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Ana Pauker (born '''Hannah Rabinsohn''') ( February 13 , 1893 - June 14 , 1960 ) was a Romania n Communist leader and served as the country's Foreign Minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s . She was the unofficial leader of the Romanian Communist Party after World War II . EARLY LIFE AND POLITICAL CAREER Pauker was born into a poor, religious Orthodox Jewish family in Codăeşti , Vaslui County and became a teacher. While her younger brother was a Zionist and remained religious, she opted for Socialism , joining the Romanian Social Democratic Party in 1915 and then its successor, the Socialist Party Of Romania in 1916 . She was active in the pro- Bolshevik faction of the group, the one that took control after the Party's Congress of May 8 - 12 1921 and joined the Comintern under the name of Socialist-Communist Party (future Communist Party Of Romania ). She and her husband, Marcel Pauker , became leading members. They were both arrested in 1922 for their political activities and went into exile to Switzerland on their release. COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP POSITION Ana Pauker went to France where she became an instructor for the Comintern and was also involved in the Communist movement elsewhere in the Balkans . She returned to Romania and was arrested in 1935 , being put on trial together with other leading Communists such as Alexandru Moghioroş and Alexandru Drăghici , and sentenced to ten years in prison. In May 1941 she was sent into exile to the Soviet Union in exchange for a Romanian being detained by the Soviets after the occupation of Bessarabia in 1940 , just in time to escape the extermination of half of the country's Jews by the Romanian authorities and Nazi Germany , their new ally. It also allowed her to distance herself from her husband, who fell a victim to the Great Purge sometime in the late 1930s . In Moscow , she became leader of the Romanian Communist exiles who would later become known as the Muscovite faction. She returned to Romania in 1944 when the Red Army entered the country, becoming a member of the post-war government which came to be dominated by the Communists. She was named Foreign Minister in 1947 . In 1948 Time Magazine featured Ana Pauker's portrait on its cover, with the caption ''The most powerful woman alive''. She promoted forced Collectivization , but also supported higher prices for agricultural products - which resulted in the allegation that she was moving away from Marxism , as a "peasantist". She also opposed the purging of Romanian veterans of the Spanish Civil War and French Resistance , and opposed Joseph Stalin 's plans to have former Communist leader Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu put on trial. Just as forcefully, she argued against the Soviet-inspired Monetary Reform that drove down prices of farm goods and risked provoking drastic shortages. Pauker's initially unreserved when, as leader of Communist Romania , he was a determined opponent of Nikita Khrushchev ). DOWNFALL Gheorghiu-Dej profited on the mounting Anti-Semitism in Soviet policy, and persuaded Stalin to take action against the Pauker faction. Pauker and her supporters were purged in May 1952 , consolidating Gheorghiu-Dej's own grip over country and Party. Pauker was charged with ", former Romanian ambassador to the United Nations , Stalin told Gheorghiu-Dej that he had chosen him to lead Romania over Pauker, saying: Ana is a good, reliable comrade, but you see, she is a Jewess of Bourgeois origin, and the party in Romania needs a leader from the ranks of the Working Class , a true-born Romanian.… I have decided… Pauker was arrested in February 1952 and was subjected to prolonged interrogations in preparation to be put on trial, as had occurred with Rudolf Slánský and others in the Prague Trials . After Stalin's death in March 1953 she was freed from jail and put under House Arrest instead. Following the rise of Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union, Pauker was recast by Romania's leaders as having been a staunch ultra-Orthodox Stalinist, despite the fact that she had opposed or had attempted to moderate a number of Stalinist policies while she was in a leadership position. Following the Twentieth Party Congress in Moscow there were fears that Khrushchev might force the Romanian Party to rehabilitate Pauker and possibly install her as Romania's new leader. She was invited in 1956 to talks with Gheorghiu-Dej and his representatives, who insisted that she acknowledge her guilt. Again, she claimed she was innocent and demanded that she be reinstated as a party member, without meeting success. Gheorghiu-Dej went on to Scapegoat her, together with Vasile Luca and Teohari Georgescu for their alleged Stalinist excesses in the late 1940s and early 1950s , despite the fact that they had urged moderation against Gheorghiu-Dej's insistence on dogmatism. This is not to say that the period when the three were in power was not marked by political persecution and the murder of opponents (such as the notorious works on the Danube-Black Sea Canal , begun in 1949 and ceased in 1953); Gheorghiu-Dej, who had as much to account for, used moments like these to ensure the survival of his policies in a post-Stalinist age. During her forcible retirement, Pauker was allowed to work as a translator from French and German for the journal Editura Politică Publishing House . FAMILY Marcel and Ana Pauker had three children: SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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