gang". Downfall While Luca had supported the rise of Gheorghiu-Dej during the Grivița strike of 1933, his temper caused frictions with the new leader. He was quite open about his opposition to the Danube-Black Sea Canal—a pet project of Dej, apparently recommended by Joseph Stalin himself. On the initiative of General Secretary Gheorghiu-Dej, who sought and obtained Stalin's approval for purging the leadership in January 1952 (Dej had traveled personally to Moscow for that purpose; Vyacheslav Molotov intervened on behalf of Pauker, whereas Lavrentiy Beria defended Georgescu) Luca was dismissed from government office in March, and purged from the party in May (formally, in August 1953), together with Pauker. Officially, the purge was centered on accusations regarding Luca's opposition to the monetary reform of the Romanian leu, a measure ordered by the Soviet Union and carried out on 28 January 1952. He had been charged, through the voice of Miron Constantinescu, with "grave deviations" and taking a "right wing opportunistic line, breaking away from the working classes" (see Right Opposition); in addition to sharing the blame, Pauker was accused of having taken a "left wing opportunistic line" (see Left Opposition) on various issues. Upon witnessing the attack on him during the Plenary meeting of May (immediately amplified by the interventions of Alexandru Moghioroș, Iosif Rangheț, Ion Vincze and others), Luca fainted. He was arrested in the same month, some days after his deposition and political indictment. Luca's interrogation, approved and supervised by Soviet advisors, also involved aspects of his past: it was alleged that, as a youth, he had taken part in conflicts opposing the Székely Division and the communists on the side of the former, that he had been recruited by the Romanian secret police (Siguranța Statului) in the early 1920s and had thus infiltrated the PCR, and that he had been paid to encourage fighting inside the party. In October 1954, he was sentenced to death for economic sabotage, but, after appealing to the PCR leaders, he had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment and hard labour, and died 9 years later in detention at Aiud Prison, having been kept in almost complete isolation. After his imprisonment, he wrote several letters to Gheorghiu-Dej, in which he continued to plead his innocence; it is not known if the addressee ever replied to Luca personally, but he would usually add derogatory comments to the margin of each letter. In one