Simeon G. Murafa

Simeon Gheorghevici Murafa (also spelled Simion or Semion Murafa; May 24, 1887 – August 20, 1917) was a Bessarabian politician in the Russian Empire, also known as a publicist and composer. A trained classical singer and a graduate of Saint Vladimir (Shevchenko) University, he was one of the leading activists supporting ethnic Romanian emancipation in Bessarabia and beyond. By 1914, he associated with the revolutionary core of the Romanian nationalist movement, which he represented as director of Cuvânt Moldovenesc newspaper.

An officer of the Imperial Russian Army during World War I, Murafa mainly used his position to advance Romanian nationalism. In early 1917, he helped establish the Moldavian National Party, helping to organize its cells in Bessarabia and Odessa. He was murdered while attending a friend's party, after a group of revolutionary soldiers identified him as a political enemy. His legacy is honored in both Romania and Moldova.

Biography

Early activities A native of Cotiujenii Mari, at the time part of Russia's Bessarabia Governorate, Simeon G. Murafa was from a family of Moldavian yeomen. He was the nephew of another nationalist activist, the Bessarabian Orthodox priest Andrei Murafa. From an early age, like his uncle, he closely identified with Bessarabia's ethnic Romanian community and its national emancipation ideals. According to Gheorghe V. Madan, his friend and fellow activist, Murafa was "a fiery nationalist". In 1908 or 1909, Murafa, Madan, Ștefan Ciobanu and Daniel Ciugureanu established Deșteptarea ("Awakening") or Pământenia ("The Colony"), a Bessarabian Romanian students' circle in Kyiv. At Deșteptarea, Murafa was sought after for his melodious voice, which he gave an aesthetic quality to the nationalist manifesto. He organized benefit concerts, and put to music the patriotic poetry of Alexei Mateevici. Reputedly, after decades of Russification, Murafa was one of the select few Besarabian intellectuals who could decently express themselves in the Romanian vernacular, which was better preserved by the mass of the people.

The group established direct but clandestine links with the Kingdom of Romania (which they regarded as their mother country), and circulated Romanian-language books. They remained in contact with Pelivan, who was being kept under close surveillance by Russian authorities. In 1912, the Gendarmes intercepted Pelivan's letter to Murafa, Mateevici and Ciugureanu, in which Pelivan advised them not to seek integration into the Russian bureaucracy. Russia, Pelivan advised, was "the enemy".

Cuvânt Moldovenesc and World War service The staff of Cuvânt Moldovenesc in 1913. Clockwise, from bottom left: Murafa, Pan Halippa, Gheorghe Stârcea, Daniel Ciugureanu, Nicolae Alexandri In May 1913, sponsored by the landowner Vasile Stroescu, Nicolae Alexandri and Murafa set up Cuvânt Moldovenesc, a nationalist newspaper. In its opening manifesto, the newspaper depicted Bessarabia as engulfed by "the darkness of ignorance", taking over the intellectual mission of enlightening the Romanian-speaking masses; the first issue also featured Murafa's educational essay, Cine-s moldovenii? ("Who Are the Moldavians?"). From 1914, taking over from Alexandri, Murafa became the Cuvânt Moldovenesc director. His arrival followed a rift between the revolutionary mainstream of Romanian nationalism in Bessarabia and Alexandri's vague Tolstoyism. He continued to organize charity concerts, in which he occasionally sang as a baritone. in both the Imperial Russian Army and the Russian Red Cross, commanding a Sanitary Detachment. Halippa describes him as "the liaison between us and Romania". With Ghibu, he is mentioned among the founders of the Moldavian National Party (PNM). As noted by historian Charles Upson Clark, the PNM demanded home rule with a Moldavian Legislative Assembly, the definitive end of Russification, and generally "a firm foundation for the civic and national liberties gained by the Revolution."

He joined Ghibu's Romanian National Committee in Chișinău, but continued to agitate among the Romanian soldiers in Russian ranks. The Committee sent him back on the Romanian Front, where he championed the emancipation cause among Bessarabians from the Turkestan Volunteer units. At a Committee meeting in April, Murafa noted: "Our Moldavians [that is, Bessarabians] have always been first to engage in fighting for Russian revolutionary ideas. But now it has come to pass that we should be fighting for our very own Moldavian interests. [...] For far too long have we been Russians, let's be Moldavians for a change!" During those months, the local Zemstvo republished, in Cyrillic type, Murafa's Cine-s moldovenii?.

Together with Mateevici, he was an official delegate to the Schoolteachers' Congresses, which introduced the Romanian alphabet to Bessarabian schools. In April, attended the PNM's "Great National Assembly" of Bessarabian soldiers in Odessa, and, in June, greeted the Romanian Volunteer Corps at Chișinău Railway Station. However, Murafa also had a stint in the eclectic "Romanian Nationalist-Revolutionary Party", founded by the anarchist Ilie Cătărău around a platform supporting a "Free Russia" and a "Greater Romania". To Romanian nationalists such as Ghibu, this group appeared suspicious, but Murafa was considered a mere victim of Cătărău's machinations.

Murder

On August 20, 1917, Simeon G. Murafa was attending a picnic at the Chișinău vineyard owned by engineer Andrei Constantin Hodorogea, when a mob of soldiers, which Halippa would later claim were Bolsheviks, stormed in. They identified the owner and guests as "counterrevolutionary" politicians, and surrounded them menacingly. Another eyewitness account states places notes that Murafa and Hodorogea were murdered at bayonet by "three well-armed Russian soldiers", after having made efforts to appease them. Murafa was survived by his wife, Polina Murafa, and an infant daughter, Silvia.

The murders, it was later noted, were part of a violent backlash that marked a definitive split between Bessarabian activists and the far left. Halippa, who narrowly missed attending Hodorogea's picnic, calls this a time of "full-blown anarchy". Murafa and Hodorogea's death occurred just days after Mateevici's death from typhus, which led the public to associate the three men and commemorated them together. and also on the monument's dedication.

Murafa's legacy was again challenged by the Soviet Union's 1940 occupation of Bessarabia: the monument was taken down and evicted to Romania; it is presumed lost. Following Bessarabia's 1991 emancipation as the independent state of Moldova, a commemorative plaque was unveiled on the same spot. According to 2013 reports, a replica of the original monument was to be erected there, on the initiative of politician Dumitru Godoroja (one of Hodorogea's descendants). The project was halted when it met opposition from Moldova's Party of Communists.