measures which resulted in Cecan going out of the publishing business. He soon revived Khristianskaya Pobeda, and, in 1935, managed to reopen Unirea Noastră without incident. The latter newspaper had become explicitly moderate in its political outlook. It hosted cartoons which mocked Hitler and the local fascists, including Octavian Goga and Alexandru Vaida-Voevod. During mid-to-late 1935, Cecan issued pamphlets and an article in Unirea Noastră, calling antisemites "sick" and defending Jewish assimilation. A 1968 letter by Greek-Catholic bishop Ioan Ploscaru notes that Cecan was again defrocked, one final time, in 1935. According to Ploscaru, Cecan had by then also alienated his Catholic backers upon revelations about his past: "Our bishops sent one of our priests to Cecan's home, to learn about him. Once there, they discovered that the pro-unionist was a priest defrocked for his immoral lifestyle, that he was missing an eye, that he had wrestled the sacristan over some money, and that all of Bessarabia detested him. As soon as this report came out, we put a stop on all propaganda." The Catholic convert Teodosie Bonteanu, who visited Cecan in 1938, noted that he had stopped putting out Unirea Noastră, and had become an avid agriculturist. However, he had also been drawn into the Confraternity of Saint Benedict, and international ecumenist body founded by Serge Bolshakoff. By 1939, upon the resignation of Tikhon Lyashchenko, Orthodox Bishop of Berlin, Cecan became that group's president. In July of that year, Cecan announced his invention of an affordable seed drill which purportedly doubled yields, and which he designed especially for "small rural households." Though still affiliated with the Iron Guard, Cecan eventually defected to Carol II's National Renaissance Front in 1938. In late June 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the Soviet Union, and the NKVD swiftly arrested Cecan. His antisemitic articles and his PNSR membership were brought up against him by the government of the Moldavian SSR. On March 13, 1941, Kishinev Tribunal sentenced him to death as a "counterrevolutionary", citing Articles 54-11 and 54-13 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code. His execution was postponed while his activity as a Russophile was being reconsidered; some political figures intervened on his behalf with Lavrentiy Beria, the then-Deputy Premier. However, his cause became indefensible in June 1941, with a coordinated German–Romanian attack on the Soviet Union. On June 27, five days after the start of war, Cecan was secretly shot by the NKVD. Though