Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

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On June 26, 1940, Romania received an ultimatum from the Soviet Union, demanding the evacuation of the Romanian military and administration from Bessarabia and from the northern part of Bukovina^[1], with an implied threat of invasion in the event of non-compliance.^[2] Under pressure from Moscow and Berlin, the Romanian administration and armed forces retreated to avoid war. Without any explanation, the Soviet forces also occupied the Hertza Region. These events were part of a larger context of Nazi and Soviet build-up to World War II.

On the main part of the annexed^[3][4] territory, the Soviets set up the Moldavian SSR, while smaller portions were given to the Ukrainian SSR, both republics of the USSR. The Soviet occupation was interrupted in 1941, when Romania took back from the Soviet Union Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in Operation München (coordinated with the German Operation Barbarossa)^[5][6], but the territory was recovered by the Soviet Union in 1944, during the Iassy-Kishinev Offensive.

After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and especially after 1956, the Soviet persecution of locals and of those deported gradually eased up.^{[citation needed]} First free elections were held in February 1990, and Soviet control of the region ended in August 1991 with the Soviet coup attempt and the dissolution of the USSR. In 1991, Moldavian SSR became the newly independent Moldova, while Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia remained part of Ukraine.

Contents 1 Historical background 1.1 Soviet-Romanian relations 1.2 The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 1.3 International context 1939-1940 2 June 1940 Soviet ultimatum 2.1 Reply to the ultimatum 3 International reaction to the ultimatum 4 "The Red Week" 5 Aftermath of the territorial concessions 5.1 Soviet Bessarabia and Bukovina 1940-1941 5.2 Romania 1940–1944 5.3 Soviet Bessarabia and Bukovina after 1944 6 Consequences for the local population 6.1 Political prisoners and massacres of civilians 6.2 Deportations 6.3 Romanian POWs 6.4 1946-1947 famine victims 6.5 Forced labor 6.6 Fled to Romania and to Western Europe 6.7 Economic consequences 6.8 Social and demographic consequences 6.9 Immigration 6.10 Consequences for the education and language 7 Positive view of the occupation 8 Notes 9 Citations 10 References 11 See also 12 External links

[edit] Historical background

[edit] Soviet-Romanian relations

In 1918, after the collapse of the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary, both Bessarabia and Bukovina had joined the Kingdom of Romania after votes by local diets (see Sfatul Ţării).^[7][8] This was internationally recognized by peace treaties after World War I, signed by the United Kingdom, France, and other countries.

Vladimir Lenin had initially supported the right of self-determination for the people included in the former Tsarist empire, of which Bessarabia had been a part, though it never made any claims to Bukovina, which had previously been part of Austria-Hungary. During the Russian civil war, on May 1, 1919, the "Soviet governments" of Ukraine and Russia issued a joint ultimatum to Romania demanding its withdrawal from Bessarabia, and the next day, Christian Rakovsky, the Chairman of the Ukrainian Soviet government, issued another ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Romanian troops from Bukovina too. Plans were made to take over the entire Romania and establish a communist state there. However rebellions in the Ukrainian Soviet Army prevented a serious communist attack against Romania.^[9]

In the meantime, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed on the left bank of the Dniester river in 1924 by the Soviet government. This was seen by the Romanian government as a Soviet threat: a possible starting ground for a communist invasion of Romania.

On August 27, 1928, both Romania and the Soviet Union signed and ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.^[10] As a follow-on to its adoption, the Soviet Union signed a protocol confirming adherence to the terms of the Pact with its neighbors: Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Romania on February 9, 1929.^[11] In signing, the contracting parties agreed:

• to condemn war as a recourse to solving conflict and to renounce it as an instrument of policy, and
• that all conflicts and disputes be settled only by peaceful means^[12].

On July 21, 1936, Maxim Litvinov and Nicolae Titulescu, the Soviet and Romanian Ministers of Foreign Affairs, signed a "Protocol of Mutual Assistance", which was interpreted^{[citation needed]} as a non-aggression treaty between Romania and the Soviet Union, that de facto recognized the existing Soviet-Romanian border. The protocol stipulated that any common Romanian-Soviet action should be pre-approved by France. In negotiating with the Soviet Union, Titulescu was highly criticized by the Romanian far-right. However, both Titulescu and Litvinov were dismissed in 1936, respectively 1939.

[edit] The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact which contained an additional secret protocol with maps, in which a demarcation line through Eastern Europe was drawn, dividing it into the German and Soviet interest zones.

See the treaty and the additional protocol in Russian 1234 and German 12345.

Based on it, one week later, on September 1, Germany started World War II by invading Poland from the west; the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east on September 17, and by September 28, Poland fell.

Bessarabia is among the regions divided into Soviet and Nazi spheres of interest by the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Article III of its Secret Additional Protocol states:

With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinterestedness in these areas.^[13]

[edit] International context 1939-1940

On November 30, 1939, following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the refusal by Finland to accede to Soviet demands, the Soviet Union attacked Finland. The ensuing Winter War lasted until March 12, 1940. Due to skillful defence by the Finns, especially along the Mannerheim line, the Soviets had to be satisfied with Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia with the cities of Viipuri and Sortavala, and also obtained the right to build a Soviet naval base on the Hanko Peninsula (south west of Helsinki).

Between June 14 and June 17, 1940, the Soviet Union gave ultimatum notes to, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, and when these ultimata were satisfied, used bases thus gained to occupy these territories. (See Occupation of Baltic States.)

On June 22, 1940, four days before the ultimatum concerning Bessarabia, Marshal Pétain signed France's capitulation to Germany: Romania's biggest European ally and the arbiter in Romanian-Soviet relations lost almost half of its territory, including the capital, Paris.

Next (after Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), would come the turn of the then Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to suffer the consequences of the Soviet-Nazi agreements. An extensive Nazi-Soviet diplomatic coordination preceded the ultimatum.^{[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]b[›]}

[edit] June 1940 Soviet ultimatum

On June 26, 1940, at 22:00, Soviet People's Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov presented an ultimatum note to Gheorghe Davidescu, Romanian ambassador to Moscow, in which the Soviet Union requested that Romania return the region of Bessarabia by June 28 and transfer the northern part of the Bukovina region to the Soviet Union.

In June 1940, days before the Soviet ultimatum, France's surrender (on June 22) and Britain's retreat from Europe rendered their assurances to Romania meaningless. On June 2, Germany informed the Romanian government that, in order to receive territorial guarantees, Romania should consider negotiations with the Soviet Union.

The German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop was informed by the Soviet side of its intentions regarding Bessarabia and Bukovina on June 24. Ribbentrop worried more for the fate of the ethnic Germans in these two provinces, claiming the number of Germans in Bessarabia to be 100,000. Also, Ribbentrop pointed out clearly that Germany has strong economical interests in the rest of Romanian territory, in what could appear as a partition of Romania between Germany and the Soviet Union.

The text of the ultimatum note of June 26 incorrectly stated that Bessarabia was populated mainly by Ukrainians: "[...] centuries-old union of Bessarabia, populated mainly by Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian Soviet Republic". The Soviet Government demanded the northern part of Bukovina as a minor "reparation for the great loss produced to the Soviet Union and Bessarabia's population by 22 years of Romanian domination of Bessarabia" (see union of 1918), and because its "[...] fate is linked mainly with the Soviet Ukraine by the community of its historical fate, and by the community of language and ethnic composition". Northern Bukovina has had some historical connections with Galicia, that had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939, in the effect of the Invasion of Poland, in the sense that both were part of Austria-Hungary from the second part of 18th century until 1918.

The Ultimatum also added: "Now, that the military weakness of the USSR in a thing of past, and the international situation that was created requires the rapid solution of the items inherited from the past, in order to fix the basis of a solid peace between countries".^[2]

[edit] Reply to the ultimatum

The Romanian government replied by suggesting it would agree to "immediate negotiations on a wide range of questions".^[23]

The second Soviet ultimatum note, that followed on June 27, requested the evacuation of the Romanian government from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in four days.

On the following day, advised by both Germany and Italy, the Romanian government, led by Gheorghe Tătărescu under the rule of King Carol II, agreed to submit to the Soviet demands, and the territory was ceded at the beginning of July.

The decision to accept the Soviet ultimatum and to commence a "withdrawal" (avoiding the usage of the word to cede) from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina was deliberated upon by the Romanian Crown Council during the night of June 27-28, 1940. The vote outcome, according to the journal of King Carol II, was:

• Reject the ultimatum: Ştefan Ciobanu, Silviu Dragomir, Victor Iamandi, Nicolae Iorga, Traian Pop, Ernest Urdăreanu
• Accept the ultimatum: Petre Andrei, Constantin Anghelescu, Constantin Argetoianu, Ernest Ballif, Aurelian Bentoiu, Mircea Cancicov, Ioan Christu, Mitiţă Constantinescu, Mihail Ghelmegeanu, Ion Gigurtu, Constantin C. Giurescu, Nicolae Hortolomei^c[›], Ioan Ilcuş (minister of defence), Ion Macovei, Gheorghe Mironescu, Radu Portocală, Mihai Ralea, Victor Slăvescu, Gheorghe Tătărescu (prime-minister), Florea Ţenescu (chief of the General Staff of the Army)
• Abstained: Victor Antonescu.

In an attempt to hide his name under a council of more authoritative figures, Carol II convinced Alexandru Vaida-Voevod to be sworn in as minister during the night of June 27–June 28. Vaida, along with all of the above, signed the final crown council recommendation, on which Carol II ordered the Army to stand down, but it is not completely clear whether he participated in the deliberations and the vote.

Out of a population of 3,776,000 (according to the 1930 census) in the territories occupied by the USSR, of which 2,078,000 (55%) were ethnic Romanians, 200,000 people (of different ethnicities) fled during those few days, most of them in several hours on June 28. The Romanian government wished to avoid, albeit temporarily, a war with the Soviet Union. Therefore, all military installations and casemates, built during a 20-year period in the event of a Soviet attack, were ceded without a single shot, the Romanian Army being under strict orders not to respond to any provocation.

[edit] International reaction to the ultimatum

To Romanian request for support, the British government replied that it would consider any territorial loses by Romania as being temporary. Of all regional allies, with which Romania had treaties with military clauses, only Turkey replied that it would live up to treaty obligations by providing support in case of Soviet military aggression.

According to Time from Monday, July 1, 1940, "This week Russian planes began making reconnaissance flights over Bessarabia. Then border clashes were reported all along the Dnestr River. Though the Rumanian Army made a show of resistance for the record, it has no chance of stopping the Russians without help, and Germany had already acknowledged Russia's claim to Bessarabia in secret deals last year. Romania had accepted her destiny in the new Europe that Hitler plans (Time, June 3). She will also lose Transylvania to Hungary and probably a part of the Dobruja to Bulgaria [...]. Russia's Sphere. Russia was preoccupied with consolidating her own position to the east of Hitler's Europe. On the heels of her occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, those three countries set up left-wing Governments that looked like steppingstones to complete sovietization. [...] Germany took the occupation calmly. Germany's calm was doubtless real, since last year's deals gave Russia a free hand in the Baltic as well as Bessarabia."^[24]

According to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov northern Bukovina, a former Austrian region that wasn’t part of Russian Empire before World War I, was also demanded to “repay Russia for waiting 20 years for Bessarabia”.^[25]

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[edit] "The Red Week"

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On June 28, at 9:00, communiqué no. 25 of the Romanian Army General Staff announced officially to the population the content of the ultimatum, its acceptance by the Romanian government, and the intent to evacuate the army and administration to the Prut River (separating Bessarabia from the rest of Romania). By 14:00, three key cities—Chişinău, Cernăuţi and Cetatea Albă—had to be turned over to the Soviets. By July 3, the new border along the Prut was totally closed.

Only few people welcomed the Soviet annexation as a relief. Around 200,000 decided to retreat to the rest of Romania, making hasty arrangement. Most of the population, unsure of what to expect next, treated the events with uneasy calmness. Nevertheless, during the retreat that took place from June 28 to July 3, the Romanian Army was attacked both by civilian Communists^{[citation needed]} and by the Soviet Army who entered Bessarabia before the Romanian administration finished retreating. In the process, the Romanian Army and the civilians that decided to retreat suffered many casualties^{[citation needed]}.

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[edit] Aftermath of the territorial concessions

The territorial concessions of that year (1940) produced deep sorrow and resentment in the Romanian population, and hastened the decline in popularity of the regime led by King Carol II of Romania. He eventually fled the country and a government led by the Iron Guard and Ion Antonescu took power. Overall, the desire to recapture lost territory was the deciding factor leading to the entry of Romania into World War II on the side of the Axis against the Soviet Union.

[edit] Soviet Bessarabia and Bukovina 1940-1941

The territory was organized by the Soviets on August 2, 1940 as follows: Most of Bessarabia became part of the newly-created along with parts of the Moldavian ASSR, which was disbanded on that occasion. Northern Bukovina, along with the northern half of Hotin County and Southern Bessarabia were given to the Ukrainian SSR. Specifically, out of six and a half of the districts composing Bessarabia, and out of a territory of the size of one district previously part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Soviet governmental commission headed by Nikita Khrushchev, the then head of the Ukrainian SSR, formed the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the Soviet Union. The other two and a half districts of Bessarabia, plus northern Bukovina (approximately the territory of a district) were allotted to the Ukrainian SSR.

During 1940–1941, political persecution of locals in the form of arrests, torture, executions and deportations to Siberia took place, resulting in 57,000 dead, and over 100,000 displaced. The economic life was destroyed by forbidding private initiative. Industrial enterprises were expropriated. By instating high quotas of agricultural products that each landowner had to deliver without payment to the state if the land is cultivated, and by frequent requisitions, the Soviets have forced many peasants to give up their land and/or to refrain from cultivating parts of it. As a result, the agricultural production became extremely low. An exchange rate of 40 Romanian lei for 1 Soviet ruble was established, which resulted in Soviet solders and officials buying out everything from the shops at very low prices within the first two months. As no goods were being brought in, the shops emptied and closed, resulting in a disastrous situation for the service sector of the economy.

[edit] Romania 1940–1944

Two months later, after giving in to more territorial demands—this time from Hungary and Bulgaria, which were supported by Germany and Italy (see Second Vienna Award)— and consequently faced with a national uprising, King Carol II of Romania abdicated (for the fourth and last time) and was forbidden ever to re-enter Romania. Power was taken by an alliance of Marshal Ion Antonescu, the chief of the Army, and remnants of the Iron Guard Legionary Movement (partly destroyed in 1938; see The Iron Guard#A bloody struggle for power), an anti-Semitic fascist party. Mihai, son of Carol II, succeeded him as king of Romania; the country was declared a National Legionary State. In January 1941 the Legionary Movement attempted a coup, which failed and placed Antonescu firmly in power.

On June 22, 1941, Romania participated with Finland, Hungary, and Italy in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, retaking Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina by July 26. Despite disagreement from all political parties [1], Antonescu ordered the Romanian Army to continue the war eastward to Odessa, then Crimea, Kharkov, Stalingrad and the Caucasus.

Moreover, the collaboration of a number of Bessarabian Jews with the Soviet occupation authorities was manipulated by the Romanian government of Antonescu as a pretext to massively deport and/or kill the remaining Jews of Bukovina and Bessarabia after Romania regained the territory in 1941 (see History of the Jews in Moldova#The Holocaust).

[edit] Soviet Bessarabia and Bukovina after 1944

On August 23, 1944, with Soviet troops advancing and the Eastern Front once again falling within Romanian territory, King Mihai organized a successful coup against Antonescu, agreed to Soviet terms, and ordered military action in the western direction against Hungary (and theoretically Germany) to recover Northern Transylvania, annexed by Hungary in August 1940 after the Second Vienna Award, and later continued the war on the territory of Hungary and Slovakia, in support of the Soviet troops.

On March 6, 1945 King Mihai was forced by Soviet troops stationed throughout Romania to accept a Communist-dominated government, and two years later to leave the country, beginning an era that only ended in 1989.

In 1947, as part of the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, Communist Romania and Soviet Union signed a border treaty, leaving the territories in the Soviet Union: the Soviet-Romanian frontier was "fixed in accordance with the Soviet-Roumanian Agreement of 28 June 1940", although no such agreement was even signed before 1944.^[26]

After the fall of communism in Romania, its president Ion Iliescu, and the president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachov have signed on 5 April 1991 a political treaty which among other things recognized the Soviet-Romanian border. However, Romania refused to ratify it. Romania and Russia eventually signed and ratified a treaty in 2003^[27]a[›], after the independence of Moldova and Ukraine.

During 1940-1989, the Soviet authorities promoted the events of June 28, 1940, as a "liberation", and the day itself was a holiday in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.

[edit] Consequences for the local population

[edit] Political prisoners and massacres of civilians

According to Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr,^[28] from 1940 to 1953 there were 32,433 people politically sentenced, of which 8,360 to death, or dead during interrogations. (These figures do not include the people shot on the spot who refused to flee in June 1940, for example many of the administration officials.)

In addition, a large number of people were arrested by NKVD and disappeared. Up to one thousand corpses were discovered after the retreat of the Soviets in 1941 in the cellars, courtyards and wells of the NKVD headquarters in the county centers, including 450 corpses in Chişinau, mostly of priests, university and high school students, and railroad workers. ^[29] (See also NKVD prisoner massacres.)

In April-August 1943, in Tatarka, near Odessa, a mass common grave was discovered on a lot of 1,000 sq. meters. 42 separate common graves of several dozen bodies each were identified, containing ca. 3,500 bodies, of which 516 were exhumed, studied, and buried in cemetery before the region became a front line. Among the victims were persons arrested in the Moldavian ASSR in 1938-1940, and in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in 1940-1941.^[29]

Serious incidents occurred in Northern Bukovina, where many locals tried in 1940-1941 to cross the border into Romania by any price. Families and relatives of people that were discovered by NKVD to have crossed into Romania were often arrested, and in several villages concentration camps of these were organized.^{[citation needed]} (See also Fântâna Albă massacre.)

[edit] Deportations

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union

Main article: Deportation of Romanians in the Soviet Union

Deportations of locals on grounds of belonging to the intelligentsia or kulak classes, or of having anti-Soviet nationalist ideas occurred almost daily throughout 1940-41 and 1944-1950, and with less frequency in 1950-1956. These deportations touched all local ethnic groups: Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Bulgarians, Gagauzes. Significant deportations happened on three separate occasions: according to Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr ^[30], 29,839 people were deported to Siberia on 13 June 1941, 35,796 on 6 July 1949 (operation Yug) and 2,617 on 1 April 1951 (operation Sever). ^[31].

These people were taken during the night; sometimes whole families with children were uprooted. They had to be ready within one hour, and were transported to Siberia or Eastern Kazakhstan, in overcrowded railway cars for cattle, for four to six weeks, with no sanitation and very little food. Finally, after journeys by foot that would last for weeks, they were taken to different destination points, often deep in Taiga forests, where they were forced to work in extreme cold and suffer humiliation, to the extent that half of them died in Siberia or on the way there.^{[citation needed]}

After Stalin's death in 1953, the deportees were allowed to return to Moldova, and around half chose to do so. But they found that their houses and property had been confiscated, they could obtain no registration or documents, could be hired only with difficulty, were not eligible for pensions, health care, or social services. According to some estimates^{[citation needed]}, at the dissolution of the USSR, 180,000 of the descendants of the surviving deportees still lived in the Russian Federation, and 20,000 in Kazakhstan.

Smaller size deportations often targeted the inhabitants of the cities, as well as the areas covered by anti-Soviet movements during 1945-1950, i.e. Bukovina, Herţa region, as well as Orhei, Bălţi and Soroca counties. ^[33]

In total, in the first year of Soviet occupation^[34], not less than 86,604 people from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Hertsa Region were arrested and deported. ^[35] This number is close to the one calculated by Russian historians following documents in the Moscow archives, of ca. 90,000 people apprehended, arrested and deported in the first year of Soviet occupation.^[36] The arrests continued even after 22 June 1941.^[37][38]. Well above half of these were deported from the Moldavian SSR, the rest from the Chernivtsi Oblast and Izmail Oblast of Ukrainian SSR, which were created in 1940.

According to a document signed by Ivan Serov, Deputy Minister of Interior of the USSR, on 1 July 1953, 46,616 deportees from Moldavian SSR were reported in localities with special regime (spetsposeleniya) in Russian SFSR and Kazakhstan, of which 10,387 were deported in 1941 (including 1,780 children), and 36,147 - in 1949 (including 10,447 children).^[39] In the meantime (1940/41-1953), many of the deported have died because of harsh transportation, detention and climate conditions, disease, and malnutrition. ^[40]

[edit] Romanian POWs

Main article: Romanian POW in the Soviet Union

See also Soviet war crimes. Many locals were recruited by the Romanian army to hold the territory from being overrun by the Soviet Union. After the Jassy-Kishinev Operation in August 1944, between 100,000 and 200,000 were taken prisoners of war, about half of them locals. Only a tiny minority, estimated at 10%, of them survived 1956, when the first POWs were released.^{[citation needed]}

Some of the captured POWs were immediately taken to the interior of the USSR, some only after a year. In the north of the region, two POW camps — one simple, and one concentration — were established in 1944-1945 in the city of Bălţi. The latter camp contained some 45,000 POWs, including 35 to 40 thousand Romanian solders (about half of which originally came from Bessarabia and Bukovina), 5,000 German, and 5,000 Hungarian, Italian, Czech, and Polish POWs. The harsh conditions in the camp allowed only the fittest prisoners to survive and be sent to labor camps in the interior of USSR, while common graves of the perished were uncovered after the fall of the Soviet system.

[edit] 1946-1947 famine victims

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295,000 died during the famine of 1946-1947, provoked by the almost total confiscation of food and seeds from farmers' households "for the needs of the state".

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[edit] Forced labor

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See also Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union. Thousands were mobilized into work camps (but at least they were formally, although very little, paid), and sent far away through the Soviet Union. In 1940 alone there were 56,365 such.

220,000 locals died from August 1944 to May 1945, after being mobilized into the Soviet Army and sent to fight in Lithuania, East Prussia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

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[edit] Fled to Romania and to Western Europe

While some 200,000 people fled from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the rest of Romania on 28 June 1940, most of them returned in 1941. Faced with the advancing Soviet troops in 1944, and fearing political condemnations or deportations similar to the ones from 13 June 1941, up to 800,000 people^{[citation needed]} moved westward to the remaining territory of Romania, leaving the main cities almost empty. These people were mainly teachers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, with their families, virtually anyone who could be qualified as an intellectual, since these were the main targets of Soviet persecutions. It took 25 years after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia for a new "intelligentsia" to emerge, mainly from the farmers' class—by itself, a remarkable national regeneration.

[edit] Economic consequences

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[edit] Social and demographic consequences

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Although, not targeting Romanians as an ethnic group, but rather the pre-Soviet civil society as a political class, the Soviet occupation inaugurated also an anti-Romanian Soviet politicide and ethnic cleansing of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Between 1940 and 1941, 300,000 Romanians were persecuted, conscripted into forced labor camps, or deported with the entire family, of whom 57,000 were killed (not counting those died in the Gulag).^[41] These policies also continued from 1944 until 1956, after which they were reduced to isolated cases.

According to some sources, in total throughout the duration of the USSR, around 2,344,000 people originally from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the former Moldavian ASSR were victims of arrests, political persecution, deportation, forced labour, of whom 703,000 perished.^[42][43]. The latter number includes the 298,500 victims of the 1946-47 famine, and an estimation of 100,000 of perished POWs which were locals. The remainder are victims of executions, massacres, arrested perished in Gulag, and deportees died.

These policies mostly targeted the elites of Bessarabians and Bukovinains which did not leave for Romania in 1940 and 1944-1945, including former teachers, doctors, clergymen, lawyers, policemen and soldiers, larger landowners (nobility and richer peasants, called by the Soviets kulaks), members of political parties (including former members of the clandestine Communist Party of Romania), as well as those who expressed any kind of dissent, which altogether constituted a significant part of the population and included the majority of the educated population, the bearers of Romanian culture. However, they were by no means restricted to ethnic Romanians, as many thousand ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, Jews who inhabited the region before 1940 were also deported en masse together with local Romanians on social and political grounds. Only in northern Bukovina, the persecutions resulted in a disproportionate number of ethnic Romanian victims. However, this could be also explained by the social nature of villages in the region, which rejected Soviet social tactics, and by local Ukrainians keeping a low profile to avoid themselves persectution. (Local Ukainians who expressed any anti-Soviet ideas were persecutted without any mercy.)

During the Soviet takeover in 1940, Bessarabian Germans (82,000) and Bukovinain Germans (40,000-45,000) were repatriated to Germany at the request of Hitler's government. Some of them were forcibly settled by the Nazis in the German-occupied Poland (they preferred proper German regions), and had to move again in 1944-1945. The people affected by the resettlement were not persecuted, but they were given no choice to stay or live, and had to change their entire livelihood within weeks or even days.

The biggest blow during World War II was suffered by the local Jewish community. (See also Bessarabian Jews.) This was due not to Soviet, but to Romanian and German authorities. (See also Ion Antonescu.) In June-July 1941, cca. 10,000 (mostly civilians) were killed during the military action in the region in 1941 by German Einzatsgruppe D units and on some occasions by some Romanian troops. In Sculeni, several dosens local Jews were killed by the Romanian troops. In Bălţi cca. 150 local civilians were shot by Einzatsgruppe (the young women were also raped), and 14 Jewish POWs by the Romanians. In Mărculeşti, 486 Soviet POWs of Jewish origin (many conscripted locals), who were left behind by the Soviet army because of wounds, in order to avoid being surrounded, were shot. Cca. 40 corpses of Jews were found damped at the outskirts of Orhei, executed either by the German or Romanian units.

From 1941 to 1942, 120,000 Jews from Bessarabia, all of Bukovina, and the Dorohoi county in Romania proper, were deported to ghettos and concentration camps in Transnistria (WWII), with only a small portion returning in 1944. The ones who died did so in the most inhuman and horrible conditions. (In the same ghettos and camps there were many Jews from that region as well, responsibility for whose death lies on the Romanian authorities that occupied it during 1941-1944.)

The remainder of the 270,000 Jewish community of the region survived World War II. Mostly these were Bessarabian Jews that wisely retreated before the departure of the Soviet troops in mid-July 1941. However, the only good thing that can be said about their fate during 1941-1944 was that they survived, because the conditions under which they traveled to the interior of the USSR (e.g. to Uzbekistan) in the summer of 1941, and their conditions of life at the arrival were very bad. Cca 15,000 Jews from Cernăuţi, and further 5,000 from elsewhere in Bukovina were saved by the then major of the city Traian Popovici. Nevertheless, he was not able to save everyone, and cca 20,000 Bukovinian Jews were deported to Transnistria (WWII). At the end of the war, the remaining Jewish community of Bukovina decided to move to Israel.

As a result of the departure of the Romanian intellectuals in 1940 and 1944, of the Bukovinian Germans in 1940-41, of the surviving Bukovinian Jews in 1945, and of the forceful repatriation of Bukovinian Polish to Poland, Cernăuţi, one of the cultural and university "jewels" of both Austria-Hungary and Romania ceased to exist as such, its population (already 100,000 in 1930) being greatly reduced. After the war, some Bukovinian Ukrainians from the countryside, as well as a few Ukrainians from Podolia and Galicia moved to the city. However, these were also generally excluded from the Soviet apparatus and higher positions in the economy and administration, which was formed mostly by people known to be loyal to the Soviet system sent from eastern Ukraine or from other parts of the USSR.

[edit] Immigration

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As the Soviet persecutions, as well as the grave reduction of the German, Jewish and Polish communities affected the local intelligentsia most of all, basically eradicating it, Soviet authorities sought to fill the intellectual gap formed in the region in 1940s, and also to build a Soviet and party apparatus. Immediately after the war, Stalin carried out a major colonization and de facto Russification campaign in what was now Soviet Moldova, Chernivtsi oblast, and Budjak under the flag of Sovietization and building a communist society in which there would be plenty and no money. Many Russians and Ukrainians, along with a smaller number of other ethnic groups, who migrated from the rest of the USSR to Moldova, arrived to 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. During the Soviet rule, up to one million people settled in Moldova. 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, or people without strong family or native land ties, many of which with little or no education at all. A few were outright criminals.

Access of local Romanians to positions in administration and economy was limited. The first local to became minister in the Moldavian SSR was only in 1960s as minister of health. The same restriction generally applied to representatives of local minority groups that were in the region before 1940, as they were considered also not trustworthy. The antagonism between the Romanians/Moldovans, and often also the pre-1940 Russian and Ukrainian minorities on one side, and the "newcomers" (cf. "venetici" in Romanian) persisted till the end of communism and was clear during the anti-Soviet and anti-Communist events in 1988-1992. (It was also an important reason for the brief 1992 War of Transnistria that took the lives of several hundred people, after Moldova became independent.) The immigration affected mostly the cities of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, as well as the countryside of Budjak where the Bessarabian Germans previously were, but also the cities of Trasnistria. All of these saw the proportion of ethnic Moldavians (Romanians) drop throughout the Soviet rule.

Despite this huge immigration, the 1959 census showed a significant drop in population from 1940, showing how badly the local population was affected by the events of 1940-1956.

[edit] Consequences for the education and language

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See also: Moldovenism

Until 1952, the education for the locals was done in a very broken language (extremely low vocabulary and many borrowing from Russian and from the Soviet bureaucratic speech) that was spoken by a handful of ethnically Moldavian communist activists from the former Moldavian ASSR, and using the Cyrillic script. At that point, realizing that to create a whole literature for a speech shared by only a few hundred individuals and impose it on 3 millions was impossible, the Soviet authorities decided to drop it "because the local peasants can not understand it"^{[citation needed]}, and return to the normal language. Hence, Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creangă were again allowed, and the standard written language became the same as Romanian, except that it was written with cyrillic script.

The Soviet authorities policy of describing 1918-1940 period as a yoke of feodal boyars and rich bourgeois speaking in half-French assigned to the word Romanian a negative connotation. Locals' ethnicity was written as Moldavians in documents, and the language was renamed Moldavian language. In the Bukovinain part of the Chernivtsi oblast, locals did not have the habit of calling themselves both Moldavians and Romanians before 1918, as they did in Bessarabia, and hence the Soviet authorities allowed them to keep their ethnic group as Romanians in the documents. This also became handy, as split into Moldavians and Ukrainians, the share of the ethnic group in the population of the oblast was statistically less observable. Children of deportees that were prevented to return to Moldova from Siberia and Kazakhstan were allowed to be schooled only in Russian.

In Moldavian SSR, Soviet authorities opened many more Russian schools than Romanian ones in the cities, calling for locals to send their children to Russian-language schools, explaining them that without knowing Russian they would not be able to get normal jobs. Russian schools were also less crowded with respect to the number of students in a class. The authorities encouraged in addition the creation of mixed schools, generally having three Romanian-language for every Russian-language class, thus all administration being in Russian.

A new local intelligentsia, to replace the virtually exterminated one, started to form in late 1960s and early 1970s. However, being composed generally of descendants from farmers, it did not have the benefit of direct ties to the pre-war intelligentsia. The contacts with classical Romanian literature were greatly limited, as a big number of authors and books were forbidden, including all authors born in Romanian localities outside the medieval Principality of Moldavia, as well as all works touching on their connected to politics of even authors such as Mihai Eminescu, Mihail Kogălniceanu, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Constantin Stere (the former two are classic and well-known, the latter two are in addition born in Bessarabia). However, these contacts were not severed, since after 1956 people were slowly allowed to visit or get visits from relatives in Romania, since Romanian press could be freely bought in Moscow (not in Moldova), and since a poor quality Romanian TV and radio could be heard with a makeshift antenna, and even by ordinary transistor-based radios. The programs of the latter, however, were created by the Communist authorities of Romania, which never dared to cross the Soviet authorities, especially in the question of education and press for ethnic Romanians in USSR, which was a political taboo, especially because the Romanian communists did not totally sided with Soviets against the Chinese after 1959, sometimes even trying to play the brokers.

The Soviet-Romanian border along the Prut river, separating Bessarbia from Romania, was closed for the general public all throughout the Soviet era. In general, visits abroad by Soviet citizens were very rare (comparing to the citizens of Communist Eastern European countries).

[edit] Positive view of the occupation

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See also Khotin Uprising, Tatarbunary Uprising.

During the 1930s, laws were passed in Romania forbidding Jews to occupy state offices, such as administration, police, and army. Unlike in Germany, Jews were not forbidden to practice medicine or teaching, and no infringements were made on the Jewish cultural life.

A portion of the population of Bessarabia viewed the Soviet annexation as a relief. It has been claimed that it was mostly left-wing oriented.^{[citation needed]} During the retreat that took place from June 28 to July 3, the Romanian Army was attacked both by civilian Communists^{[citation needed]} and by the Soviet Army who entered Bessarabia before the Romanian administration finished retreating. In the process, the Romanian Army suffered several thousand casualties^[44] (needs a second source), and throughout Romania the view was spread (partly encouraged by the state) that Jews betrayed Romanians in their darkest hour, leading to a significant rise in the anti-Semitic sentiment.

"In the chaos generated by a hasty and unorganized Romanian retreat many things happened that were not supposed to happen [...] Jew and Ukrainian population, in the enthusiasm generated by the departure of Romanian authorities, which made out of this province the worst administered part of the country, have treated the retreating Romanians in a way that will cost them dearly one year later."^[45]

The general sentiment with which the population received the occupation and the arrival of Soviet administration was mixed: while some people welcomed and supported it (most passively, but some actively), the middle class, and particularly intellectuals^{[citation needed]} and those better-to-do economically were not happy about the coming infringements on freedom of speech^{[citation needed]}, the introduction of a state ideology, the confiscation of private property, and political deportations. These consequences affected the local population of all ethnic groups; only a small politically-connected minority of the pre-1940 population did not suffer from executions, deportations, famine, diseases, or being turned into cannon fodder.^{[citation needed]} Also, some non-Romanians retreated in June-July 1940.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Citations

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• NKVD
• The Black Book of Communism
• Human rights in the Soviet Union
• Stalin's speech on August 19, 1939.
• World War II
• Soviet occupations

[edit] External links

• (English) "Molotov-Ribbentrop pact", from Wikisource
• (English) Modern History Sourcebook, a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts in modern European and World history, http://www.lituanus.org/1989/89_1_03.htm
• (English) "Romanian Army in the Second World War"
• (English) International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania: Final Report (2004)
• (Romanian) "Text of Litvinov-Titulescu pact"
• (Romanian) "Joachim von Ribbentrop to Viaceslav Molotov, regarding of Bessarabia and Bukovina, June 25, 1940"
• (Romanian) "The Ultimatum notes and Romanian responses"

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