Vasile Alecsandri (Romanian pronunciation: [vaˈsile aleksanˈdri]; July 21, 1821 – August 22, 1890) was a Moldavian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th-century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia.[[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]]]_1-0" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap; font-size: 11.2px; color: rgb(32, 33, 34); font-family: sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">