By 1949, the Securitate secret police was clamping down on some less loyal PSȚ members. Mihadaș had established contacts with the anticommunist maquis and Western countries. He was arrested and tortured, being forced to invent a conspiracy that dragged into it various members of the political and literary underworld. Ralea himself was placed under Securitate surveillance, once he began expressing his mistrust of the Communist Party. His Securitate file lists him as an "opportunistic element, a danger to our regime." Ghelmegeanu and Vianu were also marginalized, while Suchianu was arrested and imprisoned. Throughout the late 1950s and early '60s, Ralea maintained cordial relations with the communist leader, Gheorghiu-Dej, and backed the regime's gradual adoption of nationalist principles. He died in 1964, a member of the Romanian Council of State.