rallied with Gheorghiu-Dej's positive views on de-Stalinization, claiming that Pauker's fall had been a sign of Romania parting with Stalinism. At the time, he argued that Pauker and her collaborator Vasile Luca had viewed him with suspicion based on his participation in the Spanish Civil War. After Gheorghiu-Dej's death, he approved of the change in course indicated by Nicolae Ceauşescu, and joined in condemning the 1968 Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia (at the time, he notably quoted Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's statement that "socialism and truth are inseparable"). Elected to the Central Committee on July 24, 1965, he was in office until his death. Decorated a Hero of the Socialist Labor, Roman was also employed as a University professor. By the 1970s, he was becoming opposed to the Ceauşescu leadership and questioned Leninism itself; a diary entry of 1975 shows that he resented the massive enrollment of obedient cadres into the PCR, and speculated that "when Lenin elaborated the concept of the new-type party he took inspiration from, he also thought of Ignacio de Loyola, of his «company of Jesus», of what it represented from the point of view of discipline, of obedience, hence there later emerged many negative consequences and, first of all, the deterioration of human character, of human integrity". Controversies Several aspects of Roman's past remain under dispute. In 2000, investigations by Russian historian Tofik Islamov concluded that, after Soviet authorities charged Maxim Litvinov to investigate the issue of Northern Transylvania, disputed between Romania and Hungary, Roman approached the commission in late 1944 with plans to have Transylvania declare itself independent (under a common guarantee from the Soviets and Western Allies). Petre Roman has repeatedly contested the conclusion, advancing documents which, he argued, proved that his father was in favor of Transylvania's status inside Romania. In his own reply to Petre Roman's arguments, Islamov repeated his statements, and contended that views such as those attributed to Valter Roman were commonplace among internationalists of the time. He also cited Valter Roman's own 1944 statement — according to the document, Roman viewed both Hungary and Romania as guilty of waging war on the Soviet Union, arguing that the region (Transylvania) was "an ethnographic conglomerate" with a tradition of regional sovereignty, economic independence, and status as "the most progressive part of the country". In 2006, Petre Roman was involved in a polemic with former Securitate chief and defector Ion Mihai Pacepa over the