36 Facts About Ion Buzdugan

Ion Alion Buzdugan was a Bessarabian-Romanian poet, folklorist, and politician.

Ion Buzdugan vehemently supported the union of Bessarabia with Romania during the existence of an independent Moldavian Democratic Republic, and, as a member of its legislature, worked to bring it about.

In interwar Greater Romania, Buzdugan received mixed reviews as a neo-traditionalist poet, while serving terms as a Balti County representative in the Assembly of Deputies.

Ion Buzdugan later studied agriculture, law and literature in Russian schools in Kamianets-Podilskyi and Moscow.

Ion Buzdugan, who claimed to have lodged with, and befriended, the Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko, eventually took a license to practice law from Moscow University.

Ion Buzdugan 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.

Ion Buzdugan began a lifetime work of collecting Romanian folklore, and, despite such work being repressed by the Russian authorities, documented the folkloric links between Bessarabia and other Romanian-inhabited regions.

Ion Buzdugan volunteered as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, engaged in the Romanian theater of war.

Ion Buzdugan was still active as a writer, networking with his colleagues from Western Moldavia.

Ion Buzdugan's mailing address was the paper's headquarters, which was the domicile of playwright Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea.

Ion Buzdugan 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.

Ion Buzdugan sought to convince his public that what they called "Moldavian" was the same as Romanian, and to prove his point he read them fragments from the 1688 Cantacuzino Bible.

Ion Buzdugan advocated the introduction of the Latin alphabet, to replace Cyrillic everywhere, including in zemstva schools.

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.

Ion Buzdugan was working on a volume of patriotic poetry, which came out that year as Tara mea.

Ion Buzdugan was voted, with Pantea, a member of its Central Committee.

Ion Buzdugan served continuously in Romania's Assembly of Deputies, where he represented Balti County, from November 1919 to July 1932.

In March 1920, days after Vaida had been recalled by King Ferdinand, Ion Buzdugan read out the PTB's protest against this coup.

Ion Buzdugan 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.

Ion Buzdugan was one of 9 parliamentarians who, together with Halippa and the non-PTB agrarian theorist Constantin Stere, joined the PT in on July 18,1921.

Ion Buzdugan became one of the staff poets at Sandu Teleajen's review, Gand Romanesc, in December 1921.

Ion Buzdugan was inducted into the Romanian Writers' Society, and co-founded the Bessarabian Writers' Society.

Ion Buzdugan fought over the matter with Alexandru C Constantinescu of the National Liberals, but with more radical Bessarabian agrarianists such as Ludovic Daus.

Ion Buzdugan's other focus was Romania's defense against a hostile Soviet Union, which had not recognized Bessarabia as part of Romania.

Ion Buzdugan's speeches applauded by all political camps, Buzdugan depicted Romania as a bastion of Christendom and Western civilization.

Ion Buzdugan 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.

Ion Buzdugan had a verbal bout with Lucretiu Patrascanu of the far-left Peasant Workers' Bloc, calling him "a parasite of the working class".

Ion Buzdugan defeated Pantea for the position, although the latter was a favorite of the new king, Carol II.

At the time, Pamfil Seicaru and Curentul daily mounted a campaign against Ion Buzdugan, alleging that he had illegally pocketed money from the industrial concern in Balti.

In 1935, Ion Buzdugan veered to the far-right, joining the PNT's "semi-fascist" splinter group, the Romanian Front, and heading its own Balti County chapter.

From 1948, Ion 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, Ion Buzdugan began writing to the literary critic Perpessicius.

The latter arranged for Ion Buzdugan to heal a fractured right arm with help from the poet-doctor Virgiliu Moscovici-Monda.

Ion Buzdugan died on January 27,1967, in Bucharest, and was buried at Bellu cemetery.

Ion Buzdugan's funeral was attended by Halippa and Pantea, 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.