 Such views were however rejected by the Bessarabian Communists who, after gaining the support of the Ukrainian leadership, enforced a cultural policy emphasizing the distinctiveness of Moldovan identity in the newly created Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.Arrested on August 14, 1937, during the Stalinist purges, Nicolau was sentenced to death on September 27, 1937, by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on fabricated charges of "espionage and involvement in counter-revolutionary terrorist organisations".He was executed on the same day, and buried in the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.