Ștefan Cicio Pop


Ștefan Cicio Pop was a Romanian politician.

Biography

Born in Sajgó, Belső-Szolnok County, Principality of Transylvania, Austrian Empire, his maternal grandfather was the Greek-Catholic canon Vasile Pop, who supported the boy's expenses during his school years. After attending high school in Szamosújvár and Nagyszeben, he went to the universities of Vienna and Budapest, obtaining a doctorate in law from the latter institution in 1891. The same year, he became a lawyer in Arad.

Political activity

He entered the Romanian National Party while still a student, and drew notice for championing the defendants in the 1894 Transylvanian Memorandum trial. In 1895, together with Gheorghe Pop de Băsești, he represented the Romanians at the Budapest congress of nationalities. Following the PNR's switch to an activist political stance, he sat in the Hungarian House of Representatives from 1905 to 1918. He contributed to the press, including the dailies Lupta and Românul.
Pop, as a member of the PNR executive, was involved in the process leading up to and following the union of Transylvania with Romania. He attended the party congress in Oradea on 12 October 1918, that adopted the declaration of self-determination for the Romanians and formed an Arad-based action committee that included Pop. On 30 October, he was named president of the Central Romanian National Council, which took control of the increasingly autonomous Transylvania as Austria-Hungary crumbled near the end of World War I. As such, he led negotiations between the PNR and the Socialist Party of Transylvania. One day later, on 1 December, Pop was at Alba Iulia, where he served as vice president of the Great National Assembly that proclaimed the union. According to a source, Ștefan Cicio Pop delayed by a couple of hours the opening of the session of the Great National Assembly and held the inaugural address without being asked to or mandated to do so by the elected President of the Assembly, Gheorghe Pop de Băsești. On 2 December, he became vice president and head of the army and public safety department within the Directory Council, the temporary authority of Transylvania.

As such, he went to the Parliament of Romania in Bucharest and submitted the legislative proposal for the union, together with Ion Inculeț and Ion Nistor, who supplied similar proposals for, respectively, Bessarabia and Bukovina. All three were adopted at the end of 1919, in the first parliament of Greater Romania. During this time, Pop belonged to three successive cabinets, serving as Minister without portfolio for Transylvania under Ion I. C. Brătianu, Artur Văitoianu and Alexandru Vaida-Voievod. He first won a term in the Romanian Assembly of Deputies in 1919.
In 1926, after the PNR merged with the Peasants' Party to form the National Peasants' Party, Pop became vice president of the new formation. Active as a diplomat, he led the Romanian delegation to the first Balkan Conference, held at Athens in 1930; and to the second, at Istanbul in 1931, where he led the committee for political rapprochement. The 1932 conference took place at Bucharest, and Pop was its president. He was twice Assembly President: December 1928 to April 1931, and August 1932 to November 1933. He died in Arad, days after Vasile Goldiș. Among the participants at the funeral were Prime Minister Gheorghe Tătărescu, Iuliu Maniu, Ion Mihalache, Sever Bocu, Alexandru Nicolescu and Nicolae Săveanu.

Tributes

Numismatic

On the occasion of the Centenary of the Great Union, on 26 November 2018, the National Bank of Romania put into circulation, for the attention of the numismatists, a set of coins; on the obverse of each of the coins in the set are engraved a processing of a photo done by Samoilă Mârza, the texts ROMANIA and THE GREAT MEETING FROM ALBA IULIA, the nominal value, the coat of arms of Romania and the thousandths 2018. On the reverse part of each coin is engraved the effigies of Stefan Cicio Pop, Gheorghe Pop de Băsești, Iuliu Maniu, Vasile Goldiș and Iuliu Hossu. Gold coins have a nominal value of 500 lei, silver coins have a nominal value of 10 lei, and those of common metal have a nominal value of 50 dollars, all of proof quality. In the same set of coins, 1,000,000 medal coins of general UNC quality were issued.