Romulus Zăroni

Romulus Zăroni or Zeroni (Hungarian: Zaroni Romulusz; 28 April 1906 – 23 October 1962) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian politician and agronomist, who collaborated with Petru Groza in establishing the left-agrarian Ploughmen's Front, and served as Minister of Agriculture in 1945–1946. Generally associated with the ethnographic region known as Țara Hațegului, he was of peasant origins—during his political ascendancy, he presented himself as a destitute smallholder, but was in fact from a well-to-do family, and was himself a prosperous entrepreneur. Though enshrined in popular memory as a dimwitted blunderer, Zăroni had in fact taken an agricultural specialist's diploma in Weimar Germany, and was well-read; he was also noted as an amateur poet and author of political manifestos. Before consolidating his political partnership with Groza, he had carved out his own political path as a Romanian nationalist and an advocate of prohibition. He had caucused with the Agrarian League, and had appeared on its lists for legislative elections in 1932.

Zăroni joined Groza's protest movement in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. As one of the Ploughmen's Front secondary leaders, he supported collaboration with other leftist groups within the Kingdom of Romania, including the underground Romanian Communist Party, but also the Hungarian People's Union or the United Socialists. Zăroni entered the public eye in 1937, when he published an anti-fascist brochure specifically aimed at the peasants; well-liked in leftist circles, it was ridiculed by the conservatives as inadequate. He himself was always seen as subservient to Groza, being consequently ridiculed as Groza's servant, or pet animal. During World War II, Groza entered the anti-fascist underground and found himself imprisoned as a result. Zăroni himself was less vocal, though he reportedly participated in some efforts to reanimate the Ploughmen's Front.

Groza and Zăroni reached their political apex after the coup of 23 August 1944, when the Communist Party and the Ploughmen's Front were allowed to participate in government. Zăroni himself entered the Second Sănătescu cabinet as a high-ranking functionary in the Ministry of Agriculture, preserving his post during the Rădescu cabinet. He then helped engineer a crisis over the issue of land reform, becoming complicit in the communist power-grab of March 1945. Groza took over as the communist-appointed Premier, advancing him to the post of Minister. Zăroni soon antagonized the communists by folding back on his conservatism, which included support for the Romanian monarchy, and by seeking to bring together like-minded members of the Front. He was made Minister of Co-Operation, then, upon the full consolidation of a socialist-republican regime, was demoted to head of Centrocoop. He was allowed to continue political work within the Great National Assembly, dying while still in office on its presidium, at age 56. He endured as the butt of many a Romanian joke, and a stock character prefiguring Bulă.