Early life He was born in
Horodiște,
Soroca County, to a family of
boyar origins from
Ciripcău,
Bessarabia — which was part of the
Russian Empire at the time. Stere was one of the three sons of a couple of Russian citizens: Gheorghe or Iorgu Stere (known as
Yegor Stepanovich Stere, Егор Степанович Стере in Russian), an
ethnic Greek landowner whose family was originally from
Botoșani County in the Romanian part of
Moldavia, and Pulcheria (Пулкерия), a member of the impoverished gentry in Bessarabia. He spent most of his early years, until the age of eight, in Ciripcău, where the family
manor was located. Around 1874, he graduated from a
Chișinău private school where classes were taught German, and entered the school for
dvoryane in the city, where he became close friends with Alexandru Grosu and
Lev Matveyevich Kogan-Bernstein (who were the basis for the characters
Sașa Lungu and
Moise Roitman in Stere's novel). It was also around this time that he became acquainted with
progressive,
utopian socialist, and
Darwinist ideas (notably reading the works of
Nikolai Chernyshevsky,
Alexander Herzen,
Charles Darwin,
Karl Marx,
Mikhail Bakunin,
Ferdinand Lassalle, and
Peter Lavrovich Lavrov). Stere later indicated that, before the late 1870s, he could not spell the
Romanian alphabet, which had just been adopted over the border (
see Romanian Cyrillic alphabet), and had to rely on a few books
smuggled into Bessarabia for getting a sense of
literary Romanian. While still students, Stere and Kogan-Bernstein engaged in revolutionary politics as
socialists and
Narodniks, initiating a
conspirative "self-instruction" cell of six inside their school. The group was affiliated with
Narodnaya Volya, and Stere was responsible for multiplying and distributing locally the
manifesto issued by the latter after it had assassinated
Emperor Alexander II. This was also the first moment when Stere declared his opposition to a
Social democratic program, a Narodnik-inspired objection which would later form one of the tenets of his doctrine. He was first arrested in late 1883, after
Okhrana units decapitated the Bessarabian wing of the Narodnaya Volya. Detained in
Odessa (during which time he read intensely), Stere was frequently visited by Maria Grosu, the sister of Alexandru, who had fallen in love with him — a Narodnik and a
feminist, she asked Stere for a
marriage of convenience that was meant to help her become free from parental tutelage (according to the laws of the Russian Empire, unmarried women were under their father's protection). Stere agreed, and they were married in the prison
chapel (1885).
Siberia In 1885, he was
deported to
Siberia, serving a three-year term. Briefly kept in
Tyumen prison awaiting transport further east, he was sent to
Kurgan in the custody of two
gendarmes (October). He was joined there by Maria, who gave birth to their son Roman in 1886. Moving to
Turinsk, the Steres joined a group of revolutionaries in internal exile; Constantin Stere agreed to print copies of a Narodnik magazine, using a
hectograph, and was exposed during a raid by authorities. He was swiftly taken to
Tobolsk, then shipped down the
Irtysh to the place where it met the
Ob; he traveled to the village of
Sharkala (the northernmost part of Siberia he ever reached) in a
Khanty canoe, and was then settled in
Beryozovsky District, only to be arrested again and sent back to Tobolsk in the autumn of 1888. He was tried for his activities in Turinsk, based on evidence collected by the Okhrana. While in prison, Stere, who was beginning to distance himself from socialism and
proletarian internationalism, argued in front of authorities that mention of his change in attitude was supposed to be kept by the court when passing the verdict. At the time, a physician who examined him noted that he had suffered a
nervous breakdown, and had him moved to a prison hospital. According to most accounts, he had attempted suicide (a gesture caused by either the death of one of his brothers, who had himself committed suicide, or by news that the Narodnik leader
Lev Tikhomirov had become a supporter of the political establishment). In hospital, Stere stated that: "Quite a while ago have I begun to remove myself from the influence of political exiles and their tradition. Recent times, filled with major hardships for me, I have decided firmly and sincerely to break with these traditions, as well as with all things «illegal» in my past." Instead, he became familiar with
neo-Kantian philosophy, expanding on his interest in
Immanuel Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason (which he was reading in Beryozovsky District). It was at this time that Stere began writing. In March 1889, the court decided to extend his term of exile by three more years, and relocated him to the village of Serginsk, near
Minusinsk. He much later claimed that, while passing through the prison of
Krasnoyarsk, he met
Vladimir Lenin, the future
Bolshevik leader — this is unlikely, as Lenin passed through the city several years after Stere. His other claim to have met and befriended
Józef Piłsudski, future head of state of
Poland (and, at the time, a prominent member of the
Polish Socialist Party), was confirmed by Piłsudski himself in 1927 (Stere's novel,
În preajma revoluției, included Piłsudski as a character, under the name
Stadnicki).
Datoria and Evenimentul In late 1891 or early 1892, having been set free, Stere returned to Bessarabia, and eventually sought political refuge inside Romania, crossing the border clandestinely. He studied law at the
University of Iași (under
Petre Missir, while carrying on as a
leftist activist and quickly becoming an influential figure among the youth of
Iași, the inspiration behind a left-leaning student society that engaged in a virulent polemic with the nationalist youth, and an acquaintance of socialist leaders such as
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea,
Garabet Ibrăileanu,
Ioan Nădejde,
Sofia Nădejde,
Constantin Mille,
Theodor Speranția,
Vasile Morțun, and
Nicolae L. Lupu. Later, a controversy erupted over Stere's academic credentials, as it was never consistently proven that he had passed his
baccalaureate between being arrested and applying for law school. Stere's break with
Marxism led him to attempt persuading the newly created
Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR) to amend its
proletariat-focused policies, and, in 1893, to found the student society
Datoria ("The Duty"), which preserved the Narodnik focus on educating peasants. He and his followers nevertheless continued to rely much of their thesis on Marxist concepts, coupled with an interest taken in the
reformist socialist way advocated by
Eduard Bernstein. After debuting as a journalist for the liberal-inspired
Evenimentul in 1893 (and engaging in public debates with the socialist press), Stere also sent substantial contribution to , a tribune of various left-wing trends that was being published in
Bucharest under the direction of
Anton Bacalbașa. Later in 1893, he took part in founding
Evenimentul Literar, the literary supplement of
Evenimentul. He joined in the socialists Bacalbașa and Ibrăileanu in a cultural polemic with the poet
Alexandru Vlahuță and his magazine
Vieața. Vlahuță, who had sided with Dobrogeanu-Gherea during the latter's conflict with
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, nonetheless clashed with the
leftists over the issue of "
art for art's sake", arguing that the interest his adversaries took in
didacticism was harming literature. This exchange of replies soon involved the former socialist
Eduard Dioghenide, who attacked
Evenimentul Literar with
Antisemitic language, contending that Stere was "an employee of the little kikes" and had "lost his soul to the
Jews". At the time, Stere's activity with
Datoria also came under attack from various student societies — most of them associates of the
Conservative Party. During the late 1890s, he had begun making use of the
Șărcăleanu alias in his polemic articles, which became a particular topic of dispute after his confrontation with Dioghenide (who first speculated that Stere was the author of
Șărcăleanu's articles). Dioghenide's supporters, editors of the newspaper
Naționalul, consequently pressured Stere to indicate who
Șărcăleanu was ("We wish to know him, does he wear
sidelocks or is he a
Judaisized Romanian?"). Similar calls were voiced by
Vieața, who alleged that Stere himself was a
Russian Jew. Winning the support of several Conservative politicians, Stere successfully applied for Romanian citizenship in February 1895, obtaining
naturalization through a special law, as "a Romanian from Bessarabia". In 1897, Stere obtained a
licensure with a thesis on
legal entity and
individualism, one which drew criticism from the influential Conservative-inspired group
Junimea, on the assumption that it had been partly inspired by Marx. At the time, he also published an incomplete series of philosophical essays centered on the works of
Wilhelm Wundt. After graduation, Stere, who was by then the father of four, lived for a while in
Ploiești, and afterwards joined the
Bar association in Iași as a practicing lawyer. During the period, he met and befriended the influential writer
Ion Luca Caragiale.
Birth of Poporanism By 1898, Stere, who had continued to acquire influence with Iași-based socialists, became involved in disputes over the future of the
Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR) and
Vasile Morțun's call for a merger with the
National Liberal Party (PNL) — Morțun's camp, which also included
Alexandru G. Radovici, became known in time as "the generous ones" (
generoșii). According to
Constantin Titel Petrescu, Stere, despite his own polemics with Dobrogeanu-Gherea, sided with the latter and against Morțun ("Even Stere [...] declared himself against moving to the Liberals"). Nevertheless, during merger talks between the "generous ones" and the left wing of the National Liberals, Stere was approached by the latter's
Ion I. C. Brătianu; Brătianu and
Gheorghe Gh. Mârzescu, who were gathering supporters at a time when the PNL cabinet of
Dimitrie Sturdza looked set to lose the
general elections of 1899 to a strong coalition of Conservatives and former Liberals such as
Petre S. Aurelian, proposed to Stere that he become a city councilor in Iași, and he accepted. During the period, he split with
Evenimentul, as the paper became close to Liberal splinter groups and virulently criticized the contacts between the PNL and former PSDMR affiliates. Eventually, Stere entered the PNL as a left-wing
radical and
populist, supporting an original tactic that blended a Narodnik focus on the peasantry with a weariness towards
capitalism and
industrialisation. This was the origin of
Poporanism, a theory expanded upon in his influential 1908 essay
Poporanism sau social-democrație?, "Poporanism or
Social democracy?" (Stere coined the original term in 1894, viewing it the best translation of the word
Narodnik). In essence,
Poporanism ceased to view socialism as a goal in countries such as Romania. Stere noted that the group to be defined as industrial
proletariat accounted for ca. 1% of the total number of taxpayers (around 1907), and argued instead for a "peasant state", which was to encourage and preserve small
agricultural plots as the basis for economic development. Citing the example of Denmark (
see Danish cooperative movement), he also proposed that
cooperative industries were to be created in the rural sphere, and that initiative agriculture could also rely in
cooperative farms: "The essential role of peasant cooperatives resides in that they, while keeping the small-scale peasant holdings intact, award them the possibility to make use of all the advantages of large-scale production." Despite its name, Stere understood the "peasant state" not as an actual
hegemony of the peasantry, but as an immediate move from the census
suffrage in the
Kingdom of Romania to a
universal one, intended to accurately reflect the country's social realities (
see 1866 Constitution of Romania). In an 1898 speech, he also stressed a loyalty for the
King of Romania (
Carol I at the time). Stere notably rejected
Karl Kautsky's support for capitalization in agriculture, arguing that it was neither necessary nor practical. He was not, however, opposed to
modernization, and invested trust in the role of
intellectuals as militants and activists, as well as building on
Werner Sombart's theory that agrarian economies were facing new and special conditions (as opposed to those that bore the mark of the
Industrial Revolution). Stere observed changes occurring in the developed world at the turn of the 19th century, and concluded that industrialization of backward countries was also being blocked by
colonialism and the prosperity it had brought to the
British Empire and the United States. He argued that a new form of
capital was being created at a larger, non-national, scale; he deemed it "vagabond capital", and viewed in it the source for the lack of accuracy in Marxist
predictions over proletarian alienation (as it appeared that, in developed countries, the proletariat was growing wealthier). This was also the start of a polemic between him and the Marxist
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Although the two shared skepticism over the possibility of early socialist success in Romania (agreeing with
Titu Maiorescu's verdict that it was one of the "forms without substance", and thus an ill-suited effect of
Westernization), Dobrogeanu-Gherea argued that Stere's program of basing Romania's economy on cooperatives and small-scale agricultural holdings could only lead to endemic
underdevelopment.
Early National Liberal politics As a city councilor in 1899, Stere soon found himself in an unusual position after
Minister of the Interior Mihail Pherekyde ordered a clampdown on the surviving PSDMR. This came after the
Conservative opposition voiced allegations that socialist clubs in the countryside were inciting laborers to revolt (an accusation which threatened to decrease the popularity of the
Dimitrie Sturdza cabinet). As all former PSDMR members in the PNL came under scrutiny, he was himself the target of attacks in
Parliament, and notably criticized by the
Constitutional Party's Titu Maiorescu for allegedly using his position to "disturb the elementary order; [...] leading to the only place it could lead: peasant rebellion". He lost his position in March 1899, following Sturdza's fall from power over a scandal involving relations between Romanian and
Austria-Hungary. Consequently, he welcomed the remaining "generous ones" inside the PNL as the PSDMR was dissolved (April 1899); those socialists who remained independent continued to consider Stere the main instigator of the move. At the time, he relied on what he interpreted as
Ion I. C. Brătianu's promise that a PNL cabinet was going to enforce both
universal suffrage and
land reform, and hoped to exercise an influence on the party's Left. With Pherekyde,
Petre Poni,
Toma Stelian and
Spiru Haret, Stere was soon involved in public protests against the successive Conservative cabinets of
Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino and
Petre P. Carp — provoked by the
Hallier Affair — involving a French firm which used its government connections to regain a
public works contract in the port of
Constanța, although it had failed to respect its obligations —, and the "Law on
spirits" (or "law on
țuica") — which established
homebrewing tax, engendering violence in the countryside. Following a conflict between Cantacuzino and Carp, which caused the latter's cabinet to be invalidated with assistance from Conservative parliamentarians (February 1901) Sturdza returned to power triumphantly. In the
1901 suffrage, he was first elected to
Chamber for the 3rd Electoral College in Iaşi. Stere largely owed his 1901 appointment as Deputy Professor at the
University of Iași to his political connections: falling short of legal requirements, he asked Brătianu and Spiru Haret to make an exception in his case (in order to avoid breaking the law which prevented state employees from being elected deputies, he asked not to receive a salary for his first course). After he became a full Professor, his assistant at the department was
Nicolae Daşcovici. Stere sided with Brătianu and
Vasile Lascăr in 1904, at a time when the two confronted Sturdza and resigned from their government offices, provoking the cabinet's fall (and Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino's reinstatement as Premier).
1905 Russian Revolution In his later years, Stere argued that he had foreseen Japan's victory in the
Russo-Japanese War and the string of social problems Russia experienced, and that he had sent the General Staff of the
Romanian Army a memorandum on the matter. Soon after the
Russian Revolution of 1905, Stere and a group of his followers returned to Bessarabia in order to encourage local Romanian sentiment during elections for the
State Duma and
zemstvos — according to Stere, the group had the tacit approval of the Conservative government. In parallel, Stere represented the
Chișinău zemstvo as a lawyer in a civil lawsuit. They arrived at a time of conflict, when
Black Hundreds activity was gaining momentum and peasant pressures in the countryside were meeting with resistance from
reactionary politicians such as
Vladimir Purishkevich and
Pavel Krushevan. Initially, Stere doubled as a correspondent for PNL
French language newspapers, signing them as
C. Șercăleano. He issued a magazine (
Basarabia) of which he was editor (together with
Ion Inculeț,
Teodor Inculeț,
Ion Pelivan,
Alexei Mateevici, and
Pan Halippa), attempting to profit from the political gains in Russia by calling for both in-depth social reforms and
decentralization; their influence waned after
reactionary politicians made electoral gains and, as the new administration, confiscated most of the magazine's issues (leading to its
bankruptcy in 1907). Stere himself first returned to Romania in early 1906, and immediately left on a trip to
Austro-Hungarian-ruled
Transylvania, where he met with the poet and activist
Octavian Goga in
Sibiu, as well as with other prominent ethnic Romanians, becoming in time an unofficial envoy of the PNL in the region. His involvement in the
zemstvo trial became the topic of a scandal, after the institution accused Stere of having failed to fulfill his obligations as a lawyer, and called on him to return the fees he had received.
Viața Românească In its first editorial (1906),
Viața Românească (a magazine which Stere had planned during his return to Bessarabia) summarized the cultural guidelines of the
Poporanist trend, ones which Stere had first theorized in 1899 articles for
Evenimentul Literar: "A 'national' culture with specific characteristics will only be born when the large, truly
Romanian, popular masses will partake in
creating and
assessing cultural values —
literary language,
literature, ways of living — and this will only be possible when, through
culture,
enlarged political participation and
economical uplifting, the peasantry will be awarded a
social value in proportion with its numerical, economical, moral and national values, when we shall be
one people, when all the
social classes shall be of
the same people [...]." Stere distanced himself from the competing and equally peasant-focused trend of
Sămănătorul, which aimed to preserve the peasant way of life in front of modernization rather than enforce the peasant economy advocated by
Poporanism. He was notably involved in polemics with
Sămănătorul's
Octavian Goga and
Nicolae Iorga. As he later admitted, he attempted to divert attention from the
Șărcăleanu alias by making use of another one,
P. Nicanor & Co. (used before and after him by various
Viața Românească contributors to the magazine's closing column), and by writing an article in which he claimed Stere and Șărcăleanu were not one and the same, thus maintaining the relative ambiguity until the early 1930s.
1907 Revolt and aftermath Alongside other followers of Brătianu (including
Garabet Ibrăileanu), Stere began campaigning in favor of dismissing the Conservative cabinet of
Premier Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, at a time when the latter also faced
Take Ionescu's dissidence. This coincided with the outbreak of the
1907 Peasants' Revolt, which managed to bring down the cabinet after Ionescu agreed to support the
Dimitrie Sturdza's return to power, as a means to ensure a response to the troubles. Like many other "generous ones", Stere was integrated in the new administration, and became a
prefect of
Iași County; instead of calling in the
Romanian Army to pacify the area, he interfered in landowner-peasant relations to ensure better conditions for the latter, thus causing alarm in the Conservative camp. Although no violent reprisal against the rebels was recorded in his prefecture, his association with the repressive cabinet was the topic of criticism from many of his former allies, most notably
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea,
Paul Bujor, and
Constantin Mille. Together with his deputy prefect
Gheorghe Gh. Mârzescu, Stere resigned his position in April and was replaced with
Gheorghe Kernbach, preparing to run in the
legislative election of that year — for the 2nd Electoral College in Iași; he won the seat in late May. In early June, Premier Sturdza appointed Stere, alongside Take Ionescu,
Petre P. Carp,
Ion G. Duca,
Alexandru Djuvara,
Constantin Alimănișteanu,
Ion and
Alexandru G. Radovici,
Dinu and
Vintilă Brătianu, and 24 other parliamentarians, to a Committee charged with settling the agricultural issue; ultimately dissolved later in the same month, the Committee did not achieve any clear result, and Stere's radical proposals were repeatedly ignored by his own party. During the same period, a conflict erupted between Stere and the independent
Antisemitic politician
A. C. Cuza, who had been one of his opponents in the election; after making use of the word "trivial" in reference to Stere's attitudes, Cuza was sued by the latter, and refused a challenge to face him in a
duel (an additional aspect of the scandal was the accusation that Stere had purposely failed students who supported Cuza's policies). Following the creation of Take Ionescu's
Conservative-Democratic Party (PCD), the PNL launched accusations that the new group was financed by the leaseholder
Mochi Fischer (whose property in
Flămânzi had seen the outbreak of the 1907 revolt); in reaction, the PCD newspaper
Opinia, representing the views of
Alexandru Bădărău, accused Stere of having failed to protect the interests of his clients in the
Bessarabian
zemstvo — Stere challenged the article's author
Gheorghe Lascăr, former mayor of Iași, to a duel on
Copou Hill, during which Lascăr was defeated and injured (March 11, 1908). Calling for an
amnesty in respect to peasant rebels, Stere was initially silent on the new legislation (which, without questioning traditional landed property, allowed room for
communal ownership), and was mostly absent from Chamber sessions. He nevertheless authored several studies in which he condemned the state of affairs in Romanian agriculture, concluding one of them with a
Latin verdict, paraphrasing
Pliny the Elder,
Latifundia perdidere Romaniam ("The great estates have ruined Romania"). He expressed full support for the newly established agricultural bank,
Casa Rurală, at a time when the project for its creation was voted in Parliament (February 1908).
First clashes with the PNL After again siding with Brătianu during the inner-party conflict with Sturdza — culminating in Brătianu's arrival to power after the premier fell victim to a nervous disease —, Stere replaced
Petre Poni at the head of the Liberal club in Iași (June 1908), and soon came to be opposed by Mârzescu over his promotion of former socialists to party offices. Following the PCD's rise to the detriment of the PNL, Stere was able to enlist his party's support for his vision of
electoral reform (with a single electoral college, and idea also promoted by Take Ionescu), and reported on it in Parliament, being criticized by the Conservative opposition on the basis of suspicions that he was still promoting socialist ideals. By mid-1909, he was the target of a campaign in
Evenimentul, which had by then turned Conservative, being again accused of having profited from the
zemstvo in Bessarabia without providing the required services. At the time, Stere and Ibrăileanu began mentioning the
Poporanist or "democratic peasantist" trend as a small but representative faction of the PNL. Such attitudes caused further tensions inside his party:
Henri Sanielevici, himself a former socialist National Liberal, commented that "[Stere] seeks to strengthen himself
through and inside the Liberal Party and break with it only when he will become strong enough"; at a time when Brătianu was thought to be considering Stere for a cabinet position, the
right-wing section of the PNL expressed its opposition and took steps to marginalize him (a catalysis for this attitude was the clash between the PNL and
România Muncitoare affiliates, caused by the expulsion of the socialist activist
Christian Rakovsky, together with promises made by Brătianu that his party would not push for
land reform and
universal suffrage). Largely absent from the political scene during 1909-1910, Constantin Stere nevertheless aided the PNL, fallen from power in December 1910, to reach an agreement with the
Conservative-Democrats over opposition to the
Petre P. Carp cabinet, by improving his relations with
Alexandru Bădărău. In his 1910
Neo-Serfdom (A Social and Economic Study of Our Land Issue), Dobrogeanu-Gherea viewed the relation between left-leaning cultural circles in Romania and Stere's Narodnik focus as conjectural, and made mention of competing trends inside
Poporanism: "[There is] the
Poporanism established in this country around 15 years after [the Narodnik original] and from the very same source. Lacking the rigorous method of Marxism, [...]
Poporanism appears to have being against Social Democracy as its sole attribute [...].[There is also] our national, Romanian,
Poporanism, as it has originated from the different and real circumstances of our country. [It] is more practical than theoretical, and does not in fact have its own theory. Mr. Stere's effort to award it one was not at all successful. But this
Poporanism has its own views and attitudes and — what's more important — its own
praxis. And to this real praxis, influencing the real course of things in this country, all kinds of
Poporanists have associated themselves in one way or another, including those who are under the influence of Russian [Narodnik ideas]. But even this national
Poporanism is far, very far from being uniform. This can even be seen in those multiple groupings composing it, [...] which many times quarrel with one another." The apparent heterogeneous character of
Poporanism was also criticized by others, who noted that its discourse also featured
nationalist rhetoric. Constantin Stere had a moderate reaction to the publishing of
Neo-Serfdom, briefly criticizing the arguments it brought against
Poporanist politics (with Dobrogeanu-Gherea's renewed message that socialism was possible in backward countries); additional replies to the thesis came from Stere's disciple, the engineer
Nicolae Profiri (among others who engaged in the debate was Dobrogeanu-Gherea's son, the future
Leninist Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea). Around 1912, while visiting
Florence, Italy, Stere began a long extra-marital relationship with Ana Radovici, the widow of
Ion Radovici (the latter had committed suicide in 1909). No longer elected to the Chamber in the
1912 suffrage, he returned to his chair at the Iași University. During the electoral campaign, reelected leader of the Liberal club, he was again attacked by
Evenimentul, and, having taken part in denouncing
A. C. Cuza for
plagiarism, clashed with his supporters (who briefly occupied the PNL headquarters in Iași in May).
World War I In 1916, Stere strongly supported Romania's alliance with the
Central Powers, arguing in favor of a policy focused on Bessarabia's recovery and against what he saw as Russian
expansionism - ultimately, this led him to split with the pro-
Entente PNL upon the outbreak of
World War I. Following the
occupation of Bucharest by the
Central Powers, Stere remained in the city, in contrast with the mass the Bucharesters who followed the Romanian authorities' refuge to Iași. With financial support from
Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, he began publishing his
Lumina, a newspaper that was nevertheless, according to its editor, "supportive of the Romanian point of view" and thus subject to
censorship ("a German [censorship], for [views on] external politics [...] and for internal politics [the one] exercised by Petre P. Carp's men, who cut out my articles on
expropriation [that is,
land reform] and
universal suffrage"). After prolonged debates, the vote was carried in favor of union on March 27 (
see Greater Romania). With the change in fortunes brought by the
Armistice with Germany, Stere was charged with
treason and imprisoned; never facing trial, he was eventually set free.
Creation of the Peasants' Party In the late 1910s, he became discreetly involved in the movement that led to the creation of the ''Bessarabian Peasants' Party'' (founded and led by
Pan Halippa and
Ion Inculeț). In late 1918, most of it merged into
Ion Mihalache's
Peasants' Party (PȚ), of which he and Halippa became high-ranking members (Inculeț disagreed with the political union, and led a smaller party that eventually merged into the PNL). Stere caused a scandal after running and winning elections for the
Chamber of Deputies of Romania in
Soroca (1921, under the
Alexandru Averescu government), when all parties joined
Nicolae Iorga in opposition to his appointment in office (Iorga considered Stere's anti-Entente past to be equivalent with
treason). Fears of
Bolshevik appeal in Bessarabia led to widespread allegations that the former socialist Stere was "Bolshevizing" the region. Speaking from the non-
communist Left,
Ioan Nădejde expressed concerns that Stere was radicalizing his message: "[...] Stere aims to scrape together a socialist party, allied with the Peasants' Party, against all other social classes, and thus follows a policy out of which, in the end, we could only get Bolshevism."
Scandal and dissidence Stere's position in his party's leadership prevented it from entering a close union with the
Transylvania-based
Romanian National Party (PNR) in 1924, as the PNR's leaders resented his anti-Entente past. Two years later, however, he was admitted as one of the leaders of the newly created
National Peasants' Party, a fusion of the two groups that was partly aided by the attack of National Liberal agents on
Pan Halippa and the government's refusal to punish the guilty. Stere was the author of a legislation which aimed at providing for a degree of administrative decentralization and local initiative in government, passed in 1929 by the
Iuliu Maniu executive. He soon clashed with the more
conservative politicians who had been members of the PNR. In March 1930, the mention of his name during a public celebration provoked a number of
Romanian Army generals to leave in protest; immediately after, the National Liberal group around
Vintilă Brătianu began attacking Stere's party for harbouring him, and for causing a split between Army and political establishment. General
Henry Cihoschi, the
Minister of Defense, was publicly criticized in
parliament for not siding with his subordinates, and had to resign on April 4; Maniu appeared to support Stere's ousting. In reply, Stere again expressed his view that Romania's government had been wrong in 1916, and left to create the minor
Democratic Peasants' Party–Stere (not to be confused with the one created later by
Nicolae L. Lupu), which he led into a union with
Grigore Iunian's ''Radical Peasants' Party''. ==Legacy==