Vasile Stroescu

Vasile Vasilievici Stroescu (Russian: Василий Васильевич Строеско, Vasily Vasilyevich Stroesko; November 11, 1845 – April 13, 1926), also known as Vasile de Stroesco, Basile Stroesco, or Vasile Stroiescu, was a Bessarabian and Romanian politician, landowner, and philanthropist. One of the proponents and sponsors of Romanian nationalism in Russia's Bessarabia Governorate, as well as among the Romanian communities of Austria-Hungary, he was also a champion of self-help and of cooperative farming. He inherited or purchased large estates, progressively dividing them among local peasants, while setting up local schools and churches for their use. An erudite and traveler, he abandoned his career in law to focus on his agricultural projects and cultural activism. For the latter work, he became an honorary member of the Romanian Academy.

Having backed the nationalist papers Basarabia and Cuvânt Moldovenesc, Stroescu was drawn into the more elitist cell of the nationalist movement, centered on the parts of the zemstva and gentry assembly. He was thus honorary president of the National Moldavian Party shortly after the February Revolution but, with Vladimir Herța, drifted away from the core of the movement to set up his own aristocratic branch. He became an absentee member of Sfatul Țării during the existence of a Moldavian Democratic Republic and its union with Romania. In 1919–1920, he served in the Assembly of Deputies, and was its de facto President for one day, on November 20, 1919. Rallying with the Bessarabian Peasants' Party, Stroescu became critical of the unification process, decrying government abuses in Bessarabia, and also objected to the 1920s land reform.