Journalist and politician who, as vice-president and later president of Sfatul Țării, led the movement for Bessarabia’s union with Romania
Born to poor peasants in Cubolta, Bessarabia, in 1883, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary and entered the University of Yuryev, but as a Socialist Revolutionary had to quit after the 1905 revolution. Sought by the Tsarist authorities after printing the hymn “Deșteaptă-te, române!”, he took refuge in Iași and studied there in 1908–1912. From 1913 he published the newspaper Cuvânt moldovenesc in Chișinău, writing unceasingly for union, and in 1917 he founded the Moldovan National Party. He was elected first vice-president, then president of Sfatul Țării. After 1918 he served as minister for Bessarabia and in other posts and joined the National Peasants’ Party; in 1924 he accused the Romanian government of turning Bessarabia into an “inferno”. Arrested in 1950, he was sentenced in the Soviet Union to 25 years’ hard labour, was held until 1957 and died in 1979.
Career timeline
1908–1912Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, University of Iași
1913Launches the newspaper Cuvânt moldovenesc
1917Founds the Moldovan National Party
1917–1918Vice-president, then president of Sfatul Țării
1919–1920Romanian Minister and Secretary of State for Bessarabia
1927Romanian Minister of Public Works
1950–1957Arrest and imprisonment (Sighet, Soviet hard labour, Aiud)
Bessarabian politician who presided over Sfatul Țării and the Moldavian Democratic Republic and saw through its union with Romania
Born to a peasant family in Răzeni, Bessarabia, in 1884, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary and Saint Petersburg University and worked as a physicist at the Meteorological Observatory. After the February Revolution he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and sat in the Petrograd Soviet, and Kerensky sent him to Bessarabia as the Provisional Government’s representative. At first he said Bessarabia should remain part of Russia, but as president of Sfatul Țării and of the Moldavian Democratic Republic he steered the vote for union with Romania in April 1918. After the union he became Minister of State for Bessarabia; in 1923 he took his wing of the Bessarabian Peasants’ Party into the National Liberal Party, and he later served as minister of health, of the interior and of communications and as vice-president of the Council of Ministers. He died of a heart attack in 1940.
Career timeline
1915Physicist at the Meteorological Observatory, Saint Petersburg
1917Member of the Petrograd Soviet (Socialist Revolutionary Party)
1917Assistant Government Commissioner of Bessarabia
1917–1918President of Sfatul Țării and of the Moldavian Democratic Republic
1918–1920Romanian Minister of State for Bessarabia
1927–1928Romanian Minister of Health and Social Protection
1933Romanian Minister of the Interior (Duca cabinet)
1936Vice-President of the Romanian Council of Ministers
Bessarabian Socialist Revolutionary who headed the first government of the Moldavian Democratic Republic and put land reform first
Born in Tănătari, Bessarabia, in 1884, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary and the Faculty of Letters in Saint Petersburg and taught. A Socialist Revolutionary, he returned to Bessarabia in 1917 with Inculeț at Kerensky’s urging and was elected chairman of the governorate peasants’ soviet and to the Russian Constituent Assembly. In December 1917 he became President of the Council of Directors General, the Moldavian Democratic Republic’s first government, and Director General for Agriculture, putting land reform first. His view that the republic should bear the majority people’s name prevailed; he put the entry of Romanian troops to a vote, yet protested their presence, fearing they would be used to block land reform. He voted for union but resigned amid charges of a pro-Russian stance, and later sat in the Romanian Senate. He fled to Bucharest in 1940 and died there in 1971.
Career timeline
1917Chairman of the Bessarabian Governorate Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies
1917Member of the Russian Constituent Assembly
1917–1918President of the Council of Directors General and Director General for Agriculture
Co-founder and chief theoretician of the Left SR Party: from coalition with the Bolsheviks to the July 1918 uprising
"We, as political actors, at a moment when an event of immense historical significance is taking place, could least of all occupy ourselves with moral characterization. It was clear to us that our place was with the revolution." — First PLSR Congress, November 1917
Co-founder and chief theoretician of the Left SR Party. Entered coalition with the Bolsheviks, then led the July 1918 uprising against the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. After its suppression he endured repeated exile and was executed in 1938.
Career timeline
1904Joined SR combat organization; arrested and exiled to Turukhansk
1907Escaped abroad, émigré activity in Geneva and Paris; graduated Heidelberg law faculty (1911)
1915Attended Zimmerwald Conference; active as anti-war internationalist
1917.04–11Returned to Russia, co-founded PLSR; VTsIK Presidium member, head of International Department
1917.11Elected to Constituent Assembly (Petrograd capital district, SR list no. 9)
1918.04Elected Chairman of the PLSR Central Committee Presidium
1918.07Led opposition to Brest-Litovsk and the July uprising; went underground after suppression
1920–1937Repeated arrests and exile (Chelyabinsk, Tver, Voronezh, Arkhangelsk); worked as an economist
1938Sentenced to death by VKVS; executed 29 August at Kommunarka; posthumously rehabilitated 1992
The republic first secretary who ruled Moldavia for nearly 20 years as Brezhnev's close ally
Of writer Ion Druță, forced to relocate to Moscow, Bodiul said publicly: 'If he returns home, I'll hang him on the first lamppost.'
He served nearly 20 years as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia, one of the longest-serving republican party chiefs in Soviet history. A close Brezhnev ally, he transformed agrarian Moldavia with new industries (machine-building, electronics, food processing) and built some of Europe's largest orchards and livestock complexes. Yet he also pursued aggressive Russification: suppressing Romanian, closing churches, and threatening writer Ion Druță with hanging. Elevated to Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1980, his 2003 Order of the Republic award provoked eight Moldovan writers to renounce their own medals in protest.
Career timeline
1937–1938Senior agronomist, collective farm
1942–1946Veterinary officer, Red Army (127th Guards Artillery Regt → 59th Guards Rifle Div → 10th Guards Rifle Corps)
1946–1951Agricultural aide and inspector, Moldavian SSR Council of Ministers
1951–1956First Secretary, Chișinău / Volontirovka / Olănești District Party Committees
1956–1959Higher Party School graduate; instructor, CC CPSU Org-Party Work Dept
1959–1961Second Secretary, CC of the Communist Party of Moldavia
1961–1980First Secretary, CC of the Communist Party of Moldavia
1980–1985Deputy Chairman, USSR Council of Ministers
The final head of Soviet Moldavia's Communist Party
He called the 1991 banning of the Communist Party “an illegitimate act.”
Grigore Eremei was a Moldavian party and state official whose career reached its decisive moment at the end of the Soviet system. As First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia in 1991, he occupied the republic's leading party post while the Union was breaking apart and Moldova moved toward independence. After the party was dissolved, he continued in public life as a Moldovan diplomat and parliamentarian, linking a Soviet political career to the institutions of the independent republic.
Career timeline
1952Began working as a village secondary-school librarian
1954–1956Served in the Soviet Army
1966–1970First Secretary of the Kotovsk district party committee
1970–1980Deputy and First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR
1980–1990Chairman of the Moldavian republican council of trade unions
1989–1991People's Deputy of the USSR
1991First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia and member of the CPSU Politburo
A politician who moved from Soviet party leadership to Moldova's presidency
In the 1996 runoff, backed by left and centrist forces, he defeated Mircea Snegur to win the presidency.
Pyotr Luchinsky rose through the party apparatus of the Moldavian Soviet republic and became a link between late Soviet republican politics and the making of the independent Moldovan state. He became first secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova's Central Committee in 1989 and served on the CPSU Politburo from 1990 to 1991. After independence, he was ambassador to Russia and speaker of parliament before winning the 1996 presidential election and serving as Moldova's second president from 1997 to 2001. His career shows how Soviet institutional continuity and the adjustment of a new state's sovereignty and foreign orientation could converge in one politician.
Career timeline
1960–1971Instructor, department head, secretary and first secretary of the Moldavian Leninist Komsomol Central Committee
1971–1976Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova Central Committee and member of its Politburo
1976–1978First secretary of the Communist Party's Chișinău City Committee
1978–1986Deputy chief of a department of the CPSU Central Committee
1986–1989Second secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan Central Committee
1989–1990First secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova Central Committee
1990–1991Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and member of its Politburo
