Some of the PND members were targeted by repression following the establishment of a Romanian people's republic in late 1947. Gheorghe Cotenescu became an active supporter of the anticommunist resistance, and was imprisoned by the regime after 1949. Topa was also arrested, in May 1951, part of a group charged (spuriously) with "spying for the Vatican". He was dispatched to the "labor colony" of Peninsula, on the Danube–Black Sea Canal, serving as its prison doctor. Topa died in captivity in 1957, as did his one-time party colleague Tașcă. Ionescu-Sisești was stripped of his position in the Romanian Academy in 1948, but allowed back in in 1955.