Gynecology Guide

On March 23, 1991, the RUF, led by Foday Sankoh and backed by Charles Taylor, launched its first attack in villages in Kailahun District in the diamond-rich Eastern Province of Sierra Leone.

The RUF became notorious for brutal practices such as mass rapes and amputations during the civil war. Sankoh personally ordered many operations, including one called “Operation Pay Yourself” that encouraged troops to loot anything they could find. After complaining about such tactics, Kanu and Mansaray were summarily executed. In March 1997, Sankoh fled to Nigeria, where he was put under house arrest, and then imprisoned. From this time until Sankoh’s release in 1999, Sam Bockarie performed the task of director of military operations of the RUF. During the ten-year war, Sankoh broke several promises to stop fighting, including the Abidjan Peace Accord and the Lomé Peace Accord signed in 1999. Eventually United Kingdom and ECOMOG intervened with their own small, but professional, military forces, and the RUF was eventually crushed. Sankoh was later arrested after his soldiers gunned down a number of protesters outside his Freetown home in 2000. His arrest led to massive celebrations throughout Sierra Leone. Sankoh was handed to the British and, under jurisdiction of a UN-backed court, he was indicted on 17 counts for various war crimes, including crimes against humanity, rape, sexual slavery and Genocide.

Born in Havana, Arkansas, Sain pitched for 11 years, winning 136 games and losing 116 in his career and compiled an earned run average of 3.49. His best years were those immediately after World War II, when he won 100 games for the Boston Braves, before being traded to the New York Yankees during the 1951 season for Lew Burdette and cash.

In 1948, Sain won 24 games against 15 losses and finished second in the voting for the Most Valuable Player Award behind the St. Louis Cardinals’ Stan Musial, who had won two legs of the triple crown. Sain and teammate Spahn achieved joint immortality that year when their feats were the subject of sports editor Gerald V. Hern’s poem in the Boston Post which was eventually shortened to the epigram, “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.” According to the Baseball Almanac, the original doggerel appeared in Hern’s column on September 14, 1948:

First we’ll use Spahn
then we’ll use Sain
Then an off day
followed by rain
Back will come Spahn
followed by Sain
And followed
we hope
by two days of rain.

The poem was inspired by the performance of Sain and Spahn during the Braves’ 1948 pennant drive. The team swept a Labor Day doubleheader, with Spahn throwing a complete 14-inning win in the opener, and Sain pitching a shutout in the second game. Following two off days, it did rain. Spahn won the next day, and Sain won the day after that. Three days later, Spahn won again. Sain won the next day. After one more off day, the two pitchers were brought back, and won another doubleheader. The two pitchers had gone 8-0 in twelve days’ time.[1]

That year, Boston won its second and last National League pennant of the post-1901 era, but fell in six games to the Cleveland Indians in the 1948 World Series. Sain won the first game of the Series, a 1-0 shutout at Braves Field that included a memorable play in which Boston catcher Phil Masi was called safe after an apparent pickoff at second base. Masi went on to score the game’s only run.

With the Yankees, Sain became a relief pitcher and enjoyed late-career success, leading the American League in saves with 22 in 1954. He finished his career in 1956 with the Kansas City Athletics.

John Franklin Sain (September 25, 1917 – November 7, 2006) was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who was best known for teaming with left-hander Warren Spahn on the Boston Braves teams from 1946 to 1951. He was the runner-up for the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award in the Braves’ pennant-winning season of 1948, after leading the National League in wins, complete games and innings pitched. He later became further well-known as one of the top pitching coaches in the majors.

Abbas Sahhat was born into a family of a cleric in the city of Shamakhi. He received his primary education from his father. At age 15 he started writing amateur poems.[1] Beginning in 1892 he studied medicine in Mashhad and Tehran. After returning to Shamakhi around 1900 he abandoned his professional field, as Russian institutions did not recognize medical diplomas from Iran. Sahhat started teaching Azeri and literature first in primary schools and then in a Realschule. This period is considered the beginning of his career as a poet and playwright. In 1903 he began writing articles for the Azeri-language newspaper Sharg-i Rus, published in Tiflis. His articles mostly discussed topics in contemporary literature.[2]

As a poet, Sahhat adhered generally to romanticism. His poetry was influenced by Ali bey Huseynzadeh, editor of the Fuyuzat magazine in 1905–1907. Sahhat also translated works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nadson, Krylov, Hugo, Musset, Prudhomme, Amir Khusro as well as a number of German and Armenian poets into Azeri.[2]

In 1912 he published his first collection of poems entitled Sinig saz (”Broken Saz”), his narrative poem Ahmadin shujaati and his translations of Western European literature under the name Garb gunashi (”The Sun of the West”). In 1916 his romantic poem Shah, muza va shaharli was published. In his literary style, influence of classical poets such as Nezami, Hafez and Saadi, and modern poets such as Tevfik Fikret, is seen.[2]

Among his dramatic pieces, Neft fontani (1912) and Yoxsullug ayib deyil (1913) are noteworthy. There are accounts of a novel written by Sahhat and entitled Ali and Aisha. It was never published and its manuscript is believed to have perished during the Dashnak occupation of Shamakhi in April 1918, when Sahhat’s house was ravaged and burned. The poet himself managed to escape the town with his family, fleeing first to Kurdamir and later to Ganja, where he died some months later of stroke.[1]

Abbas Sahhat was in favour of liberal bourgeoisie and, due to his Iranian academic upbringing, disagreed with mass secularisation that was taking place among Azeris beginning in the early 20th century. Instead he promoted a more moderate idea of all-Muslim westernization. He dedicated some of his finest pieces of poetry to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, in which he presented himself as a realist poet.[3]

Following his Lumina vine de la Răsărit lecture, Sadoveanu became noted for his positive portrayals of communization and collectivization. In particular, Sadoveanu offered praise to one of the major pillars of Stalinism, the 1936 Soviet Constitution.[191] In 1945, claiming to have been “flashed upon” by “Stalin’s argumentation”, he urged the public to read the book, assuring them that it was a document of “sincerity and the wish for better things”.[192] Elsewhere, he equated reading the constitution with “a mystical revelation”.[193] Adrian Cioroianu connects describes the adoption of this discourse as “an office assignment” on the part of ARLUS, noting that the association was by then handing down free copies of the Soviet constitution translated into Romanian.[194] The enthusiasm of his writings also manifested itself in his public behavior. According to his ARLUS colleague Iorgu Iordan, Sadoveanu showed himself emotional during their 1945 travels through the Soviet state, and shed tears of joy after visiting a day care center in the countryside.[195]

Running in the 1946 election, Sadoveanu blamed the old political class in general for the problems faced by Romanian peasants, including the major drought of that year.[66] By then, his partners were making use of his literary fame, and his electoral pamphlet read: “There is no doubt that the thousands of people who have read his works will rush out on [election day] November 19 to vote for him.”[71]

After 1948, when the Romanian communist regime was installed, he directed his praise toward the new authorities. In 1952, as Romania adopted its second republican constitution and the authorities intensified repression against anti-communists, Sadoveanu made some of his most controversial statements. Declaring the defunct kingdom to have been a “long interval of organized injustice and crooked development in all areas”, he presented the new order as an era of social justice, human dignity, available culture and universal public education.[196]

Criticism of Sadoveanu’s moral choices also focuses on the fact that, while he led a luxurious existence, many of his generation colleagues and fellow intellectuals were being persecuted or jailed in notoriously harsh circumstances.[197] Having tolerated the purge within the Romanian Academy, Cioroianu notes, Sadoveanu accepted being colleagues with newly-promoted “secondary characters from a cultural point of view [...] whom the new regime needed”, such as poet Dumitru Theodor Neculuţă and historian Mihail Roller.[198] In his official capacity, Sadoveanu even signed several death sentences declared by communist tribunals,[104] and, in the wake of the Tămădău Affair of summer 1947, presided over the Chamber sessions which outlawed the opposition National Peasants’ Party: according to researcher Victor Frunză, he was a willing participant in this, having been upset by the exposure of his personal wealth in the National Peasantist press.[199] Later, Sadoveanu made a reference to his former colleague, the National Peasantist activist Ion Mihalache, arguing that his Agrarianist approach to politics had made him a “ridiculous character”.[104] Ioan Stanomir describes this fragment as one of “intellectual abjection”, indicating that Mihalache, already a political prisoner of the regime, was to die in captivity.[104] However, as leader of the Romanian Writers’ Union, the aging writer is credited by some with having protected poet Nicolae Labiş, a disillusioned communist who had been excluded from the Union of Worker Youth in spring 1954, and whose work Sadoveanu treasured.[200]

Mihail Sadoveanu provided a definition of his own political transition in 1946, as part of a conversation with fellow writer Ion Biberi. At the time, he claimed: “I have never engaged in politics, in the sense that one assigns to this word.”[45] He elaborated: “I am a left-wing person, following the line of a Poporanist zeal in the spirit of Viaţa Românească, but one adapted to the new circumstances.”[201] Cioroianu sees in such statements evidence that, trying to discard his inconvenient past, Sadoveanu was including himself among the socialist intellectuals “willing to let themselves be won over by the indescribable charm and the full swing of the communist utopia”, but that he may in reality have been among the group of political allies who were “motivated by fear”.[202] Paraphrasing communist vocabulary, Stanomir describes the writer as one of the “bourgeois” personalities who became “fellow travelers” of the communists, and argues that Sadoveanu’s claim to have always leaned towards a “people’s democracy” inaugurated “a pattern of chameleonism”.[165] In the view of historian Vladimir Tismăneanu, Sadoveanu, like Parhon, George Călinescu, Traian Săvulescu and others, was one of the “non-communist intellectuals” attracted into cooperation with the Romanian Communist Party and the communist regime.[203] Tismăneanu also argues that these figures’ good relationship with communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was a factor in the process, as was Gheorghiu-Dej’s ability to make himself look “harmless”.[203]

According to Adrian Cioroianu, Sadoveanu was not necessarily an “apostle of communization”, and his role in the process is subject to much debate.[204] Describing the writer’s “conversion to philosovietism” as “purely contextual”,[67] Cioroianu also points out that the very notion of “light arising in the East” is read by some as Sadoveanu’s coded message to his colleagues in the Freemasonry, warning them of a Soviet threat to the organization.[205] The historian notes that, for all their possible lack in sincerity, Sadoveanu’s statements provided a template for other intellectuals to follow—this, he argues, was the case of Cezar Petrescu, who copied it “with a precision that, to me, seems to have been most certainly calculated.”[206]

During the 1930s, following his stint as head of Adevărul, a leftist newspaper owned by Jewish entrepreneurs, Sadoveanu was targeted by right-wing voices, who claimed that he had chosen to abandon his nationalist credentials.[183] Thus, Sadoveanu became the target of a press campaign in the antisemitic and fascist press, and in particular in Nichifor Crainic’s Sfarmă-Piatră and the journals connected with the Iron Guard. The former publication deplored his supposed “betrayal” of the nationalist cause. In it, Ovidiu Papadima portrayed Sadoveanu as the victim of Jewish manipulation, and equated his affiliation to the Freemasonry with devil worship, and mocked his obesity, while Crainic himself compared the writer to his own character, the treacherous Ieremia Golia.[184] Porunca Vremii often referred to him as Jidoveanu (from jidov, a dismissive term for “Jew”), depicted him as an agent of “Judaeo-communism” motivated by “perversity”, and called on the public to harass the writer and beat him with stones.[185] It also protested when the public authorities in Fălticeni refused to withdraw Sadoveanu the title of honorary citizen, and again when the University of Iaşi made him a doctor honoris causa, and, through the voice of novelist N. Crevedia, even suggested that the writer should use his hunting rifle to commit suicide.[186] In 1937, Porunca Vremii congratulated ultra-nationalists who had organized public burnings of Sadoveanu’s works in Southern Dobruja and in Hunedoara, as well as non-identified people who sent the writer packages containing shredded copies of his own volumes.[187]

However, George Călinescu claims, the writer himself had not actually revised his nationalist outlook, that he continued to believe that minorities and foreigners were a risky presence in Greater Romania, and that his Humanism was “a light tincture”.[145] In one of his columns, Sadoveanu replied to those organizing the acts of vandalism, indicating that, had they actually read the novels they were destroying, they would have found “a burning faith in this nation, for so long mistreated by cunning men”.[188] Elsewhere, stating that he was not going to take his detractors into consideration, Sadoveanu defined himself as an adversary of both Nazi Germany and any form of advocacy for a “National-Socialist regime in our country”.[189] In April 1937, the campaign was met with the indignation of various public figures, who issued an “Appeal of the Intellectuals”, signed by Liviu Rebreanu, Eugen Lovinescu, Petru Groza, Victor Eftimiu, George Topîrceanu, Zaharia Stancu, Demostene Botez, Alexandru Al. Philippide, Constantin Balmuş and others.[189] Denouncing the campaign as a “moral assassination”, it referred to Sadoveanu as the author of “the most Romanian [works] in our literature.”[189]

During the Ion Antonescu dictatorship, Sadoveanu kept a low profile and was apolitical. However, Cioroianu writes, he supported the invasion of the Soviet Union and Romania’s cooperation with the Axis Powers on the Eastern Front, seeing in this a chance to recover Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina (lost to the 1940 Soviet occupation).[67] In spring 1944, months before the King Michael Coup toppled the regime, he was approached by the clandestine Romanian Communist Party and its sympathizers in academia to sign an open letter condemning Romania’s alliance to Nazi Germany. According to the communist activist Belu Zilber, who took part in this action, Sadoveanu, like his fellow intellectuals Dimitrie Gusti, Simion Stoilow and Horia Hulubei, refused to sign the document.[190] Also according to Zilber, Sadoveanu motivated his refusal by stating that the letter needed to be addressed not to Antonescu, but to King Michael I.[190]

Sadveanu’s engagement in politics was marked by abrupt changes in convictions, seeing him move from right- to left-wing stances several times in his life. In close connection with his traditionalist views on literature, but in contrast to his career under a Conservative Party and National Liberal cabinets, Sadoveanu initially rallied with nationalist groups of various hues, associating with both Nicolae Iorga and, in 1906, with the left-wing Poporanists at Viaţa Românească.

Around that time, he formulated a ruralist and nationalist perspective on life, rejecting what he deemed “the hybrid urban world” for “the world of our national realities”.[145] In Călinescu’s analysis, this signifies that, like his predecessor, the conservative Eminescu, Sadoveanu believed the cities were victims of the “superimposed category” of foreigners, in particular those administrating leasehold estates.[145] Following the 1907 Peasants’ Revolt, Sadoveanu sent a report to his Minister of Education Spiru Haret, informing him on the state of education in the rural sphere, and, through this, of the problems faced by villagers in Moldavia. It read: “The leaseholders and landowners, no matter what their nationality, make a mockery of the Romanians’ labors. Every surtucar [that is, person having adopted an urban demeanor] in the village, mayors, notaries, paper-pushers, shamelessly [and] mercilessly milk this milk cow. They are joined by the priest—who, in most parts, is in disagreement with the teacher.”[33]

Călinescu thus sees Sadoveanu, alongside Constantin Stere, as one of Viaţa Românească ’s chief ideologues, noting that he was nonetheless “rendered notorious by his inconsistency and opportunism.”[145] He writes that Sadoveanu and Stere both showed a resentment for ethnic minorities, particularly members of the Jewish community, whom they saw as agents of exploitation, but that, as Humanists, they had a form of “humane sympathy” for Jews and foreigners taken individually.[179] He notes that this is evident in Sadoveanu’s novel Haia Sanis, where the Jewish woman is seen as a victim.[180]

According to Z. Ornea, Sadoveanu’s affiliation to the Freemasonry shaped not only his political “demophilia”, but also his “Weltanschauung, and, through a reflex, his [literary] work.”[48] By consequence, Ornea argues, Sadoveanu became a supporter of democracy, a stance which led him into open conflict with extreme nationalists.[49] Alongside its Humanism, Sadoveanu’s nationalism was noted for being secular, and thus in contrast with the Romanian Orthodox imagery favored by nationalists on the far right. Sadoveanu rejected the notion that ancestral Romanians were religious individuals, stating that their belief was in fact “limited to rituals and customs.”[181] He was also a vocal supporter of international cooperation, particularly among countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Writing for the magazine Familia in 1935, 17 years after Transylvania’s union with Romania and 15 years after the Treaty of Trianon, Sadoveanu joined the Hungarian author Gyula Illyés in pleading for good relations between the two neighbors.[82]

In 1926, the year of his entry into Alexandru Averescu’s People’s Party, Sadoveanu motivated his choice in a letter to Octavian Goga, indicating his belief that the intelligentsia needed to partake in politics: “It would seem that what is foremost needed is the contribution of intellectuals, in an epoch when the overall intellectual level is decreasing.”[21] His sincerity was doubted by his contemporaries: both his friend Gheorghe Jurgea-Negrileşti and the communist Petre Pandrea recount how, in 1926-1927, Sadoveanu and Păstorel Teodoreanu requested public funds from Interior Minister Goga, with Sadoveanu motivating that he wanted to set up a cultural magazine and later spending the money on his personal wardrobe.[41] In contrast, Adrian Cioroianu notes that this episode in Sadoveanu’s life, and especially the “mutual wariness” between him and the National Liberals, underlined Sadoveanu’s sympathy for the “intellectual Left”.[182]

After the Soviet-backed advent of the Communist system in Romania, Sadoveanu supported the new authorities, and turned from his own version of Realism to officially-endorsed Socialist realism (see Socialist realism in Romania). This was also the start of his association with the Soviet-sponsored Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union (ARLUS), which was led by biologist and physician Constantin Ion Parhon. Having served as a host to official Soviet envoys Andrey Vyshinsky and Vladimir Kemenov during their late 1944 visits, he soon after became president of the ARLUS “Literary and Philosophical Section” (seconded by Mihai Ralea and Perpessicius).[58] In February 1945, he joined Parhon, linguist Alexandru Rosetti, composer George Enescu, biologist Traian Săvulescu and mathematician Dimitrie Pompeiu in a protest against the cultural policies of Premier Nicolae Rădescu cabinet, which was described as one in a series of moves to discredit the non-communist Rădescu and make him leave power.[59] With Ion Pas, Gala Galaction, Horia Deleanu, Octav Livezeanu and N. D. Cocea, Sadoveanu edited the association’s weekly literary magazine Veac Nou after June 1946.[60]

Sadoveanu’s literary and political change became known to the general public in March 1945, when Sadoveanu returned lectured about Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at a conference hall in Bucharest. Part of a conference cycle, his speech was famously titled Lumina vine de la Răsărit, which soon became synonymous with the attempts to improve the image of Stalinism in Romania.[61] ARLUS would issue the text of his conference as a printed volume later in the year.[47] Also in 1945, he journeyed to the Soviet Union together with some of his fellow ARLUS members—among them biologists Parhon and Săvulescu, sociologist Dimitrie Gusti, linguist Iorgu Iordan, and mathematician Simion Stoilow.[62] Invited by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to attend the 220th anniversary of its foundation, they also visited research institutes, kolhozy, and day care centers, notably meeting with Nikolay Tsitsin, an agronomist favored by Stalin.[63] After his return, he wrote other controversial texts and gave lectures which offered ample praise to the Soviet system.[64]

During the rigged election of 1946, Sadoveanu was a candidate for the Communist party-organized Bloc of Democratic Parties (BPD) in Bucharest, winning a seat in the newly-unified Parliament of Romania.[65][66] In its first-ever session (December 1946), the legislative body elected him its President.[67] He was at the time residing in Ciorogârla, having been awarded a villa previously owned by Pamfil Şeicaru, a journalist whose support for fascist regimes had made him undesirable, and who had moved out of Romania. The decision was viewed as evidence of political corruption by the opposition National Peasants’ Party, whose press deemed Sadoveanu “Count of Ciorogârla”.[68]

In 1948, after Romania’s King Michael I was overthrown by the BPD-member parties and the communist regime officially established, Sadoveanu rose to the highest positions ever granted to a Romanian writer, and received significant material benefits.[66][69] In 1947-1948, he was, alongside Parhon, Ştefan Voitec, Gheorghe Stere, and Ion Niculi, a member of the Presidium of the People’s Republic, which was elected by the BPD-dominated legislative, and, as leader of that body, filled in for the position of republican head of state.[70][71] He also kept his seat at the Academy, which at the time was undergoing a communist-led purge, and, with several other pro-Soviet intellectuals, was voted in the Academy Presidium.[72]

He was publishing new works at a regular rate, culminating in the first volume of his historical epic Fraţii Jderi, which saw print in 1935.[12] In 1936, the writer accepted the honorary chairmanship of two left-wing magazines, Adevărul and Dimineaţa. During that time, he was involved in a public dispute with the far right and fascist press, replying to their attacks in several columns.[51] Affiliates of the radical right organized public burnings of his volumes.[50][52] The scandal prolonged itself over the following years, with Sadoveanu being supported by his friends in the literary community.[12][53] Among them was Topîrceanu, who was at the time hospitalized, and whose expression of support was made shortly before his death to liver cancer.[54] In September 1937, as a statement of solidarity and appreciation, the University of Iaşi conferred Sadoveanu the title of doctor honoris causa.[55]

Mihail Sadoveanu withdrew from politics in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as Romania came to be led by successive right-wing dictatorships, starting with King Carol II and his National Renaissance Front, and continuing under the Iron Guard’s Nazi-allied National Legionary regime. After Conducător Ion Antonescu overthrew the Iron Guard during the Legionary Rebellion and established his own fascist regime, the still-apolitical Sadoveanu was more present in public life, and lectured on cultural subjects for the Romanian Radio.[56] After publishing the final section of his Fraţii Jderi in 1942, Sadoveanu again retreated to a life in the countryside, settling at Bradu-Strâmb, in his beloved Arieş area.[50] During those years, the sixty-year old writer met Valeria Mitru, a much younger woman and feminist journalist,[57] whom he married after a brief courtship.[9]

In August 1944, Romania’s King Michael Coup toppled Antonescu and switched sides in the war, rallying with the Allies. As a Soviet occupation began at home, Romanian troops fought alongside the Red Army on the European theater. Paul-Mihu was killed in action in Transylvania on September 22.[50]

In 1921, Sadoveanu was elected a full member of the Romanian Academy;[14][12][4] he gave his reception speech in front of the cultural forum two years later, structuring it as a praise of Romanian folklore in general and folkloric poetry in particular.[12][4][39] His house was by then host to many cultural figures, among whom were writers Topîrceanu, Gala Galaction, Otilia Cazimir, Ionel and Păstorel Teodoreanu, and Dumitru D. Pătrăşcanu, as well as conductor Sergiu Celibidache.[37] He was also close to a minor socialist poet and short story author, Ioan N. Roman, whose work he helped promote,[40] to the aristocrat and memoirist Gheorghe Jurgea-Negrileşti,[41] and to a satirist named Radu Cosmin.[42]

Despite his health problems, Sadoveanu frequently traveled throughout Romania, notably visiting local sights which inspired his work: the Romanian Orthodox monasteries of Agapia and Văratec, and the Neamţ Fortress.[21] After 1923, together with Topîrceanu, Demostene Botez and other Viaţa Românească affiliates, he also embarked on a series of hunting trips.[36] He was charmed in particular by the sights he discovered during a 1927 visit to the Transylvanian area of Arieş.[12][9] The same year, he also visited the Netherlands, which he reached by means of the Orient Express.[12][21] His popularity continued to grow: in 1925, 1929 and 1930 respectively, he published his critically acclaimed novels Venea o moară pe Siret… (”A Mill Was Floating down the Siret…”), Zodia Cancerului and Baltagul, and his 50th anniversary was celebrated at a national level.[12] In 1930, Sadoveanu, Topîrceanu and the schoolteacher T. C. Stan wrote and edited a series of primary school textbooks.[43]

In 1926, after a period of indecision, Sadoveanu rallied with the People’s Party, where his friend, the poet Octavian Goga, was a prominent activist.[21] He then rallied with Goga’s own National Agrarian Party.[44] During the general election of 1927, he won a seat in the Chamber for Bihor County, in Transylvania, holding a seat in the Senate for Iaşi County after the 1931 suffrage.[45][21] Under Nicolae Iorga’s National Peasants’ Party cabinet of the period, Sadoveanu was President of the Senate.[45][21] The choice was motivated by his status as “a cultural personality”.[21] Around that date, he was affiliated with the National Liberal Party-Brătianu, a right-wing party inside the liberal current, who stood in opposition to the main National Liberal group.[46]

He was by then affiliated with the Freemasonry, as first recorded by the organization in 1928,[47] but was probably a member since 1926 or 1927.[48] Reaching the 33rd degree within the organization,[49] he was elected Grand Master of the national Masonic Lodge in 1932, thus replacing the vacating George Valentin Bibescu.[50] There subsequently occurred a split between Bibescu and Sadoveanu’s supporters, aggravated by the secession of a third group around Ioan Pangal, which Sadoveanu managed to solve over the following three years.[50] By 1934, he was recognized as Grand Master of the United Romanian Freemasonry, which regrouped all the local Lodges.[50][47][33][21]