[6] During his troubled youth, Arbore-Ralli underwent medical training in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but was more involved within the revolutionary, nihilist and pan-Russian anarchist underground, with the goal of subverting Tsarist autocracy.

[23] The reasons and objectives of this group, whose other members were Vladimir Holstein, Alexander Oelsnitz and Nikolai Ivanovich Zhukovsky,[23] were outlined in a letter to Jura anarchist James Guillaume.

[27] Moving from Zurich to Geneva, and known primarily as Ralli, Arbore ran a socialist publishing house, through which he helped popularize the political manifestos of anarchism, as well as his own history of the Paris Commune.

[10][28] He was among those who established, in 1875, the Genevan Russian-language newspaper Rabotnik ("The Worker"), which bridged the "young Bakuninist" faction with the Eser Party of Vera Figner and Reclus' St. Imier International.

[29] One of his colleagues there, future astronomer Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov, recalled that Arbore was actively involved in redacting news arriving from Russia, manipulating them for dramatic effect and political conformity.

[1] He was later in contact with the Iași Marxist circle of Ioan, Iosif and Sofia Nădejde, sending them books by Karl Marx and his anarchist commentators (Johann Most, Carlo Cafiero).

[43] Additionally, C. A. Rosetti is alleged to have personally assisted Arbore and Zubcu-Codreanu, who shared a Bucharest apartment, from evading both the persistent scrutiny of Romanian Police forces and the threat of extradition.

[51] At this stage, Arbore is believed to have helped other foreign-born socialists to find refuge in Romania: in particular to have assisted Peter (Petru) Alexandrov, the brother-in-law of writer Vladimir Korolenko, in obtaining a license to practice medicine in Tulcea and in defending himself during subsequent police inquiries.

[53] Arbore was, around 1890, a correspondent for Frédéric Damé's Bucharest newspaper La Liberté Roumaine, with exposé pieces on the kidnapping of junior Bulgarian Navy officer Vladimir Kisimov by Russian spies.

[56] As a socialist activist, he was coming to support the faction of Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Constantin Mille, who published Lumea Nouă review and ultimately set up the short-lived Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR).

[58] Arbore himself experimented with the genre, publishing children's versions of Don Quixote, Tartarin of Tarascon and Robinson Crusoe, as well as popular histories—one about Ancient Egypt, the other about 1821 rebel Tudor Vladimirescu.

[6][13] The same year, he was a voluntary contributor, with Bessarabian-themed entries, to the first-ever Romanian encyclopedic dictionary: Enciclopedia română, published in Austria-Hungary by Cornelius Diaconovich and ASTRA cultural society.

[65] In 1904, Mikhail Nikolayevich von Giers, the Russian Ambassador to Romania, warned National Liberal Premier Dimitrie Sturdza that "Mr. Ralli-Arbore" intended to send into Russia many small packages of brochures, to be delivered by a special network of socialist agents.

[67] An immediate predecessor for the legal Basarabia of 1906, it was noted for its radical support of Bessarabian autonomy, demands for universal suffrage, and adoption of a modern Romanian alphabet instead of traditional Moldavian Cyrillic letters.

[4][85] During the period, he took a personal interest in the fate of Russian prisoners held on occupied territory, and, in a letter to the Germanophile academic Ioan Bianu, spoke about the need to popularize revolutionary ideas among this particular group.

[4][35] Dumitru Arbore also joined the Communist Party, was kept under surveillance by the authorities for hosting conspirative sessions at his home in Prahova County, but remained in Romania, where he died in an October 1921 accident.

His membership in the local subsidiary of the Grand Orient de France was confirmed in December 1922 by Mihail Noradunghian, and he was recognized as a Rank 33 Mason, Worshipful Master of Human Rights Lodge (located in Bucharest).

[6] These promotions were scrutinized by the anti-Masonic far right: in a public conference, Nicolae Paulescu of the National-Christian Defense League called Arbore the Grand Master of a "Kike-Romanian Masonic group".

[4] The socialist tribune Societatea de Mâine published an obituary, which referred to Arbore as "one of the highest profile representative figures [in socialism], and one of the most worthy examples for all people-loving generations to follow.

[43] In Autonomia sau anexarea, he claimed that "damned Russia" secretly wanted to lure Romania into her war with the Austro-Hungarian provinces inhabited by Romanians, and in exchange expand its own territory southwards, into the Danube Delta and Dobruja.

[84] Liberarea Basarabiei, Marcel Mitrașcă argues, was one of the select few manifestations of Romanian national sentiment to advocate Bessarabian emancipation at the peak of wartime agitation, alongside similar manifestos by Stere, Axinte Frunză, Dumitru C. Moruzi etc.

[84] With Ukraina și România, Zamfir Arbore spoke out against the opinions expressed by Romanian nationalist historian Nicolae Iorga, a leading figure in pro-Entente politics, who had denied the existence of a distinct Ukrainian identity.

[84] Arbore was more outspoken during the interwar period: his December 1918 speech demanded the guarantee of minority rights in Greater Romania, saluted the policies of Soviet Russia as a liberating force, and predicted a Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War.

His Viața Basarabiei partner Pan Halippa noted that Arbore's historical but minor merit in opposing "Russification" was equivalent to that of other Bessarabian boyars and writers from various epochs: Stere, Alecu Donici, Alexandru Hâjdeu, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Constantin Stamati.

Stahl discusses him and Stere, alongside theorist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Nicolae Zubcu-Codreanu, as one of the most important intellectuals in the group of ex-Narodniks who contributed to the left-wing school of social sciences in Romania.

[13] From her adoptive Soviet Union, Arbore's older daughter Ecaterina cultivated her father's image: in 1931, she helped publish fragments of his memoirs on Mikhail Bakunin and Sergey Nechayev, translated into Russian and signed with the abridged name Z. K.

[92] Communist censorship however intervened in his various republished texts, cutting out all remarks which could seem Russophobic,[85] keeping his political writings hidden from public view while allowing some exposure to his geography tracts.

[4][97] Armand Goșu noted that the entry comprised "the best pages ever written on Zamfir Arbore",[4] while Ioan Stanomir sees in it a real-life equivalent of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Possessed and Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes.

[16] After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Arbore's name resurfaced in a nationalist conspiracy theory, which claims that Mihai Eminescu's descent into mental illness was staged by his more conservative political rivals.

[118] Arbore's 2009 biography at the anarchist Kate Sharpley Library focuses on his revolutionary career rather than his other commitments, claiming that the Romanian reviews of his nationalist policies, beginning with Nicolae Iorga's texts, are "mystification", and noting that his activities in Greater Romania "remain to be investigated".