Patriotic Anti-Hitlerite Front PAF

an alliance of patriotic forces of the Rumanian people, created in June 1943 on the initiative of the Communist Party of Rumania (CPR). The PAF consisted of the CPR and other democratic organizations: the Plowmen’s Front, founded in 1933; the Union of Patriots, founded in 1942; and MADOSZ, an organization of Hungarian workers in Rumania founded in 1934. The leaders of the Rumanian bourgeois parties (the National Peasant and National Liberal parties) refused to join the PAF.

The PAF program called for the organization of active struggle, including armed struggle, to overthrow the military fascist regime. The front demanded that Rumania withdraw from the fascist side in the war and join the antifascist coalition instead. Other points in the program included the immediate cessation of shipments of food and military goods to fascist Germany and the punishment of war criminals. The creation of the PAF was an important milestone in the preparation of the 1944 Popular Armed Uprising in Rumania. In October 1944 all the organizations in the PAF, together with the trade unions, formed the National Democratic Front, which set about carrying out a program of democratic transformations throughout the country.