Biography of Gheorghe Ghimpu

Gheorghe Ghimpu (July 26, 1937, Coloniţa - November 13, 2000) was a Moldovan politician and a political prisoner in the former Soviet Union. Gheorghe Ghimpu was born on July 27, 1937 in Coloniţa, a village in Bessarabia during the Greater Romania administration. 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 only a few years because he completed only seven years of schooling during the Romanian rule, then he worked at the local kolkhoz too. Gheorghe Ghimpu is the oldest brother of Simion Ghimpu (born May 24, 1939), Visarion, Valentina (mother of Dorin Chirtoacă) 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. 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 Moldavian 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 several 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 Moldavian SSR from Soviet Union. He was a founder member of the Popular Front of Moldova and a MPs (1990-1994). He died in Chişinău on November 13, 2000, after an unclarified traffic accident (near Donduşeni on October 27, 2000), possibly staged for political reasons.