Global InformationDumitru Topciu information
Dimitrie Topciu | |
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 Topciu in FRN uniform, 1940 | |
| Romanian Undersecretary of State for Agriculture | |
| In office July 4 – September 14, 1940 | |
| Member of the Senate of Romania | |
| In office June 2, 1939 – September 1940 | |
| Constituency | Agricultural |
| Member of the Romanian Assembly of Deputies | |
| In office June 1926 – July 1927 | |
| In office June 1931 – July 1932 | |
| In office December 25, 1933 – February 1938 | |
| Constituency | Tighina County |
| Member of Sfatul Țării | |
| In office November 1917 – May 18, 1918 | |
| Constituency | Bulgarian–Gagauz caucus |
| Member of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic | |
| In office October 7 – November 7, 1917 | |
| Constituency | Peasant caucus |
| Chairman of the Provisional Council of Bender Uyezd | |
| In office September 3, 1917 – March 22, 1919 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Dmitriy Topçu (Dimitri Georgevich Topchu) September 2, 1888 Tomai, Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | 1958 (aged 69–70) Bucharest, Romanian People's Republic |
| Resting place | Bellu Cemetery, Bucharest 44°24′14″N 26°06′00″E / 44.40389°N 26.10000°E |
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| Profession | Lawyer, agriculturalist, businessman |
Dumitru or Dimitrie Gheorghe Topciu (Gagauz: Dmitriy Topçu, Bulgarian: Димитър Топчу, romanized: Dimitar Topchu, Russian: Дмитрий Георгиевич Топчу, romanized: Dimitri Georgevich Topchu; September 2, 1888 – 1958) was a Romanian politician and agriculturalist of Bessarabian birth and Gagauz ethnicity. Originally a subject of the Russian Empire, he established his reputation as a lawyer and advocate of peasant welfare, also networking between the Bessarabian Gagauz, Romanians, and Bulgarians. He formed a Bulgarian–Gagauz caucus after the February Revolution, seeking representation inside the Russian Republic, and overall shunning Romanian nationalism. After his mandate in the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic was cut short by the October Revolution, he was sent to Sfatul Țării, which acted as a legislative body of the Moldavian Democratic Republic. Topciu was absent during its March 1918 vote on that polity's union with Romania; by his own testimony, he assisted the Romanian expeditionary force, in his other capacity as the provisional leader of Bender Uyezd. After escaping prosecution for his alleged smuggling activities along the Dniester, he settled in Tighina, entering Romanian politics as a member of the People's Party.
In interwar Greater Romania, Topciu became a proponent of Gagauz assimilation, embracing forms of Romanian nationalism which came to be ridiculed in the press; he was also outspoken in his resistance to Gagauz re-Turkification. In tandem, he was a leader of the Agricultural Syndicate in Tighina County, a champion of the winemakers' corporate interests, and simultaneously a temperance activist, who spoke out against the consumption of Bessarabian moonshine. He won his first mandate in the Assembly of Deputies after elections in 1926, being returned in 1931 as an affiliate of the Democratic Nationalist Party. Topciu served additional terms during which he veered from agrarianism to fascism, affiliating with the National Agrarians (1932), the National Christian Party (1935), and the Union of National Awareness (1939). Touring the Budjak subregion, he had a major contribution in canvassing Gagauz votes for Romania's far-right groups.
Topciu was finally recruited by King Carol II into his catch-all National Renaissance Front, which resulted in his peak political activity, as Undersecretary of State for Agriculture in the Gigurtu cabinet (1940). He supported Ion Antonescu's takeover of the country, as well as his alliance with the Axis Powers. Having been chased out of Bessarabia by a Soviet invasion in 1940, he became an organizer of formal and informal efforts to assist his fellow refugees. Topciu managed to survived the establishment of a Romanian communist regime in 1948, though he was still harassed and had to pay a fine for his involvement with the black market; he lived his final decade in obscurity, at his new home in Bucharest.