Gheorghe Ghimpu


Gheorghe Ghimpu was a Romanian politician and a political prisoner in the former Soviet Union and then Moldova.

Early life

Gheorghe Ghimpu was born on July 26, 1937 in Coloniţa, a village in Bessarabia, then Romania. His mother, Irina Ursu died in 2003; she worked at the local kolkhoz. His father, Toader Ghimpu, was an elementary school teacher. Gheorghe Ghimpu is the oldest brother of Simion Ghimpu, Visarion, Valentina and Mihai Ghimpu.
Gheorghe Ghimpu completed his studies at T. G. Shevchenko University in Tiraspol. Then he obtained his PhD at the Institute of Biological Physics, Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow. Gheorghe Ghimpu was a teacher in Străşeni and a professor at T. G. Shevchenko University in Tiraspol and the Moldova State University in Chişinău.
He was married to Zina and had two children, Oana and Corneliu.

Political activity

Between 1969 and 1971, he was a founder of the clandestine National Patriotic Front of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, established by several young intellectuals in Chişinău, totaling over 100 members, vowing to fight for the establishment of a Moldovan Democratic Republic, its secession from the Soviet Union and union with Romania. In December 1971, following an informative note from Ion Stănescu, the President of the Council of State Security of the Romanian Socialist Republic, to Yuri Andropov, the chief of KGB, Gheorghe Ghimpu as well as Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr, Valeriu Graur, and Alexandru Şoltoianu were arrested and later sentenced to long prison terms. He was sentenced on July 13, 1972. Gheorghe Ghimpu spent six years in prison, as result of his political activities.
Ghimpu took part in the Moldovan national movement and was a supporter of the independence of the Moldovan SSR from Soviet Union. He was a founding member of the Popular Front of Moldova and a member of the Moldovan Parliament.
He died in Chişinău on November 13, 2000, after an unclarified traffic accident.

Legacy

The Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Moldova will study and analyze the 1940–1991 period of the communist regime.

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