The Soviet View of BessarabiaMoldavskaya sovetskaya gosudarstvennost' i bessarabskiy vopros by A. M. LazarevReview by: Dennis DeletantThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 1978), pp. 115-118Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4207597 .

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Review Article

The Soviet View of Bessarabia

Lazarev, A. M. Moldavskaya sovetskaya gosudarstvennost' i bessarabskiy vopros. Cartea Moldoveneascfa Publishing House, Kishinev, 1974. 858 pp.

THIS work is a presentation of the achievements of the Moldavian Soviet Republic and at the same time a thinly disguised attempt to justify the Russian annexations of Bessarabia in I8I2 and I940. The author seeks to demonstrate that the Moldavians are not Rumanians but a different people; in his own words: 'The Moldavians will never and in no way become Rumanians, while Soviet Moldavia will never become "Rumanian territory" ' (p. 8oi), a statement that characterizes Lazarev's scholarship.

The title acknowledges the existence of a 'Bessarabian problem'. Yet from the threadbare information about the history of Bessarabia before I8I2 presented here, the reader might deduce that Bessarabia played no part at all in the history of the Rumanian Principalities. Some of the pertinent facts are presented below.

The land between the Dniester and the Pruth, generally known as Bessarabia, forms today the greater part of the Soviet Republic of Molda- via. The official language of the Moldavian SSR is called Moldavian by Soviet scholars. It is, in fact, Rumanian written in the Russian Cyrillic script. There is no philological basis for asserting as Lazarev does, that 'Moldavian' is as distinct from Rumanian as is Portugese (p. 739). Before the annexation of this area in I8I2, when it was given the official name of Bessarabia by the Russians, it formed an integral part of the Rumanian Principality of Moldavia.

The origin of the name Bessarabia goes back to the years of the establish- ment of the Rumanian Principalities. The first Principality is considered to have been founded in I330 by the ruler Basarab I. It included the territory that was later to be called Wallachia as well as the southern part of the area between the Dniester and the Pruth with the fortress of Akkerman (Cetatea Alba). Contemporary sources, using the ruler's name, often designated this country Bessarabia but the term was used very loosely, sometimes covering all of present-day Rumania, or merely Wallachia, or Moldavia. In later centuries the name was confined either to the land between the Danube, Pruth, Dniester and the Black Sea, or to the southern part of this region - the Budjak (Bugeac).

The establishment of the second Rumanian Principality, Moldavia, followed in I359, its frontiers being the Dniester in the east and the dominion of Basarab in the south. Moldavia extended its control over the latter area during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The Tatars were driven from Bender (Tighina) and the Genoese port of Akkerman was obliged to pay tribute to Alexander the Good of Moldavia. The Prince also secured the Genoese centre of Chilia on the Danube by I4I2. Thus the whole bank of the Dniester had become Moldavian and

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ii6 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

the Treaty of Lublau with Poland, concluded in 1412, confirmed this situation.

The Rumanian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia became vassal states of the Ottoman Empire during the fifteenth century, both countries being obliged to pay tribute to the Porte. Nevertheless, by the terms of various treaties with the Principalities (in 1393, 1460, I5 iI and I634), the Turks bound themselves to respect the internal autonomy of Moldavia and Wallachia regarding law and administration. Apart from narrow strips of territory around Chilia and Akkerman which came under direct Ottoman rule during the late fifteenth century, Bessarabia remained part of Moldavia and as such, never formed an integral part of the Turkish Empire.

By the Treaty of Bucharest of May I8I2 which concluded the Russo- Turkish war, the Porte ceded all the Moldavian territory between the Dniester and the Pruth to Russia. Alexander I incorporated the area into the rest of Tsarist Russia and to distinguish it from the rest of Moldavia, gave the region the name of Bessarabia. Legally speaking, the Turks had no right to cede any of this territory except for the areas around Chilia and Akkerman which they directly controlled; what remained of Bessara- bia was part of Moldavia and inalienable without the consent of the ruler of the Principality. However, at the time of the Treaty, there was no Prince, and Moldavia and Wallachia were under Russian occupation.

The Treaty of Paris of i856 restored to Moldavia the districts of Bessara- bia bordering on the Danube - Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail. When the Union of Moldavia and Wallachia took place in I859, these three districts automatically became part of the Principality of Rumania. In 1878 the Treaty of Berlin returned the three districts to Russia and they were reincorporated with Russian Bessarabia.

Following the Russian Revolution, Rumanian troops occupied part of Bessarabia. The National Assembly of Bessarabia resolved on 24 January I9I8 that an independent Bessarabian Republic be established, and on 27 March I9I8 the Assembly passed the following resolution: 'The Moldavian Democratic Republic, within its boundaries of the Pruth, the Dniester, the Danube, the Black Sea and its frontier with Austria; torn by Russia a little over one hundred years ago from the body politic of old Moldavia, by virtue of its historical and national rights, in accor- dance with the principle that the people alone must decide their own fate, from now on, and forever, unites with its mother country, Rumania'. The Union of Bessarabia with Rumania was recognized by the Allied Powers and confirmed by the Paris Treaty on 28 October 1920. However, Bessarabia changed hands yet again in June 1940 when Rumania received a Soviet ultimatum demanding the cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. King Carol II was in no position to resist and acceded to the demand. Bessarabia became part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic while Northern Bukovina was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR.

When Russia annexed Bessarabia in I812, contemporary Russian testimony suggests that the country was largely Rumanian in language.

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REVIEW ARTICLE I I7

The Russian military census of I8I6 does not give separate figures for the Rumanian population but gives 86.2 of the population as being Rumanian and Ukrainian, and four per cent as Jews. The Russian census of 1897 gave the following figures for Bessarabia: Rumanians 47.6 per cent, Ukrainians I9.6, Russians 8. i ,Jews I I.8, Bulgarians 5.4 and Germans 3. I . The fact that a number of Rumanians emigrated during the second half of the nineteenth century to the United Kingdom of Rumania, and that Bessarabia was colonized with Russians, Bulgarians and Germans explains why there was a fall in the Rumanian element of the population, although whether the I897 census figures are an objective record is open to question. The Rumanian census of 1930 gave 56.2 per cent of the population as Rumanian, I2.3 per cent as Ukrainian, Ii per cent as Russian, 7.2 per cent as Jewish, and 5.7 per cent as Bulgarian.

Throughout the nineteenth century a policy of Russification was applied in Bessarabia. In I833 Russian was made the sole language of civil administration, although Rumanian was occasionally used. The teaching of Rumanian in schools ceased in I866. Five years later the use of Rumanian in church services was forbidden and churches for which no Russian priest could be found were closed.

After the Union of Bessarabia with Rumania in I9I8 this process was reversed until the Soviet reannexation of I940. Rumania joined Germany in the attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June I941 in order to regain Bessarabia and within one month she had achieved that objective. The German reverse at Stalingrad marked the beginning of the Soviet reconquest of Bessarabia and, early in 1944, the Red Army crossed the Pruth.

After the cessation of hostilities in I 944, 'volunteer' workers were conscripted in Bessarabia. In I 955 a large-scale 'planned migration' scheme was launched to induce the Rumanian population of the Molda- vian SSR to settle in Astrakhan, Rostov and Khazakstan. The 1959

Soviet census gives no figures for Rumanians in the Moldavian SSR, since all Rumanian-speaking people are officially described there as Molda- vians. However, it does give figures for Rumanians elsewhere in the USSR. The separate numbers of Moldavians and Rumanians in the USSR were, 2,214,000 and io6,ooo respectively. The number of Molda- vians in the Moldavian SSR is given as I,886,ooo.

Needless to say, some of the above facts are omitted and others are disputed by Lazarev. His position in presenting this history of Bessarabia since 1812 is summed up in the following words: 'Rumania, as a state (together with its official name, which reflects its international legal status), appeared on the map of Europe long after Bessarabia became part of Russia. The attempt by Rumanian bourgeois historians to give retro- spectively a wider meaning to the terms "Rumania" and the "Rumanian people", and to use them to refer to foreign territories and foreign peoples, was not only a concrete example of historical falsification, but also the expression of the aggressive tendencies of the ruling classes in the Kingdom of Rumania' (p. 53I). Indeed, the author extends his brief beyond the question of Bessarabia to attack Rumania's participation in the First

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II8 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

World War: 'The rulers in Rumania were cynically awaiting a favourable moment to cast the working people in their country into a massacre so that their plans for conquering neighbouring territories could be realized' (p. 70). Inter-war Rumania is described as being 'created on the backs of, and with the blood of other peoples, principally that of the Moldavian people' (p. 849). Neither is Rumania's part in events leading up to the Second World War spared: 'Royal Rumania did not prevent, on the contrary, it aided Nazi aggression against Czechoslovakia, its ally in the Little Entente. How else can one interpret, for example, Rumania's refusal to allow Soviet troops to cross her territory to assist Czechoslo- vakia?' (p. 369). The tone of these passages characterizes much of this book which does a great disservice to the cause of friendly Soviet- Rumanian relations.

DENNIS DELETANT

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