Petru Lucinschi (born 27 January 1940) was President of Moldova from 15 January 1997 to 7 April 2001, succeeding Mircea Snegur and preceding Vladimir Voronin.
Biography[]
Pyotr Kirillovich Luchinsky was born in Radulenii Vechi, Romania in 1940 to a family of distant Polish heritage, and he served as secretary of the local Komsomol before serving in the Soviet Army and joining the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldavia in 1971, becoming the only native Moldovan member of the party leadership. He served as First Secretary of the Chisinau City Committee from 1978 to 1989 and became first secretary of the Communist Party in 1989, and, in 1992, he became the ambassador of an independent Moldova to Russia. He served until 1993, and then as President of the Moldovan Parliament from 1993 to 199. Lucinschi appealed to left-wing ethnic Moldovans and Slavs as the leader of the social democratic Agrarian Party of Moldova, which Mircea Snegur left in order to lead a more conservative party, the Party of Rebirth and Conciliation of Moldova. Lucinschi remained oriented towards Moldova's Soviet past, and he defeated Snegur at the 1996 presidential election, serving as President from 1997 to 2001. While Lucinschi continued Snegur's political reforms, he also reoriented Moldova closer to the European Union and away from the pro-Russian CIS. In 2001, he lost a snap election to communist leader Vladimir Voronin, and he continued to be a major voice in Moldovan politics.