Ștefan Foriș (; born István Fóris, also known as Marius; 9 May 1892 – summer 1946) was a Hungarian and Romanian communist journalist who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR or PCdR) between December 1940 and April 1944. Born a Transylvanian Csángó and an Austro-Hungarian subject, he saw action with the Hungarian Landwehr throughout World War I. While training in mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University, he affiliated with the Galileo Circle and, moving to the far-left, entered the Hungarian Communist Party in late 1918. During the brief existence of a Hungarian Soviet Republic, he joined the war against Romania (1919), but subsequently opted to settle in the Romanian Kingdom, at Brașov. Foriș emerged as a local leader of the Socialist Party, largely failing at convincing his subordinates to join the PCR upon its creation (1921). He took up underground work even before the PCR was formally outlawed, while establishing his public profile as an accountant and a correspondent for moderate left-wing newspapers—including Adevărul and Facla.
From his new home in Bucharest, Foriș presided upon two PCR front organizations, including the Red Aid's local branch and the Peasant Workers' Bloc. He was caught up in the repression of the mid-to-late 1920s, but escaped to the Soviet Union before being sentenced. He was a Comintern cadre to 1929, choosing to return to Bucharest in 1928, after a general amnesty. Foriș was assigned as head of agitprop, and worked in parallel as a correspondent of TASS; he also took a direct part in power struggles, being instrumental in the 1928 overthrow of general secretary Elek Köblös. A member of the PCR Central Committee in 1930, he was himself neutralized by the Romanian authorities between 1931 and 1935, when he was jailed and, by his own account, repeatedly beaten. Upon reemerging, he became personally involved in forging the PCR's popular front strategy, though he failed in his main goal of forming a reciprocal alliance with the National Peasants' Party. Under the National Renaissance Front dictatorship (1938–1940), Foriș traced a controversial policy for the PCR, sparking his personal conflict with activist Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu.
Foriș emerged as PCR leader following the ouster of Boris Stefanov, and was recognized as such by the Comintern during another one of his Soviet travels. He presided upon a particularly inauspicious period in communist history, which saw dwindling support for the PCR; Foriș was also tasked with explaining the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with its truce between the Comintern and fascism—locally represented by the Iron Guard. He was notorious for his failure to predict the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and Romania in mid 1941, thereafter finding his legitimacy openly challenged by Petre "Zidaru" Gheorghe and Teohari Georgescu; in the aftermath, he also refused to sponsor a partisan movement, and obstructed others from attempting to form one. Foriș's leadership style also relied on isolation and atomization of the existing party cells, a matter which contributed to his own demise. In 1943, he upset the powerful "prison faction" centered on Caransebeș penitentiary—its leaders, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Emil Bodnăraș, conspired with Constantin Pîrvulescu to have Foriș deposed.
In April 1944, an unusually docile Foriș agreed to Bodnăraș's forceful demands, and resigned on the spot. He was kidnapped alongside his lover Victoria Sârbu, and then held hostage in PCR safe houses. Gheorghiu-Dej eventually took over as general secretary, and only tolerated Foriș as a contributor to the PCR's illegal press. After the anti-German coup of 23 August, which brought the PCR into government, the Foriș–Sârbu couple was repeatedly tormented, and made aware that their freedom was relative. Allegedly contemplating emigration into Hungary, Foriș was again kidnapped on orders from the new party elite, and bludgeoned to death by Gheorghe Pintilie. He was singled out as a traitor in party literature, though his fate remained undisclosed until April 1968, which was three years after Gheorghiu-Dej's own death. Foriș was only partly rehabilitated by Nicolae Ceaușescu as the new general secretary, with constant reference being made to his "grave mistakes"; as a sign of reconciliation, his remains were dug up and reburied in the Freedom Park necropolis.
Biography
Early life Foriș was born in Tatrang, Transylvania, Brassó County, part of Austria-Hungary (Transleithania) at the time—now Tărlungeni, Brașov County. Lavinia Betea, Paula Mihailov Chiciuc, "Amintiri din comunism cu nepotul lui Foriș", in Jurnalul Național, 8 March 2008 Adriana Criș, "Ucis de Partid", in Bihoreanul, 19 December 2006Florea Nedelcu, "Un militant de seamă al Partidului Comunist Român. 80 de ani de la nașterea lui Ștefan Foriș", in Scînteia, 11 May 1972, p. 2Tismăneanu, p. 96 As reported by historian Hilda Hencz, his ethnic origin was not only Hungarian, but also specifically Csángó, from a branch that had settled in Burzenland.Hilda Hencz, Bucureștiul maghiar. Scurtă istorie a maghiarilor din București de la începuturi până în prezent, p. 185. Bucharest: Editura Biblioteca Bucureștilor, 2011. Another historian, Cristina Diac, highlights Foriș's origins in the "Seven Villages" area, "whose inhabitants were often trilingual".Diac (2013), p. 198 Aside from his native Hungarian, Foriș was able to speak Romanian, German and French, talents which allowed him to work as a journalist.Betea & Ștefan, p. 42 He lived at the same time as another Tatrang Csángó who shared both his first and last names, and who achieved posthumous recognition as a Hungarian folk poet—though he remains less known than his political namesake.Emese-Gyöngyvér Veres, "Poézis a lövészárokban. Barcasági csángó tollforgatók az I. világháborúban", in A Hadtörténeti Múzeum Értesítője – Acta Musei Militaris in Hungaria, Vol. 12, 2011, pp. 306–307 Another coincidence brought Foriș the communist, and his family, into contact with the parents of Violeta Andrei, later famous as a film actress and as the wife of PCR potentate Ștefan Andrei.Andrei & Betea, pp. 62–63
Foriș's own parents, István Fóris Sr and Anna Kocsis, had a peasant background. In a 1940 autobiographical record, Foriș described his father as a woodcarver, bricklayer, and "small entrepreneur", whose one financial achievement was in setting up his own brickworks, always on the verge of bankruptcy. He claims to have supported himself from fourth grade, when he became a tutor to Saxon children.Diac (2013), pp. 198, 199, 200 Such statements are partly contradicted by his grandson, architect Ștefan Sîrbu, who notes that Anna ended up owning several brickworks, allowing her son a comfortable existence. According to Diac, the family was successful enough to have been rated as "exploiters" under the communist guidelines. István Jr, who Romanianized his Christian name as "Ștefan", grew up to an impressive height of over 1.80 meters (approximately 6 feet); he was also "noticeably obese".Câmpeanu, p. 110
The future PCR leader completed his secondary studies in exact sciences at a lyceum in Brassó (today Brașov). On 1 August 1914, just shortly after the start of World War I, Foriș was drafted in the Hungarian Landwehr as an artillery cadet. According to his own reports, he saw action on the Italian front, and later in Albania.Diac (2013), p. 199 He served to November 1918, when he was demobilized as a Hadnagy (Lieutenant).Diac (2013), p. 199. See also Drăgoescu, p. 22 He then resumed his education at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, graduating from its Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in 1919.Betea & Ștefan, p. 42; Diac (2013), p. 199; Tismăneanu, p. 297. See also Andrei & Betea, p. 53; Câmpeanu, p. 106 Marxist historian Florea Nedelcu argues that, in this context, Foriș also became "fully acquainted with the powerful revolutionary movement that was rocking the Austro-Hungarian empire, with the emancipation struggles of the popular masses, with national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples against the Habsburg monarchy." The young veteran had joined the Galileo Circle, which he called a "progressive organization". During the formation of a People's Republic, he was also drawn into the Hungarian Communist Party, which he formally joined in December 1918. His loyalties were split that same month, when the journal Szabad Gondolat ("Free Thought"), put out by the Galileo Circle, proceeded to mock communism. Foriș responded by writing a brochure defending his party, but in the end decided not to publish it. As he noted, the text was heavily influenced by anarchism, which he had come to see as embarrassing.Diac (2013), pp. 199–200
Foriș was part of the movement to establish the Hungarian Soviet Republic in March 1919. The following month, he volunteered for the communist army's 32nd Artillery Regiment, seeing action in the Hungarian–Romanian War.Diac (2013), p. 200 After Budapest fell to the Romanians, Foriș settled within the Kingdom of Romania (which had since also been united with Transylvania), entered the local Socialist Party (PS) in October 1919, and affirmed himself as a contributor to left-wing publications, beginning with Világosság ("The Light").Diac (2013), p. 200. See also Drăgoescu, p. 22; Tismăneanu, p. 297 He and Eugen Rozvan were co-editors for Dezső Jász's newspaper, Előre ("Forward"), which was published from 1921 to 1923, when it was banned.János Főcze, "Szocialisták Erdélyben impériumváltás alatt és után (1918–1927)", in Múltunk – Politikatörténeti Folyóirat, Vol. 2, Issue 65, 2020, p. 62 He was for a while married to a fellow communist, Loti (also known as Lotty or Loți) Csere, who would later share his fate as a political prisoner of the interwar.Câmpeanu, pp. 84, 110–111
Foriș rallied with the PCR (or PCdR) upon its creation in May 1921—with Iosif István and Zoltán Hortesz, he set up the committee steering Brașov's PS cell toward communist affiliation. As he noted in 1940, the effort was undermined by "centrists", who managed to prevent most PS members from joining them, but was acknowledged by Elek Köblös and Aladar Berger of the PCR, who made Foriș their connection for the entire Transylvania.Diac (2013), pp. 200–201. See also Drăgoescu, p. 22 With much of the PCR leadership rounded up in the Dealul Spirii Trial, Foriș reported being overwhelmed by his tasks. In June 1922, after several weeks of insomnia, he attended a trade unions' congress at Sibiu, and collapsed in front of his colleagues. They had him interned at the local psychiatric hospital. Though he "got to my senses after some 5 days", he found that his workload had been much reduced.Diac (2013), p. 201 As the core staff of Világosság, he and Rozvan developed an antipathy for Köblös, who appointed a "centrist" favorite, Sándor Asztalos, as editor-in-chief. According to Foriș, such behavior pinpointed Köblös as a "right-wing" communist.Diac (2013), p. 202 This variant of events is contradicted by historian Liviu Pleșa, who notes that Foriș and Vasile Luca (whom Foriș had employed at Előre) were part of a "Magyar camp" which helped Köblös take over as PCR general secretary in 1924.Pleșa, pp. 27, 43
PCR outlawing