31 Facts About Leon Kalustian

Leon Kalustian was then again arrested, and sentenced, for having kept and sold books banned by state censorship.

Ultimately released in 1964, Leon Kalustian was allowed to publish again from 1966.

Leon Kalustian was still exposed to acts of persecution and to constant surveillance by the Securitate, and harassed into becoming its informant.

Leon Kalustian lived to witness the Romanian Revolution of 1989, dying a month later in his native town of Focsani.

Leon Kalustian's father was from Ottoman Armenia, while his mother was an ethnic Romanian from Transylvania.

Leon Kalustian was the oldest of four children: two sisters, Vartuhi and Satenig, and a brother, Manuil.

Leon Kalustian was generally identified as an Armenian, o more generally as a Levantine, by his literary peers, including Carandino and Victor Eftimiu.

Young Leon Kalustian attended one year of high school in his native town and beyond that was self-taught.

Leon Kalustian's youth was spent on "poker games, the racetrack, tea parties with the madams", as well as "success in women".

Leon Kalustian joined him on his international tours; a diary note by novelist Camil Petrescu reports a conversation between himself and Leon Kalustian, in which the latter confided that he was hired to exaggerate Titulescu's impact of Europe's political affairs.

In July 1936, Leon Kalustian concentrated on warning his readers about the unchecked excesses of fascist paramilitaries from both the Iron Guard and the Lancieri:.

Leon Kalustian's articles covered the assassination of Mihai Stelescu, founder of the dissident Crusade of Romanianism, by his former colleagues in the Guard.

Critic and left-wing essayist Serban Cioculescu recalled in 1975 his "great satisfaction" at reading Leon Kalustian's renewed attacks on "the immense nonentity that was Stelian Popescu, who had fashioned himself into an 'apostle' of nationalism and a great newspaperman".

Leon Kalustian quit political journalism, which he did not resume for forty years; as later noted by novelist Constantin Toiu, "a gag was shoved into [Leon Kalustian's] mouth" by the successive fascist governments.

Leon Kalustian was employed as a personal secretary by Romanias editor-in-chief, Cezar Petrescu.

Leon Kalustian used this occasion to meet up with the gravely ill Titulescu, one final time, at the Paris Ritz.

Leon Kalustian joined the Romanian Social Democratic Party, whereupon he sided with the anti-communist inner-faction, formed around Constantin Titel Petrescu.

Leon Kalustian recorded rumors of devastation by the Soviet occupation forces, and, in late years, claimed that the Constantin Stere archive in Bucov had been destroyed by a Red Army squad; the information is contradicted by other accounts, which suggest that the Stere documents were either destroyed or scattered by an unnamed caretaker.

Sturdza reports that Leon Kalustian was able to coax a prison guard into letting them communicate with the outside world by means of "little notes".

Between 1956 and 1960, having no other means of subsistence, Leon Kalustian sold books clandestinely, an activity closely monitored by the Securitate secret police.

The Banescu letters expanded on historical-biographical studies on figures such as C A Rosetti, Nicolae Iorga and George Valsan, focusing on details that Kalustian selected as especially moving.

In private, Leon Kalustian enjoyed a good rapport with Armenian Arsavir Acterian, who had spent time in communist prisons for his affiliation with the Iron Guard; as reported by Horasangian, the two men jokingly competed as to who had been jailed longer, and exchanged anecdotes of real life.

Leon Kalustian made return visits to Focsani, where, around 1974, he met the aspiring Armenian poet Varujan Vosganian, to whom he sent books.

In December 1977, Leon Kalustian was one of 21 men and women who expressed solidarity with the communist regime, against the dissident movement launched by Paul Goma; the list, which was kept in the Securitate archive, included public intellectuals such as Constantin Abaluta, Eugen Barbu, Fanus Neagu, Zigu Ornea, Marin Preda and Dan Zamfirescu.

Leon Kalustian was additionally featured as a raconteur in a Titulescu issue put out in early 1982 by Revista Romana, which was published in four languages and circulated abroad.

Leon Kalustian ultimately collected his columns in five volumes, which appeared to generally positive reviews between 1980 and 1985 as Simple note.

Unconfirmed rumors circulating by word of mouth had it that Leon Kalustian had been preparing a more acid set of memoirs, called Requiem la o meserie care nu mai exista.

Leon Kalustian's wife died the following month, plunging him into grief; his apathy deepened after his brother died in 1985, and his desire to write steadily faded.

In October 1989, his health increasingly deteriorating, Leon Kalustian returned to Focsani, where his two sisters cared for him until his death the following January.

Leon Kalustian was buried in the local Armenian cemetery, the service officiated by Zareh Baronian, who had reportedly assisted Kalustian during his final days.

Leon Kalustian's memory was invoked by his former friends and colleagues.