Emil Calmanovici (March 1896 – March 12, 1956) was a Romanian engineer, businessman, and communist militant. Known for the financial support he gave to the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) during the late 1930s and early 1940s, he became a political prisoner of the Communist regime after being implicated in the show trial of his collaborator Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu. Calmanovici died in mysterious circumstances in Aiud Prison, while on recovery from a hunger strike.
Biography
Early life and financial success
Born to a Jewish family in Piatra Neamț, he was the son of Mendel and his wife Ana, who ran a business in the town. A graduate of the University of Munich and the University of Berlin, where he was confronted with the establishment of the Nazi regime and became an avid reader of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, he also amassed a fortune in his youth, owing to his real estate investments. Calmanovici decided to dedicate his wealth to the PCR cause, at a time when the party was outlawed.
By the end of World War II, when they were nationalized, his properties included two construction enterprises, additional shares in a logging company centered in his native town, seven apartments, and over 18,000 m2 in Bucharest real estate.
Party financier
According to Calmanovici's statements, he had contributed massive sums to various PCR enterprises between 1937 (the year when he joined the group) and 1944, being responsible for the purchase of a printing press, the renovation of the Central Committee seat in Bucharest, a clandestine radio station, and a kindergarten for children of party members. He estimated that his investments totaled 30 million lei in 1942 currency, which he argued was over 75% of his total income. Calmanovici took pride in noting that this contribution was by far the highest of all those recorded (including that of Jacques Berman). In addition, he contended, nationalization of his wealth had brought the state over 1 billion lei in 1947 currency.
Inside the PCR, he kept only sporadic contacts with the "prison faction", a group led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (according to one account, during the time when Gheorghiu-Dej was held in Doftana prison, Calmanovici sent him a jacket as a gift). Instead, he was close to Pătrășcanu's maverick group (later known as the "Secretariat faction"), a fact which, in time, contributed to his arrest and imprisonment (both of which were instigated by members of the "prison faction").
Late 1940s
During the war, when Romania joined the Axis powers and participated in Operation Barbarossa, Calmanovici was among those charged with establishing contacts between the Communists and other opposition groups. At the time, his relation with the pro-Allied financier Alexandru Ștefănescu helped him gain intimate knowledge of various negotiations between the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) and the National Liberal Party (PNL) on one side and Ion Antonescu's dictatorial government on the other, as well as of the latter's tentative moves to withdraw Romania from its alliance with Nazi Germany through a compromise with the Western Allies (the 1943 unsuccessful mission of Barbu Ştirbey to Cairo). Calmanovici forwarded his information to the PCR's Remus Koffler, which helped the group approach and influence the PNȚ leader Iuliu Maniu to form an alliance against Antonescu (one which enlisted support from the Soviet Union).
After the fall of Antonescu's regime and the onset of Soviet occupation in August 1944, when the PCR first entered government, Calmanovici became an esteemed party member and officially endorsed industrialist. In the spring of 1945, his Bucharest house served as a meeting place for PCR and pro-Communist forces who planned and succeeded in toppling Prime Minister Nicolae Rădescu (after a series of street clashes, Rădescu was replaced with the Ploughmen's Front leader Petru Groza, whose cabinet was controlled by the PCR). Following this, he was appointed a technical director of the Bucharest Constructions Institute and was involved in enforcing Soviet standards and expertise.
Arrest
Relations between Calmanovici and the PCR degenerated abruptly toward the end of the 1940s, and he was arrested by the Securitate on May 26, 1951. Several days earlier, Calmanovici had met with Constantin Pîrvulescu. At this meeting, Calmanovici asked Pîrvulescu to use his status as head of the Party Control Commission to grant him a decoration (Calmanovici was stiffly refused, on the grounds that such self-promotion was unprecedented).