34 Facts About Alexis Nour

Alexis Nour stood out among Germanophiles and local supporters of the Central Powers, agitating in favor of a military offensive into Bessarabia, and demanding the annexation of Transnistria.

Still active as an independent socialist in Greater Romania, Alexis Nour won additional fame as an advocate of human rights, land reform, women's suffrage and Jewish emancipation.

Alexis Nour furthered his studies in other regions of the Russian Empire, where he became a familiar figure to those who opposed Tsarist autocracy, and exchanged ideas with radical young men of various ethnic backgrounds.

Alexis Nour is known to have studied Philology at Kiev University, where he affiliated with the underground Socialist-Revolutionary Party, probably infiltrated in its ranks by the Okhrana.

From 1903, Alexis Nour was editor of Besarabskaya Zhizn, Bessarabia's "first democratic paper".

Alexis Nour was still in Bessarabia during the Russian Revolution of 1905, but was mysteriously absent from the follow-up protests by local Romanians.

However, Alexis Nour was after expelled from the Constitutional Democratic group and began frequenting the political clubs of Romanian nationalists.

In 1906, Alexis Nour was affiliated with Basarabia, a Romanian-language newspaper for the region's politically minded ethnic Romanians in the region, soon after closed down by Imperial Russian censorship.

Alexis Nour enlisted other negative comments from Iorga when he began writing Bessarabian notices in the Romanian daily Adevarul, which had Jewish proprietors.

Alexis Nour questioned the national sentiment of Bessarabia's landowning elite, which had largely been integrated into Russian nobility and served Imperial interests.

The measure, Alexis Nour noted, gave formal status to the vernacular, in line with his own Viata Basarabiei agenda.

Alexis Nour was, between June 1910 and August 1911, the editor of his own press venue, the Russian-language newspaper Bessarabets.

Alexis 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, Alexis Nour fled to Kiev.

Alexis Nour was afterwards seen as a leading member of the Bessarabian expatriate community.

Alexis Nour thought further than his colleagues, speculating about an alliance of interests between Romanians and Ruthenians.

The latter demand was without precedent in the history of Romanian nationalism, and Alexis Nour is even credited with having coined the term Transnistria in modern parlance, alongside the adjective transnistreni.

Elsewhere, Alexis Nour argued that there were over 1 million transnistreni Romanians, a claim which endured as one of the largest, directly above the 800,000 advanced by Bessarabian historian Stefan Ciobanu.

Also in 1915, Alexis Nour designed and published in Bucharest an ethnographic map of Bessarabia on a scale of 1:450,000.

Alexis Nour took his ideas outside the Poporanist clubs, and became a contributor to the unofficial Conservative Party press.

Alexis Nour became a regular contributor to Petre P Carp's newspaper pro-Bessarabian and anti-Russian gazette Moldova, which stood by the belief that "Germany is invincible".

Alexis Nour expanded on his wartime vision in the Germanophile daily Seara.

Alexis Nour kept company with another Bessarabian agent of the Okhrana, Ilie Catarau, wanted by the Central Powers on charges of terrorism.

Alexis Nour was back in Iasi when Romania sued for peace with Germany.

In one of his later essays, Alexis 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.

Alexis Nour wrote for the newspapers Opinia and Avantul, discussing Russian affairs and Russia's take on "socialist democracy", and was present on the first issue of Moldova de la Nistru, a Bessarabian "magazine written for the people".

Alexis Nour was still affiliated with the Poporanist periodicals, including Viata Romaneasca and Insemnari Literare, where he mainly published translations from and introductions to Russian literature.

Alexis Nour centered his subsequent activities in the area of human rights defense and pro-feminism.

Alexis Nour published in Adevarul a portrait of liberal White emigre leader Pavel Milyukov.

Alexis Nour signed pieces in Hanul Samariteanului, a literary monthly launched, unsuccessfully, by writers Gala Galaction and Paul Zarifopol.

Alexis Nour turned to fiction writing, completing the novella Masca lui Beethoven, first published by Convorbiri Literare in February 1929.

One of the last projects to involve Alexis Nour was a collaborative fiction work, Stafiile dragostei.

Alexis Nour's co-authors were genre novelists Alexandru Bilciurescu and Sarmanul Klopstock, alongside advice columnist I Glicsman, better known as Doctor Ygrec.

Alexis Nour is buried at the Ghencea cemetery in Bucharest.