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
The Cricova winery chief who testified to the vineyard destruction of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign
'On weekends they forced us out with axes to chop the vines,' he recalled, and those who tried to protect the vineyards got 14–15 years in prison.
A Moldovan winemaker and industrial manager, he led the Cricova wine combine as director general for 29 years, from 1987 to 2016. As chief engineer during Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign, he testified that workers were forced to chop vines with axes on weekends and that those who tried to protect the vineyards received 14–15 years in prison, providing the most vivid ground-level account of the vineyard destruction.
Career timeline
1973Technologist, Sîngerei winery
1974–1975Director, Drăgănești winery
1975–1978Komsomol, Lazovsky (Sîngerei) district committee
1978–1983Administrative manager, CC of Moldovan Komsomol
Veteran of the Bessarabian national movement who, as foreign minister of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, championed union with Romania
Born in Răzeni, Bessarabia, in 1876, he graduated from the Chișinău seminary in 1898 and in law from the University of Dorpat in 1903. Arrested as a student for founding an association of Bessarabian students, he later worked as a deputy judge in Bălți and created the town’s first national group. He joined the National Moldavian Party in 1917 and initially won a majority for president of Sfatul Țării, but the post went to Inculeț. As foreign minister in the Erhan and Ciugureanu cabinets in 1917–1918 he sought military aid from Shcherbachev in Iași and campaigned for union. He then served as Minister of Justice under Vaida-Voevod, worked in Paris, London and Geneva for recognition of the union and sat in parliament for the National Party and the National Peasants’ Party. Arrested by the communist authorities in 1950, he died in Sighet Prison in 1954.
Career timeline
1903Law degree, University of Dorpat
1917–1918Director General for Foreign Affairs of the Moldavian Democratic Republic
1919–1920Romanian Minister of Justice (Vaida-Voevod cabinet)
The Bessarabian 'Red Robin Hood' who rose from Tsarist outlaw to legendary Soviet Civil War commander
In May 1917, during Carmen at the Odesa Opera House, the recently pardoned Kotovsky appeared to a standing ovation, delivered a revolutionary speech from the stage, and watched his prison shackles auctioned for 10,000 rubles.
A Bessarabian revolutionary commander. Notorious under the Tsar as a bandit who sided with the poor, he led Red cavalry in the Civil War and helped establish the Moldavian ASSR. Mythologized in his lifetime as a legend of Soviet folklore; murdered in 1925.
Career timeline
1905–1916Led armed raiding bands in Bessarabia and Odesa; repeatedly arrested and escaped; sentenced to death 1916, commuted to hard labor
1917Amnestied after February Revolution; served on Romanian Front, awarded George Cross for bravery; joined Left SRs
1918–1919Commanded cavalry in Tiraspol Detachment defending Odesa Soviet Republic; military commissar of Ovidiopol, commander 2nd Brigade, 45th Rifle Division
1920Awarded Order of the Red Banner; joined RCP(b); commanded cavalry brigade on Soviet-Polish front
1921Commander, 17th Cavalry Division of Red Cossacks; wounded suppressing Makhnovist and Antonov uprisings; awarded Honorary Revolutionary Weapon and second Red Banner
1922–1924Commander, 2nd Cavalry Corps; contributed to founding Moldavian ASSR; awarded third Order of the Red Banner
1924–1925Member of USSR Central Executive Committee and Ukrainian/Moldavian CECs; member of Revolutionary Military Council
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
