conflicts inside the party, he was punished by the Comintern overseers and the Stalinist leadership, being recalled from his party functions and later on required to display a dose of self-criticism. Prison and exile Arrested in 1924, 1933, and 1938, and sentenced to prison terms; notably, Luca was successfully defended by attorneys paid for with Red Aid funds during a 1927 trial in Cluj (where Boris Stefanov was sentenced), and was represented by Ion Gheorghe Maurer during his 1938 trial. He was serving time in Cernăuţi, having been found guilty of attempt to cross the border between the Kingdom of Romania and the Ukrainian SSR, when the Soviet Union annexed Northern Bukovina (see Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina). Luca reoriented himself in the aftermath of the Great Purge (having already renounced the friendship with Purge victim Aladar, as well as those of Vitali Holostenco, Eugen Rozvan, and Elek Köblös). He took up Soviet citizenship, became deputy mayor of Chernivtsi, and a deputy in the Soviet of Nationalities of the Ukrainian SSR. The Trotskyist journal the New International accused Luca of having participated in a supposed deportation of almost 30,000 citizens from Northern Bukovina to the Asiatic republics of the Soviet Union. On 26 March 1941, in Storozhynets, he gave a speech in front of a mass of people who were protesting the Soviet administration, calling them "spies, enemies, and diversionists"; the crowd responded with heckling. On 1 April, a large number of people from nearby villages were killed while attempting to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania in Fântâna Albă (now Bila Krynytsya, Ukraine) — see Fântâna Albă massacre. After the start of Operation Barbarossa, he was instrumental in the creation of a Romanian language section for Radio Moscow, broadcasting propaganda against the Ion Antonescu regime and its German allies (see Romania during World War II). At the time, he began his collaboration with Ana Pauker, who led the main cell of the PCR's "exterior wing", created by those who had taken refuge inside the Soviet Union. He enlisted in the Red Army, helped recruit Romanian prisoners of war to form the Tudor Vladimirescu Division, and then returned to Romania with the Soviet troops in late 1944 (see Soviet occupation of Romania). Luca later stated that he had been disappointed in the fact that local forces under King Mihai I had taken the initiative in