Born in
Bucharest, he lived for part of his childhood at the family
manor in
Botoșani, where, at age 11, he witnessed first-hand the
1907 peasants' uprisings (which, as he later admitted, contributed to his
left-wing sympathies). As a youth, he read
Russian anarchist books, while studying in Paris during World War I, joined
anarchist circles. While travelling through
Finland in 1917, Callimachi attended a public meeting at which
Vladimir Lenin gave a speech, and consequently adopted
Bolshevism. and published
Avant-garde poems in
free verse — inspired by the work of
Russian Futurists. With fellow
modernists Ion Vinea and
Stephan Roll, he later issued the
literary magazine Punct. He began working on communist and other leftist newspapers (including
Clopotul, which he himself edited in his native town) while keeping a front as an employee of his relatives. an allegiance which brought Callimachi into a relatively small, but dedicated, category of communist sympathisers of
upper class upbringing — it also included
N. D. Cocea (to whom Callimachi was a close collaborator) and
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu. Nevertheless, at the same time, he was a nominal member of the
National Peasants' Party (PNȚ). was one of the leaders of the Democratic Bloc (
Blocul Democratic), a PCR-created legal organization which in 1935 succeeded in forming a tight alliance with
Petru Groza's
Ploughmen's Front (the agreement was signed in
Țebea). In 1937, as the
fascist Iron Guard was gaining unprecedented momentum and the secondary fascist movement around the
National Christian Party was ascending to power, Callimachi decided to leave Romania and settled in France, but returned a year later, after
King Carol II acted against the Iron Guard and established a dictatorship around the
National Renaissance Front. After World War II, he became a leader of the Singular Journalists' Trade Union, which had replaced the Union of Professional Journalists in October 1944 and had since become an instrument of the PCR-controlled government in controlling the press. He, with N. D. Cocea,
Miron Constantinescu, and
Ion Pas, organized the expulsion and denouncement of journalists who professed
anti-communism, and maintained this position after the proclamation of the
People's Republic of Romania in 1948, before moving on to become head of the Romanian-Russian Museum (
Muzeul Româno-Rus), an institution created to highlight cultural and social links between Romania and the Soviet Union in accordance with the
Zhdanov Doctrine. The Museum was closed down in 1956, after the
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej regime began rejecting Soviet influence. He died in 1975, and was buried in the Bucharest
Bellu Cemetery; he had refused the ostentatious funeral reserved for senior PCR members. ==Notes==