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Alexandru Nicolschi (born Boris Grünberg, his chosen surname was often rendered as Nikolski or Nicolski; Russian: Александр Сергеевич Никольский, Alexandr Sergeyevich Nikolsky; June 2, 1915–April 16, 1992) was a Romanian communist activist, Soviet agent and officer, and Securitate chief under the Communist regime. Active until the early 1960s, he was one of the most recognizable leaders of violent political repression.

Early life

Born to a Jewish family in Chişinău, Bessarabia (part of Imperial Russia at the time), he was the son of Alexandru Grünberg, a miller. In 1932, he joined the local section of the Union of Communist Youth, a wing of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR or PCdR). By the 1930s, as associates of General Secretary Vitali Holostenco, he and Vasile Luca were elected to the internal Politburo (which was doubled by a controlling body inside the Soviet Union). In 1937, he joined the ranks of the Romanian Communist Party. He did his military service in Iaşi in 1937-39, being discharged with the rank of corporal.

In December 1940, following the onset of the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, Grünberg became a Soviet citizen, joined the NKVD, and trained as as a spy in Cernăuţi. He was sent undercover into Romania on May 26, 1941, carrying papers with the name Vasile Ştefănescu, and reporting on Romanian Army movements in preparation for Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, in which Romanian troops, under the command of Marshal Ion Antonescu, participated; see Romania during World War II). Apprehended by Romanian border guards, his case was investigated June 6-12 by SSI Lt.-Col. Emil Velciu; Nicolschi confessed he had been recruited into Soviet intelligence by NKVD Captain Andreev. After a short trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor on August 7, 1941. He was sent to prison in Ploieşti, and then Aiud, where other Soviet spies, such as Vladimir Gribici, Simion Zeiger and Afanasie Sisman, were also held.

Career

He was set free by the Red Army occupying Romania on August 28, 1944, and benefited from a general amnesty. Following that, Nicolschi was incorporated into the police force, becoming an inspector and head of the Detective Corps, while, in parallel, he rose rapidly through the ranks of the PCR. In May 1945, just after the end of World War II in Europe, he was present in Moscow, where he was entrusted with the task of transporting Ion Antonescu and his group of collaborators (Mihai Antonescu, Constantin Pantazi, Pichi Vasiliu and others, all of whom had been captured by the Soviets) from Lubyanka back to Romania. On April 9, 1946, it was he who signed the release papers when these prisoners were brought back to Romania by Soviet Lt. Col. Rodin to face trial.

Under the Petru Groza Communist-controlled government, he was assigned to the traditional secret police, Siguranţa Statului, where he and Serghei Nicolau led a Mobile Brigade, entrusted with silencing political opposition. The unit, which was to become an embryo for the Securitate, comprised an active cell of MGB envoys. At the time, Nicolschi himself rose to the rank of Colonel in the MGB. With Alexandru Drăghici, he ordered a wave of arbitrary arrests in 1946-1947, which, according to some sources, came to mark the lives of as many as 300,000 people. He also played a role in the killing of Ştefan Foriş, who, after being toppled from his position as General Secretary, had been kept in seclusion; it was Nicolschi who ordered Foriş' mother to be drowned in the Crişul Repede. In 1967, he indicated that one of his subordinates, a certain "Comrade Bîrtaş" of the Oradea section, had taken the initiative:

"Comrade Bîrtaş had received the indication to talk to her and get her to return to Oradea and admit herself into an old people's home. Details of how Comrade Bîrtaş has accomplished the mission are not known to me."

In early 1948, after the PCR forced King Mihai I to abdicate, Nicolschi escorted the latter out of the country and as far as Vienna. After the founding of the Securitate on August 30 of that year, Lieutenant General Gheorghe Pintilie became the first Director of this organization. The positions of Deputy Directors went to two Soviet officers: Major Generals Nicolschi and Vladimir Mazuru; nobody could be appointed to the Securitate's leadership without their approval. Together, they oversaw the creation of the massive Communist Romanian penal system, starting in February 1950. On the latter occasion, Nicolschi presented a series of ideological imperatives, resumed in sentences such as:

"The rust of bureaucratism has begun to gnaw at us . Our apparatus cannot be gnawed at, but this is an aspect ."

Nicolschi engineered the 1948 trials for sabotage, which implicated the industrialists Radu Xenopol and Anton Dumitru, who were accused of having destroyed their own enterprises as a means to resist nationalization. Involved in the interrogation of Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, he ensured Soviet intervention in the proceedings, and was personally responsible for the arrest of Lena Constante.

He also played a leading role in the brainwashing experiment provoked by the Communist authorities in 1949-1952 at the Piteşti prison; he encouraged Eugen Ţurcanu to carry out the task and carried out regular inspections, during which he would ignore evidence of torture. In the inquiry preceding the show trial for sabotage at the Danube-Black Sea Canal, Nicolschi led a squad of torturers that was entrusted with obtaining forced confessions from Gheorghe Crăciun and other employees.

Although an associate of Ana Pauker's "Muscovite wing", Nicolschi maintained links with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and relied on his NKVD-MGB credentials to survive political turmoil caused by the fall of Pauker, Vasile Luca, and Minister of the Interior Teohari Georgescu. He apparently rallied with Gheorghiu-Dej, and, despite the fact that he was still a Soviet citizen, he was decorated with the high distinction Steaua Republicii Populare Române. In 1953, he became a General Secretary in the Interior Ministry. At around that time, his suspicion towards Gheorghiu-Dej allegedly led him to plant microphones in the latter's office.

In 1961, after Gheorghiu-Dej began adopting anti-Soviet themes in his discourse, Nicolschi, promoted to Lieutenant General, was sidelined and forced into retirement, without being denied the luxuries reserved for the nomenklatura. He lived through the Nicolae Ceauşescu years, and died in Bucharest, two years after the Romanian Revolution, as the result of a heart attack. This happened on the very same day he was presented with a subpoena from the Prosecutor General, who had received a formal notification from the victims' families and the Association of Former Political Prisoners (Nicolschi was scheduled for hearings on April 16, 1992).

Notes

1. Bălteanu, p.46
2. Bălteanu, p.46
3. Tismăneanu, p.93
4. Munteanu
5. Bălteanu, p.47
6. Adameşteanu; Bălteanu, p.46-47; Tismăneanu, p.45, 297
7. Bălteanu, p.47
8. Bălteanu, p.47; Munteanu
9. Munteanu
10. Adameşteanu; Frunză, p.150
11. Bălteanu, p.47; Tudor & Pavelescu
12. Bălteanu, p.47
13. Tudor & Pavelescu
14. Munteanu
15. Bălteanu, p.47; Pacepa; Golpenţia
16. Bălteanu, p.47; Pacepa; Pop; Tănase
17. Pacepa
18. Bălteanu, p.47
19. Golpenţia
20. Betea, p.45; Golpenţia
21. Nicolschi, in Betea, p.45
22. Pacepa
23. The Security Police...; Adameşteanu; Bălteanu, p.46, 47; Golpenţia; Pacepa; Pop; Tismăneanu, p.297
24. The Security Police...
25. Cesereanu; Pacepa
26. Nicolschi, in Cesereanu
27. Golpenţia
28. Golpenţia
29. Golpenţia
30. Cesereanu; Cioroianu, p.317; Frunză, p.150; Golpenţia
31. Cioroianu, p.317
32. Bacu, Chapter XXI
33. Hossu-Longin
34. Frunză, p.151
35. Bălteanu, p.47; Tănase; Tismăneanu, p.43
36. Bălteanu, p.47
37. Adameşteanu; Bălteanu, p.47
38. Adameşteanu
39. Adameşteanu; Bălteanu, p.47; Tismăneanu, p.297
40. Adameşteanu
41. Bălteanu, p.47
42. Adameşteanu; Bălteanu, p.47

References

• The Security Police (Securitate) between 1948 and 1989 at The Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance
• Template:Ro icon Gabriela Adameşteanu, "Crimele neglijate ale comunismului. O sintagmă neinspirată" ("The Neglected Crimes of Communism. An Ill-Inspired Syntagm"), in Observatorul Cultural
• Dumitru Bacu, The Anti-Humans. Student Re-Education in Romanian Prisons, Soldiers of the Cross, Englewood, Colorado, 1971 (translation of Piteşti, Centru de Reeducare Studenţească, Madrid, 1963)
• Valeriu Bălteanu, "1948-—1958: Control, supraveghere, verificare, dominaţie. Agenţii NKVD şi consilierii sovietici din MAI şi Securitate" (1948-—1958: Control, Supervision, Verification, Domination. NKVD Agents and Soviet Advisers in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Securitate"), in Dosarele Istoriei, 3/1996
• Lavinia Betea, "Testamentul lui Foriş" ("Foriş' Last Will"), in Magazin Istoric, April 1997
• Template:Ro icon Ruxandra Cesereanu, "«Limba» Securităţii" ("The Securitate's «Language»"), at Memoria.ro (review of Marius Oprea, Banalitatea răului. Istoria Securităţii în documente)
• Adrian Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc ("On the Shoulders of Marx. An Incursion into the History of Romanian Communism"), Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2005
• Victor Frunză, Istoria stalinismului în România ("The History of Stalinism in Romania"), Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990
• Template:Ro icon Sanda Golpenţia, "Introducere la Ultima carte de Anton Golpenţia (Anchetatorii)" ("Introduction to Anton Golpenţia's Ultima carte (The Inquisitors)"), at Memoria.ro
• Template:Ro icon Valentin Hossu-Longin, "Procesul Canalului Morţii" ("The Trial of the Death Canal"), in Ziua, March 11, 2006
• Template:Ro icon Miruna Munteanu, "Sinistrul Nicolschi", in Ziua, June 28, 2003
• Template:Ro icon Ion Mihai Pacepa, "E timpul ca Securitatea să fie repudiată" ("It's Time for the Securitate to be Repudiated"), part IV, in Jurnalul Naţional, October 8, 2005
• Template:Ro icon Adrian Pop, "1950. Legaţia S.U.A informează: Dominaţia U.R.S.S asupra României nu poate fi slăbită" ("1950. The US Legation Informs: The USSR's Domination over Romania Cannot Be Loosened"), in Magazin Istoric
• Template:Ro icon Stelian Tănase, "Dej - omul resentimentului" ("Gheorghiu-Dej, the Man of Grudges"), in Magazin Istoric
• Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism pentru eternitate, Polirom, Iaşi, 2005 ISBN 973-681-899-3 (translation of Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003, ISBN 0-52-023747-1)
• Template:Ro icon Alina Tudor, Şerban Pavelescu, "Moscova - închisoarea Liubianka. Mareşalul Antonescu: alte interogatorii" ("Moscow - Lubyanka Prison. Marshal Antonescu: Other Interrogations"), in Magazin Istoric

• 1915 births
• 1992 deaths
• Admitted Soviet spies
• Deaths from cardiovascular disease
• Romanian communists
• Romanian Jews
• Romanian police officers
• Soviet people of World War II
• World War II spies