Sahia, Alexandru

(pen name of Alexandru Stănescu). Born Oct. 11, 1908, in Mînăstirea, district of Ilfov; died Aug. 13, 1937, in Bucharest. Rumanian writer. Member of the Rumanian Communist Party from 1932.

The son of a peasant, Sahia was educated in the law faculty of the University of Bucharest. In 1932 he published the weekly journal Veac nou (The New Century) and the journal Bluze albastre (Blue Blouses), in which he propagandized Soviet and Rumanian proletarian literature. Both journals were soon closed down by the censorship.

Sahia dealt with proletarian unity in the short stories “The Living Factory” and “An Uprising at the Port” (both 1932) and attacked militarism in the stories “The Death of a Volunteer” (1933) and “A Father’s Return From the War” (1934). The short story “Unemployment Regardless of Race” (1936) was a denunciation of racism. In 1934, Sahia visited the Soviet Union, and in 1935 he published The USSR Today. He was posthumously elected a member of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Rumania.