Filimon Săteanu
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Filimon Ivanovici Săteanu or Săteanul ( Moldovan Cyrillic: Филимон Иванович Сэтяну; 1907 – late 1937) was a Moldovan poet and victim of the Great Purge. Though an
ethnic Romanian The Romanians ( ro, români, ; dated exonym ''Vlachs'') are a Romance-speaking ethnic group. Sharing a common Romanian culture and ancestry, and speaking the Romanian language, they live primarily in Romania and Moldova. The 2011 Romanian ...
from
Bessarabia Bessarabia (; Gagauz: ''Besarabiya''; Romanian: ''Basarabia''; Ukrainian: ''Бессара́бія'') is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Be ...
, he was active and published in the Soviet Union's Moldavian Autonomous Republic (MASSR). Known publicly as a committed communist, Săteanu allegedly supported the notion that Moldavians and Romanians are the same people, and was singled out as a
Romanian nationalist Romanian nationalism is the nationalism which asserts that Romanians are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Romanians. Its extremist variation is the Romanian ultranationalism.Aristotle KallisGenocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive ...
. This resulted in his execution by the NKVD.


Biography

Săteanu was born in 1907 in the village of Păpăuți on the Dniester's right bank, which was back then part of the Russian Empire's Bessarabia Governorate; Iurie Colesnic
"Scriitorii transnistreni între tragedie și minciună..."
in '' Timpul'', August 14, 2019
as noted by scholar Sergiu Grossu, his was an ethnic Romanian family. Also according to Grossu, this ethnic affiliation meant that Săteanu and
Nistor Cabac Nistor is a Romanian male given name and surname. Individuals with this name include: *Nistor Grozavu *Nistor Văidean *Constantin Nistor (disambiguation), two athletes *Dan Nistor (born 1988), Romanian footballer * Ion Nistor (1876–1962), Romani ...
were always mistreated by the MASSR, which distributed its accolades to non-Romanians—including
Samuil Lehtțir Samuil Rivinovici Lehtțir, also rendered as Lehțir, Lehtțâr, Lekhtser, and Lehitser (russian: Самуил Ривинович Лехтцир or Лехтцер; October 25, 1901 – October 15, 1937), was Moldovan poet, critic, and literary theo ...
, Dmitrii Milev, and Culai Neniu. Săteanu and Cabac's status as one of the "Romanians who could not be included within Romania's natural borders" was noted in May 1936 by "Petronius", of the Bucharest newspaper '' Viitorul''. Săteanu's poems were collected in a single volume, the 1936 ''Ție, Patrie, îți cînt'' ("It is to Thee I Sing, My Country"). In 1931, Lehtțir's ''Octombrie'' magazine published his ''De peste Nistru'' ("From Over the Dniester"), one of several period poems which described the Greater Romania as highly oppressive, claiming that Moldavians from that region secretly cherished MASSR as an ideal homeland. As early as 1934, the scattered works drew attention from the exile anti-communist Nichita Smochină, who commented on one of Săteanu's
idyll An idyll (, ; from Greek , ''eidullion'', "short poem"; occasionally spelt ''idyl'' in American English) is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the ''Idylls'' (Εἰδύλλια). U ...
s, which began in classical form (as a romantic address to a peasant girl), and ended with slogans about plentiful life in the '' kolkhoz'' and the Five-year Plan. Another piece focused on the life and times of poet
Mihai Andricescu Mihai () is a Romanian given name for males or a surname. It is equivalent to the English name Michael. A variant of the name is Mihail. Its female form is Mihaela. As a given name *Mihai I of Romania (1921–2017), King of Romania until 1947 * Mi ...
, whom the MASSR authorities had labeled a Romanian nationalist. Săteanu restored Andricescu's status as a Leninist poet: Literary historians describe Săteanu's downfall and death as related to his belief that the MASSR was a Romanian polity. Maria Șleahtițchi, who cites an earlier verdict by Mihai Cimpoi, views Săteanu as directly involved in the Soviet Latinization campaign, which had been reversed, and which made him a political suspect by 1936. Likewise, Elena Tamazlâcaru includes Săteanu among the MASSR authors who were "lined up against the wall and shot for the serious 'crime' of speaking and writing in Romanian". Nicolae Dabija renders one of the charges in the original de-Romanianized vernacular: ''au îngunoioșat limba moldovenească cu cuvinte romînești'' ("
he writers He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
have besmirched the Moldavian language with their Romanian words"). Examples of terms used by Săteanu and the others included neologisms or words for which the MASSR preferred a Russianism: ''elev'' rather than ''școlar'' ("student"), ''timp'' rather than ''vreme'' ("time", "weather"), ''uzină'' rather than ''zavod'' ("factory"), and ''steag'' rather than ''flag'' (as in the English "flag"). The decision to shoot Săteanu was taken by the NKVD bureau in Tiraspol, on October 20, 1937, at the height of the Great Purge. He was executed at an unspecified date shortly after, part of a literary purge that also included Lehtțir (on October 10), Pavel Chioru (on October 11), Milev (on October 13), Cabac and Ion Corcin-Corcinschi (both on November 26);
Teodor Malai Teodor is a masculine given name. In English, it is a cognate of Theodore (name), Theodore. Notable people with the name include: *Teodor Muzaka III, Albanian nobleman who was born in 1393. * Teodor Andrault de Langeron (19th century), President o ...
was similarly shot as a Romanian nationalist, in October 1938. The group was tacitly rehabilitated over the next decades, when the MASSR was absorbed into the larger Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (comprising Soviet-occupied Bessarabia). As historian Iurie Colesnic indicates, discussing the writers' deaths was viewed as an embarrassment in Soviet historiography. For this reason, the 1974 Moldovan anthology, ''Cîntăreți ai primelor cincinale'' ("Poets of the First Five-year Plans"), falsified data on Săteanu, Cabac, and the others, making it seem like they had died during World War II; Săteanu's death was presented as having taken place in 1943. Remembrance of Săteanu's life as a Romanian poet is cultivated in post-Soviet Moldova. In July 2022, he had his name inscribed on a votive cross in
Chișinău Chișinău ( , , ), also known as Kishinev (russian: Кишинёв, r=Kishinjóv ), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Republic of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial center, and is located in the ...
, alongside Cabac, Chioru, Lehtțir, Milev, and 28 other writers, described therein as "massacred or deported by the diabolical communist-Stalinist regime." Moldavian identitarianism finds expression in the breakaway region of Transnistria, roughly coterminous with the old MASSR; it also upholds Săteanu as a literary model. A collection put out in 2005 by the Shevchenko University of Tiraspol, titled ''Фечорий плаюлуй нистрян'' ("Sons of the Dniester Homeland"), was supposed to include him—but "regretfully, isworks were not reprinted", and could not be located in the original anywhere in Transnistria.L. I. Siniak, "Префацэ", in L. I. Siniak (ed.), ''Фечорий плаюлуй нистрян'', p. 4. Tiraspol: Izdatel'stvo Pridnestrovskogo Universiteta, 2005


Notes


References

* Nichita Smochină, "Din cultura națională în Republica Moldovenească a Sovietelor", in '' Revista Fundațiilor Regale'', Vol. III, Issue 4, April 1936, pp. 145–164. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sateanu, Filimon 1907 births 1937 deaths Moldovan male writers Soviet poets Moldovan poets 20th-century Ukrainian poets Writers from the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Communist poets Moldovan communists Moldovan propagandists Romanian nationalists People from Rezina District People from Soroksky Uyezd Moldovan people of Romanian descent Soviet people of Romanian descent Great Purge victims from the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic People executed by the Soviet Union by firearm Deaths by firearm in Moldova Soviet rehabilitations