Nicolae Cristea (communist) Nicolae Cristea (communist) Nicolas or Nicolae Cristea (also known under the "nom de guerre" Joseph Copla; November 26, 1906 – March 1943) was a Romanian communist, a volunteer in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and in the French Resistance during World War II. Cristea was born in a poor workers family in Galaţi. During the Great Depression he participated in the protests organized by the Romanian Communist Party in Bucharest, afterwards being forced by the Siguranţa Statului (Romania's secret police) to move back to his native town. He returned to Bucharest in 1931, and in 1933 was
Nicolae Iorga 1948, the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History was merged into a communist institution headed by Petre Constantinescu-Iași, while Papacostea was assigned as head of the reorganized ISSEE. Beginning in the 1960s, the national communist authorities capitalized on Nicolae Iorga's image, suggesting that he was a forerunner of Nicolae Ceaușescu's official ideology. Iorga was promoted to the national communist pantheon as an "anti-fascist" and "progressive" intellectual, and references to his lifelong anti-communism were omitted. The ban on his works was selectively lifted, and some of his main books were again in print between 1968 and 1989, along with volumes of his