Gheorghe Ghimpu was a Romanian politician and a political prisoner in the former Soviet Union and then Moldova.
Background
Gheorghe Ghimpu was born on July 26, 1937 in Coloniţa, a village in Bessarabia, then Romania. His mother, Irina Ursu (daughter of Haralambie Ursu) died in 2003. She worked at the local kolkhoz.
His father, Toader Ghimpu (death in 1980), was an elementary school teacher.
Education
Gheorghe Ghimpu completed his studies at T. G. Shevchenko University in Tiraspol. Then he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy at the Institute of Biological Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics in Moscow.
Career
Gheorghe Ghimpu is the oldest brother of Simion Ghimpu (born May 24, 1939), Visarion, Valentina (mother of Dorin Chirtoacă) and Mihai Ghimpu. He was sentenced on July 13, 1972. Gheorghe Ghimpu spent 6 years in prison (1972-1978), as result of his political activities.
Ghimpu took part in the Moldovan national movement and was a supporter of the independence of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic from Soviet Union.
He died in Chişinău on November 13, 2000, after an unclarified traffic accident (near Donduşeni on October 27, 2000). The Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Moldova will study and analyze the 1940-1991 period of the communist regime.
Politics
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 Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security), Gheorghe Ghimpu as well as Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr, Valeriu Graur, and Alexandru Şoltoianu were arrested and later sentenced to long prison terms.
Membership
He was a founding member of the Popular Front of Moldova and a member of the Moldovan Parliament (1990-1994).