Gheorghe Pintilie

Gheorghe Pintilie
Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Romania
In office September 15, 1949 – January 18, 1963
Director General of the Securitate
In office August 15, 1948 – 1959
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Vasile Vîlcu
Member of the Great National Assembly
In office March 1948 – November 1952
Constituency	Ialomița County
Personal details
Born	Panteley Timofiy Bodnarenko November 9, 1902 Tiraspol, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	August 11, 1985(1985-08-11) (aged 82) Bucharest, Socialist Republic of Romania
Resting place	Ghencea Cemetery, Bucharest
Nationality	Russian (1902–1917) Soviet Russian (1918–1922) Soviet (1922–1944) Romanian (1944–1985)
Political party	Romanian Communist Party (1940s–1968)
Other political affiliations	Komsomol (1920s) People's Democratic Front (1948)
Spouse	Ana Toma
Children	Radu Pintilie Ioana Constantin
Occupation	Locksmith, spy, bodyguard, assassin, torturer
Awards	Order of the Star of the People's Republic, Second Class (1948) Ordinul Muncii, First Class (1949) August 23 Order, Third Class (1959) Order of Tudor Vladimirescu [de], Second Class (1971)
Signature
Nickname	Pantiușa
Military service
Allegiance	Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic  Soviet Union  Kingdom of Romania  Romanian People's Republic
Branch/service	Red Army NKVD SMERSH MGB Patriotic Combat Formations Siguranța DGSP Miliția
Years of service	ca. 1920–1963
Rank	Lieutenant General (Romania)
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War World War II Anti-guerilla operations

Gheorghe Pintilie (born Panteley Timofiy Bodnarenko,^[1] 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 (1948–1958). 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 [de], Second Class, and granted him military honors upon his death in 1985.