Pavel Chioru, Chior, or Kior, known in full as Pavel Ivanovici Chioru-IanachiGalushenko, p. 105 Iurie Colesnic, "Scriitorii transnistreni între tragedie și minciună...", in Timpul, 14 August 2019D. Virgil, "Stalinismul în destinele oamenilor", in Cuvîntul Libertății, 29 November 1990, p. 2 (, or Павел Кьору; 2 April 1902 – ), was a Moldovan journalist, folklorist, and Soviet politician. He was among the Bessarabian youths who rejected that region's union with Romania, and consequently fled into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he joined his communist father. Chioru Jr served in the Red Army and the Cheka, seeing action in the Russian Civil War; training as a political commissar, and known to the leadership of the Communist Party (CPSU), he emerged from the war as an author of Soviet propaganda with literary and musical preoccupations. His father became a founding figure of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), established in Ukrainian territory as a statement of Soviet territorial claims on Bessarabia; though Chioru Sr died in 1926, his son continued his political work, moving to Balta.
Chioru personally handled some of the core institutions of Soviet "Moldovenism"—a doctrine which held that Moldovans (or Moldavians) are fundamentally distinct from Romanians. These include the newspaper Plugarul Roșu, the literary magazine Moldova Literarî, and the local Writers' Union. Chioru was MASSR Commissar for Education between 1928 and 1930, and in this capacity worked to create a "Moldovan language" of the proletariat, principally by overstating differences between the Moldavian dialect and modern Romanian. He edited Gavril Buciușcan's dictionary, which stood as a moderate sample of Moldovenism, but around 1929 took personal charge of the project, endorsing in-depth cultural separatism through Russification of the vocabulary. In the earliest 1930s, Chioru was again moderating his outlook, recommending a literary language that was mostly influenced by the archaic dialect. This made him interested in selectively cultivating the classics of Romanian literature, Vasile Alecsandri and Mihai Eminescu. He earned attention in Greater Romania for his research into folklore, and was seen there as an unwitting champion of Romanian nationalism.
In 1932, Chioru backed the Soviet Latinization campaigns, whereby the Romanian alphabet was effectively adopted by the MASSR. His cultural activism was largely put on hold by 1934, when he took political offices in Rîbnița District and was possibly groomed to become a leader of the MASSR. This stint ended abruptly during the Great Purge, when he was labeled as a Romanian nationalist and Trotskyist. Expelled from the CPSU in March 1937, he was sentenced to death in October. He is known to have received a stay of execution, but his ultimate fate remains unclear. Official narratives, circulated at the height of De-Stalinization, have it that he died in the Gulag in 1943; they are questioned by authors who argue that he was more likely shot before the end of 1937.
Biography Origins and early career Chioru was a native of Cartal village in southern Bessarabia; at the time, the area was in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, through Izmailsky Uyezd (now in Ukraine's Izmail Raion). Ghenadie Nicu, "Acte și valori. Basarabia, acum", in Ziarul de Iași, 9 September 2007 His exact birth date, according to later scholarship, is 2 April 1902. His father, known in Romanian as Ivan Nicolaievici Chior-Ionache and in Russian as Ivan Nikolaevich Kior-Yanaki, was a figure of importance in the regional Bolshevik movement, helping to organize the communist network in Yekaterinoslav. Pavel was a musically gifted child, who went on to perform in amateur choirs, as well as becoming a multi-instrumentalist (he could play the piano, the button accordion, the mandolin, and the Jew's harp).Galushenko, p. 107 He is known to have been enrolled at Bolhrad High School around the time when Bessarabia achieved independence as the Moldavian Democratic Republic.
He left the region in 1918, as it united with Romania. He swam across the Dniester and volunteered for service in the Red Army, seeing action in the Russian Civil War. Settling for a while in Soviet Russia, Pavel was welcomed into the all-Russian Communist Party (future CPSU) in 1919, and then joining his father in Yekaterinoslav; here, he was assigned to the communist secret police, Cheka, serving as such between 1920 and 1922. Chioru Jr graduated from Sverdlov Communist University in Moscow in 1924.Galushenko, pp. 105, 107 He appeared as a singer of folk melodies for a number of benefit concerts, gathering funds for survivors of the Volga famine. From 1924, Chioru's father was mainly active in Soviet Ukraine, joining the Ukrainian Bolshevik Party's regional committee in Odesa, and then being welcomed into the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union. He was also called upon to help establish the subordinate MASSR, located just west of that city, but only to April 1926, when he died at Kislovodsk. In 1924–1925, Chioru Jr returned to the Red Army as a political commissar among the Red Cossacks.Galushenko, p. 106 He then emerged as first secretary of the Ukrainian Komsomol's chapter in the newly formed Moldavian polity; this period saw his first contributions to Soviet propaganda, the brochures Что такое комсомол ("What Is the Komsomol?", 1925) and Наша смена – пионе-ры ("Our Shift: The Pioneers", 1926).
Upon settling in Balta, Chioru helped establish the newspaper Plugarul Roșu, serving as its editor in chief, and became MASSR People's Commissar for Education, in which capacity he helped establish the Writers' Union. He was probably the main literary contributor at Plugarul Roșu, with a column named Ungherașul poeziei norodnice moldovenești ("Little Corner of Moldavian People's Poetry"), later Pagina Literarî ("Literary Page"). It eventually became a standalone magazine, Moldova Literarî ("Literary Moldavia")—unusual in its Soviet context for being editorially independent. His arrival came at a time when the MASSR's professional intellectuals were dividing into Romanianizers and Moldovenizers. As noted by the Russian scholar Oleg Grom, the former group, who still enjoyed relative supremacy, did not regard Romanians and Moldovans as distinguished by ethnicity, as much as by class: "'Romanians' in this interpretation are, first of all, boyars and capitalists who 'fooled' their own people". Moldovenizers, instead, actively strove to create a "Moldovan language", hoping to transform class consciousness into a new ethnic nationalism.Grom, pp. 94–95 Chioru's own interest in the linguistic field led him to serve as publisher of a Russian–Moldovan dictionary, compiled by Gavril Buciușcan in 1926; he shared editorial credits with writer Dmitrii Milev.Tărîță, p. 220. See also Galushenko, p. 106 Reviewing this contribution, historian Marius Tărîță notes that, though maintaining a localized Cyrillic script, it did not yet endorse claims that "Moldovan" was wholly distinct from Romanian.Tărîță, p. 220
Language creation Chioru's experiment with language began in September 1926, when he was assigned as director of the MASSR Scientific Committee—this institute only had one functioning section, dedicated to linguistics and led by the grammarian Leonid Madan.Scurtu, p. 140 Looking back on this activity some four years later, Chioru argued that Romanian was not just different from Moldovan, but also "incomprehensible" to speakers of the latter (though he also reported his annoyance that many inhabitants of the MASSR, including "very esteemed scientific cadres", "believe that the Moldovan and Romanian languages are one and the same").Scurtu, pp. 140–142. See also Grom, p. 95 He served as Commissar for Education between 1928 and 1930, when, as philologist Vasile Bahnaru notes, he argued for the political channeling of linguistics; he supported an emphasis on the differences between the archaic Moldavian dialect and the modernized Romanian language, proposing that the communists could engineer a Moldovan language out of the former; on this basis, Chioru suggested that Romanian was a language of the "exploiters", whereas Moldovan was one for the "exploited".Bahnaru, p. 13 He took personal charge of the project, superseding Buciușcan's dictionary with his own works in lexicography and a tract, Dispri orfografia linghii moldovinești (appearing at Bîrzu in 1929); "either by the choice of Chior or through additions and alterations by the editors", these recommended a Russified lexis, with terms such as soiuz for "union" (instead of the Romanian unire).Tărîță, pp. 220–221, 234
In his report of November 1929, Chioru asserted that creating new languages was an all-Union process, involving many other Soviet languages; in his introduction to one of Madan's handbooks, he denounced Buciușcan's standard as too Romanian.Scurtu, pp. 139–140 In terms of orthography, Chioru favored revamping Cyrillic with direct borrowings from the Russian alphabet—including я and ю—arguing that this was a "democratic, simplified and scientific" approach. Reviewing his contribution, linguist Anatol Lența observes that it "completely changed" the familiar standards of the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, being conducive of Russification.Lența, p. 120 Chioru and Milev endorsed Madan, who also invited writers to fabricate a "Moldavian socialist" lexis.Lența, pp. 122–124 With I. Cușmăunsă, they co-wrote an appeal which argued that: "We have no need for Romanian literary grammar, since that sort of grammar would completely stifle our Moldavian language" (Ноауы ну ни требуи граматикы литерары ромыниаскы кэч ку ашэ граматикы ной ом ынабушы ди тэт лимба ноастры молдовинясы).Lența, pp. 123–124
In 1930, Chioru acknowledged that he was more interested in creating a "mother tongue" and "living language", rather than a full-blown Moldovan literary language; he also reported being uninterested in the historical background of the MASSR vernacular, simply describing the topic as "difficult".Scurtu, p. 141 Once he switched focus toward literary expression, he moderated his stance, favoring old Romanian sources and a reliance on the speech patterns of his native Bessarabia—thereby isolating himself from other activists, who wanted a language based on the comparatively exotic speech patterns of Dubăsari.Galushenko, p. 106. See also Chelaru, p. 32 Chioru also admired the Romanian folklorist Vasile Alecsandri, wishing to imitate his work in the field.Iordan Datcu, "Recenzii. Creația populară moldovenească", in Revista de Etnografie și Folclor, Vol. 37, Issue 5, 1992, p. 521 He repeatedly urged all local communists to become well acquainted with what he termed "Moldavian literature", and also to promote it in the villages.Negură, p. 88