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Between 28 June and 3 July 1940, theSoviet Union occupiedBessarabia and NorthernBukovina, following anultimatum made toRomania on 26 June 1940 that threatened the use of force.[1] Those regions, with a total area of 50,762 km2 (19,599 sq mi) and a population of 3,776,309 inhabitants, were incorporated into the Soviet Union.[2][3] On 26 October 1940, six Romanian islands on theChilia branch of theDanube, with an area of 23.75 km2 (9.17 sq mi), were also occupied by theSoviet Army.[4]
The Soviet Union had planned to accomplish the annexation with a full-scale invasion, but the Romanian government, responding to the Soviet ultimatum delivered on 26 June, agreed to withdraw from the territories to avoid a military conflict. The use of force had been made illegal by theConventions for the Definition of Aggression in July 1933, but from an international legal standpoint, the new status of the annexed territories was eventually based on a formal agreement through which Romania consented to the retrocession of Bessarabia and cession of Northern Bukovina. As it was not mentioned in the ultimatum, the annexation of the Hertsa region was not consented to by Romania, and the same is true of the subsequent Soviet occupation of the Danube islands.[1] On 24 June,Nazi Germany, which had acknowledged the Soviet interest in Bessarabia in a secret protocol to the 1939Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, had been made aware prior to the planned ultimatum but did not inform the Romanian authorities and was unwilling to provide support.[5] On 22 June,France, a guarantor of Romanian borders,fell to Nazi advances. This is considered to be an important factor in the Soviets' decision to issue the ultimatum.[6] The Soviet invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, since it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence that had been agreed with the Axis.[7]
On 2 August 1940, theMoldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as aconstituent republic of the Soviet Union, encompassing most of Bessarabia and part of theMoldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous republic of theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on the left bank of theDniester (now the breakawayTransnistria). TheHertsa region and the regions inhabited bySlavic majorities (Northern Bukovina,Northern andSouthern Bessarabia) were included in the Ukrainian SSR. A period of political persecution, including executions,deportations to labour camps and arrests, occurred during the Soviet administration.
In July 1941, Romanian and German troops occupied Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Hertsa during theAxisinvasion of the Soviet Union. A military administration was established, and the region'sJewish population was executed on the spot or deported toTransnistria, where large numbers were killed. In August 1944, during the SovietSecond Jassy–Kishinev Offensive, the Axis war effort on theEastern Front collapsed.The coup of 23 August 1944 caused the Romanian army to cease resisting the Soviet advance and to join the fight against Germany. Soviet forces advanced from Bessarabia into Romania, captured much of its standing army as prisoners-of-war andoccupied the country.[8] On 12 September 1944, Romania signed the Moscow Armistice with theAllies. The Armistice and the subsequent peace treaty of 1947 confirmed the Soviet-Romanian border as it was on 1 January 1941.[9][10]
Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Hertsa remained part of the Soviet Union until itcollapsed in 1991, when they became part of the newly independent states ofMoldova andUkraine. TheDeclaration of Independence of Moldova of 27 August 1991 declared the Soviet occupation illegal.[11]
As a historical region, Bessarabia was the eastern part of thePrincipality of Moldavia. In 1812, under the terms of theTreaty of Bucharest, the region was ceded by theOttoman Empire, to which Moldavia was avassal state, to theRussian Empire.
TheBessarabian question was both political and national in nature. According to the 1897 census,Bessarabia, then aguberniya of the Russian Empire, had a population that was 47.6%Romanians, 19.6% Ukrainians, 8% Russians, 11.8% Jews, 5.3% Bulgarians, 3.1% Germans and 2.9%Gagauz.[12][13] The figures showed a strong decrease in the proportion of Moldovans and Romanians compared to the census of 1817, which had been conducted shortly after the Russian Empire annexed Bessarabia in 1812. In that survey, Moldovans and Romanians represented 86% of the population.[14] The decrease seen in the census of 1897 was caused by the Russian policies of settling of other nationalities and ofRussification in Bessarabia.[13][15]
During the 1917Russian Revolution, anational assembly was formed in Bessarabia to manage the province.[16] The assembly, known locally asSfatul Țării, initiated several national and social reforms, and on 2/15 December 1917, it declared theMoldavian Democratic Republic an autonomous republic within theRussian Federative Democratic Republic.[17][18]
TheRumcherod, an Odessa-based soviet council, loyal to thePetrograd Soviet and formed by late December, decided to take actions against the authority ofSfatul Țării. Its Front Section (Frontotdel), made up of Bolsheviks was sent to Chisinau and on 1/14 January 1918 it captured strategic locations and buildings.[17][19] The Bolsheviks attempted to take power for themselves by arresting elected deputies, abolishing theSfatul Țării and replacing it with a self-proclaimed Moldavian Soviet. None of its members were ethnic Moldavian,[20] in contrast withSfatul Țării where the ethnic Moldovans were about 70%.[21] With the consent of theAllies and based on calls from more sources for a Romanian military intervention,[22][23]Romanian troops entered Bessarabia in early January 1918 and, by February, had pushed the Soviets over theDniester.[24][25] In the wake of the intervention, Soviet Russia broke off diplomatic relations with Romania and confiscated theRomanian Treasure, which was stored inMoscow for safekeeping.[20] To calm the situation, Entente representatives inIași issued a guarantee that the presence of the Romanian Army was only a temporary military measure for the stabilisation of the front, without further affecting the political life of the region.[25] In January 1918, theUkrainian People's Republic declared its independence from Russia, which left Bessarabia physically isolated from the Petrograd government and led to the declaration of independence of the Moldavian Republic on 24 January/5 February.[20] Following several Soviet protests, on 20 February/5 March, the Romanian prime minister, GeneralAlexandru Averescu, signed a treaty with the Soviet representative inOdessa,Christian Rakovsky, which provided that Romanian troops be evacuated from Bessarabia within two months in exchange for the repatriation of Romanian prisoners-of-war held by the Rumcherod.[26] After theWhite Army forced the Soviets to withdraw from Odessa, and theGerman Empire agreed to the Romanian annexation of Bessarabia in a secret agreement (part of theBuftea Peace Treaty) on 5/18 March,[24][27] Romanian diplomacy repudiated the treaty by claiming that the Soviets were unable to fulfill their obligations.[25]
On 27 March/9 April 1918, theSfatul Țării voted for theUnion of Bessarabia with Romania, conditional upon the fulfilment of an agrarian reform. There were 86 votes for union, 3 votes against, 36 deputies abstaining, and 13 deputies absent. The vote is regarded as controversial by several historians, including Romanian ones such as Cristina Petrescu andSorin Alexandrescu.[28] On 18 AprilGeorgy Chicherin, the SovietCommissar for Foreign Affairs, sent a note of protest against the incorporation of Bessarabia into Romania.[29]
Back in August 1916, the Entente and the neutral Romania signed a secret convention that stipulated Romania would join the war against the Central Powers in exchange for several territories ofAustria-Hungary, such asBukovina.[30] During the end ofWorld War I, national movements of the Romanians and the Ukrainians began to emerge in the province, but both movements had conflicting aims, each seeking to unite the province with their national state.[31] Thus, on 25 October 1918, a Ukrainian National Committee, gaining the upper hand inCzernowitz, declared Northern Bukovina, populated by a Ukrainian majority, part of theWest Ukrainian People's Republic.[32] On 27 October the Romanians followed suit, proclaiming the whole region united with Romania,[33] and calling in Romanian troops.[24] The Romanian intervention quickly established the Romanian Assembly as the dominant force, and on 28 November, a Congress of the Romanians, Germans, and Poles voted to unite with Romania. The representatives of the Ukrainian and Jewish populations boycotted the Congress, and the struggle between ethnic factions continued for several months.[32]
During theRussian Civil War, the Soviet governments of Ukraine and Russia, prompted by the unrest in Bessarabia from the Romanian occupation, issued a joint ultimatum to Romania on 1 May 1919, for its withdrawal from Bessarabia, and the next day, Christian Rakovsky, the chairman of the Ukrainian Soviet government, issued another ultimatum for the withdrawal of Romanian troops from Bukovina as well. TheRed Army pushed the Romanians over the Dniester, and aBessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed. The ultimatum also came in the context of theHungarian Soviet Republic, with the Soviets hoping to prevent aRomanian intervention in Hungary. A massive rebellion in Ukraine prevented further Soviet advances.[24][34][35] Soviet Russia would continue its policy of non-recognition of Romanian sovereignty over Bessarabia, which it considered Romanian-occupied territory, until 1940.
During the negotiations before theTreaty of Paris, theUnited States' representative asked for aplebiscite to be held in Bessarabia to decide its future, but the proposal was rejected by the head of the Romanian delegation,Ion I. C. Brătianu, who claimed such an undertaking would allow the distribution ofBolshevik propaganda in Bessarabia and Romania.[36] A plebiscite was also requested at the Peace Conference by theWhite Russians, only to be rejected again.[37] The Soviets would continue to press for a plebiscite during the following decade, only to be dismissed every time by the Romanian government.[38]
Romanian sovereignty over Bessarabia wasde jure recognized by theUnited Kingdom,France,Italy, andJapan in theBessarabian Treaty, signed on 28 October 1920. Soviet Russia and Ukraine promptly notified Romania that they did not recognize the treaty's validity and did not consider themselves bound by it.[39] Ultimately, Japan failed to ratify the treaty and so it never came into force,[40] leaving Romania without a valid international act to justify its possession of Bessarabia.[41] The United States refused to discuss territorial changes in the former Russian Empire without the participation of a Russian government.[42] Thus, it declined to recognize the incorporation of Bessarabia into Romania, and, unlike its position of recognizing the independence of theBaltic States, it insisted that Bessarabia was a territory under Romanian military occupation and incorporated the Bessarabian emigration quota into the Russian one in 1923.[43] In 1933, the US government tacitly included the Bessarabian emigration quota into that of Romania, an act that was considered ade facto recognition by Romanian diplomacy.[44] However, duringWorld War II, the US argued it had never recognized Bessarabia's union with Romania.[45]
In 1924, after the failure of theTatarbunary Uprising, the Soviet government created aMoldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on the left bank of the Dniester river within theUkrainian SSR. The Romanian government saw that as a threat and a possible staging ground for a communist invasion of Romania. Throughout the 1920s, Romania considered itself a pillar in thecordon sanitaire, the policy of containment of the Bolshevik threat, and avoided direct relations with the Soviet Union.[citation needed]
On 27 August 1928, both Romania and the Soviet Union signed and ratified theKellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.[46] On 9 February 1929, the Soviet Union signed a protocol with its western neighbors,Estonia,Latvia,Poland, and Romania, confirming adherence to the terms of the Pact.[47] In signing the Pact, the contracting parties agreed to condemn war as a recourse to solving conflict, to renounce it as an instrument of policy and to agree that all conflicts and disputes would only by peaceful means.[48] At the time, the Soviet ambassador,Maxim Litvinov, made it clear that neither the pact nor the protocol meant renunciation of Soviet rights over the "territories occupied by Romanians".[49] On 3 July 1933, Romania and the Soviet Union were signatories the London Convention for the Definition of Aggression, Article II of which defined several forms of aggression: "There shall be recognized as an aggressor that State which shall be the first to have committed one of the following actions: First—a declaration of war on another State. Second—invasion by armed forces of the territory of another State even without a declaration of war. (...)" and "No political, military, economic or other considerations may serve as an excuse or justification for the aggression referred to in Article II."
In January 1932 inRiga and in September 1932 inGeneva, Soviet-Romanian negotiations were held as a prelude to a non-aggression treaty, and on 9 June 1934, diplomatic relations were established between both countries. On 21 July 1936, Litvinov andNicolae Titulescu, the Soviet and Romanian Ministers of Foreign Affairs, agreed upon a draft of a Mutual Assistance Pact.[50] It was sometimes interpreted as a non-aggression treaty, which wouldde facto recognize the existing Soviet-Romanian border. The protocol stipulated that any common Romanian-Soviet action should be approved by France ahead of time. In negotiating with the Soviets for the agreement, Titulescu was highly criticized by theRomanian far right. The protocol was to be signed in September 1936, but Titulescu was dismissed in August 1936, leading the Soviet side to declare the agreement null and void. Subsequently, no further attempts were made to reach a political rapprochement between Romania and the Soviet Union.[51] Moreover, by 1937, Litvinov and the Soviet press revived the dormant claim over Bessarabia.[52]
On 23 August 1939, theSoviet Union andNazi Germany signed theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that contained an additional secret protocol with maps in which a demarcation line throughEastern Europe was drawn and divided it into the German and Soviet interest zones. Bessarabia was among the regions assigned to the Sovietsphere of interest by the Pact. Article III of its Secret Additional Protocol stated:
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.[53]
On 29 March 1940, Molotov declared on the Sixth session of the Supreme Soviet: "We do not have a pact of non-aggression with Romania. This is due to the presence of an unsolved issue, the issue of Bessarabia, the seizure of which the Soviet Union never recognized although it never raised the issue of returning it by military means".[54] That was seen as a threat to Romania.
Assured by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of Soviet non-interference, Germany started World War II one week later byinvading Poland from the west on 1 September 1939. The Soviet Unionattacked Poland from the east on 17 September, and by 6 October,Poland had fallen. Romanian Prime MinisterArmand Călinescu, a strong supporter of Poland in its conflict with Germany, was assassinated on 21 September by elements of the far-rightIron Guard with Nazi support. Romania remained formally neutral in the conflict but aided Poland by providing access to Allied military supplies from theBlack Sea to the Polish border and also a route for the Polish government and army to withdraw after their defeat. The Polish government also preferred a formally neutral Romania to ensure the safety from German bombardments of supplies transported through Romanian territory. (See alsoRomanian Bridgehead.)
On 2 June 1940, Germany informed the Romanian government that to receive territorial guarantees, Romania should consider negotiations with the Soviet Union.
From 14–17 June 1940, the Soviet Union gave ultimatum notes toLithuania,Estonia andLatvia, and when the ultimata were satisfied, it used the bases that it had gained tooccupy those territories.
TheFall of France on 22 June and the subsequent British retreat from the Continent rendered the assurances of assistance to Romania meaningless.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(June 2008) |
By directives OV/583 and OV/584 of the Soviet People Commissariat of Defense, military units of theOdessa Military District were ordered into battle-ready state in the spring of 1940. Soviet troops were concentrated along the Romanian border between 15 April and 10 June 1940. To co-ordinate the efforts of theKiev and Odessa military districts in the preparation of action against Romania, the Soviet Army created theSouthern Front under GeneralGeorgy Zhukov, which was composed of the5th,9th and12th Armies. The Southern Front had 32 infantry divisions, 2 motorized infantry divisions, 6 cavalry divisions, 11 tank brigades, 3 paratrooper brigades, 30 artillery regiments and smaller auxiliary units.[55]
On 25 June, the Soviet Southern Front received a directive:[56]
1. The soldiery and the bourgeois-capitalist clique of Romania, preparing provocationary acts against the USSR, concentrated on the borders of the USSR large armed forces, increased the border posts to 100 persons, enlarged the number of commandos sent to guard the border and is with enforced tempo constructing defense facilities on its border and the close rear.
2. The commander of the Southern Front set the troops of the Southern district the task to: a) clear of mines, seize and hold bridges over the borderline rivers; b) firmly defend state borders in the front of the 12th army where the troops of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army are going to act; c) to provide the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army with guides; d) to cleanse the rear of the 12th army from possible pockets of enemy in the near-border belt of Romania.
Two action plans were devised. The first plan was prepared for if Romania did not agree to evacuate Bessarabia and Bukovina. The Soviet12th Army was to strike southward along thePrut River towardsIași while the Soviet9th Army was to strike westwards, south ofChișinău towardsHuși. The objective of the plan was to surround the Romanian troops in theBălți–Iași area.
The second plan took into consideration the possibility that Romania would agree to Soviet demands and evacuate its military forces. In such a situation, Soviet troops were given the mission to quickly reach the Prut River and oversee the evacuation of Romanian troops. The first plan was taken as the default course of action. Along the portions of the border in which the offensive was planned to take place, the Soviets prepared at least a triple superiority of men and materiel.[55]
On 26 June 1940, at 22:00,Soviet People's CommissarVyacheslav Molotov presented anultimatum note toGheorghe Davidescu, the Romanian plenipotentiary minister to Moscow, in which the Soviet Union demanded the evacuation of the Romanian military and civil administration fromBessarabia and the northern part ofBukovina.[57][58] The Soviets stressed their sense of urgency: "Now that the military weakness of the USSR is a thing of the 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...".[59] The German Minister of Foreign Affairs,Joachim von Ribbentrop, was informed by the Soviets of their intentions to send an ultimatum to Romania regarding Bessarabia and Bukovina on 24 June 1940. In the ensuing diplomatic co-ordination, Ribbentrop expressed mainly concern for the fate of the ethnic Germans in both provinces, claimed the number ofGermans in Bessarabia to be 100,000, and affirmed that Soviet demands regardingBukovina were new.[60] He also pointed out that Germany had strong economic interests in the rest of Romania.[a]
The text of the ultimatum note sent to Romania on 26 June 1940, incorrectly stated that Bessarabia was populated mainly byUkrainians: "[...] 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 enormous loss inflicted on the Soviet Union and Bessarabia's population by 22 years of Romanian reign over Bessarabia" and because its "fate is linked mainly with Soviet Ukraine by the community of its historical fate, and by the community of language and ethnic composition". Northern Bukovina had some historical connections withGalicia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 as part of itsinvasion of Poland, in the sense that both had been part ofAustria-Hungary from the second half of the 18th century to 1918. Northern Bukovina was inhabited by a compact Ukrainian population, which outnumbered Romanians,[61] but Bessarabia was regarded as having a Romanian majority even though most of the population adopted a "Moldavian" identity.[62]
On the morning of 27 June, amobilization of Romanian troops started.[63] In the early hours of 27 June,KingCarol II had a meeting with his prime minister,Gheorghe Tătărescu, and his minister for external affairs,Ion Gigurtu, and he summoned the ambassadors ofItaly andGermany. Carol communicated his wish to stand against the Soviet Union and asked for their countries to influenceHungary andBulgaria in the hopes of not declaring war againstRomania and to reclaimTransylvania andSouthern Dobruja. Stating that it would be "in the name of peace" to accede to Soviet demands, the ambassadors urged the King to stand down.[64]
On 27 June, Molotov declared that if the Romanians rejected Soviet demands, the Soviet troops would cross the border.[63] Molotov gave the Romanian government 24 hours to respond to the ultimatum.[58]
On the same day, the Romanian government replied by suggesting it would agree to "immediate negotiations on a wide range of questions".[65] The Soviets considered the Romanian government's response to be "imprecise" because it did not directly accept the immediate transfer of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.[66] On 27 June, a second Soviet ultimatum note put forward a specific time frame that requested the evacuation of the Romanian government from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina within four days.[66] It stated the Soviet military's intention to enter the Bessarabian cities ofChișinău andCetatea Albă and the Bukovinian city ofCernăuți.[66]
On the morning of 28 June 1940, following advice by both Germany and Italy, the Romanian government, led by Gheorghe Tătărescu, under the semi-authoritarian rule of Carol II, agreed to submit to the Soviet demands.[67] Soviet forces also occupied theHertsa region, part of theRomanian Old Kingdom, which was in neither Bessarabia nor Bukovina.[67] The Soviets said that was "probably a military error".[67] As well, the final border line cut off about 1.7 km2 (0.66 sq mi) fromMaramureș, as the extending westerly border line ran south of the old historical border between Maramureș, Bukovina, andGalicia, which extended to the north to the Muncel River and border marker N542 (as seen onCold War Soviet military cartography maps), a tributary of Pârcălab River, which flows into theCeremuș River.
The decision to accept the Soviet ultimatum and to start a "withdrawal" (avoiding the use ofceding) from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina was deliberated upon by theRomanian Crown Council during the night of 27-28 June. The second (decisive) vote outcome, according to the journal of King Carol II, was:
The same night, Carol II also convincedAlexandru Vaida-Voevod to be sworn in as minister. Vaida, along with all of the above, signed the final Crown Council recommendation in which Carol II ordered the army to stand down.
On 28 June at 9:00, Communique no. 25 of the General Staff of the Romanian Army officially announced the terms of the ultimatum to the population, its acceptance by the Romanian government, and the intent to evacuate the army and administration to thePrut River. By 14:00, three key cities (Chișinău,Cernăuți, andCetatea Albă) had to be turned over to the Soviets. The military installations andcasemates, built during a 20-year period for the event of a Soviet attack, were relinquished without a fight, the Romanian Army being placed by its command under strict orders not to respond to provocations. In a declaration to the local population, the Soviet command stated: "The great hour of your liberation from the yoke of Romanian boyars, landowners, capitalists andSiguranța has arrived".[63]
Part of the population left the regions with the Romanian administration. According to the April 1941 Romanian census, the total number of refugees from the evacuated territories amounted to 68,953, but as the ultimatum came unexpectedly, many people did not have time to evacuate, and over 70,000 requests for repatriation to Romania were later recorded. On the other hand, by early August 1940, between 112,000 and 149,974 people had left the other territories of Romania for the Soviet-ruled Bessarabia. That figure comprised Romanians of the region but also includedJews, both from Bessarabia and from theOld Kingdom, who wanted to escape the officially endorsedantisemitism in Romania.[68]
As Romania agreed to satisfy Soviet territorial demands, the second plan was immediately put into action, with the Red Army immediately moving into Bessarabia and north Bukovina on the morning of 28 June. By 30 June the Red Army reached the border along the Prut River. On 3 July the border was closed completely from the Soviet side.
One month after the military occupation, on 2 August 1940, theMoldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was established on the main part of theannexed territory, and smaller portions were given to theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Six Bessarabian counties and small portions of the other three counties, along with parts of theMoldavian ASSR (formerly part of the Ukrainian SSR), which was disbanded on that occasion, formed the Moldavian SSR, which became one of 15 union republics of the Soviet Union. The Soviet governmental commission headed byNikita Khrushchev, the Communist Party chief of Ukrainian SSR, allottedNorthern Bukovina,Hertsa region and larger parts ofHotin (Northern Bessarabia),Ismail, andCetatea Albă (Budjak) counties to the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1940 to 1941, political persecution of certain categories of locals took the form of arrests, executions anddeportations to the eastern parts of the Soviet Union. According toAlexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr,[69] 32,433 people received a politically motivated sentence, of which 8,360 were sentenced to death or died during interrogations.
Serious incidents occurred in Northern Bukovina, where attempts by the locals to force the border towards Romania resulted in the Soviet border guards opening fire against unarmed civilians. In one case, atFântâna Albă, that resulted in a massacre in which between 50 and 3,000 Romanians were killed.[70][71] The situation was the same on the other side of the border: roughly 300 (or between 80 and 400, according to other sources[72]) civilians, most of them Jews, waiting to leave for Soviet-controlled Bessarabia were shot by the Romanian army inGalați railway station on 30 June 1940.[73]
The installation of the Soviet administration was also accompanied by major changes in the economic domain, as medium and large commercial and industrial enterprises werenationalized. The Soviet government also instituted aland reform that redistributed 229,752 hectares to 184,715 poor peasant households and limited estates to 20 hectares in the south and 10 hectares elsewhere. Acollectivisation drive was also started in 1941, but the lack of agricultural machinery made the progress extremely slow, with 3.7% of the peasant households being included in akolkhoz or asovkhoz by the middle of year.[74] To bolster the government's image, much of the 1941 budget was directed towards social and cultural needs, with 20% allocated to health services and 24% to education and literacy campaigns. The theological institute in Chișinău was closed, but six new higher education institutions were created, including aconservatory and apolytechnic. Furthermore, the salaries of industrial workers and administrative personnel were increased two to three times the pre-Soviet levels.[75]
In September 1941, Romanian authorities uncovered evidence of torture perpetrated at theNKVD headquarters and in the basement of the Metropolitan Palace in Chișinău. Some 80 bodies were discovered, of which 15 in a common grave, with their hands and feet tied. The bodies had been mutilated and burned, then doused with quicklime and acids; from the remains of the clothing it was inferred that the victims were priests and students.[76]
| This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(June 2008) |
According toTime from Monday 1 July 1940,
This week Soviet planes began making reconnaissance flights over Bessarabia. Then border clashes were reported all along the Dn[i]estr River. Though the Rumanian Army made a show of resistance for the record, it has no chance of stopping the Soviet without help, and Germany had already acknowledged Soviet's claim to Bessarabia in secret deals last year. Romania had accepted her destiny in the new Europe that Hitler plans. She will also lose Transylvania to Hungary and probably a part of the Dobruja to Bulgaria. (...) Soviet's Sphere. Soviet 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 Soviet Union a free hand in the Baltic as well as Bessarabia.[77]
The territorial concessions of 1940 produced deep sorrow and resentment among Romanians and hastened the decline in popularity of the regime led by KingCarol II of Romania. Three days after the annexation, Romania renounced the 1939 Anglo-French guarantee. A new government ofIon Gigurtu was sworn in on 5 July 1940, which withdrew the country from the League of Nations on 11 July and announced its desire to join theAxis camp on 13 July. A series of measures taken by Gigurtu, including official persecution of Jews inspired by the GermanNuremberg Laws in July and August 1940, failed to sway Germany from awardingNorthern Transylvania toHungary in theSecond Vienna Award on 30 August 1940.
That led to a near-uprising in the country. On 5 September King Carol II proposed to General (later Marshal)Ion Antonescu to form a new government. Antonescu's first act was to force the King to abdicate, for the fourth and final time, and to flee Romania. An alliance was formed by Ion Antonescu with remnants of theIron Guard (partly destroyed in 1938), anantisemiticfascist party, and took power on 6 September 1940.Mihai, the son of Carol II, succeeded him as King of Romania. The country was declared aNational Legionary State. Between October 1940 and June 1941, around 550,000 German troops entered Romania. In November, Antonescu signed theTripartite Pact, which tied Romania militarily to Germany, Italy and Japan. In January 1941, the Iron Guardattempted a coup, which failed and placed Antonescu firmly in power, with the approval ofHitler. The authoritarian regime of Antonescu (1940–1944) did not restore political parties and democracy but only co-opted several individual civilians in the government.
Overall, thedesire to regain the lost territories was invoked as a justification by Romania for its entry into World War II on the side of the Axis against the Soviet Union.
On 22 June 1941, Romania, alongside the other Axis powers, commenced aninvasion of the Soviet Union, with Romania's stated intent being the recovery of Bessarabia and Bukovina.[78] The Axis forces completed the occupation of these territories by 26 July 1941.
KingMichael I, alongside his motherHelen andMihai Antonescu, participated in the opening ceremony forLiberation Tower inGhidighici on 1 November 1942.[79]
On 27 July 1941,Ion Antonescu, despite major political opposition,[80][self-published source?] ordered the Romanian army to continue the war further eastward into Soviet territory, fighting atOdessa,Crimea,Kharkov,Stalingrad, and theCaucasus. Between late 1941 and early 1944, Romania occupied and administered the region between theDniester andSouthern Bug rivers, known asTransnistria, as well as sending expeditionary forces to support the German advance into the Soviet Union in several areas.
In the context of increasing antisemitism within the country during the late 1930s, the Antonescu government officially adopted a narrative ofJewish Bolshevism, declaring Jews responsible for Romania's territorial losses during the summer of 1940. Thus, after the reconquest in July 1941, in a coordinated effort with Germany, the Romanian government embarked on a campaign to "cleanse" the recaptured territories, engaging in the mass deportation and murder of the remaining Jewsin Bukovina andBessarabia who hadn't fled further into the Soviet Union. In 1941 alone, between 45,000 and 60,000 Jews within these territories were killed by Romanian and German forces. The survivors were quickly rounded up intoghettos, and of these between 154,449 and 170,737 were deported to Transnistria—by 16 September 1943, only 49,927 were still alive. By 1944, only 19,475 Jews in Bukovina andDorohoi County had avoided being deported, most of them inCernăuți.Romanian gendarmerie units, alongside German troops and local militias, also carried out the destruction of the Jewish community in Transnistria, murdering between 115,000 and 180,000 people.[81]
During the war, many young inhabitants of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were recruited into the Romanian army. From February until August 1944, Romania struggled to defend itself in the face of Soviet counteroffensives, with the Antonescu regime ultimately being liquidated upon the country's total occupation by the Red Army in late 1944. Overall, the Romanian army suffered 475,070 casualties on theEastern Front during World War II, with 245,388 eitherkilled in action, missing, or otherwise dying in hospitals or in non-battle circumstances. According to Soviet archival documents, 229,682 Romanianprisoners of war were taken by theRed Army; theNKVD later counted 187,367 within their POW camps. As of 22 April 1956, 54,612 of these were counted as having died in captivity, with 132,755 counted as freshly released; the front levels of the Soviet Army counted 27,800 Romanians and 14,515 Moldovans as released.[82]
In early 1944, the Soviet Union gradually took over the territory through theUman–Botoșani andSecond Jassy–Kishinev offensives. On 23 August 1944, with Soviet troops advancing and the Eastern Front falling within Romania's territory, acoup led byKing Michael, with support from opposition politicians and the army, deposed the Antonescu dictatorship, ceased military actions against the Allies and later put Romania's battered armies on their side. In the days immediately after the coup, as Romania's action was unilateral and no armistice had been agreed with the Allied Powers, the Red Army continued to treat the Romanian troops as enemy combatants, and in the confusion, the Romanian troops did not oppose them. As a consequence, the Soviets took a large number of Romanian troops asprisoners of war with little or no fighting. Some of the prisoners were Bessarabian-born. Michael acquiesced to Soviet terms, and Romania wasoccupied by the Soviet Army.
From August 1944 to May 1945, about 300,000 people were conscripted into the Soviet Army from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and were sent to fight against Germany inLithuania,East Prussia,Poland and Czechoslovakia.
In 1947, as part of theParis Peace Treaties, Romania and theSoviet Union signed a border treaty confirming the border fixed in 1940.[83] Several additional uninhabited islands in theDanube Delta as well as theSnake Island, not mentioned in the treaty, were transferred from communist Romania to the Soviet Union in 1948.
At the moment of the Soviet occupation, the regions had a total population of 3,776,309 inhabitants. According to Romanian official statistics, this was distributed among the ethnic groups as follows:Romanians (53.49%),Ukrainians andRuthenians (15.3%),Russians (10.34%),Jews (7.27%),Bulgarians (4.91%),Germans (3.31%), others (5.12%).[84][85]
During the Soviet takeover in 1940,Bessarabian Germans (82,000) and Bukovinian 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 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.
Deportations of locals on grounds of belonging to theintelligentsia orkulak classes, or of havinganti-Soviet nationalist ideas occurred in 1940 to 1941 and 1944 to 1951. The deportations touched all local ethnic groups:Romanians,Ukrainians,Russians, Jews,Bulgarians,Gagauz. Significant deportations happened on three separate occasions: according to Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr,[69] 29,839 people were deported toSiberia on 13 June 1941. In total, in the first year of Soviet occupation,[86] no fewer than 86,604 people from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Hertsa Region suffered political repression.[87] That number is close to the one calculated by Russian historians following documents in the Moscow archives, of ca. 90,000 people repressed (arrested, executed, deported or conscripted for work) in the first year of Soviet occupation.[88] The greater part of the figure (53,356) was represented by forced conscription for labour across the Soviet Union.[89] The classification of such labourers as victims of political repression is, however, disputed since the poverty of the locals and Soviet propaganda are also considered important factors leading to the emigration of the local workforce.[90] The arrests continued even after 22 June 1941.[91][92]
Based on postwar statistics, the historianIgor Cașu has shown that Moldovans and Romanians comprised roughly 50 percent of the deportees, with the rest being Jews,Russians,Ukrainians,Gagauzes,Bulgarians andRoma people. Considering the ethnic make-up of the region, he concludes that the prewar and postwar repressions were not directed at any specific ethnic or national group but could be characterised as "genocide" or "crime against humanity". The 1941 deportation targeted "anti-Soviet elements" and comprised former representatives of the Romanian interwar administration (policemen, gendarmes, prison guards, clerks), large landowners, tradesmen, former officers of the Romanian, Polish and Tsarist armies and people who had defected the Soviet Union before 1940.Kulaks did not become main targets of repression until the postwar period.[89] Before Soviet archives were made accessible,R. J. Rummel had estimated between 1940 and 1941, 200,000 to 300,000 Romanian Bessarabians were deported, of whom 18,000 to 68,000 were killed according to him.[93]
After the installation of the Soviet administration, religious life inBessarabia and NorthernBukovina underwent a persecution similar to the one inRussia between theWorld Wars. In the first days of occupation, certain population groups welcomed the Soviet power, and some of them joined the newly established Sovietnomenklatura, including theNKVD, the Sovietpolitical police. The latter had used those locals to find and arrest numerous priests.[94] Other priests were arrested and interrogated by the Soviet NKVD itself, deported to the interior of the Soviet Union and killed. Research on the subject is still at an early stage. As of 2007, the Orthodox Church has recognized themartyrdom to about 50 clergymen, who died in the first year of Soviet rule (1940–1941).[94]
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In earlySoviet historiography, the chain of events that led to the creation of the Moldavian SSR was described as a "liberation of the Moldovan people from a 22-year-old occupation by boyar Romania." The Soviet authors[95] went into great length to describe scenes how the liberated Bessarabian people eagerly welcomed Soviet troops ending the "22 years of yoke under the Romanian capitalists and landowners", organized demonstrations underred flags and liberated imprisoned communists from theSiguranțatorture chambers. In 1940 to 1989, the Soviet authorities promoted the events of 28 June 1940 as a "liberation", and the day itself was a holiday in theMoldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
However, in 2010, the Russian political analystLeonid Mlechin stated that the term occupation is not adequate but that "it is more an annexation of a part of the territory of Romania".[96]
From 26-28 June 1991, an International Conference "Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its consequences for Bessarabia" took place inChișinău, gathering scholars such asNicholas Dima,Kurt Treptow,Dennis Deletant,Michael Mikelson,Stephen Bowers,Lowry Wymann,Michael Bruchis, in addition to other Moldovan, Soviet and Romanian authors. An informalDeclaration of Chișinău was adopted, according to which the Pact and its Secret Protocol "constituted the apogee of collaboration between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and following these agreements, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were occupied by the Soviet Army on 28 June 1940 as a result of ultimative notes addressed to the Romanian government". It further stated that the events were a "pregnant manifestation of imperialist policy of annexation and diktat, a shameless aggression against the sovereignty (...) of neighboring states, members of the League of Nations. The Stalinist aggression constituted a serious breach of the legal norms of behavior of states in international relations, of the obligations assumed under theBriand-Kellog Pact of 1928, and under theLondon Convention on the Definition of the Aggressor of 1933". The declaration stated that "the Pact and the Secret Additional Protocol are legally nullab initio, and their consequences must be eliminated". For the latter, it called for "political solutions that would lead to the elimination of the acts of injustice and abuse committed through the use of force, diktat and annexations,... [solutions] in full consensus with the principles of theFinal Act of Helsinki, and theParis Charter for a new Europe".[97][98]
On 28 June 1991, theUS Senate voted a resolution sponsored bySenatorsJesse Helms (R-NC) andLarry Pressler (R-SD), members of the USSenate Committee on Foreign Relations, which recommended theUS government to
In the clauses of this Senate resolution it has been stated, among other things, that "(...) The armed forces of the Soviet Union invaded the Kingdom of Romania and occupied Eastern Moldova, Northern Bukovina and Hertsa Region. (...) The annexation was prepared beforehand in a Secret Agreement to a Non-Aggression Treaty signed by the Governments of the Soviet Union and the German Reich on 23 August 1939. (...) Between 1940 and 1953 hundreds of thousand of Romanian from Moldova and Northern Bukovina were deported by the USSR to Central Asia and Siberia (...)."[99][100][101]
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