Ion Inculeț
Ion Inculeț
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