Pyotr Z. Bazhbeuk-Melikov
Pyotr Zakharovich Bazhbeuk-Melikov, also Bachbeouk-Melikoff, Bazhbeuk-Melikyan or Bazhbeuk-Melikishvili (, "Bedros Bažbeuk-Melikyan"; ; , "Bajbeug-Melicov", "Bajbeuc-Melichian", or "Basbeuc-Melikisvilli"; February 27, 1872 – after 1939), was an ethnic Armenian politician and agronomist in Bessarabia. Educated in Tiflis Governorate and then in France, he had various administrative offices in the Russian Empire and the Russian Republic. He presented himself in the November 1917 election for the Russian Constituent Assembly as an affiliate of the Constitutional Democratic Party. Failing in this bid, Bazhbeuk was instead welcomed as an Armenian delegate by the Bessarabian assembly, or "Sfatul  Țării", just before the proclamation of a Moldavian Democratic Republic. Loyal toward the latter, he spoke out against Bolshevik infiltration, and asked for an intervention by the neighboring Kingdom of Romania. Though he welcomed the Romanian military expedition of early 1918, he found himself opposed to the subsequent union between Bessarabia and Romania, reverting to Russian monarchism. In 1919, Bazhbeuk joined the Odessa-based Committee for the Salvation of Bessarabia, and, through it, also the White movement. The Committee sent him on a mission to the General Command of the Armed Forces of South Russia in Rostov-on-Don, where  he spoke about reintegrating Bessarabia with a future Russian state. Fleeing the region altogether during the later stages of the Russian Civil War, Bazhbeuk publicized the White émigré cause in the Kingdom of Bulgaria, but finally returned to Bessarabia and served Romania's monarchy. In the 1930s, he was the Mayor of Orhei. Biography. Bazhbeuk was born to Armenian parents in Bender (Tighina), Bessarabia Governorate. Scholars Ion Gumenâi and Lidia Prisac argue that the Bazhbeuks were a wealthy family: though Pyotr Zakharovich never acknowledged that he was a landowner, he probably held to his name townhouses in both Orhei and  Chișinău. He completed his secondary education at the Classical Gymnasium in Tiflis (Tbilisi), then took university studies in France—successively at the Commercial School of Écully, the Catholic University of Lyon, and the Montpellier School of Agriculture, where he took a degree in agricultural engineering. He was thereafter charged with opening model farms on the Russian Crown Estates. During the February Revolution of 1917, when he was recruited by the Russian Provisional Government as its representative for "Orgeyevsky Uyezd", Bazhbeuk was also leader of Orhei's local government body, the "Zemstvo". Bazhbeuk ran in the legislative election of November 1917 , seventh on a Constitutional Democratic or "People's Party" list headlined by the Prince Urusov. On December 8, he was sent to "Sfatul Țării", the regional assembly of Bessarabia, as the first and sole Armenian representative. His comparatively late appointment was due to the belated formation of a National Committee of Armenians from Bessarabia (NAKOBA), under Mitridat Muratov; he was probably proposed to NAKOBA by a Romanian landowner, Vladimir Herța. Days after Bazhbeuk's induction by "Sfatul", the legislature voted to organize Bessarabia into an autonomous "Moldavian Democratic Republic" (RDM). Upon being sworn in, Bazhbeuk gave a speech outlining his  support for the RDM, his loyalty to the Armenian national liberation movement, and also his enduring commitment to the Russian Constituent Assembly. Additionally, he declared that the Armenians would help to defend RDM territory against devastation by Rumcherod soldiers and the spread of Bolshevik influence. Bazhbeuk's standing as a "bourgeois" figure was one of the issues which antagonized far-left deputies. In a "Sfatul" session of December 28, Ioan Panțâr tried but failed to obtain Bazhbeuk's removal; the session finally ended with a group of leftists boycotting "Sfatul" meetings. During the proceedings, Bazhbeuk insisted that Bolshevik revolts be  put down at any cost, and even asked for the Romanian Army to occupy Bessarabia—though he considered this a provisional solution to a temporary problem. Soon after, the RDM was subject to a Romanian military intervention. Bazhbeuk attended a banquet at the Assembly of the Nobility in Chișinău, delivering a welcome speech, in French, for the Romanian commander Ernest Broșteanu; as a "Zemstvo" delegate, he greeted Romanian troops outside Bălți. He also found common ground with the National Moldavian Party (PNM), which mainly embodied Romanian nationalism. His reported home at 81 Viilor Street served as a meeting spot for  activists of the "Moldavian Bloc", which reunited the PNM and its various partners. In one "Sfatul" session of March 1917, Bazhbeuk condemned the Ukrainian People's Republic for its promise to annex Bessarabia, and criticized the RDM Directorate for its "unlawful" lassitude on the issue, and for not sending representatives to the Bucharest peace conference. From early April, as Bessarabia embarked on a conditional union with Romania which preserved some of its autonomy, Bazhbeuk, who was registered as absent during the actual vote, greatly reduced his participation in "Sfatul" sessions—he was present only three times before November 1918. Instead , he was integrated as a civil servant on the legislative committee which decided on the RDM's official languages (February 1918), also appearing on boards for financial regulation and land reform (March–May 1918). Gumenâi and Prisac argue that he took the time to reflect on his political stances. Increasingly aware that Broșteanu had no orders to vacate Bessarabia, he came to reconsider his "apparent loyalty" toward Romania. By early 1919, Bazhbeuk had left Romania and was in Odessa, a port city that was then under direct administration by the Allied powers; a Russian loyalist, he had joined A. N.  Krupensky and Alexandr K. Schmidt's Committee for the Salvation of Bessarabia. Still counting himself a "Zemstvo" representative, in February 1919 he contributed to a memorandum received by the foreign consulates in Odessa. It referred to Romania as an "Asian" country whose intervention had degraded the former RDM, describing the actions of Broșteanu and others as "horror" and "vandalism". Before September, Bazhbeuk and V. I. Yaroshevich were delegated by the Committee to the All-Russian National Center, formed by the White movement (and more specifically the VSYuR) in Rostov-on-Don. Though they were both admitted on the body, it  was not as official representatives of Bessarabia, since the VSYuR's Anton Denikin had no intention of antagonizing Romania. In his Rostov appearances, Bazhbeuk described "Greater Romania" as concocted by "Sfatul" against the wishes of its electorate. Overall, however, he agreed with Denikin that no plebiscite was to be held regarding the rejoining of Bessarabia to a reconstructed Russia. As Bolshevist Russia recovered to win the Civil War, Bazhbeuk withdrew into exile. In 1925, he published in Sofia, Kingdom of Bulgaria the Russian monarchist tract "Сборник Высочайших актов и исторических материалов" ("Collection of Imperial Acts and Historical Materials"). It documented  the execution of the Romanov family, presenting Bazhbeuk's own allegiance to Grand Duke Kirill as the "Emperor of Russia". The author eventually reconciled with the Romanian government, and returned to Bessarabia. In later years, Bazhbeuk was recovered as an agriculturalist by the Romanian Crown Estate in Orhei County, and served terms as president, and chief agronomist, of the agricultural chamber in that same district. In this capacity, he published a number of scientific works detailing agricultural and geographic issues. From 1931, he was a staff writer for the agriculturalist monthly "Buletinul Agricol din Basarabia". On February 18, 1933, the  Ministry of Internal Affairs appointed him Mayor of Orhei, with Nuhim Rozenblit as his aide. He was no longer serving as such in 1939.