Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic

After the failure of the Tatarbunary Uprising, the Soviets promoted the newly created Moldavian Autonomous Oblast existing within the Ukrainian SSR on part of the territory between the Dniester and Bug rivers, to a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian ASSR), on 12 October 1924, as a way to primarily prop up the Soviet propaganda effort in Bessarabia, but also to exert pressure on Bucharest in the negotiations on Bessarabia, and even to help a possible Communist revolution in Romania.[1]

On 24 August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty, called the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. The pact contained a secret protocol, revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945, according to which the states of Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The secret protocol placed the province of Bessarabia, at the time controlled by Romania, in the Soviet "sphere of influence."[2] Thereafter, both the Soviet Union and Germany invaded their respective portions of Poland,[3] while the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in June 1940, and waged war upon Finland.[4]

1940 Soviet map of the Moldavian SSR

On 26 June, four days after the battle of France, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to the Romanian Kingdom, demanding the latter to cede Bessarabia and Bukovina.[5] After the Soviets agreed with Germany that they would limit their claims in Bukovina, which was outside the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols, to Northern Bukovina, Germany urged Romania to accept the ultimatum, which Romania did two days later.[6] On 28 June, Soviet troops entered the area, and on 9 July the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed and applied to the Supreme Soviet for formal incorporation into the Soviet Union.[7]

On 2 August 1940, the Supreme Soviet unanimously approved to dissolve the old Moldavian ASSR and organize the Moldavian SSR, from six full counties and small parts of three other Moldavian counties of Bessarabia (about 65 percent of its territory), and the six westernmost rayons of the Moldavian ASSR (about 40 percent of its territory).[8][9] Ninety percent of the territory of MSSR was west of the river Dniester, which had been the border between the USSR and Romania prior to 1940, and 10 percent east. Northern and southern parts of the territories occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940 (the current Chernivtsi Oblast and Budjak), which were more heterogeneous ethnically, were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR, although their population also included 337,000 Moldovans.[8] As such, the strategically important Black Sea coast and Danube frontage were given to the Ukrainian SSR, considered more reliable than the Moldavian SSR, which could have been claimed by Romania.[10]

In the summer of 1941, Romania joined Hitler's Axis in the invasion of the Soviet Union, recovering Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, as well as occupying the territory to the east of the Dniester it dubbed "Transnistria". Soviet partisans continued to be active in both regions. By the end of World War II, the Soviet Union had reconquered all of the lost territories, reestablishing Soviet authority there.

Part of a series on the
History of Moldova
Antiquity Chernyakhov culture Dacia, Free Dacians Bastarnae
Early Middle Ages Origin of the Romanians Tivertsi Brodnici Golden Horde
Principality of Moldavia Foundation Early Modern Era Phanariotes United Principalities
Bessarabia Governorate Treaty of Bucharest
Moldavian Democratic Republic Sfatul Țării Romanian military intervention
Greater Romania Union of Bessarabia with Romania Transnistria Governorate The Holocaust
Moldavian ASSR Moldovenism
Moldavian SSR Soviet occupation Soviet deportations Anti-fascist resistance
Republic of Moldova Independence of Moldova War of Transnistria Gagauz Republic History of independent Moldova
Moldova portal

On June 22, 1941, during the first day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 10 people were killed in Răzeni by Soviet authorities and buried in a mass grave.[11] In July 1941 after Operation Barbarossa, a commemorative plaque was installed in Răzeni: "Aici odihnesc robii lui Dumnezeu Diomid, Niculai, Dănila, Nichita, Alexandru, Jurian, Alexandru, Ilie, doi necunoscuţi. Omorâţi mișelește de bolșevici comuniști. 12.VII.1941".[12] The memorial to victims of Răzeni Massacre was opened in 2009.

The Soviet authorities targeted several socio-economic groups due to their economic situation, political views, or ties to the former regime. They were deported to or resettled in Siberia and northern Kazakhstan; some were imprisoned or executed. According to a report by the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, no less than 86,604 people were arrested and deported in 1940 and 1941 alone, comparable to the estimative number of 90,000 repressed put forward by Russian historians.

Immediately after the Soviet reoccupation, in 1944, a so-called "repatriation" of the Bessarabians who fled to Romania before the advancing Red Army was organized by the Soviet security forces; many were shot or deported, blamed as collaborators of Romania and Nazi Germany.[13]

NKVD/MGB also struck at anti-Soviet groups, which were most active from 1944 to 1952. Anti-Soviet organizations such as Democratic Agrarian Party, Freedom Party, Democratic Union of Freedom, Arcașii lui Ștefan, Vasile Lupu High School Group, Vocea Basarabiei were severely reprimanded and their leaders were persecuted.[14]

A de-kulakisation campaign was directed towards the rich Moldavian peasant families, which were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia as well. For instance, in just two days, from 6 to 7 July 1949, over 11,342 Moldavian families were deported by the order of the Minister of State Security, Iosif Mordovets under a plan named "Operation South".[13]

Religious persecutions during the Soviet occupation targeted numerous priests.[15] After the Soviet occupation, the religious life underwent a persecution similar to the one in Russia between the two World Wars. Religious minorities, 700 families, especially Jehovah's Witnesses, were deported to Siberia in Operation North of April 1951.[13]

Ethnic Bessarabia Germans also decreased from over 81,000 in 1930 to under 4,000 in 1959 due to voluntary wartime migration (90,000 were transferred in 1940 to German-occupied Poland)[16] and forced removal as collaborators after the war.[13]

Collectivisation was implemented between 1949 and 1950, although earlier attempts were made since 1946. During this time, a large-scale famine occurred: some sources give a minimum of 115,000 peasants who died of famine and related diseases between December 1946 and August 1947. According to Charles King, there is ample evidence that it was provoked by Soviet requisitioning of large amounts of agricultural products and directed towards the largest ethnic group living in the countryside, the Moldovans. Contributing factors were the recent war, the drought of 1946, and collectivisation.[13]

Leonid Brezhnev and Ivan Bodiul during the republic's golden jubilee, 1976

With the regime of Nikita Khrushchev replacing that of Joseph Stalin, the survivors of Gulag camps and of the deportees were gradually allowed to return to the Moldavian SSR. The political thaw ended the unchecked power of the NKVD–MGB, and the command economy gave rise to development in the areas such as education, technology and science, health care, and industry.

Between 1969 and 1971, a clandestine National Patriotic Front was established by several young intellectuals in Chișinău by Mihail Munteanu, vowing to fight for the secession of Moldavia from the Soviet Union and union with Romania.

In December 1971, following an informative note from Ion Stănescu, the President of the Council of State Security of the Romanian Socialist Republic, to Yuri Andropov, the chief of KGB, three of the leaders of the National Patriotic Front, Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr, Gheorghe Ghimpu and Valeriu Graur, as well as a fourth person, Alexandru Șoltoianu, the leader of a similar clandestine movement in Northern Bukovina, were arrested and later sentenced to long prison terms.[17]

In the 1970s and 1980s, Moldavia received substantial investment from the budget of the USSR to develop industrial, scientific facilities, as well as housing. In 1971, the Soviet Council of Ministers adopted a decision "About the measures for further development of Kishinev city" that secured more than one billion rubles of investment from the USSR budget.

Subsequent decisions directed enormous wealth and brought highly qualified specialists from all over the USSR to develop the Soviet republic. Such an allocation of USSR assets was partially influenced by the fact that Leonid Brezhnev, the effective ruler of the USSR from 1964 to 1982, was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia from 1950 to 1952. These allocations stopped in 1991 with the Belavezha Accords, when the nation became independent.

Victory Day celebrations in the Moldavian SSR in 1980

Although Brezhnev and other CPM first secretaries were largely successful in suppressing Moldavian nationalism, Mikhail Gorbachev's administration facilitated the revival of the movement in the region. His policies of glasnost and perestroika created conditions in which national feelings could be openly expressed and in which the Soviet republics could consider reforms independently from the central government.

The Moldavian SSR's drive towards independence from the USSR was marked by civil strife as conservative activists in the east —especially in Tiraspol—as well as communist party activists in Chișinău worked to keep the Moldavian SSR within the Soviet Union. The main success of the national movement from 1988 to 1989 was the official adoption of the Moldavian language on 31 August 1989, by the Supreme Soviet of Moldova, the declaration in the preamble of the declaration of independence of a Moldavian–Romanian linguistic unity, and the return of the language to the pre-Soviet Latin alphabet. In 1990, when it became clear that Moldavia was eventually going to secede, a group of pro-Soviet activists in Gagauzia and Transnistria proclaimed independence in order to remain within the USSR. The Gagauz Republic was eventually peacefully incorporated into Moldavia as the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, but relations with Transnistria soured. Its sovereignty was declared on 23 June 1990 on its territory.

Moldovan flag from 1990

On 17 March 1991, Moldova, the Baltic states, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic boycotted the 1991 Soviet Union referendum with 98.72% in favor without any official sanction. On 23 May 1991, the Moldavian parliament changed the name of the republic to the Republic of Moldova. Gagauzia declared itself the Gagauz Republic on 19 August 1991.

Independence was quickly followed by civil war in Transnistria, where the central government in Chișinău battled with separatists, who were supported by pro-Soviet forces and later by different forces from Russia. The conflict left the breakaway regime (Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic) in control of Transnistria – a situation that persists today. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 26, 1991 and Moldova was officially recognized as an independent state.

May 1 parade on Victory Square, 1971

Beginning with the early 1950s, the government gradually abandoned the language standard based on the central Bessarabian speech, established as official during the Moldavian ASSR, in favour of the Romanian standard. Hence, Mihai Eminescu and Vasile Alecsandri were again allowed, and the standard written language became the same as Romanian, except that it was written with Cyrillic script.

Access to Romanian authors born outside the medieval Principality of Moldavia was restricted, as was the case with works by authors such as Eminescu, Mihail Kogălniceanu, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Constantin Stere that promoted a Romanian national sentiment. Contacts with Romania were not severed and, after 1956, people were slowly allowed to visit or receive relatives in Romania. Romanian press became accessible, and cross-border Romanian TV and radio programmes could be easily received. Nevertheless, the Soviet–Romanian border along the Prut river, separating Bessarabia from Romania, was closed for the general public.

The little nationalism which existed in the Moldavian elite manifested itself in poems and articles in literary journals, before their authors were purged in campaigns against "anti-Soviet feelings" and "local nationalism" organized by Bodiul and Grossu.[31]

The official stance of the Soviet government was that Moldavian culture was distinct from Romanian culture, but they had a more coherent policy than the previous one from the Moldavian ASSR.[32] There were no more attempts in creating a Moldavian language that is different from Romanian, the literary Romanian written with the Cyrillic alphabet being accepted as the linguistic standard for Moldavia. The only difference was in some technical terms borrowed from Russian.[33]

Moldavians were encouraged to adopt the Russian language, which was required for any leadership job (Russian was intended to be the language of interethnic communication in the Soviet Union). In the early years, political and academic positions were given to members of non-Moldavian ethnic groups (only 14% of the Moldavian SSR's political leaders were ethnic Moldavians in 1946), although this gradually changed as time went on.

Literary critics stressed the Russian influence on Moldavian literature and ignored the parts shared with Romanian literature.

Distribution of major ethnic groups, 1989

In the aftermath of World War II, many Russians and Ukrainians, along with a smaller number of other ethnic groups, migrated from the rest of the USSR to Moldavia in order to help rebuild the heavily war-damaged economy. They were mostly factory and construction workers who settled in major urban areas, as well as military personnel stationed in the region. From a socio-economic point of view, this group was quite diverse: in addition to industrial and construction workers, as well as retired officers and soldiers of the Soviet army, it also included engineers, technicians, a handful of scientists, but mostly unqualified workers.

Access of native Bessarabians to positions in administration and economy was limited, as they were considered untrustworthy. The first local to become minister in the Moldavian SSR was only in the 1960s as minister of health. The antagonism between "natives", and "newcomers" persisted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was clear during the anti-Soviet and anti-Communist events from 1988 to 1992. The immigration affected mostly the cities of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, as well as the countryside of Budjak where the Bessarabia Germans previously were, but also the cities of Transnistria. All of these saw the proportion of ethnic Moldavians slowly drop throughout the Soviet rule.