Vasile Morțun

Vasile G. Morțun (November 30, 1860 – July 20, 1919) was a Romanian politician, playwright and prose writer.

Biography Origins, journalism and political beginnings Born in Roman, he came from a wealthy Moldavian boyar family, After studying at the private Institutul Academic in Iași and at the Parisian Collège Sainte-Barbe, he enrolled in the literature and philosophy faculties at Paris and Brussels, but did not graduate. Morțun founded and led, alone or in collaboration with Ioan Nădejde, Constantin Mille and Vintilă Rosetti, numerous gazettes and magazines: Dacia viitoare, Muncitorul, Revista socială, Ciocoiul and Înainte!. Beginning in 1885, he edited the literature section of the socialist magazine Contemporanul. He also contributed to Adevărul, Almanahul social-democrat, Calendarul pozitivist, Critica socială, Drepturile omului, Evenimentul literar, Flacăra, Generația nouă, Literatură și știință, Lumea nouă, Lumea nouă științifică și literară, Munca, Revista democrației române, Rodica, Telegraful Român, Viața Românească and Viața socială. Aside from political articles, he published prose poems that remained in the pages of various periodicals, articles on dramatic theory (Chestii teatrale, in Contemporanul, 1887) and plays (Ștefan Hudici, Zulniea Hâncu, both 1891). He wrote a few translations and adaptations from Jules de Marthold (Pascal Fargeau, novel, 1882), Edmond Gondinet, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky; these remained in the pages of Contemporanul. Morțun published an edition of Mihai Eminescu's work (Proză și versuri, 1890), which included several posthumous writings. Beginning in January 1888, when he was elected to represent Roman County as the first socialist in the Assembly of Deputies, Morțun served multiple terms there,

When the war started going badly for Romania as the autumn of 1916 wore on, the ministry was involved in organizing resistance to German-led occupation, destroying the petroleum infrastructure, sinking grain deposits in the Danube and sending the Romanian Treasure to Moscow. When the army began retreating into Moldavia, Morțun was blamed for his handling of the material evacuation, in particular of the grain supply. He was also criticized for not working ahead of time to create an informants' network in potentially occupied areas. He exited the government right after the Battle of Bucharest resulted in the capital falling to the Central Powers and the national leadership moving to Iași. During his subsequent time as Assembly president, he oversaw the June 1917 adoption of reforms to the Constitution, providing for electoral and land reform, and the April 1918 ratification of the union of Bessarabia with Romania. He owned an estate in Broșteni, Neamț County, outside Roman; during the 1907 peasants' revolt, a mob of some 400 peasants destroyed the house of its Jewish leaseholder. Morțun himself, who lived to see much of his estate expropriated, died in Broșteni in 1919, and was buried on the premises.