Dmitrii or Dumitru Petrovici MilevB. Belenchi, "Из архивов КГБ. Возвращ ение и з небытия (I)", in Sovetskaya Moldavia, April 4, 1990, p. 4Colesnic (2012), pp. 337, 340 (Moldovan Cyrillic and ; January 2, 1887 – October 13, 1937) was a Bessarabian-born short-story writer and communist militant, active in the Soviet Union's Moldavian Autonomous Republic (MASSR). During World War I, he served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, and was decorated for bravery. Already sympathetic to socialist ideas, he embraced the Bolshevik ideology around the time of the October Revolution; he was strongly opposed to Greater Romania, and, after the Romanian–Bessarabian unification, foght in the Bolshevik underground. Arrested and indicted in 1919, he escaped custody and helped prepare the Tatarbunary Uprising. Upon its quashing, Milev made his way into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was a cradle for Moldovenism and the MASSR.
Though originating from a community of Bessarabian Bulgarians, Milev identified with the Moldavian (Moldovan) ethnicity, which he viewed as distinct from the Romanians. More controversially, he advocated for a "Moldavian language", which he used in his contributions to proletarian literature—and which later scholarship regarded as "gibberish". He was upheld as the MASSR's first short-story writer, as well as a pioneer translator. Working alongside Samuil Lehtțir, he helped establish the MASSR's cultural institutions, and served as president of the Moldavian Union of Writers. Advancing through the ranks of the Ukrainian Communist (Bolshevik) Party, he had contributions to both land collectivization and the literacy campaign. His short prose was a contribution to Soviet propaganda, focusing mainly on depicting the Romanian Kingdom as a bourgeois or fascist polity, which terrorized its "Moldavian" peasants and the Bessarabian Jews.
Milev was explicit in his critique of Soviet Latinization, but later renounced Cyrillic and adapted himself to the Soviet version of the Romanian alphabet. He was still identified as a Latinizer, and therefore a Romanian-financed saboteur, with the onset of the Great Purge. Milev was shocked by these developments, and maintained his friendship with disgraced figures—including Grigore Starîi, who joined him in translating the 1936 Soviet Constitution. After a period of uncertainty, in which he was allowed to reprise his literary work (but lost all political privileges), he was arrested and tortured by the NKVD cell at Tiraspol. He confessed to being a spy, then recanted, but was still put to death in that city's prison. Within twenty years of this event, de-Stalinization had him rehabilitated, and included among the founders of Moldovan literature. Milev's posthumous vindication was used by young authors in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic to push for more creative liberties.
Biography
Early life and activities
Milev was born on January 2, 1887, at Baurci-Moldoveni,V. Tolochenko, "Из истории молдавской советской литературы. Думитру Милев", in Sovetskaya Moldavia, October 22, 1959, p. 3 Iurie Colesnic, "Scriitorii transnistreni între tragedie și minciună...", in Timpul, August 14, 2019 in what was then Izmailsky Uyezd, in Imperial Russia's Bessarabia Governorate. Romanian scholar Nichita Smochină reports his ethnicity as Bulgarian, noting that he was "from a wealthy family."Smochină, p. 151 By contrast, an official biography, panned in 1959 by V. Tolochenko, had it that: "His parents were poor peasants who did not have their own land or even their own house, and were forced to rent small plots of land from the rich, paying for it with backbreaking labor and large taxes. From an early age, after the death of his parents, D. Milev earned his bread with his own labor." Only completing his basic education, at parochial school No 1, Milev held a variety of jobs: he was a laborer in a brick factory, a baker in a shop owned by wealthy Greeks, and a coffee-shop waiter; for a while, he lodged with his uncle in Bolgrad. After moving to Tiraspol, where he lodged on Pokrovsky Lane, he volunteered the 56th Zhytomyr Infantry Regiment. While in the army, he became acquainted with the Russian Social Democrats, sympathized with their cause, and was arrested when he helped in the escape of a comrade by the name of Koltsov.
Released from the army, Milev returned to his native province. He contributed to the newspaper Bessarabskaya Zhizn, and tried to obtain employment as a schoolteacher—but his application was ruled out due to his political unreliability. He then returned under arms from the first days of World War I, during a general mobilization in summer 1914. Milev spent some two years on the Eastern Front, receiving "two wounds and a concussion". His bravery was rewarded by the Russian Empire, which granted him the Order of Saint Vladimir and the right to use a gilded ceremonial weapon. He also obtained an officer's rank, as Shtabs-kapitan;B. Belenchi, "Из архивов КГБ. Возвращ ение и з небытия (II)", in Sovetskaya Moldavia, April 11, 1990, p. 4 in a 1956 interrogation by the KGB, Milev's activist friend Ion Ocinschi reported that "he never made a secret of this."Colesnic (2012), p. 341
Milev was brought back into politics by the February Revolution, during which time he took part in "heated debates of the regimental military revolutionary committee". He was again taken out by a wound received during the Kerensky offensive, and had to recover at a military hospital in Kiev. The young veteran was again in Bessarabia "at the very beginning of 1918". Some reconstructions of his biography suggest that he identified with the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution and under the Moldavian Democratic Republic, fleeing Bessarabia during, or shortly after, the Romanian expedition; he therefore opposed the union of Bessarabia with Romania. As Tolochenko puts it: "Milev soon became a witness to the atrocities of the rabid invaders [...]. But Milev did not become a passive and submissive observer of these events, and instead was an active fighter for the liberation and reunification of Bessarabia with the Soviet Union." Tolochenko recounts that Milev had joined the Soviet Communist (Bolshevik) Party and was assigned "various important assignments" (upon his formal induction in 1930, he held party card No. 1664375). Milev was pursued and arrested by the Kingdom of Romania in 1919. He was afterwards indicted in a "Trial of the 108". By his own account, he was "incredibly lucky", only receiving a two-year prison term, when 19 co-defendants had been sentenced to death. According to Tolochenko, Milev then broke out of prison and rejoined the Bolshevik underground. He participated in the Tatarbunary Uprising of 1924, and only fled Bessarabia during the subsequent repression—by crossing the Dniester into Soviet territory.
According to Smochină, Milev's settling in the MASSR gave him privileged status, since, as an outcast from Bessarabia-proper, he could contribute propaganda against Greater Romania. His original debut was as a poet—his verse was taken up in Plugarul Roșu, alongside works by Mihai Andriescu, Teodor Malai, and Pavel Chioru. Galina Gurschi, "Акчентул историей газетаре", in Adevărul Nistrean, October 10, 2020 Milev (who found permanent employment at Plugarul) and Chioru were early adherents of the grammarian Leonid Madan, who had theorized that the "Moldavian language" was entirely unlike Romanian, and who invited writers to fabricate a "Moldavian socialist" lexis.Lența, pp. 122–124 With I. Cușmăunsă, they co-wrote a text which argued that: "We have no need for Romanian literary grammar, since that sort of grammar would completely stifle our Moldavian language" (Ноауы ну ни требуи граматикы литерары ромыниаскы кэч ку ашэ граматикы ной ом ынабушы ди тэт лимба ноастры молдовинясы).Lența, pp. 123–124 In 1926, Milev, already "one of the MASSR's most prominent writers", published Norod moldovenesc ("Moldavian People"), which criticized both Imperial Russia and Greater Romania for having denied Moldavians "the right to be human", keeping them "subjugated and nameless".King, pp. 60–61 Historian Charles King suggests that Milev followed propagandist Vladimir Dembo in describing the "emancipatory power of the Bolshevik Revolution" for the Moldavians as a separate people, with full liberation only attainable once Bessarabia had been Sovietized.King, pp. 59–62
Lionized author
Milev was initially affiliated with the Moldavian Regional Committee of the Ukrainian Communist (Bolshevik) Party (KPU), and assigned by it to the October Revolution Study Section. He and Ocinschi were therefore involved in the project to publish "the classics of Marxism-Leninism" in their "Moldavian" version.Alexandru Zavtur, "Институтул де историе а партидулуй де пе лынгэ КЧ ал ПК ал Молдовей ла 50 де ань. Промоторул штиинцей историце де партид", in Moldova Socialistă, January 26, 1975, p. 3 A "Milev D.", seen by literary historian Eugen Lungu as "in all likelihood Dumitru Milev"Eugen Lungu, "Panait Istrati 'tradus' la Balta", in Vatra, Vol. XXIV, Issue 275, February 1994, p. 20 (an identification also backed by writer Iurie Colesnic),Colesnic (2012), p. 99 penned a translation of Une nuit dans les marais, the short story by Romanian communist Panait Istrati. Done from the Russian version, it was published in 1926 by the Moldavian State Publishing House of Balta, as O noapti'n baltî (Lungu's transliteration). Lungu notes that it may be "the first Romanian language version of that well-known work of prose", though the Moldavian avatar of the language, in both Milev's version and the preface (authored by Vitali Holostenco), was bordering on "gibberish" (păsărească). He adds: "I do not know if Panait Istrati has ever come across this 'Romanian' translation", but also that Istrati's "extreme indignation" with poor-quality renditions of his work into standard Romanian allows one to "imagine what this great unfortunate Istrati would have said, if he had ever managed to read the Balta edition."
Milev made it into the Soviet literary pantheon with Moș Gorițî (Мош Горицэ, "Old Man Gorițî"), originally featured in Plugarul of 1926. It is described by Tolochenko as "the first work of fiction in Moldavian Soviet literature", and also as a record of the Moldavians' "fierce hatred for the [Romanian] occupiers". Despite his moniker, Gorițî, who was allegedly based on a real-life person, appeared as a 30-something veteran of World War I. Upon his return to Cetireni village, he issues a protest against the oppressive Gendarmerie, but is captured, tortured, and finally imprisoned as a "Bolshevik".Smochină, pp. 151–152 Milev, alongside authors such as Lehtțir and Chioru, pioneered Marxist literary criticism in the MASSR—with results deemed "quite modest" by literary historian Mihai Cimpoi.Cimpoi, p. 410 In April 1928, Iurie Colesnic, "Prima piesă montată pe scena tiraspoleană a fost a unui basarabean", in Timpul, July 23, 2014 Milev founded the literary club Răsăritul ("East"), also serving as editor of the magazines Moldova Literară and Octombrie. In August of that year, Milev and Gavril Buciușcan were members of a welcoming committee which greeted Istrati, who was passing through Balta on his tour of the Soviet Union; in his account of the meeting, Istrati called the MASSR a "Romanian butterfly on the Soviet elephant". Nina Scutaru, "Revista revistelor. Revista Literară, nr. 5/2018", in Contrafort, Issues 5–6, May–June 2018