Dumitru Corbea

Dumitru Corbea (born Dumitru Cobzaru; September 6, 1910 – March 26, 2002) was a Romanian poet, prose writer, and political activist. Born into rural poverty in Western Moldavia, he worked a variety of jobs and was briefly an indentured servant. He aspired to literary greatness and cultivated himself, also being adopted as a child soldier in the Romanian Land Forces during the 1920s. He debuted as a poet in 1929, while studying for his commercial-school degree; committed to Romanian nationalism, he drifted into fascism, and, in the early 1930s, joined the Iron Guard. In 1935, Corbea switched to a rival revolutionary group, the Crusade of Romanianism, and went public with his radical critique of the Guard. He frequented the modernist club Sburătorul, but did not share its agenda—being instead committed to an updated version of Poporanism, which seeped into his poetry volumes. In tandem, he drifted toward the political left, joining the illegal Romanian Communist Party and, more publicly, the National Peasantists. His first arrest came during the parliamentary elections of 1937.

Under the National Renaissance Front regime, Corbea was protected by Labor Minister Mihai Ralea, finding permanent employment at the Social Service and the national radio company. He was called up under arms during the early stages of World War II, but rearrested and charged with spying in 1940; as the Iron Guard established its Legionary government, the military authorities preferred to set him free, and he spent time in hiding. The military dictatorship set up by Ion Antonescu allowed him to join the Central Institute of Statistics, but Corbea used his position there to protect communists and Jews—including upon being dispatched for fieldwork in Transnistria Governorate. He was forced to fight against the Red Army during the Odessa Offensive, but managed to make his way into Romania with the retreating troops. Networking with the resistance movement, he was an indirect participant in the anti-fascist coup of 1944. Its success allowed him to return from hiding and publicly join in Romania's communization.

An editor and photojournalist at Scînteia, Corbea documented Romanian participation in the Budapest offensive, before returning to partake in political and literary affairs. He was a prolific contributor of agitprop during the early stages of the Romanian communist regime, especially involved in promoting a personality cult for Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Despite his complete and lasting commitment to Socialist Realism, his stances were at times unorthodox: he always maintained a dose of nationalism, criticized agricultural collectivization, and, as comptroller at the Writers' Union of Romania, extended protection to marginalized authors such as Tudor Arghezi. Corbea was revered for his poetry after the regime had entered its national-communist stage, and, in the 1980s, published selective, at times controversial, memoirs. He also lived through the violent end of communism, dying at the age of 91.