Misplaced Pages

Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Anonimu (talk | contribs) at 07:57, 30 June 2007 (put a lighter tag if you want but don't lie the editors this is an encyclopedia article). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 07:57, 30 June 2007 by Anonimu (talk | contribs) (put a lighter tag if you want but don't lie the editors this is an encyclopedia article)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Template:Totallydisputed On June 28 1940, Romania received an ultimatum from the Soviet Union to "return" Bessarabia and "cede" Northern Bukovina, with an implied threat of invasion in the event of non-compliance. The Romanian administration and armed forces "retreated" to avoid war, and the territory was organized by the Soviets on August 2, 1940 as follows: Most of Bessarabia became part of the newly-created Moldavian SSR, along with parts of the Moldavian ASSR, which was disbanded on that occasion. Northern Bukovina, and small portions of Bessarabia (northern half of Hotin County and two counties in Southern Bessarabia) were given to the Ukrainian SSR. These events were part of a larger context of Nazi and Soviet build-up to World War II.

The Soviet occupation was interrupted in 1941 when Romania took back Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, by attacking the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa, but the territory was recovered by the Soviet Union in 1944. The Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 saw Communist Romania give up claims to Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and especially after 1956, the Soviet persecution of locals and of those deported gradually eased up.

Soviet control of the region ended in 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.

Historical background

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). This was internationally recognized by peace treaties after World War I, signed by Great Britain, 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.

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 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 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 priorly 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.

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. One week later, on September 1, Germany started World War II by attacking 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.

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 defense by the Finns, especially along the Mannerheim line in the Karelian isthmus, the Soviets had to be satisfied with small territorial gains, including several villages, small towns and the city of Viipuri, 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 ultimata 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.

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 is 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 till 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".

Reply to the ultimatum

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

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 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:

In an attempt to hide his name under a council of more authoritative figures, Carol II has convinced Alexandru Vaida-Voevod to be sworn a minister during the night June 27-June 28. Vaida, along with all of the above, has 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 strictly ordered not to respond to any provocation.

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 Magazine 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. Rumania 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."

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.

"The Red Week"

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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 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.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.

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.

Soviet Bessarabia and Bukovina 1940-1941

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.

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 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, retaking Bessarabia and northern Bukovina by July 26. Despite disagreement from all political parties , 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).

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 coup against Antonescu, agreed to Soviet terms, and ordered military action in the western direction against Hungary (and theoretically Germany) to free Northern Transylvania, occupied 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 two territories in the Soviet Union: the Soviet-Romanian frontier was "fixed in accordance with the Soviet-Roumanian Agreement of 28 June 1940", although no Soviet-Roumanian Agreement was signed before 1944.

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.

Consequences for the local population

According to Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr up 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 the Governor of Bukovina.)

29,839 deported to Siberia on 13 June 1941, 35,796 on 6 July 1949 and 2,617 on 1 April 1951 (the last two figures are only for MSSR, excluding the territories now in Ukraine, from where people were also deported). These people were taken during the night, sometimes whole families with children. 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. Upon arrival, after weeks-long journeys by foot, to different destination points often deep in Taiga forests, they were forced to work in extreme cold and suffer humiliations, to the extent that half of them died in Siberia or on the way there. After Stalin's death, they were allowed to return to Moldavia, 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.

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".

220,000 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.

Many thousands died from epidemics as a result of 3.5 million Soviet soldiers passing through Bessarabia in 1944 (the German and Romanian troops opposing them until August 1944 numbered under 600,000).

File:28iunie1940.GIF
This flag was symbolically used by the Moldavian passive underground resistance during 1945-1989

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.

While 200,000 people fled from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the rest of Romania on 28 June, 1940, most returned in 1941. But, in front of the returning Russian troops in 1944, fearing political condemnations or deportations similar to the one on 13 June, 1941, up to 800,000 people moved westward to the remaining territory of Romania, leaving the main cities almost empty. These people were especially teachers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, with their families, virtually everyone that could be qualified as intellectual, who were the main target of Soviet persecutions. It took 25 years after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia for a new "intelligentsia" to emerge, mainly from farmers' class—itself a remarkable national regeneration.

Social and demographic consequences

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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 deported, of whom 57,000 were killed (not counting the Gulag). These policies also continued from 1944 until 1956, after which they were reduced to isolated cases.

According to other sources, in total throughout USSR, around 2,344,000 Romanians were arrested, persecuted or deported one way or another, of whom 703,000 perished..

These policies mostly targeted the elites of Bessarabian Romanians 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. Yet, they were by no means restricted to ethnic Romanians, as many ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, Jews who inhabited the region before 1940 were also deported en masse on social and political grounds.

Soviet authorities sought to fill this intellectual gap, 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. 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, and also unqualified workers, or people without strong family or native land ties, many of which with little or no education at all, and some outright criminals.

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) featured during the anti-Soviet and anti-Communist events in 1988-1992, and also was an important reason for the brief 1992 War of Transnistria that took the lives of several hundred people.

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.

Positive view of the occupation

Template:ActiveDiscuss

This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed.

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. During the retreat that took place from June 28 to July 3, the Romanian Army was attacked both by civilian Communists and by the Soviet Army who entered Bessarabia before the Romanian administration finished retreating. In the process, the Romanian Army suffered several thousand casualties (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."

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 and those better-to-do economically were not happy about the coming infringements on freedom of speech, 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. Also, some non-Romanians retreated in June-July 1940.

References

  1. ^ Soviet Ultimata and Replies of the Romanian Government in Ioan Scurtu, Theodora Stănescu-Stanciu, Georgiana Margareta Scurtu, Istoria Românilor între anii 1918-1940 (in Romanian), University of Bucharest, 2002
  2. After initailly stopping at the 1940 border, Romania has later occupied the the region between the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers from the Soviet Union, and then send expedition troups to several different areas to support the German advance futher into the USSR.
  3. [http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/clark/meta_pag.shtml Charles Upson Clark, Bessarabia: Russia and Roumania on the Black Sea, New York, 1927
  4. Volodymyr Kubijovyč, Arkadii Zhukovsky, Bukovyna, in Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2001
  5. Richard K. Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918-1921, McGill-Queen's Press, 1992, ISBN 0773508287, pp. 113-114.
  6. Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 23 1939. Complete text online at wikisource.org.
  7. The actual result of the first vote was 11 Reject the ultimatum, 10 Accept the ultimatum, 5 For negotiations with the USSR, and 1 Abstained.
  8. Different sources do not agree on this name from the journal of Carol II: reject, weak reject, accept can be found. It is suspected that the main reason Carol kept the journal was to present to the posterity as if he was ill-advised by his ministers.
  9. Hitler's Europe, Time Magazine, Monday, July 1, 1940
  10. Treaty of Peace with Roumania at Australian Treaty Series 1948, No. 2
  11. Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr "Cu gîndul la "O lume între două lumi": eroi, martiri, oameni-legendă" ("Thinking of 'A World between Two Worlds': Heroes, Martyrs, Legendary People"), Publisher: Lyceum, Orhei (1999) ISBN 9975-939-36-8
  12. Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr
  13. R. J. Rummel, Table 6.A. 5,104,000 victims during the pre-World War II period: sources, calculations and estimates, Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War, University of Hawaii.
  14. R. J. Rummel, Table 7.A. 13,053,000 victims during World War II: sources, calculations and estimates, op.cit.
  15. R. J. Rummel, Table 8.A. 15,6133,000 victims during the Postwar and Stalin's twilight period: Soviet murder: sources, calculations and estimates, op.cit.
  16. Paul Goma (2006). "Săptămâna Roşie". p. 206.
  17. Nicolas M. Nagy-Talavera (1970). "Green Shirts and Others: a History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania". p. 305.

External links

See also

Categories: