Social Democratic Party of Rumania

Social Democratic Party of Rumania 

(SDPR; Partidul Social-Democrat din Romania), a party founded in 1927 by C. Titel-Petrescu, I. Moscovici, and other opportunist leaders who had left the Socialist Party of Rumania in 1921.

In 1928 the SDPR concluded a preelection agreement with the bourgeois-landlord National Peasant Party; it had its own deputies in Parliament and representatives in the Senate. The rightist Social Democratic leaders opposed the SDPR’s participation, together with the Communist Party of Rumania (CPR), in the struggle to form an antifascist front. In 1932 the unitary socialists, a group headed by L. Ghelerter, seceded from the SDPR, and in 1933 a group headed by C. Popovici broke away. In 1938 the SDPR, along with other political parties, was banned by the government.

During World War II, many local organizations of the SDPR, which was operating illegally, supported the CPR; in 1943 many joined the Patriotic Anti-Hitlerite Front. In April 1944 several SDPR figures, including T. Iordack and L. Radaceanu, joined with the CPR in the formation of the United Workers’ Front.

In March 1946, at an extraordinary congress of the SDPR, Titel-Petrescu, I. Jumanca, and other rightist leaders who opposed unification with the CPR were expelled from the party. In October 1947 an SDPR congress accepted the CPR’s offer of merger on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism. In February 1948, with the merger, the Rumanian Workers’ Party came into existence.

E. D. KARPESHCHENKO