Socialist Party of Transylvania

The Socialist Party of Transylvania was a political party in Romania, active primarily in Transylvania. Born out of the ethnic Romanian section of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP), it gradually attracted other socialist and social-democratic groups active in the Transleithanian lands of Austro-Hungary incorporated into the Kingdom of Romania after World War I. Although initially it claimed, under the title Social Democratic Party of Transylvania and Banat, the adherence of the MSZDP party sections in Banat, the latter, while maintaining close links with the Transylvania party, constituted themselves as a distinct political organization. The party also actively sought the cooperation of the socialist parties active in other regions of Romania, working towards a unified political party of the working class. Such plans were however soon thwarted by repression from the part of the Romanian authorities, as well as disagreements both inside the party and among the different socialist formations of Romania. The disagreements were further aggravated by the request of the Third International that the leaders of the party that had collaborated with the Romanian National Party be excluded from the merger, and eventually resulted in the split between the reformist social-democrats and the revolutionary-minded communists. While the former decided to retire from unification talks and re-establish an independent Transyvanian party, the latter joined the majority of Socialist Party of Romania (PSR) to create the Communist Party of Romania in May 1921. The social-democratic faction would late join the PSR members that disagreed with the new orientation of their party, founding the Romanian Social Democratic Party in 1927.