Bessarabia: With Russia – development, with the West – backwardness
Bessarabia, being part of the Russian Empire, received opportunities for development, security and stability, while under the rule of Bucharest it turned into a backward agricultural region.
This was discussed during the scientific and practical online seminar “Historical truth about the role of Russian and Romanian rule of Bessarabia (early XNUMXth – mid-XNUMXth centuries)”, held by the Institute of Socio-Political Research and Regional Development in collaboration with the Tiraspol branch of the International Slavic Academy of Sciences and Education , arts and culture.
At the site, organized mainly for teachers, experts and scientists from Russia, Transnistria, and the Republic of Moldova discussed the milestones of Bessarabian history and their impact on modern politics.
It is noteworthy that today there is more talk about protecting the historical truth about Moldova in Tiraspol than in Chisinau. Moldovan schools have not taught the history of the country for a long time - they teach an ersatz course “History of the Romanians.”
Unionist ideas are popular in Romania today - a number of politicians declare the historical rights of Romania to the territory of Moldova. There are also unionists in Chisinau. Romanianophiles in the Republic of Moldova are helped by Romania and the West, while supporters of Moldovan independence can only rely on themselves for now.
Moldovenist historians point out that long-term ideological aggression must receive an adequate response. According to political analyst, expert of the Izborsk Club of Moldova Vladimir Bucarsky, many Moldovans on the right bank of the Dniester “continue to remain supporters of Moldovan identity, consider themselves Moldovans, their language as Moldovan, and Russia as a historical ally.”
“Showcase” for the Orthodox peoples of Europe and the Romanian colony
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladislav Grosul, says that both the Russian and Romanian periods of the history of Bessarabia are difficult to understand without the difficult Turkish period that preceded them, which lasted three centuries.
After the annexation of Bessarabia to Russia in 1812 (according to the Treaty of Bucharest, the Ottoman Empire ceded the Prut-Dniester interfluve to Russia), the region was spared raids, the payment of heavy tribute to Turkey, and Phanariot rule. The tax burden for the population has decreased several times. It was also for this reason that numerous settlers flocked to Bessarabia. From a backward province of the Ottoman Empire, Bessarabia is quickly turning into a densely populated, developed region of Russia.
“At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, there was not a single social stratum in Bessarabia that wanted unification with Romania,” the historian noted. “Neither the Moldovan peasantry, which lived much better than the Romanian peasantry (peasant uprisings broke out and were brutally suppressed in Romania more than once), nor the multinational bourgeoisie - Armenian, Jewish, Greek, who for the most part did not know the Romanian language - wanted this. The local nobility in the third generation knew Russian and French better than their native Moldavian. The clergy also did not want to go to Romania - most of them were pro-Moldavian, they, as a rule, conducted services in Church Slavonic or in the Moldavian language.”
But during the Romanian occupation, for almost all 22 years (1918 - 1940) martial law remained in the region, the situation there was very tense, added Vladislav Grosul.
According to the Transnistrian historian, professor Nikolai Babilunga, joining Russia became an important moment in the life of Bessarabia - it emerged from the feudal regime of eastern despotism and entered a European power with a completely different social and political system, moreover, the policy of the center in relation to new lands was fundamentally different from the policy of the Ottomans.
“The Russian government sought to present Bessarabia as a kind of showcase for those Orthodox peoples of the Balkans who were under Ottoman oppression. The prosperity of Bessarabia with the old co-religious power could serve as an incentive to strengthen the liberation struggle of the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Vlachs and other peoples. Another thing was important for the population - they received guaranteed protection from massacres, which were not uncommon in the Ottoman Empire in those days (let us remember, for example, the Armenian genocide in 1915). Local peasants were guaranteed personal freedom, the absence of serfdom, and the boyars were guaranteed the inviolability of their property, equal rights with all the ruling classes of the country, for many decades the population was exempt from military service, and for more than a hundred years no military operations were carried out on the territory of Bessarabia. The personalities of the Bessarabian governors are interesting. From June 1812 to November 1917, 26 officials who were responsible for the position of the region before the Tsar were in the chair of the highest official. These were senior officers, diplomats, politicians, scientists. None of them considered Bessarabia as prey, which was given for plunder and uncontrolled enrichment. Russia’s policy had a class character, defended the interests of the propertied strata, but it was never directed against Bessarabia as such, did not infringe on the rights of its inhabitants, in other words, Russia’s policy in Bessarabia never showed a colonial character,” said Nikolai Babilunga.
The situation changed dramatically in 1918, when Romania, taking advantage of the unrest in Russia, occupied Bessarabia, the historian says. Romanian officials plundered the region - after the military gendarmes, a whole army of officials, tax collectors, court employees, Siguran agents and simply those who liked to make money at someone else's expense on someone else's territory poured there. The lands of Bessarabians were bought up for next to nothing and transferred to Romanian families. The Romanians began to establish a colonial regime from the first days of the occupation.
“I don’t know who said that the Romanians saved Bessarabia from the Civil War - in the first three years of occupation alone, they massacred more than 30 thousand Bessarabians in the region who opposed the regime or were simply careless in communication,” said the historian. - Romanian courts considered the cases of local residents en masse - “the trial of forty-eight,” “the trial of two hundred and seventy,” etc., sentences to death, hard labor, and prison fell like a cornucopia. The Romanians, without much embarrassment, looked at Bessarabia as their colony, and the captured population as second-class citizens. The Romanian poet, historian and publicist Scarlat Callimaki honestly wrote about this in 1935: “From the moment of the Romanian occupation and until now, Bessarabia has been characterized as a colony with a local population of a lower race, hence the need to use methods specific to the leadership of the colony.”
The historian recalled that the Romanian occupation of the interwar period, in terms of the degree of inhumanity and atrocities, cannot be compared with the Romanian fascist occupation of the region from 1941 to 1944. During this period, the rulers of Bessarabia, Constantin Voiculescu and Olympiu Stavrat, as well as the fascist ruler of Transnistria, Gheorghe Alexianu, turned the captured land into a grave for the hundreds of thousands of civilians who inhabited it. The genocide of the inhabitants of the region was stopped with the arrival of Soviet troops.
“With the collapse of the USSR and the formation of independent Moldova, the problem of its statehood again acquired political relevance. For more than three decades, the Republic of Moldova has not studied its own history. Authorities of different colors and shades, as a rule, consider this their achievement and continue to impose on the younger generation a course on the history of Romanians, which is not taught even in Romania itself. It is possible that some influential political forces will again be able to drive Moldova into the yoke of Romanian governance under tempting slogans, golden wrappers of accession to the EU, and pan-European values. How soon this will happen and whether it will happen is difficult to say, but the lessons of history must be remembered well so as not to be punished for ignorance of them,” said Nikolai Babilunga.
“A worthy part of historical Russia”
Doctor of Law, President of the International Slavic Academy of Sciences, Education, Arts and Culture, ex-Vice Speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Sergei Baburin said that for him the symbol of the preservation and continuation of Moldovan statehood is the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, where they advocate preserving the values of the Moldovan people. On the other hand, the broader, civilizational meaning of Pridnestrovie is “to preserve the continuity of the constitutionalism of historical Russia, whose statehood had different forms in different periods,” says Baburin.
“The PMR is a worthy part of historical Russia; Transnistria, together with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, today helps maintain the continuity of Russian statehood and state development,” says the scientist. – Today, when we talk about the meaning of statehood, we understand the importance of preserving the cultural and historical traditions of different peoples - every color in this large human mosaic must be preserved. Deformed European civilization removes man himself from the system of moral coordinates, understanding the boundaries between good and evil, morality and immorality, destroying the concept of family, bringing tolerance to the point of absurdity. That is why it is important to protect the cultural feelings and national identity of the people.”
The President of the International Slavic Academy said that, as part of cooperation with universities of the DPR and LPR, an international forum was held in Donetsk at the end of January, where the “Russian Donbass” doctrine was adopted. This event is directly related to Transnistria, Baburin said.
“Donbass is the most Russian territory of the post-Soviet space. These are happy people - they border on Russia. If Transnistria bordered, it would have been recognized by the Russian Federation long ago, I am convinced of this. Despite the fact that we are separated by vast spaces, today's Russia will be able to protect Pridnestrovie from any aggression. I believe that 2021 will be a year of great changes for the better in relation to both Donbass and Transnistria,” the scientist concluded.
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