page_title: Zamfir Arbore
section_title: 1880s politics
hierarchical_section_title: Zamfir Arbore / Biography / 1880s politics
caption_attribution_description: Illustration (chromolithograph) from the Romanian socialist magazine Lumea Nouă Științifică și Literară. A torch bearer, wearing a phrygian cap and a sword marked "Universal Suffrage", tramples upon four snakes (representing, from left, "Exploitation", "Militarism", "Corruption" and "Ignorance"). She is leaning on a rock marked "8-hour Day", above which is a red flag with the paraphrased Marxist slogan "Proletarians from All Countries Unite". The three strips of cloth tied to the mast read, from left, "Brotherhood", "Liberty", "Justice". At the foot of the rock are agricultural utensils and a bundle of grain. The open book in the foreground is Karl Marx's Das Kapital, and the open one to its right reads "Union Makes Strength". In the background, over the anvil and cogwheel, a rising sun marked "The World of the Future". Notes: several words used show antiquated or incorrect spellings - țerile for țările ("countries"), corupțiune for corupție ("corruption"), esploatare for exploatare ("exploitation"). For unknown reasons, the "N" in UNIVERSAL is turned into a "И", and the "ă" (schwa) is turned into a plain "a" in the words frăție ("brotherhood") and ignoranță ("ignorance").
context_page_description: Zamfir Constantin Arbore was a Bukovinan-born Romanian political activist originally active in the Russian Empire, also known for his work as an amateur historian, geographer and ethnographer. Arbore debuted in left-wing politics from early in life, gained an intimate knowledge of the Russian revolutionary milieu, and participated in both nihilist and Narodnik conspiracies. Self-exiled to Switzerland, he became a member of the International Workingmen's Association. Arbore was mostly active as an international anarchist and a disciple of Mikhail Bakunin, but eventually parted with the latter to create his independent group, the Revolutionary Community. He was subsequently close to the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus, who became his new mentor.
  Arbore settled in Romania after 1877, and, abandoning anarchism altogether, committed himself to the more moderate cause of socialism. His campaign against Russian despotism also led him to champion the cause of freedom for Bessarabia region, to which he was personally tied by his family history.
context_section_description: After the Trial of the Fourteen, the Revolutionary Community and all other Bakuninist groups were losing the battle in front of renewed Tsarist repression. Arbore, who now criticized Bakunian anarchism, quickly came to the conclusion that a socialist party was needed as a more radical alternative to the Romanian two-party system: in 1879, he helped organize the first-ever conference of Romanian socialist clubs, and, over the following months, was member of the editorial staff at România Viitoare, the socialist review (as a result of his participation, the magazine also enlisted contributions from Reclus and his brother Élie, as well as from poet Louis-Xavier de Ricard). The next year, he and the Nădejdes were briefly in contact with the senior political radical Titus Dunka, distributing for a while Dunka's gazette Înainte! ("Forward!").
  In 1880, after a failed attempt on Ion Brătianu's life, the socialist circles faced government suspicion and became less organized, a situation which lasted until the election of 1888. At the time, Arbore was editor of Rosetti's democratic gazette Românul, and later moved to a similar position with the left-leaning newspaper Telegraful Român. Also at that stage, he befriended the Bukovinan Mihai Eminescu, later recognized as Romania's national poet, but at the time a secondary figure in the Bucharest press. Eminescu, who worked for the Conservative Party tribune Timpul, confided in Arbore about his pessimistic vision of Romanian society. At this stage, Arbore is believed to have helped other foreign-born socialists to find refuge in Romania: in particular to have assisted Peter (Petru) Alexandrov, the brother-in-law of writer Vladimir Korolenko, in obtaining a license to practice medicine in Tulcea and in defending himself during subsequent police inquiries. In 1881, he was himself naturalized a citizen of the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Romania.
  By summer 1883, when Arbore too lost National Liberal support and was briefly expelled from Romania, Eminescu had become afflicted with mental illness (he eventually died in relative isolation, in 1889). Arbore was, around 1890, a correspondent for Frédéric Damé's Bucharest newspaper La Liberté Roumaine, with exposé pieces on the kidnapping of junior Bulgarian Navy officer Vladimir Kisimov by Russian spies. His third daughter Nina, later known as a visual artist, was born in January 1888. The elder, Ecaterina, was already taking her first steps in socialist politics, as a delegate to the International Congress of Students, held in Giurgiu.
  Meanwhile, Zamfir Arbore was progressively integrated into the Romanian civil service: a clerk at the State Archives, he became a statistician in service to the Bucharest City Hall (from 1896 to 1920). As a socialist activist, he was coming to support the faction of Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Constantin Mille, who published Lumea Nouă review and ultimately set up the short-lived Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR).
caption: An allegorical illustration of Romanian socialist goals. Lumea Nouă, 1895
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