Tag Archives: Romania

Moldova – the sad results of 33 years of independence

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This translation concludes for now our series of articles about the Moldavian/Romanian conundrum, taking a look at the newest history of and the state of affairs in Moldavia. The article appeared on August 28, 2024 in the “Rythm of Eurazia” Dzen blog, written by Ilya Kiselyov.

Moldova – the sad results of 33 years of independence

Drawing by A. Gorbarukov

Every year in August, a kind of “independence parade” takes place in the post–Soviet space – states that have been formed for more than 30 years celebrate the dates of their declaration of independence. At the same time, for some reason, all these dates are given a festive character, although not all of the post-Soviet countries have been able to demonstrate progress in their development over the past years, and a number of them can be safely described as in a state of decline and even degradation.

It is noteworthy that the latter primarily include those post-Soviet states that have chosen the Western direction in their geopolitical orientation. These countries lost their independence, which they gained in 1991, joining the EU and NATO like the Baltic republics. As a result, they had to pay for this not only by obeying the decisions that are made outside of their the countries, in Brussels, but also by actually abandoning their own economy, inherited from the USSR.

Similar processes are taking place in those post-Soviet states that have not yet “earned” the right to join the EU, but whose authorities are very eager to do so. One of these post-Soviet states is the small Republic of Moldova, which celebrates Independence Day on August 27. Its current authorities, led by President Maia Sandu, are doing everything to drag their country into the EU.

The active stage of renunciation of sovereignty in Moldova began in 2009, when a coalition of pro-Western parties came to power in the republic, proclaiming a course towards “European integration” and joining the EU. Today, this process is being promoted by the head of state, as well as the PAS party as the parliamentary majority forming the government of the country. At the same time, blasphemously, “independent” Moldova is governed by people who have in their pocket a passport from neighbouring Romania. It’s hard to believe, but these includes absolutely all the top officials of the country: the president, the Prime Minister and members of the government, the Speaker and members of Parliament, the head of the Constitutional Court, most other judges, employees of ministries, law enforcement agencies and special services.
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The atrocities of the Romanians shocked even the Germans: what was the Nazi occupation of Moldavia like

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Continuing the topic of Romania and Moldavia, we present a translation of an article by Maxim Kemerrer, which was published in RuBaltic on July 17, 2022.

The atrocities of the Romanians shocked even the Germans: what was the Nazi occupation of Moldavia like

81 years have passed since the entry of Romanian troops into the capital of the Moldavian SSR, Chisinau. Today’s leaders in Chisinau and Bucharest call the events of the initial stage of the Great Patriotic War for another reunification of Romania and Moldavia. In fact, it was another occupation of Moldavia by Romania, which resulted in the terror of the civilian population and the destruction of the peoples of the multinational Moldavian SSR by the Romanian occupiers.

The state of Romania arose largely due to the support of Britain and France, who sought to create their own vassal near the southern borders of the Russian Empire, which could be used against Russia. (BATS note: yet, as we saw from the publication How Russia created Romania, it was done at the expense of Russia, and with Russian arms.) From the very beginning of its existence, Romania began to fulfil precisely this task, making territorial claims to Bessarabia.

However, it never wanted to go to war with Russia, and therefore, at that time, limited itself to cultural and ideological expansion, declaring that one people lived on the two banks of the Prut.

At the same time, the fact that the population of Bessarabia has always been multinational, with a certain dominance of Moldavians, was completely ignored.

Besides them, Malorossians lived compactly in the north and east of this territory, a significant part of the south of Bessarabia was compactly populated by Gagauz and Bulgarians, and the introduction of the pale of settlement in the Russian Empire led to a large number of Jews coming to Bessarabia. Thus, according to the census results of the late 19th century, Jews made up up to a third of the population of Chisinau, and many county centers of the country were simply large Jewish townships.

Romania’s desire to seise Bessarabia came true only in 1918, when the Moldavian People’s Republic was established after the Great October Socialist Revolution. On December 7, 1917, under the pretext of purchasing food, two regiments of the Romanian army crossed the Prut River, occupied Leovo and several border villages. Soon, on March 27, 1918, the parliament, called the Sfatul Tserii (Council of the Country), surrounded by Romanian soldiers with machine guns, voted for the “annexation” of Bessarabia to Romania; representatives of the Romanian military command were also present in the voting hall. After that, the parliament was dispersed by the Romanian military.

A commentary

A commentary from Moldavian parliament deputy from Beltsy, Alexander Nesterovsky, published in Bloknot Moldova. The commentary was made in 2018 with regard to the initiative from the Moladvian “Party of National Unity” to organise the so-caleld “Day of unity” in Beltsy:

“In the very first days after the Romanian troops entered the territory of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, the punishers shot 45 peasant delegates of the 3rd Bessarabian Provincial Peasant Congress, held in Chisinau. Then 58 members of the Sfatul Tserii, who opposed the annexation of Bessarabia to Romania, were arrested. Some of them were shot. Their place in the hall was taken by supporters of the Romanian authorities. The decision of Sfatul Tserii to join Romania on April 9, 1918, was made at gunpoint, but even after that, almost half of the delegates – 47% – voted against joining.”

As a result, Bessarabia was under Romanian occupation until June 28, 1940; throughout this period, the territory between the Dniester and the Prut remained in fact in the status of a colony and was the region of Romania with the lowest standard of living.

During the 22 years of the Romanian occupation, Bessarabia took the first place in Europe in terms of population mortality, over 500,000 people left it, tens of thousands of local residents who opposed the occupation were shot, and about 200,000 died of starvation.

The Romanian occupation ended in 1940, when Soviet troops occupied Bessarabia. By this time, the Moldavian Autonomous Republic (MASSR) had already existed in the USSR for 16 years, established on the lands of the Ukrainian SSR and the Left Bank of the Dniester (modern Transnistria).

Unfortunately, the period after the liberation of Bessarabia was short — less than a year later, on June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began, in which Romania became an ally of Hitler, and on July 16, Romanian occupation forces again entered the territory of Bessarabia.
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How Russia created Romania

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Now that the “correct” president was selected for the Romanian, while the point of “the last Ukrainian” is quickly approaching, the time has come to take a closer look at that country, as well as its neighbouring, far order Moldavia. Below is a translation of an historiographic article from New Izvestiya, taking a quick tour into the very short history of Roimania.

A certain historical parallel to Finland emerges, where in both cases Russia played the key role in creating the statehood of these states, yet, the states turned on their creator with a rabidly russophobic/racist hatred.

In the context of this article, read also our recent translation The text of Hitler’s statement on the extermination of Slavic peoples has been published in Russia for the first time.

How Russia created Romania

Once upon a time, during the early Middle Ages, Romanians, like Russians, became Christian – Orthodox Christians. However, at that time Romania, as a country bearing such name, did not exist: there were disparate principalities united only by faith.

Even then, our peoples were linked by a common past: Romanians had long used Church Slavonic in worship and Cyrillic for communication and writing texts.

The Prut Campaign of 1711. Peter I and Gospodar of Moldavia, Dmitry Cantemir in the battle for Moldavia against the Turks and Tatars, 1911. Painter: Victor Arseni.

So how did Romania appear on the world map?

The Gospodars (rulers) of Wallachia and Moldavia (on the territory of the present-day Romania) have long sought friendship and protection from the Russian monarchs. The rulers, Orthodox Christians, were burdened by the fate of the vassals of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. They also did not like the need to leave their children and loved ones hostage in Istanbul, where many of them, and sometimes the rulers themselves, were martyred at the hands of the sultans. The poll tax, which all non-Muslim subjects had to pay to the sultan, was also a heavy burden, and on top of that, there were numerous levies and tributes that had to be collected annually and sent to the Ottoman Turks. Already in the 18th century, the gospodars and boyars saw Russia as a patron and protector. Fleeing from the Turks, many found shelter and fame at the royal court. In 1711, Dmitry Cantemir, the exiled ruler of Moldavia, arrived at the court of Peter the Great with a thousand boyars. He became the most serene Knyaz of Russia, along with illustrious comrade of Peter’s, Alexander Danilovich Menshikov. His son, the first Russian satirical poet Antioh Dmitrievich Cantemir, was Russian ambassador to England and France.

The map depicts the borders of the Principality of Moldavia, Principality of Wallachia before the Union (orange lines).
After 1711, the part of the Principality of Moldavia residing between rivers Dniester and Prut came under Russian protection, while what remained under the Ottoman Empire, formed a Union of Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (light-green area with the black border).
Ater 1866 this union began to be called “Romania”.

The historical task of Russia

Russia considered it its historical task to get rid of the Turkish threat, and saw itself as a defender of the rights and freedoms of the Christian peoples who lived under Turkish rule. The power of the latter gradually weakened, and the Romanians sought to get out from under its influence. In the 19th century, the Russian Empire took a direct part in the liberation of Orthodox Romania. A significant part of the territory of the future Romania, at the insistence of Russia, was transferred by the Turks to Russian protection following the war of 1828-1829. The first constitutions of Moldavia and Wallachia were adopted, allowing the future Romanian lands to develop in the same way as other European countries of that time. Romanians were becoming really Romanians, and not just residents of villages and towns of different territories. Schools with native language teaching were opened. Historians have praised these laws: “The first Romanian constitutions that introduced fixed and stable laws that replaced momentary and arbitrary decisions.”

A series of wars and final independence

Even then, the Romanians’ dream of independence was being “crippled” by the Western European powers, who did not want Turkey to weaken as as counterweight to Russia. It all started with Napoleon, who encouraged the Romanians to “limit Russian expansion”. After the Crimean War, Romanians came under the influence of Western powers, which did not aim to liberate Romania from the Ottoman yoke: the principalities continued to pay exhausting tribute to the Ottoman Empire.

Romania appeared as a result of the Russian-Turkish wars, and became a sovereign country by the will of Russia in 1877-1878, after the final liberation of Romania from the Turkish–Ottoman rule, which had lasted from the 16th century. Russian losses in this war amounted to 16,000 killed and 7,000 dead from wounds (there are other estimates – up to 36,500 killed and 81,000 dead from wounds and diseases). These figures of losses are huge in themselves, but it is worth considering that, for example, 71 thousand people lived in Yaroslavl at the end of the 19th century, that is, either a quarter or half of the inhabitants of a large Russian city died in this war. Romanians, allied with the Russians, lost 1.5 thousand people. Yes, Romanian troops then took a direct part in the fighting – of course, on the side of Russia. Russian-Romanian troops participated together in the siege of Bulgarian Plevna, during the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish rule, and the first Romanian king even became marshal of the united Russian-Romanian troops.
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The text of Hitler’s statement on the extermination of Slavic peoples has been published in Russia for the first time.

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At the site of History.rf, the “Russian Military Historic Society” and historian Yegor Yakovlev published for the first time an unknown until now speech of Adolf Hitler. The publication is from July 27, 2023.

This publication, this document is something that needs to be shown to the brainwashed Ukrainians, who are brought up with the idea that Hitler was the “liberator” of Ukraine, as we showcased in an earlier article Indoctrination of the Ukrainian children with the Nazi ideology!

We have newly presented another work by Yegor Yakovlev in the article “How falsification of history works in our reality”, a lecture by Yegor Yakovlev.

“My mission, if I succeed, is to destroy the Slavs,” Adolf Hitler said in a conversation with Romanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu. During their meeting in Berlin on November 27, 1941, Hitler openly declared plans for the genocide of the Slavs.

Yegor Yakovlev, an expert at the “Russian Military Historical Society” and head of the “Digital History” project, found the recording of the negotiations and translated its full text into Russian for the first time. The document is published on the portal HISTORY.RF. The original of the so-called “meeting record” is kept in the archives of the “National Council for the Study of Security Archives” in Bucharest.

Word to Yegor Yakovlev:

It was known earlier of the existence of such a document. Together with other captured materials, it was taken to Moscow and ended up in the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. There, the Soviet historian Alexei Shevyakov, who was preparing the monograph “The Economic and Military-political Aggression of German Imperialism in Romania: 1936-1941”, managed to work with him. This book was published in 1963, and there, in a modest footnote, I saw for the first time quotes from the dialogue between Antonescu and Hitler about plans to destroy the Slavs. However, my appeal to the archive was unsuccessful: it turned out that in Hrushyov’s time a large body of documents, including those of interest to me, had been returned to Bucharest. Fortunately, in 2013, a recording of the negotiations between Hitler and Antonescu was published in the twelfth issue of the Romanian scientific journal “Zargidava”. The publication from the archives of the National Council for the Study of Security Archives in Bucharest was carried out by Gheorghe Buzatu, Professor of History at the University of Iasi, an ambiguous nationalist historian. Nevertheless, the document, introduced by him into scientific circulation, speaks for itself.

During Mihai Antonescu’s conversation with Adolf Hitler in Berlin on November 27, 1941, the Romanian leadership discussed issues that were of great concern. The first part of the recording is devoted to Romanian-Hungarian relations, which, despite the presence of both countries in the orbit of Nazi Germany, were extremely tense. In 1940, as a result of the Second Vienna Arbitration, Hungary took over Northern Transylvania from Romania with a mixed Romanian-Hungarian population. In this dispute, the Nazi leadership sided with the Hungarians, promising compensation to the Romanians at the expense of the USSR. However, despite these promises, the loss of Northern Transylvania was felt very painfully in Bucharest. Antonescu informed the Fuhrer about the severe discrimination of Romanians in the excluded region, asking him to intervene and achieve a “fair solution”.
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