Dmitrii Milev

Dmitrii Milev
Milev (top right) with fellow writers, including Mihai Andriescu, Samuil Lehtțir, and Pavel Chioru
Born	Dmitrii Petrovici Milev (1887-01-02)January 2, 1887 Baurci-Moldoveni, Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire (now Moldova)
Died	October 13, 1937(1937-10-13) (aged 50) Tiraspol, Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union (now Transnistria)
Occupation	Politician soldier translator
Nationality	Soviet
Period	c. 1926–1937
Genre	Lyric poetry sketch story essay political drama
Literary movement	Proletarian literature Marxist literary criticism

Dmitrii or Dumitru Petrovici Milev^[1] (Moldovan Cyrillic and Russian: Дмитрий Петрович Милев, romanized: Dmitry Petrovich Milev; January 2, 1887 – October 13, 1937) was a Bessarabian-born short-story writer and communist militant, active in the Soviet Union's Moldavian Autonomous Republic (MASSR). During World War I, he served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, but embraced Bolshevik ideology around the time of the October Revolution; he was strongly opposed to Greater Romania, and, after the Romanian–Bessarabian unification, made his way into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was a cradle for Moldovenism and the MASSR. Though originating from a community of Bessarabian Bulgarians, Milev identified with the Moldavian (Moldovan) ethnicity, which he viewed as distinct from the Romanians. More controversially, he advocated for a "Moldavian language", which he used in his contributions to proletarian literature—and which later scholarship regarded as "gibberish".

Working alongside Samuil Lehtțir, Milev helped establish the MASSR's cultural institutions, and served as president of the Moldavian Union of Writers. Advancing through the ranks of the Ukrainian Communist (Bolshevik) Party, he had contributions to both land collectivization and the literacy campaign. His short prose was a contribution to Soviet propaganda, focusing mainly on depicting the Romanian Kingdom as a bourgeois or fascist polity, which terrorized its "Moldavian" peasants and the Bessarabian Jews. Milev was explicit in his critique of Soviet Latinization, but later renounced Cyrillic and adapted himself to the Soviet version of the Romanian alphabet. He was still identified as a Latinizer, and therefore a Romanian-financed saboteur, with the onset of the Great Purge, being sentenced to death and shot at Tiraspol. Within twenty years of this event, de-Stalinization had him rehabilitated, and included among the founders of Moldovan literature. His posthumous vindication was used by young authors in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic to push for more creative liberties.