Ion Ionescu-Căpăţână

Ion Ionescu-Căpățână, often shortened to Ion Căpățână or Căpățînă, was a Romanian writer, publisher, and political activist. A promoter of vegetarianism, he also discovered libertarianism and individual anarchism, which he fused with influences from Gandhism; in the early 1930s, his magazine Vegetarianismul functioned as a discreet protagonist on the Romanian anarchist scene. Căpățână, who was an Esperantist and environmentalist, also aligned himself with Panait Istrati—a figure on the anti-Stalinist left who had maintained cordial relations with a dissident fascist movement, the Crusade of Romanianism. He defended Istrati's reading of communism in his trips to France and Bulgaria, and, after Istrati's death, established his own channels of communications with the Crusade. Căpățână eventually left the Kingdom of Romania, spending time in Paris as an advocate of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He still published some of his works at home, and edited a Romanian translation of poems by Hristo Botev.²