to have predicted the anti-Christian strife of the Revolutions of 1917 as early as 1909. During the February Revolution, he had joined the Russian Army as a chaplain. In the aftermath, the Russian Provisional Government stopped donating to propaganda outlets, including Cecan's and his newspapers, causing him to issue a note of protest. In April of that year, he attended the Kishinev Priests' Congress, which gave endorsement to the notion of an autonomous Bessarabia—organized in December as the Moldavian Democratic Republic. During its proceedings, he supported land reform and allotment for the clergy, arguing that such measures could result in material advancement for his class; the Congress endorsed his position, allowing priests to partake in agararian reforms. Cecan remained committed to Russian federalism; he was therefore vexed when the Moldavian Republic united with Romania in early 1918, claiming at the time that his former friend Baltagă had been corrupted into endorsing Greater Romania. As reported by Șornikov, Cecan defied the Romanian military intervention in Bessarabia by making frequent trips into the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) and bringing back with him works of anti-Romanian propaganda. Sensing himself threatened by the new regime, Cecan finally left Bessarabia for the UNR in November 1918. Settling in Odessa (which remained his main residence to May 1920), he was first co-opted by the Committee for the Salvation of Bessarabia, formed there by the Russian nationalist leaders A. N. Krupensky and Alexandr K. Schmidt. The activity also absorbed his son Nikolai, who was captured by the Romanians in March 1919 "while transporting his father's letters and anti-Romanian newspapers from Odessa". The same month, Chișinău's Tribunal issued a warrant for "the priest Ieremia Cecan, formerly of Chișinău, current address unknown". Cecan Sr's collaboration with the Red Army and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had begun some two months later, when he proceeded to recruit Bessarabians exiles to fight as partisans behind Romanian lines in the Ukrainian civil war. A late report notes his presence in Odessa station, "cross in hand", and using the racial trope conflating Romanians with nomadic Romanies (he was "urging the Russian soldiers to chase the Gypsies out of Bessarabia"). Though he was largely successful in organizing a detachment, he was placed under surveillance by the city's Special Department, and twice arrested as a "counterrevolutionary". In mid 1919, Cecan was recruited by the Red Army in its clashes with the UNR, and joined the