[2] After studying at the private Institutul Academic in Iași and at the Parisian Collège Sainte-Barbe, he enrolled in the literature and philosophy faculties at Paris and Brussels, but did not graduate.

[3] Morțun founded and led, alone or in collaboration with Ioan Nădejde, Constantin Mille and Vintilă Rosetti, numerous gazettes and magazines: Dacia viitoare, Muncitorul, Revista socială, Ciocoiul and Înainte!.

He wrote a few translations and adaptations from Jules de Marthold (Pascal Fargeau, novel, 1882), Edmond Gondinet, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky; these remained in the pages of Contemporanul.

[1][4] Beginning in January 1888, when he was elected to represent Roman County as the first socialist in the Assembly of Deputies,[5] Morțun served multiple terms there,[1] and was its President from December 1916 to April 1918.

[6] When the war started going badly for Romania as the autumn of 1916 wore on, the ministry was involved in organizing resistance to German-led occupation, destroying the petroleum infrastructure, sinking grain deposits in the Danube and sending the Romanian Treasure to Moscow.