officially an independent, he rallied with the PS in the chamber minority group led by
Gheorghe Cristescu and
Ilie Moscovici. Cocea's mandate was immediately contested by his National Liberal adversaries. They sought to invalidate his candidature, citing a law which prevented those with a military discharge from running in elections. The National Liberal motion was however defeated when Cocea, who presented himself as a political victim, earned unexpected support from the
Romanian National Party and the
Democratic Nationalist Party. In opposition to the
People's Party and the
anti-communist consensus, Cocea spoke positively in
Parliament about
Soviet Russia, arguing that the Bolshevik foreign policy had saved the whole of civilization, and citing favorable statements made by the returning war prisoners. His theory was that the
Comintern was a legitimate successor of the
First International. The notion was contested by another socialist deputy, Dragu—early signs of a schism between the Cominternist socialist-communists and those who followed the
Vienna International. In one of his addresses to the Chamber (July 28, 1920), Cocea presented a vision of socialism that was neither "unilateral" nor "narrow", but suited to the needs of "all peoples and all times", and quoted from
The Internationale. Cocea's rhetoric, equating the October Revolution with the
birth of Christ and glorifying the
Slavic soul, was ridiculed from the benches as "Russian mysticism". For a while, Cocea's sympathy turned toward the rising
Peasants' Party. This Poporanist group, which reacted against National Liberal politics and sought peace with the socialists and the Soviets, was called "civilized and
Westernized" by the socialist journalist. Nevertheless, Cocea was becoming disappointed by the
parliamentary system of
Greater Romania. He argued that Parliament itself should be replaced with a
technocratic body, elected by a radical form of
universal suffrage, and clamored his belief that "in short while, [...] Romania will be socialist." There followed the
October 1920 general strike, that was condoned and supported by Cocea and the writers at
Chemarea. During December, following a
state of siege, Cocea and Lupu were behind parliamentary efforts to investigate the alleged murder of socialist activist
Herșcu Aroneanu by People's Party authorities. When, in early 1921, Cristescu and the other socialist-communists set up the
Romanian Communist Party (PCR), Cocea became an outside sympathizer of their cause, protesting against their imprisonment and prosecution in the
Dealul Spirii Trial. In May and June of that year, when chamber was assessing the case of Moscovici's seat, left vacant by his sentencing after the strike, Cocea asked for it to be filled by
Constantin Popovici; Popovici, next on the electoral list, was himself under arrest. His speech about "government terror" ended in a heated dispute with People's Party deputies Berlescu (whom Cocea called a descendant of
Romani slaves) and Alexandru Oteteleșeanu. Shortly before the
1921 election, Cocea labeled
Conservative-Democratic leader
Take Ionescu, the
Prime Minister-designate, as a pawn of King Ferdinand and his "
camarilla". Early in 1922, Cocea also joined
Dem. I. Dobrescu and other lawyers on the Dealul Spirii Trial defense team.
Facla revival and 1923 trial of March 24, 1923, published with the warning Cum sunt decapitați regii cari se împotrivesc voinței poporului...'' ("How they decapitate kings who oppose the people's wishes...") alongside the
execution of Louis XVI In 1920,
Chemarea came to its end, and Cocea began putting out another edition of
Facla weekly. According to political scientist
Stelian Tănase, this enterprise was secretly financed by Soviet Russia as external
agitprop: notes kept by
Siguranța Statului intelligence agency suggest that Cocea was a regular guest at the
Russian mission in Romania. Cocea was an occasional contributor to this venue, but was separated from its
avant-garde staff writers, having a less rebellious writing style and a more structured political vision. In exchange, Vinea was an occasional contributor to
Facla, whenever
Contimporanul met financial difficulties; he was also the editorial director from 1925 to 1926 (the year when
Facla again closed down). Vinea's own political articles were noted for their critique of National Liberal policies, portraying liberal Romania as a
Brătianu family dictatorship and campaigning in favor of the socialist groups. Around 1924, the
Facla group was also joined by "Red Prince"
Scarlat Callimachi, a modernist promoter and communist militant, and by the
Zionist opinion maker
A. A. Luca. Cocea was at the time the animator of cultural debates at
Terasa Oteteleșanu, where he introduced the young novelist and journalist
I. Peltz. The early 1920s also witnessed N. D. Cocea's involvement in various other civic and cultural campaigns. He became, in 1922, a member of the Romanian
Friends of Nature, a socialist-inspired
environmental organization, and, the following year, joined Dem I. Dobrescu in creating the League for Human Rights. He was among the regular guests at
International Red Aid "literary tea parties", described by historian
Adrian Cioroianu as "one of those schemes the communists employed in collecting money for their comrades in prison". Cocea compensated by giving moral support to the Jewish modernist
Vilna Troupe, which relocated to Bucharest in 1924. Also that year Cocea published a new book,
Ignoranță ("Ignorance"). After the adoption by a National Liberal legislature of Romania's
1923 Constitution, Cocea joined up with the angrier ranks of political opposition. He soon publicized a claim that King Ferdinand and his favorite minister, Brătianu, had together given legal foundations to a
plutocracy. He was taken to court and lost, being sentenced for
lèse majesté. Through the voice of Vinea,
Contimporanul also protested the sentencing, claiming that Cocea was a persecuted man, his career "a spectacle of modern dramatism". the nationalist review
Țara Noastră openly celebrated Cocea's arrest. An unsigned note in that paper announced that Cocea had been imprisoned "for the least of his crimes", and called to mind that Cocea had been lampooning its editor,
Octavian Goga. The antisemitic publicist
Alexandru Hodoș designated Cocea's supporters at
Adevărul and
Cuvântul Liber with the title of "
Shabbos goyim", describing Cocea as a habitual prankster, a renegade of the socialist cause, and a dishonorable man. Cocea served his sentence of one year and a half at
Craiova penitentiary, and paid the 10,000
lei fine. His modernist supporters did not follow his lead. By 1929, Vinea and
Contimporanul were toning down their own socialist agenda, cooperating instead with the moderate
National Peasants' Party, and even drawing suspicion from the left that they had become sympathetic to
fascism. Generally a critic of the National Peasantists, Instead, he made his return to fiction. In 1931, his novel
Vinul de viață lungă ("The Wine of a Long Life") was released under contract with
Editura Cultura Națională. Cocea's erotic series includes:
Fecior de slugă ("The Son of the Servant"), published in 1933 by Cultura Națională;
Pentr-un petec de negreață ("Over a Black Patch", also known as
Andrei Vaia), 1934,
Alcaly Publishers; and
Nea Nae ("Uncle Nae"), 1935, Alcaly. In parallel, Cocea was becoming involved in a publicized controversy with his wartime colleague
Pamfil Șeicaru. As commentators have since noted, the two journalists were equally vulgar, but Șeicaru had been enlisted by the nationalists and the traditionalists. In 1934, Cocea joined a group known as
Amicii URSS, formed on the basis of a PCR initiative and formally seeking to normalize Romania's relations with the
Soviet Union. In November of that year,
Siguranța Statului was reporting that Cocea and Callimachi, together with
Petre Constantinescu-Iași, were going to establish in Bucharest a "far left platform" with a "pronounced
Semitic tendency"; known as
Ideea Socială ("The Social Idea"), it was supposedly part of the
Adevărul-
Dimineața network. The period also brought Cocea's brief and uneventful marriage with Lila Stănescu. She was in reality the lover of PCR activist
Ion Gheorghe Maurer, whom the journalist continued to view as his friend. It had published only two issues. In one of its internal memos,
Siguranța Statului reviewed the first of these as inoffensively "academic", the second as "agitatorial". and
Paul Păun. They were joined by communist polemicists
Ghiță Ionescu and
Belu Zilber. According to cultural historian
Zigu Ornea, such pronouncements, soon taken up by the entire communist press, were in reality a form of left-wing
totalitarianism, and therefore equivalent to the internal logic of fascism.
Reporter magazine and tensions with the PCR Cocea was reputedly pondering the relaunch of
Chemarea as a communist newspaper, supposedly with
Ștefan Foriș, the ex-convict head of PCR Agitprop, as its manager, and Paraschivescu, Voicu, as well as other
Communist Youth activists, as co-editors. Cocea was again mandated by the PCR to lead
Reporter weekly, beginning with its November 1937 issue. The periodical, already in existence for five years, was making efforts to reach the apolitical public. In an editorial for
Reporter, Cocea made comments similar to the
Era Nouă program, with a more pronounced satirical tone and allusions to fascism: "however massive the stupidity of dictatorial rules, man's intelligence, honesty in convictions [and] the fervor of the masses will in the end topple them. [...] The greedy
satraps, the leeward adventurers have come to tumble down, one on top of the other."
Reporters agenda was generically anti-fascist: campaigning for the
Republican side in the
Spanish Civil War, it lampooned
Benito Mussolini and
Adolf Hitler, and repeatedly attacked the
Iron Guard or other Romanian fascist groups. Its political panelists included, alongside Voicu, Paraschivescu and Călugăru, the future communist historian
Ion Popescu-Puțuri, reporter
Aurel Baranga, and anti-fascist poet
Gherasim Luca. Other members of the
Reporter circle, whose contacts with Cocea were closely investigated by the authorities, included a diverse gathering of PCR figures: Foriș, Trost, Marxist sociologist
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, unionist
Ilie Pintilie Reporter also published the militant poems of
Demostene Botez,
Liviu Deleanu and
Al. Șahighian, and samples of international left-leaning literature (
Ilya Ehrenburg,
André Malraux,
Nikolai Ostrovsky). The maverick dramatist
Mihail Sebastian was, for a while,
Reporters literary chronicler. Only two months after Cocea took over,
Reporter was banned by state censorship, suspected of "communist tendencies" and of publishing "alarmist articles."
World War II A 1939 entry in Cocea's own diary admits that the "unexpected"
Non-Aggression Treaty between the Soviets and
Nazi Germany was the source of "doubting" and "bitterness" among left-wing Romanians, but scolds his old friend
Nicolae L. Lupu for having then lost faith in socialism. At times, he was openly critical of
Joseph Stalin and his
personality cult, writing about the "sickening smoke of official Soviet incense", and joking about the various feats attributed to Stalin. In contrast to his earlier political stances, Cocea was, by 1938, a member of the National Liberal Party, probably because a new wave of repression had led the PCR to implode. He was registered with the National Liberals until after Carol II's
National Renaissance Front dictatorship pushed them into semi-clandestinity, and still enjoyed a privileged relationship with them during
World War II. The fascist
National Legionary regime continued to keep track on Cocea's movements during 1940, alarmed by rumors that he had been operating a clandestine
printing press, but was unable to determine whether he was still a communist. From 1941, the Nazi-aligned regime of
Conducător Ion Antonescu ordered Romania's participation in the
war against the Soviet Union. Cocea was active in the informal opposition to Antonescu, approaching his old friends in the mainstream political parties. As early as January 1942, Cocea met with the National Peasantist leadership, probing its attitude toward the Soviet Union and the Romanian communists. Like them, Cocea was positively impressed that the PCR was turning into a "patriotic" party and going back on its pro-German stance. He personally proposed for some 50 "valuable writers", from
Maria Banuș and
Ury Benador to
Radu Tudoran and
Gheorghe Zane, including many of his left-wing friends, to be admitted into the Society (only 20 of them were eventually received). The Union was originally presided by a Committee comprising Cocea, Callimachi,
Nicolae Carandino,
Miron Constantinescu,
George Ivașcu,
Eugen Jebeleanu,
Octav Livezeanu,
George Macovescu,
Nicolae Moraru,
Ion Pas,
Grigore Preoteasa,
Tudor Teodorescu-Braniște,
Alfons Vogel and several others. In May 1945, Cocea represented the Writers' Society at the funeral of his
Reporter colleague
Mihail Sebastian, who had been killed in a road accident. The
Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union (ARLUS), which offered a good reception to
Soviet occupation forces, counted N. D. and Dina Cocea among its earliest members (although they were probably not among its founders); in December 1944, father and daughter were co-opted on the ARLUS Leadership Committee. The ARLUS Press Section, headed by Teodorescu-Braniște, had Cocea as one of its first vice presidents, serving alongside Ion Pas. According to Tănase, Cocea "offered himself to the Soviet occupier, with the same
amoralism and cynicism that have been following him through life." It fostered a new generation of journalists and activists, among them
Vera Călin,
B. Elvin,
George Mărgărit and
Marius Mircu. Other
Victoria contributors, including Iosifescu,
Constantin Balmuș, the avant-garde writers
Radu Boureanu and
Geo Dumitrescu, wrote articles which condemned the various traditional seats of learning and the
Romanian Academy, as "
reactionary", while naming the senior far right supporters in culture (from
Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești and
D. Caracostea to
P. P. Panaitescu and
Ion Petrovici). In September 1947, a few months before the
Romanian communist regime officially took over, Cocea was reelected to the Writers' Society Leadership Committee. On January 9, 1948, Cocea was made vice president of the reformed Writers' Society (later
Writers' Union of Romania), alongside Galaction,
Gábor Gaál and
Al. Șahighian (
Zaharia Stancu was the president,
Ion Călugăru the general secretary). at his home in Sighișoara, shortly after a spiritual crisis had brought him back into the
Romanian Orthodox Church. ==Personal life and family==