Still active as an independent socialist in Greater Romania, Alexis Nour won additional fame as an advocate of human rights, land reform, women's suffrage and Jewish emancipation.

[2] Nour furthered his studies in other regions of the Russian Empire, where he became a familiar figure to those who opposed Tsarist autocracy, and exchanged ideas with radical young men of various ethnic backgrounds.

According to Onisifor Ghibu (himself an analyst of Bessarabian life), Nour missed out on the chance of establishing a Romanian–Moldavian–Bessarabian "irredentist movement", leading "a mysterious existence", and "not giving even the faintest clue that he was alive, until 1918.

[7][8] The short-lived periodical, financed by sympathizers from the Kingdom of Romania (including politician Eugeniu Carada), was pushing the envelope on the issue of Romanian emancipation and trans-border brotherhood, beyond what the 1905 regime intended to allow.

[9] In his first-ever article for the review, Alexis Nour suggested that the regional movement for national emancipation still lacked a group of intellectual leaders, or "elected sons", capable of forming a single Romanian faction in the State Duma.

[10] Other Basarabia articles by Nour were vehement rebuttals addressed to Pavel Krushevan, the (supposedly ethnic Romanian) exponent of extreme Russian nationalism.

[11] The following year, in April, Nour himself launched, sponsored and edited the political weekly Viața Basarabiei, distinguished for having discarded the antiquated Romanian Cyrillic in favor of a Latin alphabet, wishing to make itself accessible to readers in the Kingdom of Romania; an abridged, "people's" version of the gazette was also made available as a supplement, for a purely Bessarabian readership.

Cazacu recalls: "Although moderate, the atmosphere was so stuffed, the hardships so great, the attacks of the right and the left so relentless, that in a short while [this magazine] also succumbed, not without having had its useful effect in the awakening of national sentiment, even among the Moldavians in various parts of Russia, in the Caucasus, and in Siberia.

[19] Initially, they describe 1907 Bessarabia with noted regret, as the place where "nothing happens", in contrast with a more politically oriented Romania, where the Peasants' Revolt had seemingly radicalized public opinion.

[22] They report with consternation that the official Moldavian Studies Society, had been inactive for an entire year, and concluded that its creation was government farce; however, he also admitted that the bloody events of 1907 Romania were unpalatable for the average Bessarabian.

[22][24] The region's educated classes were Russian-educated, often Russian-oriented, and had therefore lost cheia de la lacătă, care închide sufletul țăranului ("the key that will unlock the peasant's soul").

Seraphim Chichagov, the Archbishop of Chișinău, included him among the Church's "worst enemies", but noted that his Romanian nationalism had managed to contaminate only 20 Bessarabian priests.

[28] In his reply to Nour, published by the Bucharest political gazette Epoca (September 1909), Madan claimed that his accuser was at once a socialist, an internationalist and a follower of Constantin Stere's Bessarabian separatism.

[29] Later research into Special Corps of Gendarmes archives identified Madan as the informant who provided the Imperial authorities with first-hand reports on the perception of Bessarabian issues in Romania, including on Nour's own 1908 article on the Orthodox priests' support for the vernacular.

A Page from the Great Restoration of Nations"), published by Viața Românească in its October–November–December 1914 issue, inaugurated a series of such pieces, which talked about Ukraine's emancipation, the Bessarabian union, and, unusually in this context, the incorporation of Transnistria into Romania (with a new frontier on the Southern Bug).

[40] The latter demand was without precedent in the history of Romanian nationalism,[34] and Nour is even credited with having coined the term Transnistria in modern parlance, alongside the adjective transnistreni ("Transnistrians").

[34] The pie-chart procedure as a whole was criticized by French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne, who viewed it as inaccurate in rendering the comparative numerical force of the individual populations.

[46] Martonne stated having personally verified the accuracy of Nour's map at some point before 1920, and concluded: "Although it is not exempt from all criticism, it is generally as exact as is permitted by the Russian documents on which it bases itself.

[49] With time, the Bessarabian journalist claimed, the Straits Question would be solved, Romanian rule over Odessa and Constanța would create commercial prosperity, and Romania, a great power, would be entitled to a share of the British, French or Belgian colonial empires.

[34] Nevertheless, the October Revolution and its aftermath seemed to credit Nour's prophecies: although Romania was losing to the Central Powers, the Moldavian Democratic Republic proclaimed by Bessarabian activists looked set to unite with the defeated country.

This was noted at the time by the newly appointed Germanophile Premier of Romania, Alexandru Marghiloman, who credited Nour with having helped revise Romanian foreign policy: "[His] map has since been laid out on all tables of the great European conferences, in all chancelleries, and is the soundest document for those who wish to untangle the matter of Bessarabia's nationalities.

This was a risky gesture on his part: present at Londra Restaurant, where Marghiloman was being greeted by the unionist leaders, he was spotted by his former friends, and only rescued from near-certain lynching by the intervention of outgoing MDR Prime Minister, his old colleague Petru Cazacu.

[50] Umanitatea emphasized Nour's leftist projects for social change, and, according to Lucian Boia, offered a reply to Marghiloman's promise to reform the 1866 constitutional regime.

Nour's articles, published in Răsăritul and in N. D. Cocea's Chemarea, describe Bessarabia (the "stateless" MDR) as prey to "Bolshevik fury", calling for Romania to immunize itself "against the plague" by simply abandoning hopes to the region.

[34][56] He also wrote for the newspapers Opinia and Avântul, discussing Russian affairs and Russia's take on "socialist democracy",[57] and was present on the first issue of Moldova de la Nistru, a Bessarabian "magazine written for the people".

[2][60] In parallel, he worked with C. Zarida Sylva on another Basarabia newspaper, which was dedicated to "national propaganda" in Romania and abroad, and with Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo at Lumea, the "weekly bazaar".

Writing for M. H. Maxy's Integral magazine (Issue 4), he sought to define the political purpose of Romanian Constructivism: "progress is a gradual adaptation [to the] least reduced division of labor between men.

University of Turin academic Roberto Merlo notes that it formed part of a Zamolxian "fascination" among Romanian men of letters, also found in the research and essays of various others, from Mircea Eliade, Lucian Blaga and Dan Botta to Henric Sanielevici and Theodor Speranția.

[71] The other study focused on Paleo-Balkan mythology, and in particular on the supposed contributions of ancient Dacians and Getae to Romanian folklore: Credințe, rituri și superstiții geto-dace ("Gaeto-Dacian Beliefs, Rites and Superstitions").

[72] The decision was received with indignation by archeologist Constantin Daicoviciu, who deemed Credințe, rituri și superstiții geto-dace unworthy of attention, as an indiscriminate collection of quotes from "authors good and bad", without any "sound knowledge" of its subject.