page_title: National Peasants' Party
section_title: Against Groza
hierarchical_section_title: National Peasants' Party / History / Against Groza
caption_attribution_description: English: Cartoon from a propaganda leaflet of the Romanian Communist Party, ridiculing Iuliu Maniu of the National Peasants' Party as an effete landowner with no contact with the peasant base (also detailed with an accompanying poem, not included here); circulated ahead of the November 1946 election.
context_page_description: The National Peasants' Party was an agrarian political party in the Kingdom of Romania. It was formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party, a conservative-regionalist group centered on Transylvania, and the Peasants' Party, which had coalesced the left-leaning agrarian movement in the Old Kingdom and Bessarabia. The definitive PNR–PȚ merger came after a decade-long rapprochement, producing a credible contender to the dominant National Liberal Party. National Peasantists agreed on the concept of a "peasant state", which defended smallholding against state capitalism or state socialism, proposing voluntary cooperative farming as the basis for economic policy. Peasants were seen as the first defense of Romanian nationalism and of the country's monarchic system, sometimes within a system of social corporatism. Regionally, the party expressed sympathy for Balkan federalism and rallied with the International Agrarian Bureau; internally, it championed administrative decentralization and respect for minority rights, as well as, briefly, republicanism. It remained factionalized on mainly ideological grounds, leading to a series of defections.
context_section_description: Rădescu was toppled following a massacre of communist-and-allied protesters, later revealed as a false flag operation carried out by PCdR militias. In early March 1945, the FND took over in government, with Petru Groza, of the Ploughmen's Front, as Prime Minister. The PNȚ remained in the opposition, viewing the takeover as a coup. Although it sent representatives when Groza celebrated the full recovery and pacification of Northern Transylvania, these were purposefully selected from among the party youth. Groza engineered a takeover of all local administration, only failing to do so in six counties. These were progressively made to submit by selective arrests among the opposition activists and by the institution of political censorship, resulting in the closure of other PNȚ newspapers. Emil Hațieganu reported that 40 party newspapers had been shut down since 1944; Dreptatea itself was banned in March, and could only briefly reemerge in January 1946. A standoff between the King and Groza was saluted by the National Peasantists, who participated in a massive monarchist rally in November 1945. Many, including Coposu, were arrested during the clampdown.
  During May 1945, while organizing Antonescu's trial by a Romanian People's Tribunal (with which it hoped to discredit Maniu as a Nazi collaborator), the government also ordered massive arrests among its cadres. A large number of PNȚ regional activists, as well as PNȚ youth who had participated in the November rally, were detained at camps in Caracal and Slobozia, but ultimately released in December 1945. While Maniu dissociated himself from the movement, Groza was supported by the communists' "popular assemblies", which openly called for the PNȚ and PNL to be outlawed and repressed. Churchill's electoral defeat in July was read as an additional bad omen by Maniu, who noted that Labour had no sympathy for Romanian anti-communists. He asked Rațiu not to return from England, but continue to serve as his lobbyist.
  Other PNȚ men and women were by then involved in the establishment of an armed anti-communist resistance. Founded by three Ardealul volunteers in 1944, the group Haiducii lui Avram Iancu asked Maniu for assistance. It received no such endorsement, although communist prosecutors would claim that it and all other such units were financed by the party leadership. General Aurel Aldea, who spoke for Haiducii, had credentials as an adversary of the Iron Guard, but also viewed the PNȚ as inefficient and unpatriotic. In early 1945, some PNȚ members had affiliated with the National Resistance Movement, operated by a dissident Iron Guard member, George Manu. Its democratic and fascist wings remained generally hostile to one another. Maniu was still "reluctant to collaborate" with various resistance groups, "since many manifested anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalist sentiments." From April 1946, PNȚ men networked in Suceava County between the Sumanele Negre partisans and an American envoy, Ira Hamilton. This and various other resistance units took in members of the Peasant Guards. In June, the US Central Intelligence Group worked with the PNȚ to set up a sleeper network, tasked with opening up a second front in case of a Soviet attack on Turkey. The local organization was infiltrated by the Soviets and soon after repressed. Dreptatea still published regular praise of the Soviet Union, but did so on the advice of American envoys, and hoping to ensure the party's survival under occupation.
  During May 1946, Groza established a new BPD from FND affiliates and other parties, including Alexandrescu's. Later that year, the Border Police of Iași County reported that the local PNȚ branch was experiencing mass desertions, with Iorgu Iordan and Andrei Oțetea reemerging as communists. Maniu's grip on the party was also loosened from January 1946, when Lupu led another schism. His eponymous Democratic Peasants' Party–Lupu (PȚD-L) condemned Maniu as an enemy of the people, but did not support Groza. As the PSDR split into anti- and pro-BPD parties, Lupu ensured contacts between the former group an
caption: Romanian Communist Party leaflet, published ahead of the November 1946 election: Maniu as an effete gentleman, who has lost contact with the peasants
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