Paul Bujor
An award-winning ichthyologist, Bujor was hired by the University of Iași, where he taught for 41 years, and throughout the period worked on documenting the Black Sea fauna, and made discoveries concerning the environment of Techirghiol Lake.
Elected to Senate as a university representative, and serving throughout the social upheaval of World War I, Bujor clashed with the National Liberal Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu, whom he accused of bringing disaster upon the country.
[5] Bujor took his Baccalaureate at Iași (1880), then performed his six-months service in the Romanian Land Forces, at a cavalry regiment, and ultimately enrolled at the Natural Sciences department, University of Bucharest, while working as a copyist in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
[13] Having done independent research in marine biology at Villefranche-sur-Mer,[14] Bujor moved to Geneva for specialized courses in animal morphology, under the guidance of Carl Vogt.
[18] Instead, by 1894, he was a noted contributor to Garabet Ibrăileanu's Evenimentul Literar of Iași,[19] and also wrote for Gherea's own review, Literatură și Știință—which hosted various of his "countryside sketches",[20] including the anti-war, didactic Mi-a cântat cucu-n față ("A Cuckoo Sang to My Face").
[12] Other critics note that it was the first of several Bujor stories in which urban civilization is a factor for ethical dissolution, a theme "idyllic and ideological",[22] repeated to the point of "obsession".
[24] The same Atanasiu notes that, on Labor Day 1894, Bujor acted as a courier for the PSDMR moderate mainstream, warning the party cell in Galați not to invite in, nor respond to, police violence.
[29] His research took him outside the country: with Voinov and Racoviță, he worked as a marine biologist at Banyuls-sur-Mer and at the Stazione Zoologica of Naples,[30] returning with a rich collection of biological samples, which he donated to his faculty.
[31] From 1904, his articles promoting physical culture among the peasantry were hosted by Cultura Română, the popular pedagogy magazine,[33] with Bujor serving as president of the Iași Society for Gymnastics, Sport and Music.
[44] However, by 1905, the split between Poporanism and Sămănătorul was irreconcilable, as Stere, Ibrăileanu and Bujor alike declared that agrarianism could only be progressive, whereas Vlahuță and Iorga defended cultural conservatism.
[52] By then, Bujor also contributed to several other literary magazines, including Arta, Lupta, Noua Revistă Română, and Revista Literară și Științifică (where he was editing secretary),[2] and also to newspapers such as Opinia and Tribuna Conservatoare.
[2][53] In 1911, Bujor published the essay Foamea și iubirea în lupta pentru existență ("Hunger and Love in the Fight for Existence"),[36] and, with Cantacuzino, Gheorghe Marinescu, and Francisc Rainer, founded the international journal Annales de Biologie.
[56] Those years accentuated his conflict with Cuza: in October 1909, when he planned to speak at university about the execution of Francisco Ferrer by the Spanish restoration government, his address was violently interrupted by far-right students.
[62] His Darwinian studies, carried by Revista Științifică V. Adamachi, discussed issues such as parthenogenesis, and commented on Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.
[66] The period coincided with Romania's neutrality in World War I, with Bujor, by then a contributor to Petre P. Carp's Moldova newspaper,[11] involving himself in passionate debates at the university.
During those months, he joined a parliamentary commission on land reform—although, as PNL man Ion G. Duca notes, these were dominated "by the great landowners, since Brătianu's goal was to get those most affected by the reforms to support them as well.
"[70] On May 30, he signed up to a list of demands formulated by the Conservative Democrat dissidents Ion C. Grădișteanu and Constantin Argetoianu, which argued that the PNL's plan to enact reforms was "political diversion", one meant to cover Brătianu's contribution to the "national disaster".
As noted at the time by sociologist Dimitrie Drăghicescu, he was one of many former National Liberals in the PȚ, confirming claims that the Peasantists were only the "impatiently democratic" side of the PNL mainstream.
[83] As reported by Iorga, Bujor expressed his opposition to the centrist platform adopted by the emerging "Democratic Bloc", declaring himself a man "of the far-left", until Mihalache threatened to expel him from the party.
[85] In his speech thanking senators for casting their vote, Bujor again voiced his radicalism, asserting that "dawn shows itself from the East", a discreet allusion to the October Revolution.
[86] Bujor also had debates with the nationalist senator Ilie Roșoagă, when the latter proposed a vote to recognize Romanian-inhabited portions of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as irrendenta.
[92] Renewing his support for land reform, Bujor was again a noted critic of the antisemitic Cuza, whom he accused of wanting to destroy the university with his mystical rhetoric and his violent actions.
[94] During the early months of 1920, Bujor reverted to a more uncompromising stance, voting to put pressure on the king and thus force into law Mihalache's land reform proposal.
On March 12–13, the king informed him and Iorga that he expected Democratic Bloc ministers to resign, with Bujor protesting, in vain, that the regime being revoked was "good for the country".
Both proposals were ignored, and parliament only debated a more conservative project, advanced by Averescu's Agriculture Minister, Constantin Garoflid; this incensed the FDNS to address the peasants directly, with leaflets condemning the lawmaking-landowners.
He optimistically argued that the "three-headed dragon" would be defeated by the "fire-sword archangel" of democracy, claiming that the fall of the Vaida cabinet was just a symptom of the PNL's losing struggle.
[111] Although the PNȚ carried the elections of December 1928, both Bujor and Borcea remained on the group's far-left, criticizing perceived fascist tendencies on the right, and were, overall, largely inactive members.
He also denounced the PNȚ "oligarchy", portraying Iuliu Maniu as a dictator and exposing Vaida as a "reactionary antisemite", guilty of having "massacred innocent workers at Lupeni".
[118] By April, again formally affiliated with the Viața Românească writers and their anti-fascist platform, Bujor expressed publicly his support for the novelist Mihail Sadoveanu, who was being targeted by the far-right press.
[120] As Bujor himself explained in articles for the official newspaper Scînteia, he was also co-opted by the World Peace Council, holding political meetings with Grivița workers to condemn the "imperialist governments of the West."
