Barbu Lăzăreanu

Barbu Lăzăreanu
Lăzăreanu in a 1950s photograph
Born	Avram "Bubi" Lazarovici (1881-10-05)October 5, 1881 Botoșani, Kingdom of Romania
Died	January 19, 1957(1957-01-19) (aged 75)
Other names	Alex. Bucur, Arald, Barbou Lazareano, Barbu Lăzărescu, Bélé, Mathieu H. Rareșiu, Trubadur, Trubadurul
Academic background
School or tradition	Marxist historiography Marxist literary criticism
Academic work
Main interests	Romanian literature, Romanian folklore, historical linguistics, phonoaesthetics, labor history, history of medicine

Barbu Lăzăreanu (born Avram Lazarovici, also known as Barbou Lazareano or Barbu Lăzărescu; October 5, 1881 – January 19, 1957) was a Romanian literary historian, bibliographer, and left-wing activist. Of Romanian Jewish background, he became noted for both his social criticism and his lyrical pieces while still in high school. His socialist-and-anarchist advocacy made him a target of the conservative establishment, which expelled him from the country in 1907. Lăzăreanu spent five years studying in France, then returned to Romania as a publicist, columnist, and workers' educator. He earned the reputation of a highly focused literary researcher and biographer, noted as the editor of works by Ion Luca Caragiale and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea.

By 1933, Lăzăreanu was a public critic of fascism, a fact which contributed to his persecution by the antisemitic far-right in the 1940s. Having narrowly escaped a deportation to Transnistria and a likely death in 1942, he returned to public life after the 1944 Coup and subsequent democratization. He rose to prominence post-1948, under the Romanian communist regime, first as a rector of Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy, then as a member of the Romanian Academy and its Presidium. Lăzăreanu spent his final decade as a decorated and lionized writer and political forerunner of the regime.

The future author, primarily known in his early years as "Bubi" Lazarovici, was born in Botoșani as the son of Herschel Lazarovici. As later noted by Traian Săvulescu, his first home was the southern, poorer part of town, where Avram grew up "revolted by injustice and with a burning desire to rectify it." He attended primary school and A. T. Laurian High School in his native town, while becoming acquainted with Marxism through his perusing of Contemporanul review and, as noted by his official obituary of 1957, making a name for himself as a "propagandist of such ideas." His first contribution to the Romanian labor movement was taking part in a bakers' strike at Botoșani, and, in early 1899, the Laurian High School expelled him for his socialist agitation.