Istoria Basarabiei

Basarabia este teritoriul dintre Prut şi Nistru, mare parte a acestuia aflându-se în momentul actual în componenţa Republicii Moldova, iar partea de sud (Bugeac) şi cea de nord în componenţa Ucrainei.

Numele regiunii este legat de familia domnitoare Basarab. În1350, Nicolae Alexandru, fiul lui Basarab I, domnitor al Ţării Româneşti duce o campanie impotriva tătarilor. Reuşeşte să-i împingă pe tătari dincolo de Nistru şi consemnează in hărţi teritoriul de aproximativ 45.000 km2 cuprins între Nistru, Prut şi gurile Dunării pe care îl denumeşte Basarabia şi care este azi cunoscut şi sub numele de Basarabia Istorică. În urmatoarele secole teritoriul devine parte integrantă a Ţării Româneşti Moldova.

Aşa cum se afirmă mai sus, iniţial numele de Basarabia era folosit doar pentru partea de sud. Dar, în 1812, prin Tratatul de la Bucureşti încheiat în urma războiului ruso-turc, otomanii cedează Basarabia Imperiului Ţarist, însa ruşii ocupă întreg teritoriul cuprins între Prut si Nistru, aproximativ 45.000 km2.

Teritoriul rămâne sub ocupaţie rusească până in 1917 când, pentru scurt timp, în urma revoluţiei, devine republică şi ulterior votează unirea cu România. În 1940 este ocupat de trupele sovietice ca urmare a Pactului Ribbentrop-Molotov.

Partea de sud a Basarabiei este inclusă în Ucraina.

După dezmembrarea Uniunii Sovietice, în 1991, Republica Sovietică Moldovenească se declară independentă sub numele de Republica Moldova, situaţie în care se află şi în ziua de azi.

Încercările de unire cu România iniţiate din ambele părţi n-au dus la nici un rezultat, clasa politică moldovenească încercând să zădărnicească orice apropiere dintre cele două ţări, astfel că în momentul de faţă, limba oficială este cea moldovenească în loc de română.

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

-----------------------------------------------------------
This region, historically known as Bessarabia, has changed hands many times. After being Turkish for many years it became Russian in 1810. In 1917 it proclaimed independence before joining Romania in 1918. In 1940, under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, it once more became Soviet. The territory was joined to the pre-existing Moldovan ASSR, a Soviet fiction carved out of Ukraine which in fact had very few Moldovans living there (this is the origin of the dispute between the modern Republic of Moldova and the self-styled Dniestr Republic, the largely Slavic-populated eastern region) and became the Moldovan SSR on 2 August 1940. From 1941 until 1944 Romania, allied to the Axis powers, once again ruled Bessarabia.

Post war, the Soviets created a largely artificial Moldovan language (largely accomplished by transcribing Romanian from the Latin alphabet into Cyrillic) and sought to encourage the creation of a separate Moldovan nation. This fiction could not disguise the fact that the Moldovans are essentially Romanian, and although Moldova's initially expressed aspiration of union with Romania is now much more muted, the Moldovan flag is basically that of Romania with the addition of the national coat of arms on the yellow stripe.
--------------------------------------------------------------

[Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

o varianta britanica a istoriei acestei regiuni...
[Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

si lista voievozilor de-a lungul istoriei
[Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

Slavic and romanian place names in north Moldavia

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

[Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

The Republic of Moldova: An Historical Background


Born like the other Romance speaking peoples in the 1st millennium AD, the ancestors of those who are now known as Romanians have continuously inhabited the geographical space encompassing the territories stretching from the Pannonian Plain in the west to Transnistria (Transdnestr) in the east, from the Black Sea and Danube in the south to the Trans Carpathian area and Galicia in the north. Their forefathers, the Thracian tribes, had populated a larger area as early as the 2nd millennium BC. The Greeks called them Getae, the Romans called them Dacians, but they were actually a single Geto-Dacian people. The important historical references about them came mostly from Greek, Byzantine and Italian sources. From the 7th century B.C., the Greeks and then the Byzantines and Italians established their own ports and trading colonies along the northwestern shore of the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) and on the Danube, and continued to trade with the local people.
mai mult pe [Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

Harta anului 1370

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Harta anului 1500

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Middle Ages Principality of Moldova

When the great migrations ended, the Romanians began to descend from the forested piedmonts, hills and Carpathian Mountains and gradually moved toward the lower southern and eastern lands once inhabited by their ancestors. The attraction of the new uninhabited lands, and the demographic pressure of the overcrowded lands "at home," motivated the move. This slow natural movement took several centuries. In their eastward drive, the Romanians reoccupied the whole region between the eastern Carpathian range and the surrounding hills to the Nistru River, and crossed Nistru en masse as well as in scattered groups.
In 1352-1353 Voivode Dragos from Maramures (northern part of Transylvania) became the first appointed ruler of the boundary province of Moldova. The economic exchanges, the development of boroughs and of towns linked through transit trade routes with the commercial world abroad, offered a good chance to the Romanian political formations to place their unification projects on a viable basis. Once their independence from the Hungarian Crown had been won in battle, two other Romanian Principalities appeared -- Wallachia in 1324, and Moldova in 1359.
The Principality of Moldova occupied a larger area stretching from the Black Sea and the Danube in the south, to Galicia in the north, and from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Nistru River in the east. Moldova had a glorious and legendary century starting with the rule of Alexandru cel Bun (1400) and with the end of the rule of Stefan cel Mare (1504).
Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great or the "Saint" who was canonized in 1992) ruled Moldova between 1457-1504 and won European renown for his long resistance to the Ottoman Empire. Never before was Moldova so expanded and so highly respected as it was during Stephen the Great's rule. A remarkable army commander and politician, he sought to strengthen princely authority, to organize and bring about prosperity for Moldova, and to fight for its independence against foreign invasions. Though it was marked by continual strife, Stephen's long rule nonetheless brought considerable cultural development, and was a period of great ecclesiastical building and endowment. As the legend has it, he ruled for 47 years and led 47 battles, mainly against the Turks. He built, rebuilt or patronized about the same number of fortresses, churches and monasteries, which won him the acclaim of Pope Sixtus IV as the "Athlete of Christ". Eventually (in 1503, when he concluded a treaty with sultan Bayezid), he managed to preserve Moldova's independence, but only at the cost of an annual tribute to the Turks.
An important stage in the history of the Romanians was marked by the sway of Mihai Viteazul (Michael the Brave), the prince of Wallachia between 1593-1601. Mihai Viteazul joined the Christian League, an anti-Ottoman coalition initiated by the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire (Austria, Mantua, Ferrara, Spain), and won the battles of Calugareni and Giurgiu against the Turks (1595), to regain the independence of his country. In 1600, he was the first who for a short while ruled and controlled the three Romanian lands -- Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldova. But the great powers -- Austria, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland -- did not favour such a policy, so that the union was short-lived. However, the idea of unification, embraced earlier by Russians, was kept alive and gave fresh impetus to the Romanians' struggle for the setting up of an independent national state.
A relatively prosperous period for the principality of Moldova during the Ottoman suzerainty was during the years of the rule of Vasile Lupu (1634-1653). Vasile Lupu succeeded to not only strengthen and modernize the state and local administration, but also to develop an educational system and stimulate the genuine cultural flowering of Moldova.Among significant reforms and achievements of that period are: adoption in 1646 of the first Moldovan code of law ("Pravila lui Vasile Lupu"), publishing the first printed monument of the Romanian language ("Romanian Book of Teaching for Sundays and Other Holidays", 1643), opening of the first college in Moldova -- Academia Vasiliana (1640), erection of the unique church in Iasi "Trei Ierarhi" (1639), etc


Harta anului 1540
[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Actually, from a cultural point of view, the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries represent a period of "Great Moldovan chroniclers," which formed the basis of the Romanian literature and historiography. Among them Grigore Ureche (1590-1647) with his "Letopisetul Tarii Moldovei" ("Chronicle of the Land of Moldova"), and Miron Costin (1633-1691) with his "De neamul moldovenilor" ("On the Origin of the Moldovans") had articulately and persuasively argued, for the first time in Romanian historiography, the Roman beginnings and Latin origin of the people of Moldova. The language and historical proofs we see in the chronicle "O seama de cuvinte" ("Some words") of Ion Neculce (1672-1745) certifies the genuine cultural development in Moldova of that period. Later, Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), the ruler of Moldova between 1710-1711, succeeded to summarise and formulate in some of his fundamental works, written in Latin, Romanian or Turkish and translated in several European languages, the most important facts and aspects of Moldova's history, geography, ethnography etc.
The Russian armies appeared in Moldova in 1711, led personally by Peter the Great. Prince Dimitrie Cantemir and Peter the Great concluded the Lutsk alliance treaty against the Turks with Russia, recognizing fully the sovereignty of Moldova and her territorial integrity. But the Russian defeat at the hands of the Turks in 1711 proved disastrous for Moldova.
mai multe la [Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

Modern times: Bessarabia. Romania.

Thus, at the Passarowitz Peace talks (1718), the Turks ceded Oltenia, a region of Wallachia, to the Habsburg Empire, which held it until the conclusion of the Belgrade Peace (1739). In 1775, the Habsburgs received another similar "donation" from the Turks, this time the northern part of Moldova -- Bucovina. Bordering with the Tzarist Empire since 1792 when Russia acquired the territory known today as Transnistria, and extending its borders to the west along the river Nistru (Dnester in Russian), the Ottoman Empire was permanently threatened to lose control over Moldova. Since Russia didn't want to wait too long for the right moment, in 1812 the Ottoman Empire "ceded" her the eastern half of the Principality of Moldova as a result of the Russo-Turkish war of 1806-1812.
At the time of its annexation by Russia, the eastern half of Moldova between Prut and Nistru did not have a name. In many ways its central part had become the core of Moldova. The Russians gave the name Bessarabia to the entire region, which before that was defined only to the southern part of the interfluves area along the Black Sea.
It was actually a shrewd diplomatic move to circumvent the Tilsit Treaty (1807), which committed Russia to evacuate both Wallachia and Moldova. Since the Treaty did not mention "Bessarabia," the Russian troops could remain there. In 1812, the Russians argued that Bessarabia was still different from Moldova and it was in their interest to extend that name to the whole territory between the Prut and the Nistru rivers. The Turks who signed the Treaty were not aware of how far the region extended either.
The annexation of Bessarabia had a dramatic impact over the destiny of Romanian Moldovans from this province which, since 1812, with some short interruption, remained under Russia's discretion until the end of communism. The annexed province had an area of 46,000 square kilometres and approximately 480,000 people, of whom 90 percent were Romanians. In the beginning Bessarabia was an autonomous province, but in 1829 when her autonomy was ended it became a simple Russian Gubernia. Life began to deteriorate immediately and thousands of Romanians, nobles and peasants alike, crossed the Prut into what remained of Moldova, preferring to live under Turkish suzerainty.
The Russian management of Bessarabia was a disaster. The land remained underdeveloped and the people, the native Romanians in particular, remained overwhelmingly illiterate. Bessarabia had the highest mortality rate in Europe, 50 percent higher than the Russian average. The Romanian language was gradually eliminated from schools, administration and even churches. Almost all the towns of Bessarabia had a massive settlement of Russians who controlled the local authorities and industry, and the Romanian Moldovans became a source of unqualified workers for the emerging regional Russian market. They remained aloof and could not integrate into the new Russian administration.
In 1877, at the beginning of the 1877-78 Russian-Turkish War, Romania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire, and fought beside Russia in that war. The war brought not only the independence of Romania, but after the war, in 1878, the southern part of the territory between Prut and Nistru Rivers was re-annexed by Russia, while the Bulgarian region Dobrogea became part of Romania. Thus, the whole of Bessarabia, a region predominantly populated by ethnic Romanians, remained under the Russian Empire control until the end of 1917.
In Bessarabia, Romanian Moldovans were under a ferocious process of Russianisation, with very low literacy, and in a continuing decrease of their influence among the total population of Bessarabia (from 86% in 1817 to 47.6% in 1897). In the western part of Moldova the Romanian Moldovans contributed substantially in creating a new modern state of Romania, in the founding of Romanian classical literature, and in establishing a new and remarkable pleiad of political leaders, scientists, economists.
mai multe la [Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

Harta anului 1795

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Harta a 1860

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Union of Bessarabia with Romania.

After Romania entered World War I (1916) on the side of the Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia), the Romanian soldiers from Bessarabia, Romania and Transylvania (still under Austria-Hungarian Empire) were forced to fight on different sides. Since the war scene encompassed their native lands, this encouraged them to look for a common post-war future.
Thus, in 1917, the Romanian soldiers and prisoners from the eastern front (natives from Bessarabia, the Kingdom of Romania, and Transylvania), together with legal representatives of workers, peasants, teachers and clerics from whole Bessarabia, initiated and organized the State Council (Sfatul Tarii) of Bessarabia. On December 2, 1917 the Council declared Bessarabia an autonomous republic, and soon, on January 24 1918, it proclaimed the independence of the Moldavian Democratic Republic (Bessarabia) and its separation from Russia.

Confronted with threats of isolation or absorption by the Ukraine, and in order to prevent the atrocities of the Russian soldiers withdrawn from the Romanian-Galician front, and the chaos prevailing in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution, the Sfatul Tarii called in the Romanian troops. Soon after, on March 27, 1918, the Bessarabian council voted to reunite Bessarabia with Romania. During the same year, with the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the unification with Romania of three other Romanian territories -- Banat, Transylvania and Bucovina -- was achieved.

At the Paris Peace Conference on March 9, 1920, the three great western powers - the United Kingdom, France and Italy -- consented to the reunion of Bessarabia with Romania, re-establishing the new boundary along the Nistru River as it had been prior to the annexation of 1812. The most important measures taken by the Romanian authorities after the reunion were land reform, building of elementary free-of-charge schools in all localities of Bessarabia, and creating conditions for the Romanian language to become the language of all inhabitants of the region. These reforms, along with the introduction of universal suffrage and the passing of a new constitution, one of the most democratic on the Continent, created a general-democratic framework and allowed for fast economic growth in Romania (e.g. the industrial production doubled between 1923-1938.

Meanwhile, the new Soviet government, aggressively opposing the union of Bessarabia with Romania, took various steps to acquire what it considered were "lost territories". In 1924 a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) was established within the Ukrainian SSR on the border of Romania, in the territory known as Transnistria, of which about a third of the population were Moldovans/Romanians at the time. The town of Balta was its designated capital until 1929, when the capital was transferred to Tiraspol.

Located on the eastern, or "left", bank of the Nistru River, the MASSR was meant to serve as a bridgehead for Soviet influence in the interfluves and, in the greatest possible hopes of the Soviets at the time, a paving of the way towards prospective "sovietization" of the entire Romanian kingdom. This "Bessarabia in miniature" provided Soviet policymakers and cultural planners with a diabolic laboratory. Indeed, the notion that Romanians and Moldovans in Bessarabia and the MSSR formed two separate ethno national groups, speaking different languages and possessing separate historical, cultural, and even biological traits, became a standard element of Soviet discourse on the Bessarabian question and the central justification for Moscow's territorial claims. In a sense, the MASSR represented a first Stalinist step towards the "liberation" of the "Moldovan nation".

mai multe [Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

Harta a 1896

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]


Harta a 1882

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The opportunity for the Soviets to "liberate" Bessarabia came in 1940. In August 1939, under the terms of the secret protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Germany declared its "lack of interest" with respect to Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland and Bessarabia. Less than a year later, although Romania declared its neutrality in September 1939, the USSR managed to force the Romanian government into conceding Bessarabia and northern Bucovina. Soviet forces occupied these regions in June 1940 within a matter of a few days.
At first the Soviet authorities continued to call the occupied interfluves area "Bessarabia", but soon afterward the Soviet leadership proceeded to dismember the occupied territories. Thus, on August 2, 1940, the "Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic" was "proclaimed" by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and the former "Moldavian ASSR" was abolished. Northern Bucovina, northern and southern Bessarabia, and an important part of the Moldavian ASSR were included into the "Ukrainian SSR", while 6 of 14 former districts of the Moldavian ASSR, and 6 of 9 Bessarabian districts entered the Moldavian SSR. The inclusion of Bessarabia's Danube and Black Sea frontage into the Ukrainian SSR placed these strategic assets in the hands of a reliable Soviet republic rather than leaving them under the control of a newly created entity, and not to mention a probable object of Romanian aspiration towards re-unification with its dismembered territory.

Between 1941 and 1944 the entire territory of Bessarabia, as well as northern Bucovina again became parts of Romania, but in 1944 Soviet troops retook these territories. Finally, they remained parts of the USSR until the disintegration of the Soviet empire in 1991, when the independent republics of Moldova and of the Ukraine where established.

As the only republic in the union whose titular nationality was represented by a sovereign state outside the USSR (Romania), the MSSR represented a special case in Moscow's economic and cadre policies. After the re-occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bucovina in 1940 and again in 1944, the Soviet Union continued the colonial Tsarist policy of genocide implemented by means of mass deportation, organized famine (provoked by Communists grain requisitioning in 1946-47), forced nationalization and collectivisation. The leadership of the USSR tried its very best, using different methods by now infamous, to change the very ethnic structure of the occupied Romanian territories in an overall two-pronged approach: the diminution of the Romanian element, and the maximisation of the ethnic Slav element. The following statistical figures illustrate this policy:
[img=https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img296/7646/tabelca0.th.gif]
Immediately after Bessarabia's occupation, the Soviet regime concentrated on the creation of a distinctly "Moldovan" language and culture. Soviet cultural policy in Moldavian SSR was designed to sever any historical, cultural or linguistic links between Romanians and "Moldovans", and to posit the existence of a distinct "Moldovan" cultural heritage. Thus, the Russian script replaced the Latin script; Soviet scholars declared "Moldovan" and Romanian to be separate languages within the same east-Romance language family; while the "literary critics and historians" stressed the historical connections and traditions shared by Moldovans, Russians and Ukrainians.
In addition, Moscow ventured to alter the traditional names of ethnic Romanians and other non-Slavic population in Moldova, as well as names of towns and villages. Typically, family and given names were transliterated using the Russian alphabet, and a Russian-styled father's name (patronymic) was appended as one's middle name; middle names were not generally used in Bessarabia at the time. In a similar fashion, names of many towns and villages were changed to sound more Russian (usually by adding a Slavic suffix), and often replaced altogether by names of revolutionary leaders or cities in Russia. The Communist Party and cadres from Transnistria, controlled and supervised by KGB, played a leadership role in the implementation of this diabolic project.

Since politics in a country is dominated by its urban population, Moscow followed the policy of Czarist Russia by combining industrial and urban development with massive settlements of non-Moldovans in non-rural localities, offering them better accommodations and increased opportunities to dominate the political and social life throughout the country. At the same time, the indigenous rural inhabitants representing the largest majority of Moldova's population were given no incentives to move into urban areas. Indeed, lacking any personal and legal identity documents, and being paid very low wages for working in state-owned collective farms, often received once at the end of the year, along with a restrictive residence policy in all cities (called propiska, that is "permit for residence"), the rural native population essentially had been forced to practice agriculture, and to remain far away from political and industrial circles. Thus Moscow managed to ensure itself with a very obedient indigenous population.
In a strangely repetitive historical legacy, as Transnistria did at the time, it actually continues to have even now a crucial influence on the destiny of the Republic of Moldova. Although accounting for only an eighth of the Republic of Moldova's land and population, it played a dominant role in the republic's economy and political system. Moldova's industrial enterprises were concentrated in Transnistria, in part because of the surety of future Romanian demands over Bessarabia. Skilled workers and even unqualified persons from other parts of the Soviet Union were relocated there en masse, as well as in the whole of the MSSR. The region's temperate climate, rich in fruits, vegetables, and wine, also attracted many other individuals, especially retired members of the Communist party and Soviet Army.
The difficulties which faced the native population from the Moldavian SSR were aggravated by some other specific particularities of this Soviet republic. Indeed, in comparison with the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia), the Moldavian SSR remained after 1949 without its own native (Bessarabian) elite or intellectuals. Almost all intellectuals from Bessarabia (public clerks, owners, managers, members of non-leftist political parties, teachers, doctors, priests, students, etc.) were deported to the remote Siberia or Kazakhstan's areas (partially in 1940, and massively in 1949), exterminated locally or sheltered to Romania or other countries in 1944.
[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

In such circumstances, with no contacts in Romania until the Perestroika, and under a ferocious KGB's surveillance, led by the communist party structures totally controlled by Kremlin, the Moldavian SSR was transformed into a region where Moscow could easily implement any of its ideological and economical experiences, leaving the native population without any chance to dream about union with Romania or independency.

After Gorbachev started Perestroika, the long dormant grievances which smouldered among a grassroots element from all levels of Moldovan society motivated the appearance, in 1987, of a democratic mass movement. In 1988 this movement transformed itself into the Popular Front of Moldova, which grew rapidly into a real national movement for liberation in the MSSR. The issues of ethnicity and language became key to the political concerns of this movement, and these positions were indeed supported by a large part of Moldovan society at the time. In August 1989, the Supreme Soviet was forced to accept the demand of the Popular Front and adopted the law requiring that the "Moldovan" (Romanian) language be written in Latin characters, and that this be the state language of the republic.[b]/ Local officials to the area east of the Nistru River however, refused to enact the language law in the area administrated by them where large numbers of Slavs resided. A similar reaction was also met in the southern part of Moldova where the Gagauz minority resided. In Chisinau, [b]a political group, "Yedinstvo" ("Unity"), was formed supporting Transnistrian leaders and promoting the idea of Moldova's continued inclusion in the USSR.

Under the control of the KGB, and with crucial support from Moscow itself, including military support (the 14th Soviet Army headquarters were and are located in Transnistria), separatist movements were quickly organised in the southern and eastern portions of the country. Thus, on 2 September 1990 the "second extraordinary congress of deputies" from Transnistria "proclaimed" a self-styled "Moldavian Transnistrian Soviet Socialist Republic".

This was preceded by another "proclamation" from the southeast (19 August), that of the apparently autonomy aspiring people in the newly so-called "Gagauz Soviet Socialist Republic". Since then the legal authorities of Moldova don't control the border with the Ukraine crossing Transnistria, while the separatist authorities continue to govern this region with considerable, if not indeed crucial, economic and military support from Russia.

[Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

Republic of Moldova.
1...
The situation unexpectedly changed in favour of the legitimate Chisinau authorities in August 1991, after the failure of the soviet hard-liners military putsch in Moscow that year. The Moldovan Parliament (acting in a similar fashion to the newly legitimate legislative bodies in other soviet republics which had been occupied by the now rapidly disintegrating USSR), took the opportunity to declare the independence of the Republic of Moldova on 27 August 1991. The Transnistrian separatist leadership, only a few days earlier, made its own declaration -- the independence of "the Moldovan Transnistrian Republic" from Moldova.

Mircea Snegur, the first president of the newly independent state, and his supporters in Parliament - mainly managers of collective farms, and communist and soviet leaders from the whole territory of Moldova -- became anxious because of the successive waves of democratic transformations, as well as by the emerging separatist movements. He refused to follow the Baltic countries otherwise normal path towards a genuine independence. So it was that in December 1991, President Snegur found himself signing a declaration in favour of Moldova's adherence to the newly created "Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)", a successor state of sorts to the now decidedly buried Soviet Union. By joining the CIS, however, Moldova didn't manage to solve many of its problems. The issue of ethnicity and territoriality further degenerated into a dramatic confrontation between the pro-western and legitimate Chisinau government, and the pro-Moscow, and illegitimate Tiraspol government.

This soon led to armed conflict, and in the spring of 1992, after Moldova became a member of the United Nations (UN), Moldovan President Mircea Snegur (president from 1990 to 1996) authorized concerted military action against rebel forces which had been attacking loyal Moldovan police outposts on the left bank of the Nistru, and on a certain smaller section of the right bank in the southern city of Tighina (Bender). The rebels, aided by contingents of Russian Cossacks and the Russian 14th Army, consolidated their control over most of the disputed area, but by no means over all of it, as testified to by the heroic resistance of loyal Moldovan police and volunteer forces in battles at Tighina and Varnita, at Cocieri-Dubasari and Cosnita-Dorotcaia plateaus. As a result of this civil war, hundreds of people were killed, and thousands were forced to leave Transnistria as refugees.

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

The Moldovan government made several futile requests for UN intervention, but on 21 July 1992 was forced to settle for a combined Russian-Transnistrian-Moldovan peacekeeping force. In May 1993 the Moldovan side made several concessions to the opposing side, including the allowance of Russian federal forces in eastern Moldova until the region was granted some "special political status". Still not satisfied despite their considerable gains against the Chisinau government, and under the shadow of soviet heavy artillery, the Transnistrian leadership even demanded that the Moldovan Parliament rescind parts of its 1991 declaration of independence and return the Republic of Moldova to a more subordinate political position within the CIS. This they did not achieve.

In February 1994, Moldova held its very first post-independence, free parliamentary elections. The Communist-led Agrarian Democratic Party won the largest number of seats, and a pro-Moscow, "old mind" bloc of Socialist parties won the next largest percentage. Forming a large alliance, this majority immediately ratified Moldova's adherence to the CIS Economic Union. In order to block any attempt of the opposition to claim a rapprochement between Moldova and Romania, President Snegur, under the pressure of Agrarian-Socialist block, organized a hurried referendum (March 1994), the main point of which was to underline "the peoples will" to build an independent Moldova, entirely separate from Romania. Such a measure, taken immediately after the elections (which otherwise reinforced the influence of the old nomenclature when the electorate continued to be in a deep depression provoked by the bloody and lost war in Transnistria, and by the unprecedented post-independence inflation), brought the expected results to the pro-Moscow faction. Around 90 percent of those who participated in the pool supported a Republic of Moldova within its 1990 borders, entirely independent from Romania, but which would include the Transnistrian region.
In July 1994, the newly adopted Constitution the Agrarian-Socialist majority stipulated that the name of the official language of Moldova is not Romanian but Moldovan, and proclaimed Moldova's permanent neutrality (versus NATO's rapprochements of neighbouring countries).
The Agrarian-Socialist block governance (1994-1998) had a dramatic impact on the Republic of Moldova's development as a newly independent country. Although Moldova was the first CIS country to join the Council of Europe in 1995, and to implement the economic reform with the support of international and regional organizations, the "outcomes" of these reforms caused the country to be one of the poorest regions in Europe. This was due to the fact that, enjoying the support of the IMF, World Bank and donors who during these years generously offered Moldova huge loans and grants totalling more than $1.3 billion, the Agrarian-Socialist government didn't reform the agriculture, and opposed massive privatisation. Instead of this, the former communist leadership redirected budget sources and different state-guaranteed loans and grants to non-reformed sectors of economy, or used these financial sources totally improperly, thus actually contributing to their embezzlement or stealing

Republic of Moldova
2..
The Agrarian-Socialist government aggravated Moldova's poorest preparedness for a smooth transition to market economics and democracy. Amid slow gains and painful setbacks to that transition, without clear political views for the country's future, Moldova didn't apply, as did other countries from the region, to become an aspirant to NATO or the European Union membership. As a member of the Partnership for Peace programme, its cooperation with NATO didn't exceed the level of cooperation attained by other aspirant countries. Moreover, during the years of 1994-1998, Moldova did not take measures to be seriously and firmly supported by the U.S., European Union and other countries for pursuing the Russian Federation to withdraw its troop and armaments from the Transnistria region where Russian army troops prop up the breakaway authorities.

Accordingly, after the 1998 general elections when the Alliance for Democracy and Reform (ADR) took the government (with 61 out of 101 seats in the Parliament), it was not capable of rapidly solving many of the existing painful political, economic and social problems. These included the Transistrian issue, the huge Moldova external and internal debts inherited from the Agrarian-Socialist government (especially those used for importing from Russia the expensive energy resources), and the enormous arrears to pensions and salaries

This latest crisis developed after many months of struggle between the president and parliament over Lucinschi's attempts to enlarge his powers. As early as February 1999, after parliament denied his proposal to extend his powers, Lucinschi turned to the public for support, initiating a consultative referendum on May 23. The plebiscite provoked only more confusion. Although 62 percent voted to accept the proposal (36 percent rejected it), voter turnout was two points below the 60 percent required by the election law.
These long political disputes and debates among parliamentary factions, and between the President and Parliament, culminated with the modification of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova on June 5, 2000, when the Moldovan Parliament, with a large majority, transformed Moldova into a parliamentary republic. According to the amended Constitution the President of the Republic of Moldova shall be elected by Parliament, not by popular vote, and the Government was invested with broader, extra powers.

The elections of the new president of Moldova by the Parliament proved to be a difficult task for the Parliament, which split into different antagonised groups. Although the Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin fell just two votes short of becoming Moldova's third president in the first tour of elections, on December 21 the right-centrists factions (Democratic Convention of Moldova, Democratic Party, Party of Democratic Forces, and Christian Democratic Popular Party), candidate, Pavel Barbalat, received only 35 votes, and boycotted the second round of a repeated presidential election. Accordingly, after the Constitutional Court concluded that all the conditions there allowed the President to dissolve the Parliament, it was dissolved by President Lucinschi on December 30, 2000.

But the new preliminary elections of February 25, 2001 happened to be a dramatic event for the Republic of Moldova. Refusing to form an electoral bloc, almost all reformists, pro-European political parties, and of course the incumbent President, Petru Lucinschi, contributed to transform Moldova into the first post-Soviet country in which the Communist Party legally came back to power. Only two other political forces -- an ad-hoc pro-presidential political alliance led by the incumbent prime-minister Dumitru Bragis, and the Christian Democrat Popular Party, supported indirectly by President Lucinschi, -- have passed the required 6% threshold, getting together 30 out of 101 seats in Parliament.
As expected, on April 2nd 2001 the Communist controlled Parliament elected the Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin as Moldova's third president. With its own president and 71 seats in the legislature, the Party of Communists now has more than sufficient power not only to change the Constitution as it sees fit, but also to cardinally reorient Moldova's future. In this situation, the achievements and reforms made by the previous government, and cooperation with IMF, World Bank, European Union and NATO, are at risk. They could be partially or perhaps largely lost through further destabilization of Moldova's internal politics, and a consequent leftward and eastward shift in the complexion of its government.
The issue of Moldova's accession to the Russia-Belarus Union, and the possibility of holding a referendum on that issue, arose after the Communist's won the last elections. The recent observer status, which was granted to the Moldovan Parliament at the Russian-Belarus Parliamentary Assembly, indicates a real threat for Moldova's European orientation.
On May 13, 2001, for the first time ever, Transnistrian troops physically prevented a Moldovan head of state -- President Vladimir Voronin -- from visiting territory controlled by the secessionist authorities . Tiraspol, moreover, announced that Voronin must from now on request permission from Transnistria's self-styled president Igor Smirnov for any visit there. This incident was followed by the seizure of a monastery and theological seminary on the right bank of the Nistru River by left-bank Transnistrian troops under ex-KGB officers' command. As Vladimir Socor, one of the most active authors on Moldova's politics, recently wrote, "this sort of event was probably not witnessed in Europe since Stalin's days, yet it seemed to have passed without condemnation by any of the three mediators"
Moreover, Transnistria's leadership demanded for Chisinau to recognize that it committed military aggression in 1992 against "the people of Transnistria," to apologize for it, and to pay compensation for damages. This clearly indicates that the international community should react properly in order to find a feasible solution for this conflict, taking into consideration that Tiraspol repeatedly demanded (last time on May 16, 2001) that Chisinau should officially repudiate the OSCE's 1999 decisions on the withdrawal of Russian forces from Transnistria

Undoubtedly, Russia would like to gain an OSCE mandate for its troops stationed in the region, with a few non-Russian troops added as window-dressing. This goal dictates Russia's policy in the framework of the Russia-Ukraine-OSCE mediation of the Transnistrian conflict. It also helps explain why, in spite of Kremlin's repeated pledges to support the anti-terrorism campaign organized by the Western democracies in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the Russian military and security services continue to tolerate and cooperate with the secessionist authorities from Transnistria, where a group of former Russian KGB officers heads the Transnistrian security apparatus to this day.

The latest actions of the Communist-controlled government and Parliament in Chisinau may drive Moldova onto a path that is difficult to oversee. The pro-European, pro-reformist, and pro-democracy rhetoric delivered by President Voronin or his communist comrades from the Parliament and Cabinet are unable to hide the real danger facing Moldova today - to be left outside the European integration process, and hence condemn its population to a pitiful future. It is our hope that with the support of the international community, the Moldovan population and the political elite will choose to unite forces, and manage to continue on the path of democracy and reforms, with an ultimate aim of joining the European family of nations.

Copia documentului în care pentru prima dată este pomenit oraşul Chişinău

Copia a fost oferită de Arhiva centrală a Documentelor Istorice din Varşovia, Polonia

[Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Ocupaţie moldovenească: negarea ocupaţiei ruseşti

Începând cu 1812, statul de dincolo de Prut s-a numit Moldova, iar ruşii au inventat o altă ţară – Basarabia, populată desigur cu basarabeni. Aşa că „poporul moldovenesc” pe care se avântă să-l reprezinte astăzi tot felul de lepădături, ar fi fost azi „poporul basarabean” cu limba corespunzătoare – „basarabeană”. Oricâtă românofobie ar clocoti în indivizii în cauză, aceştia înţeleg foarte bine (sper) că de n-ar fi fost gura de aer naţional dintre anii 1918 şi 1940, azi n-am mai fi moldoveni. Demonstraţia e aproape, e dincolo de Nistru!

Orice eveniment istoric este complex în sine. Complexitate pentru înţelegerea căreia este obligatorie raportarea şi la alte evenimente istorice (şi ele complexe în sine), la prima vedere separate, dar care relevă un tablou, peste secole, unitar.

Hărţile de mai jos indică schimbările hotarelor Moldovei începând cu domniile urmaşilor lui Ştefan cel Mare până în prezent.

Concluzia principală care rezultă din istoria modificărilor teritoriale prin care a trecut statul Moldova este că pe tot parcursul existenţei sale, Ţara Moldovei, în hotarele ei tradiţionale recunoscute, a avut toate pământurile libere şi conduse de moldoveni doar de patru ori (perioadele medievale sunt aproximative):

între 1426 şi 1436
între 1465 şi 1484
între 1918 şi 1940
între 1941 şi 1944
Un total de numai 54 de ani de integritate statală moldovenească!

Dar „idealul” născut de domniile lui Alexandru cel Bun şi Ştefan cel Mare a persistat în timp, şi, deşi istoria n-a fost deloc blândă cu Moldova, moldovenii au reuşit, pentru o scurtă perioadă ce-i drept, să aducă toate pământurile moldoveneşti în cadrul propriei ţări – România.

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]

Dar când scăpăm de ocupaţia rusească?!

Post-scriptum: Toţi cei care-şi zic „patrioţi”, „statalişti”, „pragmatici”, „roşii”, „mai roşii”, „rozi”, „de stânga” etc. şi care admit ocupaţiile ruseşti, dar cu precizarea că ruşii, pe lângă războaie, foamete, deportări, crime, deznaţionalizare, au adus moldovenilor şi foloase de genul construirii şcolilor, spitalelor, uzinelor de tot felul, pot fi numiţi oricum, dar nu moldoveni. Nici măcar mancurţi. Aceşti indivizi sunt slujbaşi conştienţi ai Moscovei. Şi nimic mai mult.

Chiar n-au avut ori să nu fi fost moldovenii capabili să-şi construiască şcoli, spitale şi industrie dacă nu năvăleau (şi rămâneau) ruşii în 1812, în 1940 şi 1944?!…



[Trebuie sa fiti inscris si conectat pentru a vedea acest link]

Maps Wikipedia.

[Trebuie sa fiti înscris şi conectat pentru a vedea această imagine]