Victor Crăsescu () or Crăsescu-Basarabeanu, born Victor Crasiuc (Виктор Крысюк; 16 October 1849 or 1850 – 1917 or 1918), was an Imperial Russian-born Romanian physician, left-wing activist, and prose writer. He was originally from the Bessarabia Governorate, where he grew up as a rebel against Tsarist autocracy; enlisted at Chișinău Theological Seminary, which he greatly disliked, he took his scientific training at Odesa University. At this stage of his life, Crasiuc-Crăsescu embraced Russian anarchism and the Narodnik tradition, which resulted in repression by the authorities. He spent most of the 1870s in exile, visiting Switzerland and the United States. After a brief return to his native land upon the close of the decade, he was again in conflict with the Russian regime. He left a second and final time, taking with him his young son—known to Romanians as Sergiu Victor Cujbă.
By the early 1880s, Crăsescu had made his way into the Kingdom of Romania, and had set up a physician's practice in the coastal region known as Northern Dobruja. He only formalized his training later, by graduating from the University of Bucharest with a focus on pediatrics, and eventually by obtaining a doctorate in medicine. A collaborator of the Marxist doyen Constantin Dobrogeanu Gherea, Crăsescu was also affiliated with the socialist magazine Contemporanul, where he debuted in proletarian literature. He also cultivated Zamfir Arbore, the Bessarabian-born forerunner of Romanian anarchism, and was co-editor of Arbore's Amicul Copiilor—wherein he was himself featured with children's stories. He traveled about the country, involving himself in a labor conflict while tending to the fisherman of Sfântu Gheorghe; he was ultimately dispatched to Prahova County, allowing him to work more closely with Dobrogeanu Gherea. From the late 1890s, he was based in the emerging spa town of Slănic, which became his home to the end of his life (though he also had stints as a country doctor in Predeal and Vărbilău).
Finally naturalized Romanian in 1897, Crăsescu was directly involved in improving the health of his new compatriots, and also campaigned for the introduction of universal suffrage; both he and his son embraced Romanian nationalism, albeit with a left-wing bias—expressed culturally as "Poporanism". With his only fully completed social novel, which appeared in 1899, Crăsescu upset other nationalists by advocating for Jewish emancipation. In 1903, he set up a peasant-focused chapter of the Romanian Red Cross and, under its aegis, founded a rural clinic in Teișani. Crăsescu was the head physician of the Slănic plasă in the early 1910s, during which time he tackled epidemics ranging from typhus and cholera to scarlet fever. He opted to remain in German-occupied Romania at the height of World War I, and tried to contain the typhus epidemic in Prahova; he himself succumbed to the disease, though both the exact year and place of his death remain disputed.
Crăsescu's son made his way back into Bessarabia shortly after its 1918 union with Romania, spending the rest of his life there as a writer and co-operative organizer. Crăsescu, meanwhile, was largely forgotten as an author. The socialist and anti-clerical tinges of his written work allowed for his recovery by the Romanian communist state (created in 1948), and then by the literary establishment of the Moldavian SSR. These regimes also valued him as a luminary in the field of scientific materialism. Within the framework of Romanian literature, he remains noted as a minor, but talented, promoter of naturalism and social realism, the best to have come of the Contemporanul circle.
Biography Early life and career As summarized by scholar Gabriela Drăgoi, the writer's life was "tormented, adventurous, and yet veiled in discretion."Gabriela Drăgoi, "Crăsescu, Victor", in Dicționarul general al literaturii române. C, pp. 730–731. Bucharest: Museum of Romanian Literature, 2016. Hailing from a family of yeomen (răzeși),Haneș, p. 250 he was born "Victor Crasiuc"Pan Halippa, "Cronica. †Sergiu Victor Cujbă", in Viața Basarabiei, Vol. VI, Issues 3–4, March–April 1937, pp. 249–250 or "Viktor Krasiuk"Solomon, p. 175 in Kishinev (Chișinău), capital of the Bessarabia Governorate. His father, Pavel Crasiuc, was serving in the Russian administration as Collegiate Councillor. Victor celebrated his birthday on October 16, though sources disagree on the exact year, with some using 1849Maria Protase, "Crăsescu, Victor", in Aurel Sasu (ed.), Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române, Vol. I, p. 412. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. and others 1850; still others have 1848.Bucur, p. 269 He studied at the local theological seminary, an institution of the Russian Orthodox Church, to 1872. In his later writings, he described this institution as run by "robbers", and reported that children were often subject to beatings and other forms of abuse.Taburceanu, pp. 123–125, 126, 127
Young Crasiuc enlisted at Odesa University, focusing on natural science.Haneș, p. 250. See also Solomon, pp. 175–176 He was becoming an affiliate of anarchist and Narodnik circles, all of which were inspired by Mikhail Bakunin. During the clampdown, he was exiled to Switzerland in 1872 or 1873, interrupting his studies. While there, he joined up with his seminary colleague Axinte Frunză, who had similar political convictions; the two of them, alongside Filip Codreanu, organized a smugglers' network, transporting clandestine socialist literature, as well as books written in Romanian, into their native Bessarabia—the operation was masterminded by Nikolai Sudzilovsky, known to them as "Doctor Russel".C. Săteanu, "D. dr. P. Cazacu despre Mișcarea Socialistă. Câteva aprecieri asupra operei d-lui I. C. Atanasiu. Reminiscențe despre Axente Frunză", in Adevărul, 20 June 1933, p. 3 The future author also traveled to the United States, where he was mainly employed as a farmhand. Around 1875 (the precise date is irretrievable), he fathered a son, known later in life as Sergiu Victor Cujbă.
After returning to Russia in 1878, Crasiuc was among the founders of a Narodnik circle in his native city. He began using the Crăsescu surname, also employing pseudonyms such as Ștefan Basarabeanu ("the Bessarabian"), Ștefan Valahu ("the Wallachian"), and V. Ursu. Accounts differ as to what happened next. One version is that Crăsescu was arrested in 1879, but that he probably escaped during the judicial inquiry, managing to elude the authorities. An Okhrana informant claimed that during October 1879 Crăsescu had joined Frunză, C. Ursu and Codreanu, as well as Zamfir Arbore, for a "socialist congress" held in the Romanian city of Iași.Maria Danilov, "Presa ieșeană în dosarele secrete ale ohranei țariste din Chișinău. Cazul ziarului Basarabia, 1879", in Nicolae Enciu (ed.), In honorem Alexandru Moșanu. Studii de istorie medievală, modernă și contemporană a românilor, p. 267. Cluj-Napoca: Romanian Academy & Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2012. His own son had it that Crăsescu was at Odesa in 1881, and that he only fled Russia upon receiving tips that he was about to be apprehended. He is believed to have taken Sergiu Victor on an extended travel through Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, and perhaps to America. The two eventually settled in the Kingdom of Romania, where Crăsescu was among the founding members of the Prutul Society—joining fellow exile Nicolae Zubcu-Codreanu. While living at Tulcea, in the Danube Delta, where he presented himself as a fully qualified physician, he was attracted into a socialist movement led by Constantin Dobrogeanu Gherea.Cezar Petrescu, "Carnetul nostru. Un scriitor uitat", in Adevărul, 29 January 1950, pp. 1, 3Cezar Petrescu, "Carnetul nostru. Nedreptăți vechi", in Adevărul, 30 March 1950, pp. 1–2
Alongside other political refugees, Crăsescu attempted to set up a commune (described as either a phalanstère or an obște) in the fields of Northern Dobruja.Haneș, pp. 250–251 He tried to obtain Romanian citizenship as early as 1885, and several times afterward, but his requests failed to gather enough votes in the Assembly of Deputies."Corpurile legiuitoare. Camera. Ședința de la 30 Ianuarie 1897", in Universul, 1 February 1897, p. 3 In April 1890, he was enlisted at the University of Bucharest medical faculty, signing his name to a letter of support for his professor, Dumitru Sergiu, who was being subjected to a public scrutiny for his activity as a hospital administrator."Un protest", in Voința Națională, 27 April (9 May) 1890, p. 3 Crăsescu ultimately graduated with a diploma from that faculty, specializing in pediatrics and publishing his paper on child-rearing in Northern Dobruja (noted on its own for its critique of superstition and traditional medicine).Crucița Iepure, "Moment aniversar in viața Crucii Roșii", in Ceahlăul, 12 April 1973, p. 2 It resulted in him being granted his doctorate in medicine in 1895. As a writer, Crăsescu, who sometimes used the pen name Ștefan Băssărăbeanu, entered the group surrounding Contemporanul magazine. His first published work in that journal, and in all of his career, was the 1883 sketch story, Legea lui Lynch ("Lynch's Law"). Until 1890, Contemporanul was his leading publisher, featuring his most important works of short prose.
Amicul Copiilor and Slănic relocation During his return trips to Bucharest, Crăsescu frequented Arbore, the senior anarchist, who was organizing meetings of the Bessarabian exiles from his home on Nerva Traian Street.Aurelia Herda, "Les archives de Zamfir C. Arbore. Les avatars d'un social-démocrate converti (I)", in Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, Vol. XLIV, Issues 1–4, 2006, p. 281 In 1891, he became director of Arbore's Amicul Copiilor, which stood out as Romania's first-ever children's magazine, of which he was also the co-owner. As "Ștefan Basarabeanu", he published therein children's sketches such as Băețel și cățel ("Boy and Doggie"), and sometimes employed the young Cujbă as editorial assistant.Sperantia (1969), p. 63 Throughout the interval, Crăsescu was present in the socialist press (Drepturile Omului, Dezrobirea and Lumea Nouă), as well as in Viața Literară and in Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu's Revista Nouă. Some of his writings were also picked up by Adevărul, Vatra, Lupta, Noua Revistă Română, and Sămănătorul. In early 1893, he briefly replaced V. Cosmovici on Revista Nouăs editorial board.Claudia Mihăilescu, "Bibliografie. III. Opera lui B. P. Hasdeu. I. Periodice", in Revista Arhivelor, Vol. V, Issue I, 1942, pp. 256–257
Crăsescu was full editor of Amicul Copiilor in 1895, which is recorded as his final year there (though some sources suggest that he had already left in 1894).Constantin et al., p. 240 He had a steady output as both a translator and adapter of Russian literature, including works by Vsevolod Garshin, Nikolai Gogol, Nikolay Nekrasov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Ivan Turgenev. His sketches and short stories appeared in four volumes during 1893 as Schițe și nuvele; the novel Ovreiul ("The Jew") followed in 1899 or 1900. In 1896, a year after his son's debut as a socialist poet, Crăsescu published in Lumea Nouă his translations from Anton Chekhov. He made a return trip to Austria-Hungary in early 1893, invited by friends he had in Debrecen. This was at the peak of the Transylvanian Memorandum crisis, during which Romanian natives of Transleithania found themselves arrested for their anti-government protest. Asked to comment by the Debreceni Hírlap, Crăsescu indicated that he viewed the Romanians as ill-advised in their activism, and suggested that their leader, Vasile Lucaciu, was overreacting."Napihírek. Egy román író Lucaciuról", in Budapesti Hírlap, 21 January 1893, p. 6