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Biography
Dumitru Coliu (born Dimitar Kolev, Romanian: Dimităr Colev, Bulgarian: Димитър Колев; November 7, 1907 – 1979) was a Romanian communist activist and politician.
An ethnic Bulgarian, he joined the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) prior to 1944, when it was illegal. Coliu spent the World War II years in Moscow with other Romanian communists, and was a devoted collaborator of Ana Pauker's. Following the King Michael Coup, he returned to Romania with the Horia, Cloşca şi Crişan Division, where he was made a general in the Land Forces for political reasons. He joined the central committee in 1945, remaining until his death. He was elected a candidate member of the politburo in 1952, alongside Alexandru Drăghici and Nicolae Ceauşescu, holding that post until 1969. He sat in the Great National Assembly, heading its foreign affairs committee from 1953 to 1955.
Under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, between 1954 and 1965, he was president of the State Control Commission and of the Party Control Commission, seconded by Ion Vincze. The party's professional interrogator as part of repressive actions initiated by the Securitate secret police, he took over the latter post in 1960 as Constantin Pîrvulescu was purged for his silence several years earlier in a plot to unseat Gheorghiu-Dej. By 1961, the Comintern veteran was among those advocating a turn toward national communism. He left his control commission post in 1969. Coliu was a hardliner within the leadership of the PCR, an unconditional follower of Joseph Stalin and of Stalinism.
His wife Olga was a Soviet citizen whom he married while in Moscow.