Alexis Nour (; born Alexei Vasile Nour,Gheorghe G. Bezviconi, Necropola Capitalei, Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest, 1972, p.203 also known as Alexe Nour, Alexie Nour, As. Nr.; Calendar Național 2008. Alte aniversări, National Library of Moldova, Chișinău, 2008, p.455 , Aleksey Nour; 1877–1940) was a Bessarabian-born Romanian journalist, activist and essayist, known for his advocacy of Romanian-Bessarabian union and his critique of the Russian Empire, but also for controversial political dealings. Oscillating between socialism and Russian nationalism, he was noted as founder of Viața Basarabiei gazette. Eventually affiliated with Romania's left-wing form of cultural nationalism, or Poporanism, Nour was a long-term correspondent of the Poporanist review Viața Românească. Publicizing his conflict with the Russian authorities, he settled in the Kingdom of Romania, where he openly rallied with the Viața Românească group.
During World War I, Nour agitated against any military alliance between Romania and Russia. He 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. This combative stance was later overshadowed by revelations that Nour was spying for Russia's intelligence service, the Okhrana.
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. During the final decade of his life, Nour also debuted as a novelist, but did not register significant success. His late contributions as a Thracologist were received with skepticism by the academic community.
Biography
Early activities The future journalist, born in Russian-held Bessarabia (the Bessarabia Governorate), was a member of the ethnic Romanian cultural elite, and, reportedly, a graduate of the Bessarabian Orthodox Church Chișinău Theological Seminary.Constantin, p.30 Pan Halippa, "Unirea Basarabiei cu România" (I) , in Literatura și Arta, August 28, 2008, p.8 According to other sources, he spent his early years in Kiev and graduated from the Pavlo Galagan College. 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. He is known to have studied Philology at Kiev University, where he affiliated with the underground Socialist-Revolutionary (Eser) Party, probably infiltrated in its ranks by the Okhrana.
From 1903, Nour was editor of Besarabskaya Zhizn, Bessarabia's "first democratic paper".Boldur, p.188 Nour was still in Bessarabia during the Russian Revolution of 1905, but was mysteriously absent from the follow-up protests by local Romanians (or, in contemporary references, "Moldavians"). According to Onisifor Ghibu (himself an analyst of Bessarabian life), Nour missed out on the chance of establishing a Romanian–Moldavian–Bessarabian "irredentist movement", leading "a mysterious existence", and "not giving even the faintest clue that he was alive, until 1918."Rotaru, p.261 In fact, Nour had joined a local section of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party, the leading force in Russian liberalism. As one historian assesses, this was a maverick's choice: "A. Nour [...] did not consider himself either a socialist or a nationalist."
During the post-revolutionary age of reforms and concessions, when Besarabskaya Zhizn became a Kadet paper, Nour himself was a member of the Kadet bureau in Bessarabia, and the private assistant of regional party boss Leopold Sitsinski. However, Nour was soon after expelled from the Constitutional Democratic group (reportedly, for having pocketed some of the party's funds) and began frequenting the political clubs of Romanian nationalists.
In 1906, 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.Constantin, p.30; Dulschi, p.22-24; Kulikovski & Șcelcikova, p.37; Lăcustă, passim; Rotaru, p.237 Ion Șpac, "Pantelimon Halippa – fondator și manager al ziarului și revistei Viața Basarabiei" , in Literatura și Arta, November 13, 2008, p.3 The short-lived periodical, financed by sympathizers from the Kingdom of Romania (including politician Eugeniu Carada), was pushing the envelope on the issue of Romanian emancipation and trans-border brotherhood, beyond what the 1905 regime intended to allow.Lăcustă, p.55-56
In his first-ever article for the review, Alexis Nour suggested that the regional movement for national emancipation still lacked a group of intellectual leaders, or "elected sons", capable of forming a single Romanian faction in the State Duma.Lăcustă, p.56 Despite such setbacks and the continued spread of illiteracy, Nour contended, Bessarabia's Romanians were more attached to the national ideal, and more politically motivated, than their brethren in Romania-proper. Other Basarabia articles by Nour were vehement rebuttals addressed to Pavel Krushevan, the (supposedly ethnic Romanian) exponent of extreme Russian nationalism.Dulschi, p.24
Viața Basarabiei and 1907 election The following year, in April, Nour himself launched, sponsored and edited the political weekly Viața Basarabiei, distinguished for having discarded the antiquated Romanian Cyrillic in favor of a Latin alphabet, wishing to make itself accessible to readers in the Kingdom of Romania; an abridged, "people's" version of the gazette was also made available as a supplement, for a purely Bessarabian readership.Kulikovski & Șcelcikova, p.225; Rotaru, p.38-39, 62, 523. See also Boldur, p.193; Cazacu, p.174 According to his friend and colleague, Petru Cazacu, Nour had to order the Latin typeface in Bucharest, and used coded language to keep the Russian authorities a step behind him.Cazacu, p.174
As later attested by Bessarabian Romanian activist Pan Halippa (founder, in 1932, of the similarly titled magazine), his predecessor Nour had tried to emulate the Basarabia program of popular education in Romanian, with the ultimate goal of ethnic emancipation. In his capacity as editor in chief, he employed poet Alexei Mateevici, and republished fragments from classical works of Romanian literature.Rotaru, p.65 Nour joined Gheorghe V. Madan, publisher of Moldovanul newspaper, in inaugurating the Chișinău-based Orthodox Church printing press, which began publishing a Bessarabian Psalter during spring 1907. "Momente culturale", in Răvașul, Nr. 21-22/1907, p.365 (digitized by the Babeș-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library)
Nour's Viața Basarabiei represented the legalist side of the Bessarabian emancipation movement, to the irritation of more radical Romanian nationalists. Cazacu recalls: "Although moderate, the atmosphere was so stuffed, the hardships so great, the attacks of the right and the left so relentless, that in a short while [this magazine] also succumbed, not without having had its useful effect in the awakening of national sentiment, even among the Moldavians in various parts of Russia, in the Caucasus, and in Siberia." A nationalist historian, Nicolae Iorga, accused Nour of promoting "class fraternity" between the Russians and the Romanians in Bessarabia, citing Nour's explicit rejection of the Russian Revolution.Rotaru, p.38-39 Nour enlisted other negative comments from Iorga when he began writing Bessarabian notices in the Romanian daily Adevărul, which had Jewish proprietors. Iorga, an antisemite, commented: "Mr. Alexe Nour of Chișinău assures us now that his new gazette [...] will not be a philosemitic one".Rotaru, p.62 According to Iorga, Nour was given reason to "feel sorry" about the Adevărul collaboration.Rotaru, p.39, 62
Also described as one of the journals whose mission was to popularize the Constitutional Democratic program inside the Bessarabia Governorate, Mihai Cernencu, Igor Boțan, Evoluția pluripartidismului pe teritoriul Republicii Moldova, ADEPT, Chișinău, 2009, p.66. Viața Basarabiei only survived until May 25, 1907, publishing six issues in all.Grossu & Palade, p.225 Reportedly, its demise happened on Russian orders, after Nour's editorial line had found itself in conflict with the censorship apparatus. According to Cazacu, the Second Duma election was disastrous for the "Moldavian" intellectuals, who had no journal of their own and were in a state of "despair". The vote in Bessarabia was carried by Krushevan's—pro-Tsarist and far-right—Union of the Russian People (SRN), and by an aristocratic Romanian with centrist views, Dimitrie Krupenski.Cazacu, p.174-175
By then, Nour had also become regional correspondent for Viața Românească, a magazine published in the Kingdom of Romania by a left-wing group of writers and activists, the Poporanists. From 1907 to 1914, his column Scrisori din Basarabia ("Letters from Bessarabia") was the prime source of Bessarabian news for newspapers on the other side of the Russian border. It mainly informed Romanians on the state of mind and political climate of Bessarabia following the Russian elections. Initially, they describe 1907 Bessarabia with noted regret, as the place where "nothing happens", in contrast with a more politically oriented Romania, where the Peasants' Revolt had seemingly radicalized public opinion. Catherine Durandin, "Moldova în trei dimensiuni" , in Revista Sud-Est, Nr. 2/2007 They report with consternation that the official Moldavian Studies Society, had been inactive for an entire year, and concluded that its creation was government farce; however, he also admitted that the bloody events of 1907 Romania were unpalatable for the average Bessarabian.Rotaru, p.229, 255
Nour also questioned the national sentiment of Bessarabia's landowning elite, which had largely been integrated into Russian nobility and served Imperial interests.Rotaru, p.239 The region's educated classes were Russian-educated, often Russian-oriented, and had therefore lost cheia de la lacătă, care închide sufletul țăranului ("the key that will unlock the peasant's soul").Cazacu, p.175 However, in December 1908, he reported with enthusiasm that the Bessarabian Orthodox clergy upheld the use of Romanian ("Moldavian") in its religious schools and press. The measure, Nour noted, gave formal status to the vernacular, in line with his own Viața Basarabiei agenda.Negru, p.75-76 Nour's "letters from Bessarabia" irritated the Russifying hierarchs of the Orthodox Church. Seraphim Chichagov, the Archbishop of Chișinău, included him among the Church's "worst enemies", but noted that his Romanian nationalism had managed to contaminate only 20 Bessarabian priests.Nicolae Popovschi, Istoria Bisericii din Basarabia în veacul al XIX-lea subt ruși, Tipografia Eparhială Cartea Românească, Chișinău, 1931, p.472-473
Madan scandal and Drug controversy
Nour's other Viața Românească articles unmasked a former colleague, Madan, officially appointed censor of Romanian literature within the Russian Empire, and unofficially a Russian spy in both Bessarabia and Romania.Negru, p.73, 74 In his reply to Nour, published by the Bucharest political gazette Epoca (September 1909), Madan claimed that his accuser was at once a socialist, an internationalist and a follower of Constantin Stere's Bessarabian separatism.Negru, p.74 Later research into Special Corps of Gendarmes archives identified Madan as the informant who provided the Imperial authorities with first-hand reports on the perception of Bessarabian issues in Romania, including on Nour's own 1908 article on the Orthodox priests' support for the vernacular. However, the Romanian elite also took distance from Nour, even before 1910. As argued by activist Ion Pelivan, the publicist was living far beyond his means, raising concern that he was receiving payments from the Russian authorities.