page_title: Iuliu Maniu
section_title: Anticommunism
hierarchical_section_title: Iuliu Maniu / Anticommunism
caption_attribution_description: English: Iuliu Maniu death certificate, by the communist government, 1953
context_page_description: Iuliu Maniu was a Romanian politician. A leader of the National Party of Transylvania and Banat before and after World War I, he served as Prime Minister of Romania for three terms during 1928–1933, and, with Ion Mihalache, co-founded the National Peasants' Party.
context_section_description: Subsequently, Maniu was a prominent supporter of the Western Allies and one of the main adversaries of growing Soviet influence in Romania.  His party became the predilect target of PCR hostility. PNȚ supporters and Communists engaged in several street fights in February 1945.
  The PNȚ finished a distant second in the November 1946 general election with 33 seats, well behind the Communist-dominated Bloc of Democratic Parties.  After the fall of Communism, some authors went as far as to claim that the PNȚ had actually won the election but was denied victory because of widespread electoral fraud on the part of the pro-Communist Petru Groza government. Later, historian Petre Ţurlea reviewed a confidential Communist Party report about the election and concluded that had the election been conducted honestly, the PNȚ and the other opposition parties could have won enough votes between them to form a coalition government but far less than the 80 percent support long claimed by opposition supporters.
  After 1946, the PNȚ was sidelined, with the PCR ensuring the collaboration of several former party members, such as Nicolae L. Lupu and Anton Alexandrescu.
  In a telegram to the State Department, the US representative in Romania, Burton Berry, wrote:
  "The Department well knows that Maniu has stood out boldly as a champion of pro-Allied action and sentiment in Rumania even during the dark days of the Antonescu dictatorship. He has an enormous political following in the country and I believe the respect in which all Rumanians hold him eclipses that held for any other Rumanian. Because of what he has been and what he is it seems important that he be preserved from slipping into sharing the general conviction that the dissolution of the Rumanian state is now in progress."
  The party was outlawed in July 1947. That month, Ion Mihalache attempted to flee the country in an airplane, which landed at Tămădău, allegedly to establish a government-in-exile (see Tămădău Affair). That was judged as an act of treason, and both Maniu and Mihalache faced a kangaroo court that sentenced them to life imprisonment at hard labour; given their advanced age, that amounted to a death sentence. The show trial, signaling the suppression of opposition groups, was a significant step towards the establishment of an undisguised Communist regime in Romania.
caption: Maniu death certificate, 1957
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