are not a nation apart and—from a historical and geographical point of view—Moldovans are the same Romanians as the Romanians in Moldavia [on the right bank of the Prut River]. Thus, I believe that the introduction of such a false point renders the resolution itself false. 1930s With Imre Aladar, Eugen Rozvan, and two others, Pătrășcanu was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in May 1931 as a candidate for the Workers and Peasants' Bloc, an umbrella group masking the outlawed party. Later in the same year, the 5th Party Congress (held in Soviet exile, at Gorikovo), chose him among the new Central Committee members while Alexander Stefanski rose to the position of general secretary. In 1932, he was involved in polemics at the Criterion group, where he and his collaborator Belu Zilber defended a Stalinist view of Vladimir Lenin in front of criticism from the right-wing Mircea Vulcănescu and Mihail Polihroniade, as well as from the Austromarxist perspective of Henri H. Stahl. Pătrășcanu again served as the PCdR's representative to the Comintern in 1933, and 1934 (remaining in Moscow until 1935); Stelian Tănase argues that during this time he developed doubts about Stalinism itself. During the following years, Pătrășcanu continued to prioritize opposition to fascism, and remained active in the PCR. In 1936, he was heading the defense team of PCR members who were facing the much-publicized Craiova Trial, but was himself denounced as a communist and consequently handed the position to Ion Gheorghe Maurer. World War II imprisonment Pătrășcanu was imprisoned during World War II and, after August 1940, spent time at the Târgu Jiu internment camp with Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and the "prison faction" of the Party (the communists inside Romania, virtually all imprisoned at various stages of the war, as opposed to those who had taken refuge inside the Soviet Union). Like his fellow activist Scarlat Callimachi, he was set free by the National Legionary Government while the fascist Iron Guard, which allied Romania with Nazi Germany, was trying to preserve good relations with the Soviet Union. He subsequently followed orders from Teohari Georgescu to re-create a defunct outlet of the party, the cultural society Amicii URSS ("Friends of the USSR"). In 1941, following the Legionary Rebellion, he was again arrested by the regime of Conducător Ion Antonescu. After a release from camp for health reasons in 1943, he was under house arrest in Poiana Țapului; allowed