Based on his independent opinions and, in part, on his friendship with Rakovsky, Marcel Pauker was disavowed by the Romanian and Soviet communist parties, and was himself a victim of the Great Purge in 1938. At various intervals between 1930 and 1952, his wife, the Romanian communist leader Ana Pauker, faced pressures to denounce her husband. She allegedly refused to criticize him for anything other than his association with Rakovsky, and to admit that Marcel Pauker had been guilty of all the charges brought against him.