Early activities The future journalist, born in Russian-held Bessarabia (the
Bessarabia Governorate), was a member of the
ethnic Romanian cultural elite, and, reportedly, a graduate of the
Bessarabian Orthodox Church Chișinău Theological Seminary. According to other sources, he spent his early years in
Kiev and graduated from the Pavlo Galagan College. Nour was still in Bessarabia during the
Russian Revolution of 1905, but was mysteriously absent from the follow-up protests by local Romanians (or, in contemporary references, "
Moldavians"). According to
Onisifor Ghibu (himself an analyst of Bessarabian life), Nour missed out on the chance of establishing a Romanian–Moldavian–Bessarabian "
irredentist movement", leading "a mysterious existence", and "not giving even the faintest clue that he was alive, until 1918." In fact, Nour had joined a local section of the
Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party, the leading force in
Russian liberalism. As one historian assesses, this was a maverick's choice: "A. Nour [...] did not consider himself either a socialist or a nationalist." The short-lived periodical, financed by sympathizers from the
Kingdom of Romania (including politician
Eugeniu Carada), was pushing the envelope on the issue of Romanian emancipation and trans-border brotherhood, beyond what the 1905 regime intended to allow. In his first-ever article for the review, Alexis Nour suggested that the regional movement for national emancipation still lacked a group of intellectual leaders, or "elected sons", capable of forming a single Romanian faction in the
State Duma. Despite such setbacks and the continued spread of illiteracy, Nour contended, Bessarabia's Romanians were more attached to the national ideal, and more politically motivated, than their brethren in Romania-proper.
Viața Basarabiei and 1907 election The following year, in April, Nour himself launched, sponsored and edited the political weekly
Viața Basarabiei, distinguished for having discarded the antiquated
Romanian Cyrillic in favor of a
Latin alphabet, wishing to make itself accessible to readers in the Kingdom of Romania; an abridged, "people's" version of the gazette was also made available as a supplement, for a purely Bessarabian readership. According to his friend and colleague,
Petru Cazacu, Nour had to order the Latin
typeface in
Bucharest, and used coded language to keep the Russian authorities a step behind him. As later attested by Bessarabian Romanian activist
Pan Halippa (founder, in 1932, of the
similarly titled magazine), his predecessor Nour had tried to emulate the
Basarabia program of
popular education in Romanian, with the ultimate goal of ethnic emancipation. Nour joined
Gheorghe V. Madan, publisher of
Moldovanul newspaper, in inaugurating the
Chișinău-based Orthodox Church printing press, which began publishing a Bessarabian
Psalter during spring 1907. Nour's
Viața Basarabiei represented the legalist side of the Bessarabian emancipation movement, to the irritation of more radical Romanian nationalists. Cazacu recalls: "Although moderate, the atmosphere was so stuffed, the hardships so great, the attacks of the right and the left so relentless, that in a short while [this magazine] also succumbed, not without having had its useful effect in the awakening of national sentiment, even among the Moldavians in various parts of Russia, in the
Caucasus, and in
Siberia." Nour enlisted other negative comments from Iorga when he began writing Bessarabian notices in the Romanian daily
Adevărul, which had
Jewish proprietors. Iorga, an
antisemite, commented: "Mr. Alexe Nour of Chișinău assures us now that his new gazette [...] will not be a
philosemitic one". According to Iorga, Nour was given reason to "feel sorry" about the
Adevărul collaboration. Also described as one of the journals whose mission was to popularize the Constitutional Democratic program inside the Bessarabia Governorate,
Viața Basarabiei only survived until May 25, 1907, publishing six issues in all. Reportedly, its demise happened on Russian orders, after Nour's editorial line had found itself in conflict with the censorship apparatus. By then, Nour had also become regional correspondent for
Viața Românească, a magazine published in the Kingdom of Romania by a left-wing group of writers and activists, the
Poporanists. From 1907 to 1914, his column
Scrisori din Basarabia ("Letters from Bessarabia") was the prime source of Bessarabian news for newspapers on the other side of the Russian border. They report with consternation that the official Moldavian Studies Society, had been inactive for an entire year, and concluded that its creation was government farce; however, he also admitted that the bloody events of 1907 Romania were unpalatable for the average Bessarabian. Nour also questioned the national sentiment of Bessarabia's landowning elite, which had largely been integrated into
Russian nobility and served Imperial interests. The region's educated classes were Russian-educated, often Russian-oriented, and had therefore lost
cheia de la lacătă, care închide sufletul țăranului ("the key that will unlock the peasant's soul"). However, in December 1908, he reported with enthusiasm that the Bessarabian Orthodox clergy upheld the use of Romanian ("
Moldavian") in its religious schools and press. The measure, Nour noted, gave formal status to the vernacular, in line with his own
Viața Basarabiei agenda. Nour's "letters from Bessarabia" irritated the
Russifying hierarchs of the Orthodox Church.
Seraphim Chichagov, the
Archbishop of Chișinău, included him among the Church's "worst enemies", but noted that his Romanian nationalism had managed to contaminate only 20 Bessarabian priests.
Madan scandal and Drug controversy Nour's other
Viața Românească articles unmasked a former colleague, Madan, officially appointed censor of Romanian literature within the Russian Empire, and unofficially a Russian spy in both Bessarabia and Romania. In his reply to Nour, published by the Bucharest political gazette
Epoca (September 1909), Madan claimed that his accuser was at once a socialist, an
internationalist and a follower of
Constantin Stere's Bessarabian
separatism. Later research into
Special Corps of Gendarmes archives identified Madan as the informant who provided the Imperial authorities with first-hand reports on the perception of Bessarabian issues in Romania, including on Nour's own 1908 article on the Orthodox priests' support for the vernacular. The paper had a small circulation, and was entirely financed by the local magnate
Vasile Stroescu. Beyond the political notices,
Viața Românească published samples of Nour's literary efforts, including memoirs,
sketch stories and
novellas. When the
Bessarabets venture came to an end, Nour was again employed by
Besarabskaya Zhizn, before switching to the gazette
Drug, representing the controversial Union of the Russian People. Associating with his former adversary, Krushevan, Nour became the editorial secretary, and even joined up with the SRN. With other members of the editorial board, he was soon after involved in a regional press scandal. Nour himself was suspected of having blackmailed centrist leader Krupenski and Roman Doliwa-Dobrowolski, the
Marshal of Nobility in
Orgeyev. When Doliwa-Dobrowolski sued
Drug and the other journalists were rounded up for questioning, Nour fled to Kiev. Nour's new series in
Viața Românească documents the early spread of
Moldovenism. In summer 1914, he informed his readers that the Russian state officials actively persuaded the Bessarabian peasants not to declare themselves Romanian. In this context, he reluctantly admitted, the only hope for a Romanian revival in Bessarabia was for the Romanians to side with the Krupenski-faction conservatives, which, although "hostile to the democratic sentiment of the masses", maintained
linguistic purism.
Germanophile press and Transnistrian ethnography Soon after the outbreak of World War I, Alexis Nour was residing in neutral Romania, active within the
Viața Românească circle from his new home in
Iași. Like other members of this group (and primarily its founder Stere), he campaigned in favor of
rapprochement with the
Central Powers, recommending a war on Russia for the recovery of Bessarabia. Nour thought further than his colleagues, speculating about an alliance of interests between Romanians and
Ruthenians (
Ukrainians). His essay
Problema româno-ruteană. O pagină din marea restaurare a națiunilor ("The Romanian-Ruthenian Issue. A Page from the Great Restoration of Nations"), published by
Viața Românească in its October–November–December 1914 issue, inaugurated a series of such pieces, which talked about
Ukraine's emancipation, the
Bessarabian union, and, unusually in this context, the incorporation of
Transnistria into Romania (with a new frontier on the
Southern Bug). The latter demand was without precedent in the history of Romanian nationalism, The only larger such estimate came, twenty years after Nour's, from within the Transnistrian community of exiles: ethnographer
Nichita Smochină claimed a figure of 1,200,000. Another one of Nour's analytical texts, titled
Din enigma anilor 1914—1915 ("Around the Enigma of 1914—1915"), ventured to state that the German Empire and its allies were poised to win the war, ridiculed the
Entente's
Gallipoli Campaign, and suggested that a German-led
Mitteleuropean federation was in the making. This prognosis also offered a reply to the pro-Entente lobby, who prioritized the annexation of
Transylvania and other Romanian-inhabited regions of
Austria-Hungary over any national project in Bessarabia. In Nour's interpretation, the German project for Mitteleuropa amounted to the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary, leaving Transylvania free to elect in favor of joining Romania. The notion, also supported by Stere, was hotly contested by Onisifor Ghibu, a Transylvanian. According to Ghibu, the Poporanists seemed to ignore the realities of Austro-Hungarian domination; their ideas about Bessarabian superiority were "provocative", "at the very least rude". Also in 1915, Nour designed and published in Bucharest an
ethnographic map of Bessarabia on a
scale of 1:450,000. Building on a cartographic model first used by Zsigmond Bátky in his "
Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen" ethnographic map and later adapted to the
Balkans by
Jovan Cvijić, Nour's map divided the regions depicted into communal entities, represented as
pie charts of the various nationalities. The resulting majority (2 out of 3 million inhabitants) was Romanian, with a note explaining that these were known locally as "
Moldovans"—being Nour's contribution to the
debate on Moldovan ethnicity. Bessarabian historian Ion Constantin sees the map as one of Nour's "meritorious" contributions to the cause of Romanian emancipation. Nour also expanded on his wartime vision in the
Germanophile daily
Seara. In 1915, he stated the need for Romania to join the Central Powers' effort of liberating Bessarabia, Ukraine and Poland from Russia, prophesied that Austria-Hungary would inevitably collapse, and depicted future Romania as both a
Black Sea and
Danubian power. With time, the Bessarabian journalist claimed, the
Straits Question would be solved, Romanian rule over
Odessa and
Constanța would create commercial prosperity, and Romania, a
great power, would be entitled to a share of the
British,
French or
Belgian colonial empires. and whence he made his first contributions to the international press in Entente and neutral countries. On June 24, Nour inaugurated in Iași a new magazine,
Umanitatea ("The Human Race" or "The Humanity"), which only published one more issue, on July 14, before closing down. The magazine's agenda called for a three-pronged reform:
labor rights in the industrial sphere, the reestablishment of a
landed peasantry, and
Jewish emancipation. The subject of Bolshevik "anarchy" preoccupied him enough to constitute a main topic for his other magazine, the
anticommunist Răsăritul ("The East"). Nour's articles, published in
Răsăritul and in
N. D. Cocea's
Chemarea, describe Bessarabia (the "stateless" MDR) as prey to "Bolshevik fury", calling for Romania to immunize itself "against the plague" by simply abandoning hopes to the region. He also revisited his Transnistrian agenda, writing that the Romanian armies needed to move quickly and seize "the people's East, down to the Blue Bug." In one of his later essays, Nour attested that his only son, whom the
Russian Civil War had caught at Odessa, was a victim of the
Soviet Russian-organized shootings of Romanian hostages. According to Nour's account, the young man had died in a mass execution ordered by
Commissar Béla Kun, after being made to dig his own grave. Despite such claims of loyalty, Nour is said to have been the focus of official investigation during a clampdown on wartime Germanophiles. and was present on the first issue of
Moldova de la Nistru, a Bessarabian "magazine written for the people". At Iași,
Umanitatea was relaunched in June 1920, but had Relgis as editorial director and Nour as a mere correspondent. He was still affiliated with the Poporanist periodicals, including
Viața Românească and
Însemnări Literare, where he mainly published translations from and introductions to Russian literature. In parallel, he worked with C. Zarida Sylva on another
Basarabia newspaper, which was dedicated to "national propaganda" in Romania and abroad, and with
Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo at
Lumea, the "weekly bazaar". Alexis Nour centered his subsequent activities in the area of
human rights defense and
pro-feminism. In May 1922, he was one of the Romanian contributors to
A. L. Zissu's Jewish daily,
Mântuirea. At a time when Romania lacked
women's suffrage, he argued that there was an intrinsic link between the two causes: in a piece published by the
feminist tribune
Acțiunea Feministă, he explained that his struggle was about gaining recognition for "the human rights of women". According to political scientist Oana Băluță, Nour's attitude in this respect was comparable to that of another pro-feminist Romanian writer,
Alexandru Vlahuță.
Final years In the final part of his career, Nour still carried on with his coverage of Russian politics for Romanians. He published in
Adevărul a portrait of liberal
White émigré leader
Pavel Milyukov. In 1929, having already contributed to the
Romanian Red Cross information bulletins, he became one of the original editors of
Lumea Medicală, the health and popular science magazine. Nour also signed pieces in
Hanul Samariteanului, a literary monthly launched, unsuccessfully, by writers
Gala Galaction and
Paul Zarifopol. He also turned to fiction writing, completing the
novella Masca lui Beethoven ("
Beethoven's Mask"), first published by
Convorbiri Literare in February 1929. One of the last projects to involve Nour was a
collaborative fiction work,
Stafiile dragostei. Romanul celor patru ("The Ghosts of Love. The Novel of the Four"). His co-authors were
genre novelists
Alexandru Bilciurescu and
Sărmanul Klopștock, alongside
advice columnist I. Glicsman, better known as
Doctor Ygrec. With its
speculative undertones, most of which were introduced in the text by Doctor Ygrec,
Stafiile dragostei is sometimes described as a
parody of
science fiction conventions, in line with similar works by
Tudor Arghezi or
Felix Aderca (
see Romanian science fiction). However, Nour's contribution to the narrative only covers its more conventional and less ambitious episodes, which depict the
epistolary novel of a sailor, Remus Iunian, and a recluse beauty, Tamara Heraclide—according to literary critic
Cornel Ungureanu: "In the 1930s, everyone wrote epistolary novels and sentimental journals, but the worst would have to be those by Mr. Alexis Nour". The other study focused on
Paleo-Balkan mythology, and in particular on the supposed contributions of ancient
Dacians and
Getae to
Romanian folklore:
Credințe, rituri și superstiții geto-dace ("Gaeto-Dacian Beliefs, Rites and Superstitions"). The book was a co-recipient of the
Vasile Pârvan Award, granted by the
Romanian Academy. The decision was received with indignation by archeologist
Constantin Daicoviciu, who deemed
Credințe, rituri și superstiții geto-dace unworthy of attention, as an indiscriminate collection of quotes from "authors good and bad", without any "sound knowledge" of its subject. According to historiographer Gheorghe G. Bezviconi, Nour died in 1940. He is buried at the
Ghencea Cemetery in Bucharest. ==Notes==