Corneliu Vadim Tudor

Corneliu Vadim Tudor (; 28 November 1949 – 14 September 2015), also colloquially known as "Tribunul", was a poet, writer, and journalist who was the leader of the Greater Romania Party and a Member of the European Parliament. He was a Romanian senator from 1992 to 2008. He was born and died in Bucharest, Romania. As a political figure, he was known for having held strong nationalist views, which were reflected in his rhetoric and his denunciation of political opponents (a tactic which the judgements in several civil lawsuits handed down against him deemed to be slanderous). He was most commonly referred to as "Vadim", which was a name he selected for himself, not a family name (and not shared with his brother, former Romanian Army officer ). Biography Tudor was born in Bucharest on 28 November 1949 into a working-class family, his father being a tailor. In his youth, being an admirer of the French film director Roger Vadim, he chose the pseudonym Vadim as his middle name. In 1971, he received a degree in sociology from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, and in 1975, he studied at the School for Reserve Officers in Bucharest. With the help of his mentor, Herder Prize winner Eugen Barbu, he obtained a scholarship and studied in Vienna from 1978 to 1979. During the communist era, he worked as a journalist, editor, and poet: in the early 1970s, he was one of the editors at România Liberă, and after 1975 was an editor at the Romanian official press agency, Agerpress. He served as senator from 1992 to 2008. For the first time since 1990, after the election of 30 November 2008, he and his party were no longer present in either of the Romanian legislative chambers. On 25 September 2001, Tudor renounced his parliamentary immunity from prosecution.