Alexandru Sahia

Alexandru sahia (pen name of Alexandru Stănescu; October 11, 1908 – August 12, 1937) was a Romanian communist journalist and short story author.

Early life

Born in Mânăstirea, Călăraşi County, as the son of a small landowner, he was enrolled in the Craiova Military College, which he deemed "oppressive". Sahia finished his secondary education in the Saint Sava National College in Bucharest, and started law studies at the University of Bucharest. He suffered from depression and, although he probably was already an atheist, became a novice in the Cernica Monastery in 1929. Surprisingly, he used this period of relative isolation to become acquainted with Marxism, which he found to be "the righteous sense of a great life".

In 1930, Sahia left the monastery and took a trip through the Middle East, adopting his new name — stemming from the Arabic sahiya for "truth".

With the Communist Party

The following year, Sahia started his lifetime collaboration with the Romanian Communist Party. As the Party adopted Joseph Stalin's Popular Front ideology at its 5th Congress, in 1934, Sahia was in demand as one who could reach out to the public. A member of Amicii URSS, he was also given charge of the Party-initiated magazines Veac nou and Bluze albastre. This was also the period of his first politically charged, Socialist-Realist short stories: Revolta în port ("Revolt in the harbour"), Uzina vie ("The living factory"), Întoarcerea tatii din război ("Father's return from the war"), Execuţia din primăvară ("The execution during springtime"), Şomaj fără rasă ("Unemployment regardless of race"), Înghiţitorul de săbii ("The sword swallower"). Some of these were later filmed.

In 1934, Sahia went on a tour of the Soviet Union. Although he apparently noticed first-hand the rising wave of terror (he is even claimed to have been arrested for a while after asking some troubling questions), Sahia did not hesitate to write what constituted the quintessential praise for the Soviet system in Romanian literature, entitled URSS azi ("The USSR of today").

He died in Bucharest of tuberculosis.

The documentary film studio in Communist Romania was named after him, and, in 1948, he was elected posthumously to the Romanian Academy.

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