Early years According to updated reference works, the future Ion Buzdugan was born in 1887 in
Brînzenii Noi (now in
Telenești District,
Moldova), the son of peasants Alexandru and Ecaterina Buzdâga, who also had seven daughters. One 1936 entry claims that he was born in 1889 in
Buzdugeni. Both villages were at the time included in the Russian Empire's
Bessarabian Governorate, and the young man was educated at a teachers' seminary in
Bayramcha. He later studied agriculture, law and literature in Russian schools in
Kamianets-Podilskyi and
Moscow. Buzdugan, who claimed to have lodged with, and befriended, the Ukrainian poet
Ivan Franko, eventually took a license to practice law from
Moscow University. Influenced to some degree by the work of
Mihai Eminescu, he began writing his own poetry, published in Bessarabian magazines from 1905, under the pseudonym
Nică Romanaș (or
Românaș, "Nică the Romanian Fella"). Other pen names he used include B. Cogâlnic, Ion Câmpeanu, and I. Dumbrăveanu. He became involved with the groups of Romanian nationalists then forming in the Governorate, writing for their newspaper
Basarabia, and, while in Kamianets, establishing contacts with the
Romanians east of Bessarabia. In 1907–1909, a schoolteacher in
Bursuceni, he associated the Romanian national club founded by judge
Ion Pelivan. His activity there brought him under the watch of the
Okhrana, and, during the subsequent clampdown, he received a punishment for having taught his students in Romanian. Nevertheless, he remained active in the nationalist circles and, by 1913, was in contact with
Cuvânt Moldovenesc journal, which he also edited for a while, again as N. Romanaș. Buzdugan volunteered as an officer in the
Imperial Russian Army, according to other sources, they may have even been involved with the
Bolsheviks. By the time of the
February Revolution, Buzdugan had entered the Moldavian Soldiers' Organization in
Odessa, and took up the task of propaganda work among the Bessarabian units of the Imperial Russian Army. He was still active as a writer, networking with his colleagues from
Western Moldavia. By February 1917, he had joined the literary circle
Academia Bârlădeană, becoming close friends with
George Tutoveanu and
Alexandru Vlahuță. While on the front lines, he helped save the life of the Romanian officer and fellow writer
Camil Petrescu.
National Moldavian Party After March 13, 1917, both Buzdugan and Pântea became members of
Paul Gore's
National Moldavian Party (PNM), the driving force of Romanian nationalism in the former Governorate, and were co-opted on its steering committee. However, as later noted by the party colleague
Pan Halippa, Buzdugan was categorically opposed to the PNM's right-wing, which looked to "Bessarabia's secession from Russia and her Union with Romania." Taken by the Russian army to
Iași, the provisional Romanian capital, he befriended
Mihail Sadoveanu and other contributors to
România newspaper. His mailing address was the paper's headquarters, which was also the domicile of playwright
Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea. He therefore kept contact with the Romanian nationalists, including the historian
Nicolae Iorga. Iorga recalled that Buzdugan was agitated in favor of socialist reforms and critical of the
Romanian King Ferdinand I, somewhat supportive of a Russian-backed uprising, and favoring mass desertion. At the time, he spoke a "picturesque"
Moldavian dialect, mixed with Russian neologisms. On April 10, Buzdugan attended the Bessarabian Schoolteachers' Congress, presided upon by
Alexandr K. Schmidt and comprising educators of all nationalities. There, he agitated in favor of a split, calling on Romanian teachers to form their own "cleanly Moldavian" congress, and supporting the idea of intensive courses to formalize and standardize their language. He also advocated the introduction of the
Latin alphabet, to replace
Cyrillic everywhere, including in
zemstva schools. In May, with such autonomist goals in mind, Buzdugan, Pântea and
Anton Crihan founded the newspaper
Pământ și Voe, styled "Organ of the Moldavian Socialist Revolutionary Party". Additionally, together with the playwright
Sergiu Victor Cujbă, he founded a people's university and a peasants' theater. Buzdugan,
Grigore Cazacliu,
Vasile Țanțu and
Andrei Scobioală soon set up a Moldavian Committee of the Romanian War Front, which began collecting Romanian church literature and primers, to be used in the struggle against
Russification. The committee watched with alarm as the
Ukrainian People's Republic made overtures to incorporate Bessarabia into her borders. The
Ukrainian Rada received a letter of protest written for the Bessarabian soldiers' organization by Buzdugan. It argued that, "on the basis of historical, ethnographic rights, of her distinct customs and of her economic situation", Bessarabia had "an imprescriptible right to complete autonomy." Buzdugan was also one of the founders of the PNM-and-Committee tribune,
Soldatul Moldovan, and returned to his career in the Bessarabian press. According to Iorga, Buzdugan was already going through a "taming" process, and warned the Romanians that Russian radicals were plotting a coup. Buzdugan himself claimed to have met a congratulatory King Ferdinand, using the occasion to press him for a
nationwide land reform. The Congress appointed him to an Organizational Bureau that also comprised Halippa,
Ion Inculeț,
Teofil Ioncu, and
Pantelimon Erhan. It was the provisional governing body of the region, and wrote down that laws and regulations for the
legislative election of that month. Buzdugan himself was elected to
Sfatul Țării, representing
Bălți County, and joined the Moldavian Bloc, a parliamentary club reuniting former PNM members (informally: "Pelivan's godsons") with the other Romanian nationalists. Buzdugan and Erhan supported Pelivan as leader of
Sfatul, clashing with the left-wing "Peasants' Faction", the
Mensheviks led by
Eugen Kenigschatz, and non-Romanian deputies such as
Krste Misirkov. This coalition preferred the leftist Inculeț, who did not approve of Bessarabia's secession from the
Russian Republic. Against Buzdugan's protests, Pelivan asked his followers to also support Inculeț. In November 1917, during the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Buzdugan was one of the secretaries of Bessarabian Soldiers' Congress, part of a presidium headed by
Vasile Cijevschi. This assembly voted favorably on the region's emancipation, referencing the right to
self-determination. In December,
Sfatul proclaimed the
Moldavian Democratic Republic, a quasi-independent state. Pelivan and his "godsons", who were pushing for the union with Romania, found themselves harassed by Bolshevik groups such as
Front-Odel (confederated with the
Rumcherod and loyal to the new
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). They began preparing for an armed confrontation. Buzdugan and Scobioală also acted as liaisons between the
Romanian Land Forces, under
Constantin Prezan, and the
White Russians, represented locally by
Dmitry Shcherbachev of the
7th Army.
Union process , carrying Buzdugan's name Eventually, disguised as Russian soldiers, and accompanied by sailor
Vasile Gafencu, the "godsons" left Chișinău and headed for Iași, where they contacted the Romanian Army. On January 12, the Romanians, under General
Ernest Broșteanu, crossed the border to suppress the Bolshevik uprising
(see Romanian military intervention in Bessarabia). Buzdugan, with Crihan, Pelivan, Gafencu, Țanțu and
Gheorghe Buruiană, followed them closely. Later sources suggest that Buzdugan and his Moldavian Committee set up a unit of the
Republican Army, which reportedly fought against the Bolsheviks during subsequent skirmishes. When the act of union as put up for debate in the
Sfatul session of , 1918, Buzdugan was among the 86-member majority who voted in favor. During the preliminary talks, he had seconded the
Romanian Prime Minister,
Alexandru Marghiloman, reassuring the Peasant Faction, and Inculeț, that land reform would be enacted in Romania. By then a leader of the Moldavian Bloc, he urged his colleagues to support union as stemming from "the principle of self-determination", and "the most revolutionary act in the history of our people". As
Sfatul Secretary, together with Inculeț, the
President of the Republic, and Halippa, the Vice President, he signed into law the union proclamation. Buzdugan was also the one selected to read the proclamation in the plenum session. In October 1918,
Sfatul Țăriis
eponymous journal put out his monograph on the history of
boyardom and peasantry in Bessarabia. Late that November, he was reelected Secretary of
Sfatul, in circumstances that were deemed illegal by the anti-unionist opposition; under his watch, unconditional union (which excluded the regionalist provisions of the March document) was put to the vote. Buzdugan joined Halippa, Pelivan, and Cazacliu on a
Sfatul mission to
Cernăuți, in
Bukovina, and
Alba Iulia, in
Transylvania, where they were to attend popular assemblies confirming the establishment of
Greater Romania. In Bukovina, Buzdugan expressed his enthusiasm for "our national cause, the awakening of the entire nation between the Nistru and the
Tisa." However, bedridden with the
Spanish flu in Cernăuți, he was unable to follow Pelivan to Alba Iulia, and failed to witness
Transylvania's incorporation into Romania on December 1 ("
Great Union"). In his last days as a
Sfatul deputy, Buzdugan signed a protest addressed to the Romanian government of
Ion I. C. Brătianu, citing cases of abuse by the
Gendarme "satraps", including their alleged embezzlement of welfare supplies. The document warned that the nation was "nowhere near to moral unity, to the one guarantee that formal union would be strengthened". From January 1919, he was among the founders of a
credit union, formed to assist Bessarabian peasants in view of the land reform. Its steering committee also included Halippa, Buruiană, Crihan,
Vasile Bârcă,
Teofil Ioncu,
Vasile Mândrescu,
Mihail Minciună, and
Nicolae Suruceanu.
Beginnings in Greater Romania On April 27, Buzdugan and many of his credit union colleagues rallied with the PNM's successor, the
Bessarabian Peasants' Party (PȚB). He was voted, with Pântea, a member of its Central Committee. He served continuously in Romania's
Assembly of Deputies, where he represented Bălți County, from
November 1919 to
July 1932. He shared his party's opposition to the policies of the new
People's Party government, and spoke out against its interventions in the local administration of Bessarabia. In July 1920, he took the rostrum to address the sacking of A. Crudu, the
Prefect of
Hotin County, claiming that the latter had been abused and humiliated by the authorities. Buzdugan rallied with the Halippa faction of the PȚB, which sought integration within the nationwide
Peasants' Party (PȚ); the other wings, comprising Inculeț, Pântea and Pelivan, preferred independence. He was one of 9 parliamentarians who, together with Halippa and the non-PȚB agrarian theorist
Constantin Stere, joined the PȚ in on July 18, 1921. Under Inculeț's presidency, the PȚB excluded him on July 22. His literary career took off, and his subsequent poetic work was soon taken up in literary newspapers and magazines all across Greater Romania. These include:
Viața Romînească,
Adevărul Literar și Artistic,
Convorbiri Literare,
Cuget Românesc,
Gândirea,
Luceafărul,
Sburătorul,
Convorbiri Literare,
Flacăra,
Lamura, and
Drum Drept. Buzdugan was inducted into the
Romanian Writers' Society, and co-founded the Bessarabian Writers' Society. Made a Commander of both the
Order of the Crown and the
Star of Romania, as well as a recipient of the Ferdinand Medal, he took up practice as a lawyer, based in
Bucharest and
Bălți.
Cântece din stepă ("Songs from the Steppe", 1923),
Cântece din Basarabia ("Songs from Bessarabia", two volumes: 1921, 1928),
Miresme din stepă ("Scents of the Steppe", 1922), and a reprint of
Țara mea (1928). In 1923, he won a national prize for poetry, granted by the
Romanian Ministry of Arts. With
Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică, C. S. Făgețel and N. A. Constantinescu, he also contributed a
Festschrift for Iorga, published in 1921. His poems, several of which dealt with themes of national fulfillment addressed to "Mother-Country", were often in dialect. According to literary historian
George Călinescu, they "sound to us like the
French-Canadian language must sound to the French." Iorga described them as an expression of the "primitive but powerful soul", with rhymes of "patient naivete", and overall "vastly superior" to those of
Alexei Mateevici.
Eugen Lovinescu, the modernist doyen, found
Miresme din stepă to be almost entirely "un-literary", only valid as "proofs of Romanian cultural continuity during a time of alienation": "we can only approach [the book] for its cultural interest and while numbing our aesthetic scruples." A similar point was made by
Șerban Cioculescu: "I. Buzdugan's poems cannot be said to be attractive in their beauty. All elements are lacking: no sensitivity, no imagination, no originality of ideas or artistic forms." He described
Cântece din stepă as derivative from the works of
Octavian Goga or
Vasile Alecsandri, and instructive as to the comparative underdevelopment of
Bessarabian literature. Cioculescu also noted that Buzdugan had not mastered
Romanian grammar, his spelling errors "all too numerous to be disregarded."
PNȚ and PȚ–L Reelected to the Assembly as one of the PȚ representatives for Bessarabia, Buzdugan focused on agrarian issues such as the liquidation of the
zemstva, and defended the latter as tools of peasants' self-management. He and Halippa were also asked to respond in the Assembly about how they had carried out the land reform. He fought over the matter with
Alexandru C. Constantinescu of the National Liberals, but also with more radical Bessarabian agrarianists such as
Ludovic Dauș. His other focus was Romania's defense against a hostile
Soviet Union, which had not recognized Bessarabia as part of Romania. His speeches applauded by all political camps, Buzdugan depicted Romania as a bastion of Christendom and Western civilization. Unlike other PȚ deputies, he did not see Romania's social backwardness as an impediment, and suggested that making Romanians "healthy and strong" would ensure that the country fulfilled her cultural mission. Documenting the
Comintern links of the
Romanian Communist Party, he also suggested that the PȚ itself was being infiltrated by the
Krestintern. In December 1924, Buzdugan had a public row with
Artur Văitoianu,
Minister of Transport in the new Brătianu cabinet—at stake was the issue of the
state railways, which Buzdugan deemed unfit for an imminent war with the Soviets. His later speeches about Bessarabian unionism "universally ignored", Buzdugan continued to point out cases of abuse and corruption in his native region, protesting against the sentencing by a
court-martial of his fellow deputy Gheorghe Zbornea, and warning that such displays weakened anti-communism in the region. His conflict with the Brătianu government became acute, with Buzdugan fully supporting Stere, who was sidelined by the majority deputies: reportedly, the poet-politician Goga threatened Buzdugan with a revolver during the session of May 4, 1925. On May 17, he took part in the opposition congress at Dacia Hall, alongside Peasantist and
Democratic Nationalist figures, with Communist Party men present in the audience. This meeting was broken up by the army, and Buzdugan, although defended by Iorga, found himself stripped of his deputy's seat on May 19. Buzdugan followed Halippa and Pelivan into
National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), formed from the PȚ's merger with the
Romanian National Party. Reelected
in June 1926, he became noted for his antisemitic outbursts, taking the rostrum to address the issue of anti-Jewish disturbances at Cernăuți. Scholar
Irina Livezeanu describes Buzdugan's speech as one "studded with anti-Semitic buzzwords" and "racist commonplaces". He accused the Jews of provoking vague acts of violence to "harm Romania"; however, taking sides with the
National-Christian Defense League students, he warned that the Jews could expect
pogroms to occur. In February 1927, he defected to the
Peasants' Party–Lupu (PȚ–L), serving on its executive committee alongside figures such as
Nicolae L. Lupu and
Ioan Pangal. During the 10th anniversary of the Bessarabian union, Buzdugan showed himself optimistic about the prospects of the region, against Halippa and Ioncu, who shared a bleaker outlook. In November 1928, at another festive meeting of the former
Sfatul deputies, he clashed with Stere, who demanded that a resolution be adopted in support of "people's liberties", and against the "exceptional laws". Buzdugan reproached Stere: "So you came here for politicking." In his new term in the Assembly after the
1928 election, he took a position against Bessarabian autonomism, describing it as a "Russian formula" and a "worrisome" threat. Buzdugan also questioned the PNȚ government over its alleged tolerance of communist and pro-Soviet activities in Bessarabia. Nevertheless, he endorsed decentralization of the lesser government bodies, "for it won't do that someone should have to travel back and forth from Bessarabia to Bucharest".
Iorga cabinet and Romanian Front Buzdugan was active with Pântea within the Union of Reserve Officers, which collaborated with the
Siguranța agency in combating communism, "finding out and unmasking those who carried out revolutionary propaganda"; a rough equivalent of the old regime's
gentry assembly, it also demanded pay raises for Bessarabians in the military. In 1930, he sided with the nationalist groups in the Assembly against the PNȚ government, which had promised to
ethnic Bulgarians to enact a liberal land law in
Southern Dobruja, thus limiting Romanian colonization attempts. As noted by Iorga, Buzdugan, "babbling as usual", attacked the Dobrujan Bulgarian deputies as proxies of the
Bulgarian Tsardom. Buzdugan also had a verbal bout with
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu of the far-left
Peasant Workers' Bloc, calling him "a parasite of the working class". Co-opted by Iorga during his technocratic administration of 1931–1932, he served as Undersecretary of State in the
Ministry of Commerce and Industry. As Iorga recounts, Buzdugan and
Vladimir Cristi were imposed on him by a Bessarabian "bloc" of deputies, "who wished to have their representative in Government"—this was against rumors that he was personally close to Buzdugan and intended to make him his son-in-law. In order to join the government in January 1932, Buzdugan quarrelled with Lupu and the PȚ–L, who remained in the opposition. He also defeated Pântea for the position, although the latter was a favorite of the new king,
Carol II. Buzdugan depicted Pântea as an unreliable former Bolshevik, and also as a pawn of the National Liberals. At the time,
Pamfil Șeicaru and
Curentul daily mounted a campaign against Buzdugan, alleging that he had illegally pocketed money from the industrial concern in Bălți. He responded by suing Șeicaru. By May 1932, Buzdugan had been singled out by Carol II as one of the "ridiculous" government members whom Iorga was ordered to replace; he handed in his resignation "dignified, without any expectations." After Iorga's fall in the
elections of 1932, Buzdugan dedicated himself to another calling: supporting
anti-Soviet and
White émigré circles in Romania. According to the reports of Siguranța spies, he intended to relaunch the
Golos Bukharesta, a Russian anti-communist newspaper, and to obtain support for the Whites from the cabinet of
Gheorghe Tătărescu. By January 1934, he had joined Iorga's Democratic Nationalists, heading their organization in Bălți County. In 1935, Buzdugan veered to the far-right, joining the PNȚ's "semi-fascist" splinter group, the
Romanian Front, and heading its own Bălți County chapter. Buzdugan focused on the works of
Pushkin, publishing in
Gândirea a rendition of his "
Gypsies" (1935). At the time, scholar
Eufrosina Dvoichenko described it as "the best" of several Romanian attempts to translate the poem. In 1937, he produced a new volume of his own poems,
Păstori de timpuri ("Time-herders"). However, according to sociologist Petru Negură, Buzdugan's verse was entirely backward and irrelevant by 1930: "Just as agriculturalists were facing the devastating effects of the
Great Depression, the peasants depicted in poems by Pan Halippa or Ion Buzdugan [...] continued to cultivate their land with love and judiciousness." Buzdugan escaped Bessarabia following the
first Soviet occupation of 1940, while former members of the Union of Reserve Officers, including
Emanoil Catelli, were jailed or deported. In 1942, at the height of World War II, his
Metanii de luceferi ("Genuflections of the Evening Stars") came out. It was to be his final published work in poetry, although three others exist as manuscripts. From 1948, Buzdugan escaped threats of arrest by hiding in an attic at
Blaj, where he was protected by
Ioan Suciu, a bishop of the
Greek-Catholic Church. That year, Buzdugan began writing to the literary critic
Perpessicius. The latter arranged for Buzdugan to heal a fractured right arm with help from the poet-doctor
Virgiliu Moscovici-Monda. In 1951, commissioned by Perpessicius to translate
Eugene Onegin, Buzdugan announced that he was working on his own epic poem, retelling the death of
Miron Costin—the latter, if it exists, was never published. In April 1953, he wrote again to announce his "hurried departure" to
Bazna, Transylvania, where his sister ran a
summer camp. With the onset of
de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, Romanian literati could hope for a more tolerant regime. In this climate, Buzdugan began frequenting a literary circle in the Bucharest home of Ion Larian and Paraschiva Postolache, where he met young writers such as
Eugen Barbu and C. D. Zeletin. Other senior guests included
Virgil Carianopol,
N. Crevedia, and
Radu D. Rosetti. From ca. 1955, when Romanian communism turned increasingly
nationalist and anti-Soviet, Buzdugan was allowed a quiet return to publishing, but had to limit himself to translation work. In 1956,
Steaua magazine hosted Buzdugan's version of Pushkin's "To Ovid". Reportedly, he claimed to have authored a translation of
Boris Godunov, stolen from him by the regime's poet-laureate,
Victor Eftimiu. Using the pseudonym B. I. Alion, he published in 1962 a version of
Maxim Gorky's tale, "
A Girl and Death". He died on January 27, 1967, in Bucharest, and was buried at
Bellu cemetery. His funeral was attended by Halippa and Pântea, and saw them speaking publicly for the
reincorporation of Bessarabia into Romania; reportedly, the speech was tolerated by the authorities, which were allowing non-politicized expressions of nationalist fervor. However, fearing a backlash, several guests left when Pântea began describing Buzdugan's career in politics. Later that year, Buzdugan's
Eugene Onegin appeared under his real name, with a foreword by Perpessicius. According to philologist
Ioana Pârvulescu, it was a "good translation". The last of his surviving sisters, Eleonora, died in 1995. In Romania, Zeletin reprinted
Miresme din stepă and published his correspondence; his collected works appeared as 2 volumes, in 2014, at Chișinău. In 2012, the editor had noted that Buzdugan, his friend, "is nonetheless forgotten, [...] even today, when the history of our stolen provinces is being combed through." ==Notes==