Soviet occupation of Bessarabia
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On June 28, 1940 Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were occupied by the Soviet Union.
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[edit] International context
The event was not singular, and was part of a larger context of the Nazi and Soviet build-up to the World War II.
On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression pact with 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.
On November 30, following the Pact and the refusal by Finland to succumb to Soviet terms, the Soviet Union invaded Finland; the Winter War lasted until March 12, 1940. Due to skillful defence 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 (southwest of Helsinki).
Between June 14 and June 17, 1940, the Soviet Union gave ultimatums to, and successfully occupied, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. (See Occupation of Baltic Republics.)
On June 22, 1940, four days before the ultimatum concerning Bessarabia, Marshal Pétain signed France's capitulation to Germany: Romania's main ally lost almost half of its territory, including the capital, Paris.
Next (after Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lativia, and Lithuania suffered from similar events) would come the turn of the then Romania's provinces of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to suffer the consequences of the Soviet-Nazi agreement.
[edit] History of the event
On June 26, 1940, at 22:00, Soviet People's Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov presented an ultimatum to Gheorghe Davidescu, Romanian ambassador to Moscow, in which the Soviet Union requested that Romania "liberate" by June 28 the region of Bessarabia and, as recompense for holding Bessarabia since the union of 1918, to "liberate" the northern part of the region of Bukovina. The Romanian government replied by suggesting it would agree to "immediate negotiations on a wide range of questions". A second ultimatum followed on June 27, deliberated during the following night by the Romanian Crown Council. Initially, only king Carol II agreed to accepting the ultimatum; by morning, that decision had become unanimous.
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 River Prut (separating Bessarabia from the rest of Romania). By 14:00, three key cities—Chişinău, Cernăuţi and Cetatea Alba had to be turned over to the Soviets—and by July 3 the new border along the Prut was totally closed.
Out of a population of 3,750,000 of the occupied territories (of which 2,500,000 were Romanians, 400,000 Ukrainians, 250,000 Russians, 270,000 Jews, and 120,000 Germans), 200,000 fled during those few days, most of them in several hours on June 28. The then Romanian government wished to avoid, albeit temporarely, a war with 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.
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.
[edit] Subsequent events
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 [1], Antonescu ordered the Romanian Army to continue the war eastward to Odessa, then Crimea, Kharkov, Stalingrad and the Caucasus.
The collaboration of a number of Bessarabian Jews with the Soviet occupation authorities was taken as a pretext by the Romanian administration to take action, which resulted in massive killings and deportations after Romania regained the territory in 1941 (see History of the Jews in Moldova#The Holocaust).
The killing squads of Einsatzgruppe D, together with special non-military units attached to the German and Romanian Armies were involved in many massacres in Bessarabia (over 10,000 in a single month of war, in June-July 1940), while deporting other thousands to Transnistria. The vast majority of Jews from Bessarabia fled with the Russian troops. However, 110,033 people (the vast majority of those that did not flee in 1941, plus some from two disricts of Romania proper) were deported to Transnistria (which was under Romanian military control during 1941-1944); in ghettos organized in several towns (there were also Jews not from Bessarabia in those camps, but the majority were from Bessarabia and Bukovina) over 60,000 people (mostly Bessarabian Jews) died (59,392 until 1943), from starvation, bad sanitation, or shot by special German units right before the arrival of Soviet troops in 1944.[2]
In 1942, 24,617 Gypsies from Romania were also deported to Transnistria; only half of those survived and returned to Romania in 1944.[3]
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.
[edit] Consequences of the event for the local population (up to 1953)
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, where from 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 in overcrowded railway cars for cattle, for 4 to 6 weeks, with no sanitation and very little food to Siberia or eastern Kazakhstan. 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 abasements, to the extent that half of them died in Siberia or on the way there. When, after Stalin's death, they were allowed to return to Moldavia, their houses and property had been confiscated, they could obtain no registration or documents, could be hired only with difficulties, 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". This was the only known famine in Moldavia since written records exist, that is from after the defeat of the Tatars in the 14th century.
220,000 died from August 1944 to May 1945 as cannon fodder, mobilized into the Soviet Army and sent to fight in Lithuania, Eastern Prussia, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Many thousands died from epidemics as a result of 3.5 million Soviet solders passing through Bessarabia in 1944 (the German and Romanian troops opposing them until August 1944 were under 600,000)
Thousands were mobilized into work camps (but at least they were formally, although very little, paid) and sent as 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 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 intellectuals, who were the main target of Soviet persecutions. It took 25 years after for a new "intelligentsia" to emerge, mainly from farmers' class - itself a remarkable national regeneration.
[edit] Social and demographic consequences
Since the events of June 1940 and the first year of occupation (1940-1941) lead to a massive exodus of intelectuals and businessmen, both in June-July 1940, but especially in the early 1944, many cities were left almost deserted, and many jobs had insufficient and/or underqualified professionals. The war also distroyed the industry and the infrastructure. Soviet authorities sought to fill this gap, and also to build a Soviet and party aparatus, by settling many outsiders.
Over the years some almost 1 million newcomers arrived from all corners of the Soviet Union. This group was by no means homogeneous, as it consisted of engineers, technicians and various other specialists who arrived to re-build and develop the industry, of many retiring officers and soldiers of the Soviet army, who were given residence upon their return from Germany, but also of many unqualified workers, or people without strong family or native land ties, many with little or no education at all, and some outright criminals. The later category's qualifications consisted of nothing but the ability to speak Russian.
The antagonism between the Romanians/Moldavians and the new-comers is up to this day an important (but by no means the unique) source of political instability, and an important reason for the brief 1992 war 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 1940-1953.
[edit] Positive view of the occupation
During 1940-1989, Soviet authorities promotted the events of June 28th, 1940, as a "liberation", and the day itself was a holiday in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
During 1930s, laws were passed in Romania forbidding Jews to occupy state officies, such as administration, police, army. Unlike Germany, Jews were not forbidden to practice medicine or teaching, and no infringements were made on the Jewish cultural life. But making state offices off limits to Jews, effectively transformed them in second-class citizens of Romania.
A (politically left-wing oriented) portion of the non-Romanian population of Bessarabia viewed the Soviet annexation as a relief. During the retreat that took place from June 28 to July 3, Romanian Army was attacked both by civilian Communists and by the Soviet Army who entered Bessarabia before Romanian administration finished the retreat. Romanian Army suffered several thousand casualties [1] (needs a second sourse), 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 direly one year later." (Nicolas M. Nagy-Talavera) [2]
The general sentiment with which the non-Romanian population received the occupation was mixed: while some politically left-minded 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 dramatic and tragic 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.
[edit] The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Here is the complete text of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 23, 1939.
Article III of the Secret Additional Protocol deals with Bessarabia:
"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."
[edit] See also
- June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum (There is a proposal to merge that page into this one.)
[edit] Bibliography
- 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
- 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
