His main activity in the late stages of Sfatul was with the commission of land reform: Bivol supported a radical version of the project, but moderated his stance during subsequent debates.

[2] In July 1918, Bivol remarked that he belonged to the Bessarabian yeomanry (răzeși), whom he called "Bessarabia's oldest inhabitants",[5] but that much of his property had been scattered into small and irretrievable pieces of land.

"[6] Nicolae Bivol was drawn into the "national-democratic" movement during the Russian Revolution of 1905, networking with Ion Pelivan, Emanuil Gavriliță, and Alexandru Ouatul.

As temporary chairman, Pan Halippa translated the relevant parts, but echoed Bivol's opinion, noting that "the deputies should have already learned Moldavian by now.

[13] On March 27, Bivol was among the majority of deputies who voted for union with Romania,[2] afterwards involving himself in debates about the scope and shape of the promised land reform.

[15] In May, Sfatul voted him as a Moldavian Bloc delegate on its newly established commission for land reform, where, in June, he spoke out against the preservation of model farms as inalienable land—and against the position taken by deputies such as Vladimir Tsyganko.

[16] Bivol and Mihail Minciună played down the notion that gentry-owned farms were significantly more productive than peasant farms—their claims on this issue are seen by Țurcanu as manipulative, or at least mistaken.

[17] Bivol was also hostile to the Orthodox clergy, arguing that priests should be dispossessed of their plots, and suggesting that monasteries only be granted land sparingly, in proportion to their staff.

[22] The agenda was postponed again by uncertainty regarding the legality of Sfatul decisions, as well as by the 1918 harvest; the Romanian Army was called in to ensure that peasants would continue to work as "obligatory tenants" of the landowners during that summer and autumn.

[30] During Assembly sessions, Bivol and other PȚB men decried the new administration's clampdown on rebellious Bessarabian peasants, and especially government's tendency to describe locals as "Bolsheviks".

[31] On December 26, Bivol also demanded that Romania provide "brotherly support" to the Romanian and "Moldavian" communities in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, estimating that there were 500 thousand such co-nationals.

[2] He was one of 14 members of the Sfatul to be captured in that round-up; Major Nikolai Sazykin, who was commanding over the local NKVD, reported to his chief Lavrentiy Beria that they were all in his custody, and proposed a show trial.

[1] Moraru argues that Bivol was continuously tortured, in what was an effort to make him confess to political crimes, and ultimately killed off when he would not oblige the NKVD.

"[2] In post-Bessarabian and post-Soviet Moldova, he is counted among the "victims of communist totalitarianism", and included as such in a 2001 book by the National Museum of History; as noted by Moraru, the work also lists twenty-one other Bivols from Costești, which may indicate that the whole family was fundamentally anti-communist.