Anton Crihan


Anton Crihan was a Bessarabian politician, lawyer, author, economist, professor and journalist, member of Sfatul Țării, adviser to the Secretary of State for Agriculture in the General Directorate of the Republic of Moldova, deputy in the Parliament of Romania, adviser to the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture and Domains, professor at the Polytechnic University of Iasi and at the Faculty of Agronomy in Chisinau.

Biography

Anton Crihan is the representative of the thirteenth generation, male, of the old Moldavian boyar family, the first mention of the reign of Stephen the Great. The Prince's Book of Constantine Movilă states that Anton Crihan's ancestors honored the boyar's title of "paharnic". He studied at the Bălți High School for boys and the University of Odessa, Faculty of Economics.
Anton Crihan served as Member of Sfatul Țării, the Parliament of Romania, and the Government of Romania. After World War I and the Communist revolution in Russia, Dr. Crihan, was among the handful of campaigners who succeeded in annexing most of Bessarabia to Romania. He became politically active in Romania, which was then governed by a constitutional monarchy. Trained as an economist, he served on the Central Committee of the National Peasant Party, was elected to several terms in Parliament and was appointed Agriculture Minister. After the Soviet occupation of Romania, Crihan fled on foot to Yugoslavia and arrived in the United States in 1949. After the Soviet takeover, Dr. Crihan went into hiding and then fled on foot. He made his way across Europe spending time in Paris to complete a PhD in Economics at the Sorbonne. He finally arrived in the United States in 1949, where he delivered lectures and wrote articles and books championing the reunification of Moldavia and Romania. Moldavia, now known as Moldova, gained independence when the Soviet Union disintegrated in late 1991.
He died in Saint-Louis, United States, but to his will, he was buried in Chisinau.

Works