page_title: Simeon G. Murafa
section_title: Murder
hierarchical_section_title: Simeon G. Murafa / Biography / Murder
caption_attribution_description: English: Nina Mateevici and Silvia Murafa, at the skating rink, Chişinău, 1932
context_page_description: Simeon Gheorghevici Murafa 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 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.
context_section_description: 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. According to one account, a shooting ensued, probably after Hodorogea asked his aggressors to stop tearing out grapes and littering. Murafa was hit in the chest, and the attackers used their bayonets to kill Hodorogea, who was trying to offer him medical attention. 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.
  Both were dead before the local Militsiya could intervene. The incident, retold in detail by Cioflec (who was present but escaped unharmed), shocked Bessarabian intellectuals. 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". Clark additionally notes that this killing of two "most conspicuous Moldavian leaders" was linked with the devastation of farms and businesses by peasants and Russian deserters, but also with a Bolshevik "campaign of terrorism". 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.
  Following the December 1917 establishment of a breakaway Moldavian Democratic Republic, which eventually united with Romania, Murafa was openly designated a hero to the cause of unionism. In May 1918, before its complete merger with Romania, the Republic set aside 5,000 rubles for a monument to be dedicated at Murafa's grave, a further 3,000 as aid for his widow, and a 900-ruble pension for his daughter. The issue was hotly debated between the PNM and the left-leaning Peasants' Faction, but passed with a slim majority of votes. In 1922, following Halippa's pleas, the Romanian authorities commissioned a statue to honor all three activists. As a result, the Murafa—Mateevici—Hodorogea Monument, a stone-and-bronze work by Vasile Ionescu-Varo, was erected in Chișinău. Bessarabian activists of that period introduced Murafa as the original "martyr of the nation". The term was notably used by Pelivan, 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.
caption: Murafa's daughter Silvia (right) with Mateevici's daughter Nina at a skating rink in Chișinău, 1932
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