Gheorghe Pintilie (born Timofiy Bodnarenko, Ukrainian: Пантелей Тимофій Боднаренко; also rendered as Pintilie Bodnarenco, nicknamed Pantiușa; November 9, 1902 – August 21, 1985) was a Soviet and Romanian intelligence agent and political assassin, who served as first head of the Securitate (1948–1959). Born as a subject of the Russian Empire in Tiraspol, he was briefly employed as a manual laborer, and trained as a locksmith, before joining the Red Army cavalry and seeing action in the Russian Civil War. The NKVD shortlisted him for espionage missions in the 1920s, and in 1928 sent him on for such clandestine work in the Kingdom of Romania. Bodnarenko was apprehended there some nine years later, and sentenced to a twenty-years' imprisonment. While at Doftana, he became the ringleader of imprisoned Soviet spies, together with whom he joined the Romanian Communist Party (PCR). He expressed his loyalty toward Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the jailed communist and emerging factional leader; their tight political camaraderie lasted into the late 1950s. Staging a walk-out from Caransebeș Prison just after the coup of August 23, 1944, Bodnarenko was integrated by the Patriotic Combat Formations and the Siguranța police, while also reuniting with Soviet intelligence and joining a special unit of the SMERSH. In 1946, he personally killed and buried three of Gheorghiu-Dej's rivals, including Ștefan Foriș, the former PCR General Secretary. From August 1948, Emil Bodnăraș tasked him with forming the Securitate and leading its General Directorate (DGSP), thus ensuring Soviet control over Romania's intelligence agencies. Under the newly formed communist regime, Bodnarenko was exclusively known as "Gheorghe Pintilie" (or variants thereof), being promoted directly to Lieutenant General, and serving in the Great National Assembly. Participating in the country's communization, he spearheaded the violent campaigns against the perceived class enemies—conceptualizing "reeducation" through penal labor on the Danube–Black Sea Canal, and initiating the first-ever Bărăgan deportations. Pintilie and his adjutant Alexandru Nicolschi also played a part in the Pitești Experiment, which introduced extreme violence with the goal of brainwashing inmates (primarily those detained for their past in the Iron Guard)—though it remains unclear whether they willingly stoked such violence, or just allowed it to happen. In engineering the DGSP, General Pintilie surrounded himself with men of working-class origin, who became notorious for their brutality, but also their overall incompetence—particularly in dealing with the anti-communist guerillas. Both inside and outside the PCR, Pintilie himself was remembered as an uneducated alcoholic; his preference for orality ensured that the more compromising orders he gave remained unattested. Especially during the early 1950s, he assisted Gheorghiu-Dej in the inner-party struggles, helping to topple Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca, and simultaneously framing, then executing, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu. Witnesses of these purges remain divided as to Pintilie's exact role, with some reporting that he vacillated when it came to exercising full repression, and others suggesting that he exacerbated the violence, beyond what was required of him. In the late 1950s, his projects were being vetoed by the PCR Central Committee, just as Gheorghiu-Dej was proceeding with Romania's emancipation from the Soviet sphere. In 1959, Pintilie lost his Securitate offices and was assigned to lead the Miliția, a more civilian-controlled component of the national police force. Pushed into full retirement during the anti-Soviet backlash of 1963, Pintilie then watched as Gheorghiu-Dej's posthumous successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu, proceeded to expose some of the crimes committed by Securitate personnel in previous decades. He cooperated in the investigation, openly discussing some of his individual crimes, but was never questioned regarding his involvement in mass purges; the only repercussions he faced were political, leading to his expulsion from the PCR in 1968. Though his wife Ana Toma was allowed a return to the forefront of political life, Pintilie himself lived the remainder of his life in relative obscurity. The Ceaușescu regime still bestowed him with the Order of Tudor Vladimirescu, Second Class, and granted him military honors upon his death in 1985.
Biography
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