Grigory Ivanovich Borisov, party alias Stary (Old) was born in the Bendery district of Bessarabia on December 9, 1880. He was forced to work from the age of seven. Since 1900, G. I. Stary took part in the revolutionary movement. For active participation in clandestine activities, he was repeatedly arrested by the police and served sentences in various prisons of tsarist Russia. G. I. Stary made a great contribution to the creation and development of the Moldovan ASSR. In 1924, he was appointed chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the Autonomous Republic. Then G. I. Stary was elected chairman of the Central Executive Committee. In 1926–1928 and 1932–1937, he worked as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the MASSR. Contemporaries assessed his position on the issue of “Moldovans or Romanians” as ambivalent. G. I. Stary denied accusations of opposing the indigenous policy: “It is wrong that I am against Moldovanization. I only take into account the difficulties, and this is taken as resistance”. He was repressed in 1937 and rehabilitated in 1955. The article was written on the basis of materials from the Soviet secret police (NKVD) archive.