Vitali Holostenco
Vitali Holostenco or Holostenko (, ; c. 1900, Izmail, Russian Empire– 17 December 1937) was a Romanian and Soviet communist politician. He used several pseudonyms, among which were Barbu and Petrulescu. Early life Born in Izmail, Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire (in present-day Odessa Oblast, Ukraine), he was a student in Bucharest during the 1920s. Holostenco joined the Socialist Party of Romania and was one of the members to vote for its transformation into the Socialist-Communist Party (future Romanian Communist Party, PCdR) in May 1921. He was immediately arrested alongside the new formation's leadership, and faced prosecution in the Dealul Spirii Trial, being detained in Iași for the following year. Upon his release, he fled to the Soviet Union, becoming the protégé of Christian Rakovsky, and climbed in the hierarchy of the Communist Party of Ukraine. His return to Romania is still mysterious - in 1927, Holostenco was already general secretary of the Romanian party. The emerging Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had taken care to tighten his grip on the select group of Romanian leaders, trusting Vitali Holostenco to enforce the Comintern thesis on the Romanian state's heterogeneous character (with the need for the liberation of oppressed people it