Moldova: A History 9781788318143, 9781780761626, 9781788318112, 9781788318136

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Moldova

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Moldova A History Rebecca Haynes

I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Rebecca Haynes, 2020 Rebecca Haynes has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. viii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7883-1814-3 PB: 978-1-7807-6162-6 ePDF: 978-1-7883-1813-6 eBook: 978-1-7883-1812-9 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

In memory of John Stoye (1917–2016)

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Contents Acknowledgements  Note on Place-Names  Abbreviations  Maps  Introduction: Places and questions  1 Origins  2 The Late Middle Ages: Athletes of Christ  3 Moldova and the Ottomans  4 The Phanariots  5 Russia, the principalities and Romania  6 Russian Bessarabia  7 Bessarabia’s union with Romania  8 The Second World War and Soviet rule  9 Democratic politics  Conclusion  Notes  Bibliography  Index 

viii ix x xi 1 7 19 33 55 69 81 109 133 157 181 185 215 231

Acknowledgements I am particularly indebted to my colleagues at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and in Romania and Moldova for their continued advice and encouragement in the preparation of this book. Particular thanks are due to Dr Svetlana Suveică for her friendship and helpful suggestions over the years. Any errors and inconsistencies in this work remain my own. My thanks also to the editorial staff at I.B. Tauris and Bloomsbury for their patience along the way and to my parents, under whose roof part of this book was researched and written. This book is dedicated to the memory of Dr John Stoye (1917–2016), an inspiring teacher and gifted scholar who long encouraged my interest in Central and Eastern Europe. Rebecca Haynes June 2019

Note on Place-Names Central and Eastern Europe has long been subject to competing peoples, kingdoms and empires which has given rise to different forms of place-names. The choice of any particular variant of these place-names is often interpreted as reflecting national partisanship. The decision to use present-day place-names when discussing the history of Moldova and its territorial neighbours is, however, purely for the convenience of the reader in what is already a complicated narrative. Since there are inevitably some exceptions to this rule, required to explain certain specific historical developments, alternative names are also listed in the Index.

Abbreviations CPSU

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

DMR

Dniester Moldovan Republic (also known as ‘Transnistria’)

ECHR

European Court of Human Rights

MASSR

Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

MSSR

Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic

OGFOR

Operational Group of Russian Forces

OSCE

Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe

OSTOK

Obedenionyi Soiuz Trudovykh Kolektivov

 

(United Council of Workers’ Collectives)

PCRM

Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova

Maps  

Map 1  Moldova and Its Neighbours in the Early Fifteenth Century

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Maps

Map 2  The Principality of Moldova in 1483

Maps

Map 3  The Partition of the Principality of Moldova, 1775 and 1812

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Map 4  The Creation of the MSSR, 1940

Maps

Maps

Map 5  The Republic of Moldova Today

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Introduction: Places and questions

The Republic of Moldova has the distinction of being both Europe’s poorest country and its least visited. It may be known to English speakers through Tony Hawks’s Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, which describes the author’s tennis matches against Moldovan football players and his experiences of daily life in Moldova and Transnistria. The film adaptation of the book appeared in 2012 and was the first British film to be made in Moldova. The Eurovision song contest also brought Moldova to international attention. Moldova was first represented on the Eurovision stage in 2005 and the Moldovan public and government took the country’s Eurovision debut as a serious statement of national ambition. The republic’s president affirmed that ‘the participation of Moldova in the Eurovision is important primarily for the image and prestige of the country. Many Europeans do not even know that Moldova exists on the map of the continent’.1 Moldova lies in a remote corner of Eastern Europe, with most of its territory found between the rivers Prut and Dniester. This region between the two rivers is frequently also referred to as ‘Bessarabia’ in historical literature. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west along the course of the River Prut but is otherwise surrounded by Ukrainian territory. The republic is 33,851 km2, which is almost the same size as Belgium. Moldova’s terrain consists largely of a hilly plateau of forest steppe crossed by ravines and rivers. The highest point in the republic is the Bălăneşti hill in the centre of the country which is just 430 metres above sea level. In the north and south of Moldova lie the steppes of the Bălţi region and the Bugeac plain, respectively. Rich in fertile, black soil, Moldova is primarily an agricultural country with some 40 per cent of the workforce involved in agricultural production. The country’s population in 2017 was just 3.5 million, but almost half of it now lives abroad. To the east of the River Dniester is the small strip of land which constitutes the breakaway, and internationally unrecognized, Transnistrian republic, which declared its independence from the rest of the Republic of Moldova in 1991.

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Moldova: A History

Moldova lacks much of what would make it obviously attractive to tourists. It has no high mountains for skiing or trekking. Despite its warm summer temperatures, it has no sea coast for beach resorts. It has no historic urban centres of European cultural significance. Of the five great Moldovan fortresses built on the rivers Danube and Dniester in the medieval and early modern era, three are now in Ukrainian territory, while the fortress at Tighina (also known as Bender to Russian speakers) is under the effective control of the Transnistrian authorities and is a Russian military base. Only the fortress at Soroca, on the upper Dniester, now belongs incontestably to the Republic of Moldova. Despite these shortcomings, Moldova has much to intrigue the tourist with an interest in history, culture and the natural world. Some twenty synagogues, churches belonging to the many Christian denominations that have made their home in Moldova and Orthodox monasteries are to be found throughout the republic. Among the monuments of Orthodox spirituality are Saharna, which lies in a deep, wooded gully, with monastic cells cut into the rock, and the great medieval foundation of Căpriana, which is both a monastery and complex of churches. The outdoor museum at Orheiul Vechi has archaeological remains dating from prehistory onwards, religious monuments and examples of traditional peasant architecture. Moldova has a long tradition of viticulture and significant wineries. These include Mileştii Mici, which is the world’s largest underground winery with some 200 km of cellars. The country’s second-largest winery at Cricova houses the wine collections of a number of European politicians. These include Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who celebrated his fiftieth birthday at Cricova. The winery also holds part of Hermann Goering’s wine collection, which is now presented to tourists in a glass case. The Purcari winery was established in 1827 when Moldova was part of the Russian Empire. Queen Victoria and King George V favoured red Moldovan wines and, maintaining this tradition, Queen Elizabeth II regularly orders from Purcari crates of the 1990 vintage. Being overwhelmingly rural, Moldova abounds with picturesque, if impoverished, villages complete with gaily painted wells for drawing water, gaggles of geese and flocks of other domestic animals. Such traditional scenes are now mostly absent in the rural environments of former communist countries further west, where the tractor has replaced oxen and horses. Even the low-lying, rolling hills of Moldova have their charm, especially when the acacia trees are in bloom in the spring. The country now has several nature reserves in which the flora and fauna of forest, steppe and wetland can be enjoyed. There are over 1,500 species of plants, more than 250 species of birds and 70 species

Introduction

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of mammals. Among these are the increasingly rare souslik, or ground squirrel, which has shed its cousin’s long bushy tail, and the European wildcat. The grey wolf has recently returned to Moldova after an absence of forty years, although poor management has resulted in packs attacking flocks of sheep and terrorizing isolated hamlets. Post-communist Moldova has some unique examples of Soviet-era modernist architecture, although many of these buildings are now in an advanced state of decay. In 1981, the imaginatively designed State Circus was opened in the Moldovan capital, Chişinau. With its jagged exterior and domed roof, the building has the appearance of a crown, while its interior walls are covered in once-colourful frescoes. The State Circus held just under 2,000 spectators and was a great attraction for Soviet tourists. Moldovan gymnasts and performers were once regarded among some of the very best in the Soviet Union, especially in weightlifting. Although now derelict, there are plans underfoot to renovate and reopen the Circus. Visitors to Transnistria can observe Soviet institutions (such as the ‘House of Soviets’) functioning as if in a time warp and experience a part of Moldova that continues to identify with the Soviet Union. There are several problems involved in writing the history of Moldova. The first is the lack of reliable historical information. This is in itself largely a result of the region’s history, which, on account of its frequent wars, changes of government and disputed sovereignty, has made accurate and continuous recordkeeping impossible. In addition, the country’s main centres of scholarly activity, the monasteries, have suffered through war and plunder over the centuries. The historian is thus left with often conflicting and incomplete accounts with which to develop a narrative. This remains true even of the history surrounding the republic’s path to independence from the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991, where some of the most basic facts are contested. Secondly, there is a problem of definition. Today ‘Moldova’ commonly refers to the republic of that name which declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. ‘Moldova’ is also, however, the name of the eastern part of the modern Romanian state. Today’s two ‘Moldovas’ once constituted the principality of Moldova which was founded in the fourteenth century and is often referred to by the Latinized name of ‘Moldavia’. The lands of the present-day Republic of Moldova between the Prut and Dniester rivers were a part of this principality until 1812 when they were annexed by the Russian Empire and renamed ‘Bessarabia’ (for the origin of the name, see pp. 81–2). Later in the nineteenth century, the part of the historic Moldovan or Moldavian principality which lay west of the River Prut, and had avoided annexation by Russia, joined with its

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Moldova: A History

sister-principality of Wallachia (known as Ţara Românească to the Romanians) to form the kingdom of Romania. The former Moldovan lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers, which made up Russian Bessarabia, were detached from Russia at the end of the First World War and became part of Romania. But Bessarabia was seized by the Soviet Union in 1940 and transformed into the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, although portions of historic Bessarabia were also incorporated into Ukraine. On top of territory comes the problem of language. Since language is the badge of identity in Eastern Europe, how a language is described has important political consequences. Most historians and commentators in Romania argue that the ‘Moldovan’ language, adopted as the republic’s official language in 1994, is a dialect of Romanian and, therefore, describe the language as Romanian and the people of Moldova as Romanians. Many people in Moldova would concur with this view and regard themselves as Romanians. Moldovan nationalists claim, however, that although Moldovans are closely related to the Romanians, they form a distinct ethnic and linguistic group, with a separate historical development. This point of view is not without some basis in history. The scholar Dimitrie Cantemir, for example, writing in the early eighteenth century, referred to the language spoken in the Moldovan principality as the ‘Moldovan language’ and its speakers as ‘Moldovans’. Much was made of this during the period of Soviet occupation as a way of building up a separate Moldovan identity, in the course of which the script was shifted from Latin letters to Cyrillic ones. The intention behind this exercise in nation-building was to prevent Moldova reuniting with Romania. For sure, most modern linguists categorize Moldovan as one of the six regional sub-dialects of the historic Romanian language and as a dialect of Romanian.2 But studies of verb endings and etymologies are seldom decisive, and they will not answer questions that are essentially about politics, identity, the security of place and home, and a sense of belonging. Complicated as they are, however, these problems of definition are by no means unique to Moldova. Throughout Eastern Europe, historic ‘rights’ to territories, national identities and linguistic differences are often subject to excessive scrutiny and debate. Indeed, the problems of Moldovan history are the problems of Eastern European history writ small. The example of Moldova’s Ukrainian neighbour, whose territory, identity and language are still hotly contested, is a further illustration. Not only is the territory of Ukraine, like that of Moldova, a historically ‘contested space’, but Ukrainian identity itself retains an ambiguity.3 The further from the historic centre of Ukraine, the more the

Introduction

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variations of Ukrainian identity, with Hutsuls, Bojkos, Rusyns (or Ruthenes) and Lemkos vying for recognition, and each disparaging the others as embracing an invented nationality. There is a sizeable Ukrainian minority in Moldova and it is under that name that they appear in official censuses. We shall stick by that designation and redirect all letters of complaint to the National Bureau of Statistics in Chişinău. For Western historians and commentators, Moldova and the region to which it belongs have long been considered as part of Europe’s ‘periphery’. Cut off from the cultural and political influences that have created modern Europe, the area is often regarded as a backwater and little more than a curiosity. But the principality of Moldova was in the medieval period far from being on the periphery of Europe. Both the principality of Moldova and its sister-principality of Wallachia were subjected to major European political and cultural currents of the time. The principalities were both the recipients of and contributors to the store of Byzantine Orthodox learning and culture both before and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Far from being on Europe’s ‘periphery’, the principalities developed out of, and were at the heart of, European Orthodox civilization. The influences which fed the creation and development of the two principalities were not, however, identical. In the Middle Ages, Wallachia was considerably more dominated by the Catholic kingdom of Hungary than Moldova, as well as by the Serbian and Bulgarian South Slavs. It was largely on account of its proximity to the South Slavs that Wallachia was incorporated into the religious and cultural sphere of Byzantium in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In subsequent centuries, the Greek influence in Wallachia was especially strong. While subject to similar cultural trends, Moldova was more heavily influenced by Orthodox currents stemming from Kyiv and the lands of Poland-Lithuania. In recent centuries, Russian and Ukrainian military and cultural influences have also been a major factor in Moldova’s development. While being united to Wallachia by language and culture, therefore, other influences have pulled Moldova northwards and eastwards and have shaped a different history. The Moldovans’ (and indeed the Romanians’) often complicated relations with the East Slavs, and in particular the Ukrainians and Russians, are not, therefore, simply the product of Moldova’s incorporation within the Soviet Union during the Second World War. It is, therefore, appropriate to consider the issue of the development of a Moldovan national identity, which is one theme of this book, in a long-term historical perspective and not simply as a

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Moldova: A History

product of recent decades. It is for this reason that this book is as concerned with the deep, historical past as with the events of the past century. At the same time, the historic interconnection with the Romanian lands to the west of the River Prut means that the history of Moldova is, at least in part, also the history of Romania.

1

Origins

By the fourth and third centuries bc, the lands which comprise the present-day republics of Moldova and Romania were inhabited by many tribes, including the Getae and Dacians. Both tribes belonged to the Thracian people, who spoke a now extinct Indo-European language. The two tribes already had links with the ancient Hellenic world through the Greek colonies situated on the coast of the Black Sea. These colonies included Tyras (later known in Romanian as Cetatea Albă), on the mouth of the Dniester estuary, which had been established in the sixth century bc. In the middle of the first century bc, the Getic leader Burebista brought the various tribes between the middle Danube, the northern Carpathian mountains, the River Dniester, the Black Sea and the Balkan mountains under his control in a vast tribal union. Burebista may even have had a regional capital in the valley of the River Siret which flows through what would become the medieval principality of Moldova.1 On Burebista’s death, however, his creation was divided up, although a Dacian kingdom, based in what was to become Transylvania, survived. The future Romanian lands subsequently fell under increasing Roman influence. The Dacians and Getae not only maintained continuous contact with the Roman world and its politicians but also frequently attacked the borders of the Roman Empire. In ad 8, the Roman poet Ovid was banished by Emperor Augustus to the Greek colony of Tomis (present-day Constanţa on Romania’s Black Sea coast) in the Roman province of Moesia. Ovid, remote from his beloved Rome, felt that he stood at ‘the world’s end’. Surrounded by various ‘barbarian’ tribes over whom the Roman authorities had imperfect control, he lamented that when the Danube froze in winter, Hordes of hostile savages ride over on swift/ ponies, their pride, with bows that shoot long-range arrows/ and cut a marauding swath through the countryside.2

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Moldova: A History

In the following century, however, the Romans decided to take matters in their own hands and assert their control directly over their troublesome neighbours. Accordingly, in ad 106, the Romans led by Emperor Trajan destroyed the kingdom of the Dacians, as a result of which its king, Decebalus, committed suicide. Trajan occupied the Transylvanian plateau and most of the territory between the Carpathian mountains and the River Danube. Trajan divided these lands between the Roman provinces of Dacia and Lower Moesia. The latter included the Black Sea coastal strip between the rivers Prut and Dniester where Trajan’s Wall was built, remnants of which are still visible in the south of Moldova. Some of the land conquered by Trajan was, however, lost under his successor, the Emperor Hadrian, due to barbarian incursions. As a result, all the territory of present-day Moldova now lay outside direct Roman control. Dacia and Lower Moesia, meanwhile, were subject to Romanization and colonization, although Roman rule in the area proved relatively short-lived. As a result of barbarian attacks, the Roman legions withdrew south of the River Danube around ad 273. The native inhabitants north of the river remained within the loose cultural orbit of the Roman world, but fully organized political life was not to re-emerge in the area for over a millennium. The centuries following the withdrawal of the Roman legions were marked by the ebb and flow of nomadic tribes who traversed, or made their temporary home upon, the lands of the present-day republics of Moldova and Romania. The territory which was later to make up the medieval Moldovan principality, although comprising wooded mountains to the north and bounded by the high peaks of the Carpathian mountains to the west, consisted mainly of hilly plains and steppe lands extending down to a plateau on the Black Sea coast. As an extension of the Eurasian steppes, the plains of the future Moldovan principality acted as an open road for the barbarian tribes which sought to plunder the riches of the Roman Empire. Following the division of the Roman Empire at the end of the third century ad, East Rome (later Byzantium) retained control of the fortifications on the lower Danube frontier or limes. The barbarians, however, repeatedly succeeded in breaching the Danube defences and bore down on the Roman cities of the Balkan peninsula, frequently threatening Constantinople itself. The third century ad had already been marked by the arrival of the Germanic Goths, and they were followed by assorted tribes of Huns, Gepids and Avars. The Slavs entered the Danube basin and the Balkan peninsula in the late sixth century and the Bulgars in the seventh century. These new invaders were to have

Origins

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a profound effect on the Romance-speaking population which had been left behind in old Roman Dacia and Lower Moesia, cutting them off from direct contact with the Byzantine Empire for many centuries. According to the so-called Daco-Roman continuity theory, the modern Romanians are descendants of the Dacians who intermarried with the Roman colonists and eventually adopted their Latin language. These ‘Daco-Romans’ remained in Dacia following the withdrawal of the Roman legions in ad 273 and, so it is claimed, retained their Latin identity and tongue in the face of subsequent barbarian invasions through their timely retreat into the mountains of Transylvania. This argument was put forward most strongly by Romanian historians in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It was used to justify the creation of the modern Romanian state by claiming a continuous and substantial Romanian presence north of the River Danube from Roman times onwards. Such historians have usually also denied that the Slavs exercised any important influence on the development of the Romanian nation. In a work for foreign consumption, published in 1925, Nicolae Iorga, Romania’s most famous and prolific historian, argued that the Slavonic influence on the Romanians following the Balkan invasions ‘is not supported by a study either of the historical sources or of national customs and language’.3 This view of Romanian origins came to dominate Romanian historiography, particularly during the 1980s under Nicolae Ceauşescu’s ‘national communist’ regime. Increasingly, however, it was the Dacian inheritance, rather than the Roman one, that was stressed by the regime.4 Nevertheless, several leading Romanian scholars had long recognized the importance of the Slavonic influence in Romanian identity and culture. The Romanians’ first major Slavonicist, Bogdan Hasdeu, born in Russian-ruled Bessarabia in 1838, argued that the Romanians were a product of a fusion of Thracians, Dacians, Romans and Slavs. These people had merged into a distinct people on both sides of the River Danube. Another argument, now associated with Hungarian historians, was also expounded by some eminent Romanian historians. Radu Rosetti (1853–1926) and Gheorghe Brătianu (1898–1953) argued that the ‘Romanians’ were not the descendants of the early Dacians but of a Romance-speaking population from the Balkans, who only arrived north of the Danube many centuries after the withdrawal of the Romans. On this basis, Rosetti argued that the Romanians were, in fact, ‘Romanized Slavs’ who fled north of the Danube to escape the grasping hands of Byzantine tax collectors. According to Brătianu, contacts between the Romanized population north and south of the Danube had not ceased with the formal withdrawal of the Roman legions in ad 273. The

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Moldova: A History

arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans in the late sixth century, however, modified the nascent Romanian language and forced part of the Romanized population to flee north of the Danube.5 Whatever the historical truth of these different theories regarding the genesis of the Romanian people, the Slavs, although eventually absorbed into the Romance-speaking population in the Danube basin, have left a strong imprint on the Romanian language. Many Romanian place names, and almost one-fifth of the vocabulary in modern Romanian, are of Slavonic origin. Moreover, it was largely through their Slavonic neighbours that the inhabitants of the future Moldovan and Wallachian principalities became incorporated into the religious and cultural life of Orthodox Christian Byzantium. The Slavs were by no means the last of the barbarian tribes to enter the territory of, and have an influence upon, the future Moldovan principality. The ninth century also saw the arrival of the pagan Hungarians in the Danube basin. Within the space of only a few hundred years, the Hungarians had created a flourishing kingdom and embraced Catholicism. The foundation of the Moldovan principality was to be intimately bound up with the continued expansion of Hungarian royal authority in the region. The Hungarian invaders were in turn followed by the Turkic Pechenegs in the tenth century and by another Turkic tribe, the Cumans, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cumans made their temporary home between the Siret and Dniester rivers, within the lands of the future Moldovan principality. Like the Slavs, the Cumans had a lasting effect on many Moldovan toponyms and were responsible for the names of towns that were to be important in the future principality. These include Tighina, Hotin and possibly even the present capital of the republic, Chişinău, the name of which may recall a spring on the banks of a river.6 An alternative theory proposes that the city’s name derives from the Hungarian name Kisjenő meaning Eugene the Small.7 The Hungarian kings had already secured control over the Transylvanian region in the tenth century, and thereafter they began to expand their kingdom beyond the Carpathian mountains. King Andrew II (reigned 1205–1235) continued the policy of Catholic proselytizing in the Danube basin through his conversion of the pagan Cumans. King Andrew then created a Catholic bishopric of ‘Cumania’ with its seat at Brassó (Rom. Braşov), later (and erroneously) identified with the See of Milcovia which was constituted in the fourteenth century. The area of the bishopric of Cumania covered roughly the south-west of the future Moldovan principality, north-east of the future Wallachia and southeast of Transylvania.8

Origins

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The last of the major barbarian onslaughts into Central and Eastern Europe was the Mongol-Tatar invasion of 1241 which brought the activities of the Catholic bishopric of Cumania to a halt. It was to be another century before the Hungarians were able to re-establish Hungarian supremacy east of the Carpathian mountains. This was achieved as a result of the successful expedition of 1345 led by King Louis of Anjou, who founded the Milcovia bishopric shortly afterwards. King Louis’s successes beyond the Carpathians were also bound up with the foundation of the Moldovan principality. According to numerous Moldovan chroniclers from the sixteenth century onwards, the Moldovan ‘foundation myth’ runs roughly as follows. In 1359 a certain Dragoş came down, or ‘dismounted’ (Rom. descălat), from the mountains of Transylvania or Maramureş onto the uninhabited plains east of the Carpathian mountains while hunting wild aurochs (a type of bison). During the hunt, Dragoş’s favourite hound, Molda, drowned in a river. Dragoş and his followers, therefore, named the river ‘Moldova’ in memory of the hound and subsequently named their new country after the river. Dragoş took the auroch’s head as his heraldic shield, which became the symbol of the new principality.9 Standing almost two metres high at the shoulder, aurochs were relatively widespread in Moldova in the medieval period. With their massive horns, they were a worthy prey and had been hunted to extinction by the early seventeenth century.10 The tale of Dragoş clearly fits into the widespread mythology of the ‘ritual hunt’ in which pursuit of an animal leads to the founding of a people, dynasty or new country.11 Historians have consequently found it hard to disentangle myth from legend in interpreting these events. Different opinions exist regarding not only the date of the principality’s foundation but also its dramatis personae. As one historian has written, ‘according to some Moldova is founded by Dragoş, according to others by Bogdan. According to some, Dragoş is the son of Bogdan, while according to others Bogdan is one of the descendants of Dragoş’.12 It is most probable, however, that it was Dragoş who began his rule in Moldova in fief to the Hungarian crown and as a vassal of King Louis. Bogdan, generally regarded as the first independent ruler of Moldova, secured his control in 1363 and reigned until around 1367.13 Two Hungarian documents give us indications of the principality’s emergence and are among the earliest documents in which the name ‘Moldova’ is recorded. In 1360, King Louis conferred upon Dragoş six villages in the Hungarian county of Maramureş as recompense for his military service in Moldova against ‘rebellious Vlachs’ (‘plures Olachos rebellantes’. Vlach is the usual term given in Latin and other sources to designate Romanian-speakers. It survives in the

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Moldova: A History

modern ‘Wallachian’).14 Five years later, in 1365, King Louis conferred upon Balc, Dragoş’s grandson, estates in Maramureş, which had formerly belonged to Bogdan who Louis now deemed to be in ‘occupation’ of Moldova.15 It seems that Bogdan had entered Moldova and ejected the ‘pro-Hungarian’ Saş, Dragoş’s son, and repulsed various Hungarian attempts to re-establish King Louis’s authority in Moldova, including one by Balc, Dragoş’s grandson. Bogdan’s territory, however, extended only from the Carpathian mountains to the River Siret, with the town of Baia as the seat of his court.16 What then were Bogdan’s motives in entering Moldova, ejecting the proHungarian Saş and establishing himself as an independent ruler? It is likely that Bogdan, who by all accounts was an adherent of the Orthodox Church, fled from Maramureş, together with other Romanian-speakers. Bogdan and his followers sought to escape from the strong Catholic efforts at conversion which were taking place in Transylvania and Maramureş under Hungarian auspices in the fourteenth century.17 Far from being uninhabited lands, as the chroniclers claim, the lands east of the Carpathian mountains may already have become a place of refuge for Romanian-speakers, and others of the Orthodox faith, well before Dragoş’s ‘foundation’ of the principality in 1359. Both archaeological and historical evidence suggest that a significant Romanian-speaking population had already established itself east of the Carpathians in the centuries before the arrival of Dragoş, Bogdan and their followers. The Byzantine chronicle of Nicetas Choniates records the seizure in 1164 of Andronicus Comnenus by ‘Vlachs’ on the borders of Halych, now in western Ukraine.18 Archaeological excavations have revealed a long continuity of settlement by Romanian-speakers east of the Carpathians, as well as interchange, through the mountain passes, with the Romanian-speaking population in Transylvania and Maramureş. In other words, migration east of the Carpathians was gradual and probably occasioned by a mixture of religious persecution and economic motives.19 The seventeenth-century Moldovan chronicler, Grigore Ureche, described Dragoş and his followers as păstori or shepherds.20 It is certainly possible that some of the Romanians who migrated east of the Carpathians were, as Ureche suggests, shepherds following a transhumant lifestyle. Others were settled agriculturalists living under the authority of a local village leader, a cneaz, who was himself subject to the authority of a leader with military and judicial authority, the voevod.21 Significantly, both these terms for expressing important social institutions are of Slavonic origin. This is evidence for the Romanianspeakers’ eventual absorption of the Slavonic peoples among whom they lived.

Origins

13

In addition to the Slavonic migrations of the sixth and seventh centuries into the Balkans, the ninth and tenth centuries saw the movements of East Slav Ukrainians from the Kyivan Rus’ lands into what was to become northern Moldova. Much of the territory of the future Moldovan principality was subject to the influence of the Kyivan Rus’ principality during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and later from the Kyivan principality’s successor states. Many Ukrainians were also already established in village communities in the region before the ‘foundation’ of Moldova in the fourteenth century. A folk-memory of the Ukrainian presence east of the Carpathians may be preserved in the legend that when Dragoş entered the plains of Moldova he found only one man living there. This was a certain Ukrainian named Etzko who sustained his existence entirely on the produce of his bees.22 In addition to the Slavonic population, Flemish traders, Hungarians and Germans, known generically as Saxons, were also present in the lands of the future principality well before the fourteenth century. It is possible that the Hungarians and Saxons were responsible for the introduction of vineyards into Moldova.23 More Hungarians and Saxons arrived in the area between the Carpathian mountains and the River Prut following the Hungarians’ expulsion of the Tatars from the region in the mid-fourteenth century. It was probably then that the Hungarian ancestors of the Csángós also arrived in the region.24 The Franciscan friar, Marcus Bandinus, recorded in the mid-seventeenth century that shamanism, with its ecstatic trances, was still practised in Moldova. Shamans were consulted by those who fell ill, who had lost possessions or who desired revenge against an enemy. These shamans were probably Csángós, whose ancestors had brought shamanism with them from Asia.25 The Csángós, now devoutly Roman Catholic, continue to live in present-day Romanian Moldova. The Saxons, in establishing themselves as miners and traders, were responsible for founding a number of urban settlements, including those later known to the Moldovans as Baia, Siret and Suceava, which successively housed the Moldovan princely court in the late fourteenth century.26 According to a Saxon historian writing in the late nineteenth century, there were also family ties between the new Moldovan princely family and the Saxons. We are told that Dragoş and his followers entered Moldova with many Hungarians and Saxons. Dragoş thereafter took a Saxon for his wife and their son was named Saş, meaning Saxon, in her honour.27 The etymology of the principality’s name is probably also linked to Moldova’s economically important Saxon population, although several other fanciful suggestions have been put forward. Adam Neale, a British visitor to Moldova

14

Moldova: A History

in the early nineteenth century, claimed that the principality was named after the ancient god Zalmoxis, the ‘eternal priest’ or Mollah. ‘Moldavia’ was thus a corruption of Mollah-div-ia, meaning ‘territory of the immortal Mollah’.28 More plausibly, the Romanian historians Constantin and Dinu Giurescu have argued that ‘Moldova’ is a derivation of molid, a Romanian word for spruce tree. ‘Moldova’ thus refers to the evergreen forests which covered most of the principality in the medieval period.29 Other scholars claim that the name is Germanic in origin, in keeping with the Germans’ early presence in the area during the Gothic invasions in the third century ad. Thus, it has been argued that the principality did indeed take its name from the River Moldova (a tributary of the River Siret) and that this derives not from the name of Dragoş’s hound but instead from the Gothic word mulde (or molda), meaning ‘loose earth’.30 The name would thereby correspond to the German name for the River Moldau (Vltava in Czech) in Bohemia and to the River Mulde, a tributary of the Elbe, on the banks of which the fortress of Colditz was later constructed. The presence of Flemish traders and German merchants and colonists in Moldova at the time of its foundation suggests one reason for Hungarian interest in the region, namely its economic and commercial worth.31 The lands of the future Moldova had long been an important trading route for goods coming from north-west Europe (Flanders and the Hanseatic ports) and from the Baltic to the Black Sea and thence to Byzantium or the Mediterranean. Even in antiquity, this route through the future Moldova had been used for the transportation of amber from the Baltic to the Hellenic cities. By the fourteenth century, Genoese and Venetian traders had established trading colonies on the Black Sea. Two of these were particularly important for the future principality: Kilia (Rom. Chilia, originally a Byzantine foundation) on the Danube delta and Maurocastro (Rom. Cetatea Albă, originally the ancient Greek trading colony of Tyras) on the mouth of the Dniester. Both towns were important for the shipping of grain and other foodstuffs from the Danube basin to Byzantium, as well as cloth coming from Northern Europe, and for the export of Byzantine ‘luxury’ goods to Central and Northern Europe. During the fourteenth century, authority over the Moldovan lands, which linked the Black Sea ports to the rest of Central and Northern Europe, was contested by the Hungarian and Polish monarchs, who sought to secure control over the nascent principality and its trade. The Hungarian kingdom had already secured its suzerainty over the principality of Wallachia founded by Basarab I in c.1330. The Hungarians now strove to control the lands to the south and east of the Carpathians so as to capture the trade from Hungary and Transylvania which passed along the River

Origins

15

Danube to the Black Sea. The port of Chilia on the Danube mouth with its links to Constantinople was particularly coveted by the Hungarians and their Wallachian vassals. Even after Bogdan’s successful bid for independence from Hungarian vassalage in the 1360s, the Moldovan principality continued to be subject to Hungarian political pressure. A new power was rising, however, on the principality’s northern border. In the 1340s, the Polish kingdom had taken control of the principality of HalychVolhynia, together with the city of Lviv, an important economic centre for German traders which was linked to the Hanseatic ports of the Baltic shore. It was only natural that the Polish king would cast his eye over the Moldovan lands which linked Lviv to the Black Sea port of Maurocastro (Rom. Cetatea Albă), with its large Genoese trading community. The foundation and development of the Moldovan principality in the fourteenth century was, therefore, played out against the background of Hungarian and Polish economic and political rivalry in the area. The Moldovan rulers’ close relations with the Polish kingdom yielded an effective counterweight to Hungarian attempts to reassert political hegemony over the Moldovan lands. As well as being contested by the Hungarian and Polish kingdoms, the Moldovan principality was also the subject of competition between Roman Catholic and Byzantine Orthodox Christianity. It may be recalled that Bogdan, who secured Moldova’s independence from Hungary, was of the Orthodox faith. Hungarian Catholic pressure, however, continued to threaten the new state and Bogdan’s son and successor, Laţcu (reigned 1365–c.1375), duly underwent a ‘conversion’ to Catholicism which was probably politically motivated.32 Laţcu’s conversion was rendered necessary by the union of the Hungarian and Polish crowns under King Louis of Anjou in 1370. This union of crowns lasted until Louis’s death in 1382 and put a temporary end to Moldova’s strategy of ‘balancing’ between Hungary and Poland. In addition, considerable Catholic pressure was exerted at this time by Franciscan and Dominican missionaries. In 1370, therefore, Laţcu made a direct request to the Pope, asking him to establish a Catholic bishopric at Siret. The Pope duly agreed and placed the bishopric under direct papal control. Laţcu’s decision to make a personal appeal to Rome, thereby avoiding the mediation of the Hungarian ecclesiastical authorities, together with his decision to move his court to Siret, was designed to ensure the independence of Moldova from Hungarian control. At the same time, Laţcu placated King Louis through his espousal of the Catholic faith. But his conversion to Catholicism was only a token one, for his wife and daughter continued to stick by the Orthodox faith. On his death, moreover, Laţcu was not buried at Catholic Siret but in the

16

Moldova: A History

Church of St Nicholas in Rădăuţi. Here, Laţcu’s father, Bogdan, had established an Orthodox metropolitanate, headed by the equivalent of a bishop. Laţcu’s successor, Petru I  Muşat (the founder of the House of Muşat, who reigned c.1375–1391), was also of Orthodox faith. Petru I Muşat’s Orthodoxy did not, however, prevent him from seeking the very closest political relations with Catholic Poland, as a counterweight to Hungary. Following the death of King Louis of Anjou in 1382, the Hungarian and Polish kingdoms were separated, but in 1386 the crowns of Poland and Lithuania were united. In the following year, Petru I Muşat paid homage to the Polish-Lithuanian king, Władisław I Jagiello, as his feudal overlord. By this action, Muşat and his boyars were now obliged to fight for the Polish king against his enemies. Cordial relations between Moldova and Poland-Lithuania were sealed by Muşat’s marriage to Władisław’s sister. Crucial as these links were in securing Moldova’s continued independence from Hungary, Petru I  Muşat’s oath of fealty to the Polish-Lithuanian king constrained his independence. Nevertheless, the territorial extent of the principality continued to grow with the extension of the border to the River Dniester in the north through the incorporation of the fortress of Hotin. Petru I Muşat wrested Hotin from the control of the Tatars who had dominated the lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers since the Mongol-Tatar invasion of 1241. Muşat now transferred the royal court from Siret to Suceava, which was also to become the seat of the future Moldovan Orthodox metropolitanate.33 The creation of the metropolitanate in the 1380s did not come about without conflict between the Moldovan ruler and the patriarch of Constantinople. Despite his allegiance to Orthodox Christianity, Muşat, like the Orthodox princes of Kyiv, attempted to secure a degree of ecclesiastical autonomy. The metropolitans of Kyiv were often nominated by the rulers of Kyiv and only subsequently confirmed by the patriarch of Constantinople. In a similar fashion, Muşat sought to make his own appointment, designating his relative Iosif, a monk from Neamţ monastery founded by Muşat in 1383, to serve as the first metropolitan. Iosif ’s colleague, Meletie, was appointed as bishop of Rădăuţi. Both were consecrated by the metropolitan of Halych. The authority of the Orthodox metropolitan of Halych ran along the whole course of the River Dniester, despite the Polish kingdom’s increasingly Catholic complexion. These consecrations proved unacceptable, however, to the patriarch of Constantinople who sought to appoint a Greek candidate through whom he could exert direct control over Moldovan religious affairs. The issue was only resolved after the death of the two chief protagonists. In 1401, shortly after the accession of Alexander the Good (Alexandru cel Bun, reigned 1400–1432) to the Moldovan throne, the new

Origins

17

patriarch of Constantinople confirmed Iosif ’s appointment as the head of the metropolitanate of Moldova with its seat at Suceava, the princely capital.34 Political policy wavered and so too did ecclesiastical. But by the fourteenth century, Moldova was firm in its adherence to the Orthodox religion. By embracing Orthodoxy, the Moldovan princes had made a decision that would fundamentally shape the nature of the principality over which they ruled. Orthodoxy was not just a religion but freighted with ideas of the right political order and of the interweaving of religious and princely power. It was both an ideology and an ecclesiology, which imagined the replication of divine government on earth and which vested the ruler with a heavenly authority. On this, future rulers would build.

18

2

The Late Middle Ages: Athletes of Christ

During the reign of Alexander the Good, Moldova became fully integrated into the religious and cultural life of Orthodox Christianity. This followed the arrival of the patriarch of Constantinople’s delegation to the principality in 1401 to confirm the creation of the metropolitanate of Moldova. This process of incorporation into the Byzantine world had already begun in Moldova’s sister principality of Wallachia with the creation of the Orthodox metropolitanate of ‘Ungrovlachia’ based at Curtea de Argeş in 1359. The language through which the Romanian-speaking Moldovans and Wallachians received the Byzantine Orthodox liturgy and religious literature was Church Slavonic (now usually referred to as ‘Old Church Slavonic’). The conversion to Orthodox Christianity of the Slavs by Byzantine missionaries and monks had been aided by, and was dependent upon, the invention of a Slavonic alphabet by Saints Cyril and Methodius and their followers. Through this alphabet the Byzantine liturgy, as well as the Holy Scriptures, lives of saints and other religious, and even profane, texts were translated from Greek into the Slavonic language. By the late ninth century the Bulgarians were using Old Church Slavonic. The Romanian-speakers in the region had probably adopted Old Church Slavonic for use in the Byzantine liturgy by the eleventh century, through the mediation of Bulgarian Orthodox clergymen and monks.1 It was the Bulgarian variant of Old Church Slavonic which was most frequently used in the principalities over the following centuries for copying Slavonic texts or translating from Byzantine-Greek originals. To this day, Romanian religious terminology is infused with words of Slavonic and Greek origin, as well as terms derived from Latin originals.2 The Bulgarian variant of Old Church Slavonic was also used for original works of a more creative nature, such as the ‘Life of St John the New’, written by the Bulgarian clergyman Grigore Ţamblac, who had led the patriarch’s delegation from Constantinople which arrived in Moldova in 1401.

20

Moldova: A History

The emergence of the Moldovan and Wallachian principalities as political entities in the fourteenth century had the effect of transforming Old Church Slavonic into the written language of the princely courts, as well as that of the Church, through its adoption by the court chancelleries. Old Church Slavonic dominated both the Church and chancelleries in the principalities until well into the seventeenth century, although the chancelleries also drew up documents in Latin and German where necessary. Old Church Slavonic underwent, however, certain modifications throughout the Orthodox world under the influences of the local spoken languages. In Moldova the script underwent some slight mutation as a result of the gradual permeation of Polish and East Slav linguistic influences.3 The centrality of Old Church Slavonic in the early centuries of the principalities’ existence is reflected in the fact that it was the Old Church Slavonic alphabet which was used to give written form to the Romanian language. This alphabet was only replaced by the Latin script in the principalities in the midnineteenth century. Institutional religious life in Moldova, based on the Byzantine model, also began to flourish during Alexander the Good’s long reign. Alexander founded an Orthodox bishopric at Roman, as well as re-establishing the bishopric set up by Bogdan I at Rădăuţi. He also built churches and his monastic foundations included Moldoviţa and Bistriţa in northern Moldova, as well as Căpriana and Vărzăreşti east of the River Prut, which are among the oldest monasteries in Moldova. The style of ecclesiastical architecture and painting employed during Alexander’s reign was also based on the Byzantine style, together with the local variations already visible in other Orthodox lands, such as the Serbian ‘Morava’ school. The richly decorated religious embroideries and vestments produced during Alexander’s reign also owed their designs to Byzantine originals. Alexander’s monastic foundations shared in the Hesychast tradition, with its stress on inner silence and meditative contemplation. Hesychasm was already established at Petru I Muşat’s foundation at Neamţ, which was itself indebted to the Hesychast traditions emanating from Wallachia and elsewhere in southeast Europe. Contemplation of icons, as a means to seeing and knowing God, was linked with silent prayer. Practitioners excluded external noise and internal ‘chatter’ during prayer by repeating a devotional phrase. The most common of these was the so-called Jesus Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me’), which is recited in Christian meditation to this day.4 Neamţ and Bistriţa monasteries became the main Moldovan schools for the copying of Old Church Slavonic religious texts from Bulgarian and Serbian, as well as for the translation of Byzantine-Greek originals. An important school



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of calligraphy and manuscript illumination was also established at Neamţ monastery during Alexander’s reign. One of the many beautiful works produced by the school was a copy of an illuminated Slavonic gospel, currently held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.5 Orthodox clergymen, monks and scholars of Slavonic and Greek origin travelled extensively through the principalities in the medieval period, assisting in the diffusion of the Byzantine religion and culture. The career of Grigore Ţamblac is a case in point. A monk from Tarnovo in Bulgaria, which was itself a leading cultural centre, Ţamblac had already visited Serbia, Mount Athos (the most important home of the Hesychast movement in the Orthodox world) and Constantinople before his arrival in Moldova. Here he was abbot of Neamţ monastery from 1403 until 1415. Famed for his sermons in Old Church Slavonic, Ţamblac did much to confirm the presence of the Byzantine Orthodox liturgy and religious literature within the Moldovan Church in its Slavonic form. He became metropolitan of Kyiv in 1415, in which capacity he helped to strengthen relations between the world of the Orthodox East Slavs and Moldovan congregations.6 The Byzantine model was also adopted during Alexander the Good’s reign in the day-to-day life of the princely court at Suceava.7 The ceremonial of the court displayed the influence of the imperial court at Constantinople, which itself drew upon the elaborate ritual of the Orthodox Church. A structure of court officials also began to crystallize under Alexander’s direction, with titles derived either directly from the Greek spoken at the Byzantine imperial court, such as logofăt meaning chancellor, or in Slavonic translation, such as stolnic meaning high steward. Once again, this system and nomenclature of court officials probably arrived in Moldova through the mediation of the Bulgarian or Serbian royal courts, where Byzantine influence had long been apparent. Alexander ruled with the aid of a princely council, or Sfatul Domnesc, consisting of advisers drawn from among the boyars, that is, the landed nobles, from whose ranks court officials were also drawn. During his reign, Alexander was able to maintain royal authority over the boyars, leading to a relatively long period of political stability which was to prove to be a rare event in the principality’s history. Alexander’s official title was domn, from the Latin dominus, which is often translated as prince. In medieval written documents, the Moldovan and Wallachian princes were often referred to as hospodar, the Slavonic translation of domn, or as voievod. Alexander appropriated for himself the description autocrat, a name usually only applied in this period to the emperor in Constantinople

22

Moldova: A History

himself. The word autocrat reflected the Byzantine belief that the emperor’s sovereignty was absolute and universal, mirroring God’s rule in heaven.8 The realities of the small principality’s existence, however, and the practical extent of Alexander’s power were more limited than his appropriation of Byzantine political and ecclesiastical models suggests. Princely independence was circumscribed by the relationship of the ruler to the Polish king. Ever since Petru I  Muşat’s oath of allegiance to Władisław I  Jagiello in 1387, Moldova counted as a fief, held of the Polish-Lithuanian crown. Indeed, so much did the Polish king regard Moldova as a part of his kingdom that he awarded several estates in Moldova to his relatives shortly after Alexander’s accession to the Moldovan throne.9 Alexander himself paid homage to the Polish king five times during the course of his reign and was on several occasions obliged to help the Polish king against his adversaries, the Teutonic Knights. While fealty to the Polish monarch, who had many Orthodox subjects, saved Moldova from the immediate clutches of her powerful Catholic Hungarian neighbour, a treaty drawn up between Poland-Lithuania and Hungary in 1412 reflected the potential fragility of Moldova’s territorial integrity and the limitations of her ruler’s autocratic pretensions.10 The treaty confirmed Moldova’s status as a vassal of Poland-Lithuania but laid certain military obligations upon Moldova to fight for the Hungarians in the event of an attack by the Muslim Ottomans. Failure to perform such services would lead to the partition of the principality; the north and east, with the port of Cetatea Albă, falling to Poland, and the south and west, with the port of Chilia, to Hungary. The partition did not take place, but the treaty’s stipulations reflected Moldova’s potential vulnerability. By the same token, however, it indicated that Moldova was a prize worth having. When Alexander came to the throne in 1400, Moldova’s borders had only extended to the River Dniester in the north, at Hotin.11 The rest of the course of the Dniester, including Cetatea Albă, was effectively controlled by the Muslim Tatars. In around 1408 Alexander successfully pushed the Tatars beyond the Dniester and secured his position on the river at Tighina. From there, Alexander struck down towards the Dniester estuary and seized Cetatea Albă where the Genoese traders obligingly accepted his suzerainty. Alexander thus established the River Dniester as Moldova’s eastern border, where it remained until Russia annexed the lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers in 1812. Simultaneously, by incorporating Cetatea Albă into Moldova, Alexander asserted his control over the lucrative trade route between this Black Sea port and Central and Northern Europe, especially trade with the Polish city of Lviv. Cetatea Albă also



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yielded signs of God’s approval of Alexander’s victory over the Tatars through the discovery there of the relics of Saint John the New. John had been arrested by the Muslim Tatar governor of Cetatea Albă in 1330 for preaching the Gospel. He was subsequently dragged behind a horse and martyred by the Tatars. Alexander now transported Saint John the New’s relics to Suceava, the seat of the new metropolitanate, to serve as the principality’s protective saint. A chapel was also constructed on the site of Saint John the New’s martyrdom in Cetatea Albă.12 In 1514, Saint John the New monastery was constructed by Prince Bogdan the Blind in central Suceava to house the saint’s relics. These are kept in a silver coffin which is still taken in procession through Suceava every 24 June, since this was the date on which the relics were brought to Suceava in 1402.13 The capture of Cetatea Albă was by no means the last of Alexander’s military and economic successes. By 1412 he had also taken control from Wallachia of the other great Genoese emporium, Chilia, situated on the Danube mouth. By securing these two entrepôts, Alexander greatly increased the international political and economic significance of Moldova. The principality now acted as the territorial link, under one sovereignty, between the great north European Baltic and Hanseatic trading ports, on the one side, and, on the other, the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. In order to secure the newly enlarged Moldova from its enemies, Alexander the Good improved the defences of the fortress of Chilia on the Danube, which was vulnerable to Wallachian and Hungarian assault, and built new fortifications in the interior of the country at Neamţ and Suceava, while not neglecting the walls of Hotin and Cetatea Albă on the Dniester. Alexander also improved the administrative organization of Moldova through the division of the country into twenty-four regions. Alexander’s military conquests and the political stability of his reign assisted the growth of trade, which he fostered by granting privileges to merchants and traders, giving them the right to hold markets and fairs. The Genoese merchant colonies established at Cetatea Albă and Chilia retained their administrative autonomy, despite the incorporation of these towns into Moldova, and they were allowed their own Catholic churches. In 1408 Alexander extended generous privileges to traders from Lviv in Polish Galicia and to Transylvanian merchants. Suceava, which had existed as an urban outpost well before the foundation of Moldova, and more recently as the seat of the court and metropolitanate, became one of the principality’s main inland commercial centres. Situated in the northwest of the principality, Suceava served to connect Moldovan traders with the important trading communities of Lviv and with Bistriţa in Transylvania.

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Moldova: A History

As the case of Suceava suggests, most of Moldova’s urban centres were in the north-west of the principality, which was also its political core. This was in large measure due to the way in which the principality had developed out of population movements from Maramureş and Transylvania into what became northern Moldova. Most urban centres thus emerged in hilly areas where rivers such as the Moldova, Suceava and Siret and primitive roads exited the Carpathian mountains. There were consequently far fewer towns east of the River Prut than to its west. In the medieval period, only Lăpuşna and Orhei were significant towns east of the Prut, together with the fortifications on the Dniester and Chilia on the Danube. This significantly lower level of urbanization between the Prut and Dniester rivers was also due to the area’s vulnerability to Tatar incursions, and later to Cossack attacks which lasted until the eighteenth century. Even the settlement at Orhei had to be abandoned in the mid-sixteenth century owing to Tatar invasions, and a new site developed some eighteen kilometres upriver.14 Such problems also affected the density of churches and monasteries between the Prut and Dniester rivers. Even so, written sources suggest that nearly all villages in Moldova had churches by the fifteenth century.15 The Moldovan territorial space continued, however, to be contested by different Christian denominations. This was shrewdly exploited by Alexander. In 1401 he recognized the establishment of an Armenian Orthodox bishopric based at Suceava. The Armenians had important trading communities throughout the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the Caucasus, and the establishment of the bishopric helped to ensure their enduring presence on Moldovan soil. In 1414 he also established a Catholic bishopric at Baia, in addition to the one established by his predecessor Laţcu at Siret. This not only placated the region’s Catholic powers, Poland-Lithuania and Hungary, but also the significant Catholic German merchants, as well as the Poles and Hungarians living in Baia. Alexander also had two Catholic wives, including Ringala, the cousin of the Polish king. Perhaps the most interesting of the Christian denominations represented in Moldova during the reign of Alexander and his successors was Hussitism. As precursors to sixteenth-century Protestants, Hussites believed in the translation of the Bible into the vernacular and rejected papal supremacy. The Hussites ‘denounced the pope as a whore, the Roman Church as “the synagogue of Satan”, and [declared] holy water as the “urine of priests” ’. The Hussites entered the principality as a result of their persecution in Bohemia and Hungary after 1420. Most of these Hussites were artisans and craftsmen, probably of Slovak and Hungarian origin, who found employment in Moldovan towns, although some of them may have come to Moldova as mercenaries. The translation of the Old



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25

and New Testaments into Hungarian was undertaken by two Hungarian Hussite exiles to Moldova. The Hussites did not seek converts among the Orthodox population but were responsible for many conversions from Catholicism to Hussitism, a process which the principality’s Orthodox prince could not have viewed with displeasure. In the 1440s, the Englishman Peter Payne, a follower of John Wycliffe who had contacts with the Hussites in Bohemia, took refuge in Moldova before travelling on to Constantinople. While there, Payne sought to establish a union between the Hussites and the Orthodox Church. Such discussions that took place were brought to an end by the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, after which the Hussites continued their development as a separate sect. A  number of Hussites were received at the court of the Moldovan prince, Stephen the Great, who, like his grandfather Alexander the Good, doubtless approved of their conversions among the Roman Catholic population.16 The Hussite presence in Moldova may be recollected in the name of the town Huşi and a village of the same name.17 Alexander’s reign was marked by the consolidation of royal power and institutions, the promotion of trade and extension of Moldova’s borders, and the flourishing of the principality’s religious and cultural life. Dimitrie Cantemir was surely correct in his description of Alexander as ‘the first to make foreigners acquainted with the name of the Moldovans, who up to then had been too little known’.18 Despite the successes of Alexander’s reign, however, the principality’s existence was threatened by a far greater foe than her Catholic or Tatar neighbours. By 1354, the Muslim Ottomans had already extended their empire to the European shores of the Dardanelles and in subsequent decades their military prowess made them victorious throughout south-east Europe and the Danube basin. The Battle of Kosovo in 1389 effectively brought the independence of the Orthodox Serbian kingdom to an end and was followed by the subjugation of the Bulgarian lands to Ottoman control. In 1396 the Christian forces of the Wallachians and the Hungarians were defeated at Nicopolis on the Danube. The course of the lower Danube now fell under Ottoman control as the Wallachians lost the Danube fortress at Silistra together with the Black Sea coast of the Dobruja. An Ottoman siege of Cetatea Albă was successfully repulsed by Alexander the Good in 1420 but subsequent decades witnessed further Ottoman victories. The routing of the Hungarians at the Battle of Varna in 1444 effectively sealed the fate of southeast Europe. On 29 May 1453, the ‘Holy City’ of Constantinople, the political and religious capital of the East Roman Empire for over a millennium, fell to the Ottomans. This was a turning point in the lives of the Orthodox peoples

26

Moldova: A History

of south-east Europe and the beginning of the region’s long domination by the Ottomans. Wallachia had already been forced to pay tribute to the Ottomans in the early years of the fifteenth century. In 1462 Sultan Mehmed II successfully invaded the principality. He dethroned its prince, Vlad the Impaler, and placed on the throne Vlad’s more amenable brother, Radu the Handsome. Moldova avoided a similar fate and retained considerable independence from the Ottomans for several decades longer than Wallachia largely on account of the military courage and political skills of Stephen the Great (Ştefan cel Mare, reigned 1457–1504), the grandson of Alexander the Good. Stephen the Great has the reputation as one of Moldova’s (and Romania’s) foremost national heroes, but his path to the throne was anything but auspicious. Immediately upon Alexander the Good’s death in 1432, civil war broke out between his numerous descendants. Neither of the principalities had a clear system of royal succession to the throne, mixing instead hereditary and elective principles. This meant that all male members of the princely family, including illegitimate sons, had the right to claim the throne, with the final decision resting with the boyars. This created intense rivalry between the different contenders and their boyar supporters which frequently lapsed into a full-scale war. The flawed system of succession ultimately strengthened the hands of the Ottoman sultans in their attempts to exert control over the rulers of the principalities. The civil war on Alexander’s death continued for twenty-five years before Stephen’s accession in 1457. This period of war witnessed no less than sixteen reigns divided between eight princes. In order to win the throne, Stephen made an alliance with his Wallachian cousin, Vlad the Impaler. As the price of his support, Stephen was forced to cede the port of Chilia on the Danube mouth to the Wallachians and their Hungarian suzerains.19 In exchange for Polish support in his battle to win the throne, Stephen was also forced to relinquish the fortress of Hotin on the upper Dniester. The consequence of the loss of Chilia and Hotin was that Moldova lost much of the autonomy, built up during Alexander’s reign, to her powerful Roman Catholic neighbours. Hungary and Poland now controlled the Danube and Dniester rivers, and therefore the trade which was transported along them. Moreover, only one year before Stephen ascended the Moldovan throne, his predecessor and rival, Petru Aron, had been forced to pay tribute to the Ottomans, thereby accepting their suzerainty. This was an ominous sign of the steady growth of Ottoman power over the Moldovan principality.



The Late Middle Ages: Athletes of Christ

27

Once installed on the throne, however, Stephen was determined to free himself from dependence on Hungary, Poland and the Ottomans by allying in turn with them, playing off each against the others. In so doing, Stephen was able to turn Moldova from being an object of Polish-Hungarian rivalry into a regional political and military force of no mean significance.20 Stephen’s immediate concern was the return of the ports and fortresses of Chilia and Hotin. His two-year siege of Hotin led to a treaty with the Poles in 1459 under which Stephen swore fealty to the Polish king, who in turn restored Hotin to Moldova. Supported now by the Poles, Stephen was successful in his reconquest of Chilia in 1465. Loss of control over the Danube mouth was a significant economic and strategic blow to the Hungarians, however, and led their king, Matthias Corvinus, to launch an invasion of Moldova. Stephen’s defeat of the Hungarians at Baia in 1467 proved to be the last major attempt by the Hungarians to bring Moldova under direct Hungarian control. This gave Stephen freedom of action to deal with the Poles and the Ottomans. The Ottoman sultan had, meanwhile, formed an alliance with the Muslim Tatars, brooding discontentedly east of the River Dniester, whence they had been driven by Alexander the Good. Stephen had already successfully beaten back a Tatar incursion across the Dniester at the Battle of Lipnic in 1469. In order to contain the Tatars, Stephen reinforced the former Mongol-Tatar settlement at Orhei, which lies on a tributary of the Dniester and which is today part of the archaeological and religious complex at Orheiul Vechi. Stephen also built the fortress of Soroca on the Dniester. Six years later, Stephen’s army was once more victorious over a combined Ottoman-Tatar army at the Battle of Podul Înalt and also repulsed an Ottoman naval attack on Chilia and Cetatea Albă. These victories over the seemingly invincible Sultan Mehmed II, ‘the Conqueror’ of Constantinople, led Pope Sixtus IV to declare Stephen to be the ‘Athlete of Christ’ (athleta Christi), a name reserved only for notable heroes which also included the Hungarian John Hunyadi and the Albanian Skanderbeg. The letter from the Pope addressing Stephen as the ‘Athlete of Christ’ is still preserved in Putna monastery.21 Undaunted, the Ottomans once again attacked Moldova in 1476 and defeated Stephen at the Battle of Valea Albă. Stephen’s position remained sufficiently strong, however, for the Ottoman forces to withdraw from the country without making any territorial gains. A treaty between Stephen and Mehmed II stabilized relations but forced the Moldovan ruler to pay tribute to the sultan, like his predecessor Petru Aron.

28

Moldova: A History

Following Mehmed’s death, his successor, Sultan Bayezid II, proved determined to seize back Chilia and Cetatea Albă. In the summer of 1484, the Ottomans captured the fortresses and reinforced Stephen’s status as a tributepaying vassal. A treaty of 1487, while confirming Ottoman possession of the two ports, stipulated, however, that the Ottomans were not to expand beyond them. Moldova’s autonomy was recognized, including the continuance of Moldovan customs, religion and law, together with the right of the boyars to choose their own prince. These conditions were subject to the Moldovan princes’ regular payment of tribute and the requirement to give military aid, if requested, to the sultan. The loss of Chilia and Cetatea Albă (the latter known as Akkerman by the Ottomans) was a huge blow to the Moldovan ruler, and not simply on economic grounds. The fortresses were now garrisoned by Ottoman troops, thereby potentially curtailing Stephen’s military freedom of action and enabling the sultan to interfere in the affairs of Moldova and lands further afield. As Bayezid II himself commented, Chilia was ‘the key and gateway to the whole country of Moldova and all the lands of Hungary and of the Danubian countries’, while Cetatea Albă opened the way ‘to all the Polish lands, the Romanian lands and Tatar lands and to all the Black Sea’.22 To recapture these strategically and economically important possessions, Stephen was forced to turn once again to the Poles. Reluctantly Stephen swore fealty to the Polish king in 1485 in exchange for military assistance. The Poles, however, made peace with the Ottomans and thereby earned themselves Stephen’s enmity. With relations between Moldova and Poland-Lithuania at a complete breakdown, Stephen sought support against the Poles in several unlikely quarters. He concluded an alliance with the Tatar Khan of the Crimea and was even prepared at times to consort with the Ottomans against the Poles. Stephen also exerted considerable diplomatic pressure in pursuit of close relations with Ivan III, Prince of Muscovy (reigned 1462–1505), who was seeking to expand his territory at the expense of his Catholic Polish-Lithuanian neighbour.23 Closer contact with Muscovy was secured through family links, since Stephen’s first wife, Eudoxia, sister of the Kyivan prince, was also Ivan III’s cousin.24 Stephen’s rapprochement with Muscovy was sealed by the marriage of his daughter Elena to Ivan III’s son in 1483. Diplomatic activity between the Moldovan and Russian courts was intense in the late 1480s and early 1490s, and it is possible that a treaty of alliance may have been concluded. In 1492 Stephen moved against the Poles by invading and occupying Pocuţia, a region in the south-east of Polish Galicia. Pocuţia had been promised to



The Late Middle Ages: Athletes of Christ

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Stephen’s ancestor, Petru I Muşat, in 1387 as surety for a large loan which the Moldovan prince had lent to his suzerain, Władisław I  Jagiello, to help him undertake his war against Hungary. The loan had never been repaid, but the Moldovans had, thus far, not pursued their right to Pocuţia. Watered by the upper reaches of both the Dniester and Prut rivers, Pocuţia was agriculturally rich and also had plentiful mineral resources. In 1497, the Poles struck back against Stephen’s occupation of Pocuţia with a full-scale invasion of Moldova. Once again, however, Stephen’s military skill proved superior to that of his adversaries, leading to victory over the Poles at the Battle of Dumbrava Roşie. Thus, while the Polish-Moldovan treaty of 1499 stipulated the return of the recently seized Pocuţia to Poland, it also brought Polish suzerainty over Moldova to an end.25 In the final years of his reign, Stephen sought friendship with his Catholic neighbours, Poland-Lithuania and Hungary, with a view to expelling the Ottomans from the region. To that end, Stephen tried to influence the ruler of Muscovy to terminate his conflict with Poland-Lithuania and to unite with his fellow Christians against the Ottomans. The fall of the ‘Holy City’ of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottomans only four years before Stephen became prince of Moldova in 1457 was a crucial factor in shaping the prince’s mentality and that of his successors. After 1453 the princes of Moldova and Wallachia were the sole surviving Orthodox monarchs in south-east Europe. Accordingly, the princes increasingly regarded themselves, and were regarded by the Orthodox peoples under Ottoman rule, as the protectors and patrons of the Orthodox Church in the region. The princes thus viewed themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the Byzantine imperial tradition. In keeping with this view, the ceremonial at Stephen’s court was replete with Byzantine ritual. His investiture as prince in 1457 included his anointing by the Orthodox metropolitan. This mirrored the former emperors’ anointing by the patriarchs of Constantinople and served to endow the Moldovan House of Muşat with a sacred aura.26 Stephen’s three marriages to Orthodox princesses were an integral part of his vision of Moldova as the defender of the Orthodox world. The prince’s marriage to Evdochia of Kyiv, cousin of Ivan III of Muscovy, was intended to seal Moldova’s position as the mediator between the world of the Orthodox Christians of southeast Europe and that of the Orthodox East Slavs. Stephen’s subsequent marriage in 1472 to Maria of Mangup, a member of the former Byzantine imperial family, was also pursued in order to link the House of Muşat directly with the imperial heritage and thereby raise the prestige of Moldova in the Orthodox world. Through this marriage, Stephen acquired territory belonging to the Mangups

30

Moldova: A History

in the Crimea. Stephen’s third marriage, to Maria Voichiţa, the daughter of the Wallachian prince Radu the Handsome, was inspired in the hope of uniting the thrones of Moldova and Wallachia and thereby launching an anti-Ottoman crusade from the principalities. Stephen’s ambition in this regard was not to be fulfilled. Stephen’s role as patron and protector of the Orthodox Church was apparent in the blossoming of Moldova’s religious life during his long reign. The prince was assisted in this by the many Orthodox Christians, especially Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians, who fled from Constantinople after its fall and from other areas of the Byzantine Empire which the Ottomans had conquered.27 Stephen was also responsible for founding, or restoring, some forty churches and monasteries in Moldova, at least one of which, at Lujeni, lay east of the upper River Prut. Stephen’s work included additions to the religious foundations of his predecessors, for example, at Neamţ and Bistriţa monasteries. Among Stephen’s own foundations were the monastery of Putna, which quickly emerged as one of Moldova’s foremost centres of monasticism and scholarship. Stephen also founded the monasteries of Voroneţ, Dobrovăţ and Tazlău. Among the prince’s new churches was one dedicated in the 1490s to the Apostles Peter and Paul in Huşi. This church was transformed into the seat of the new bishopric of Huşi in the following century. Wealthy boyars at the princely court were also generous towards the church, with Stephen’s chief judge founding a monastery at Arbore, which is remarkable for its painted external walls. The style of ecclesiastical architecture and painting employed during this period combined the Byzantine style inherited from the era of Alexander the Good with local traditions such as the Gothic elements introduced by Transylvanian and Polish artists and artisans attracted to Moldova by the prince. Stephen and his boyars further supported the growing monastic establishment through financial donations and gifts of land, which could include whole villages, as well as forests, vineyards, mills, beehives and fishponds. As a result, the monasteries soon ranked among the principality’s foremost landowners. The workshops attached to Moldova’s monasteries were prolific in the production of precious religious artefacts, such as icons, embroidery, vestments and ritual objects. Many of the silversmiths, goldsmiths and artists of the elaborately decorated frescoes and murals which adorned Moldovan church walls were trained in the Moldovan monasteries, while others came from other regions of the former ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’. Richly decorated liturgical books were produced at the new scriptorium at Putna monastery and at Neamţ,



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where the school of calligraphy and manuscript illumination founded by Alexander the Good continued to flourish. Many of Moldova’s artistic treasures, however, were destined for Orthodox religious houses and institutions beyond the principality. The prince, together with wealthy boyars and metropolitans, gave support to the Orthodox Church throughout the Ottoman Empire. Their munificence consisted of financial donations, often used for the restoration or construction of ecclesiastical buildings, and of gifts of precious liturgical or religious objects. From the mid-fifteenth century, and for several centuries thereafter, the principalities supported the Orthodox Church throughout south-east Europe, as well as the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Support for the patriarchate of Jerusalem included donations to the ‘Holy Places’ associated with the life and death of Christ. The relationship between the principality and the monasteries of Mount Athos, the great centre of Orthodox spirituality, was especially warm. Stephen’s gifts to the ‘holy mountain’ of Athos began in 1466 with a donation of money to Zographou monastery. In subsequent decades his gifts included an illuminated Slavonic edition of the Gospels, embroideries and a gold icon of St George. Stephen was also responsible for the building of a tower at Vatopediou monastery, as well as a baptistery at St Paul’s monastery.28 Stephen’s growing reputation for generosity within the Orthodox Christian world, and his considerable military successes, would not have been possible without the internal consolidation of his royal authority. His anointing by the Moldovan metropolitan during his investiture as prince in 1457 was a means not only of legitimizing his accession to the throne after twenty-five years of civil war but also of establishing himself as the inheritor of the Byzantine concepts of rulership. Stephen, in the best traditions of Byzantine autocracy, believed that the ruler’s authority was derived directly from God as part of His divine plan, as well as through royal descent. Stephen’s reassertion of royal power over the boyars was in keeping with these beliefs. Stephen was mindful of how the power of the landed boyars had enabled them to contest the royal succession and drag the country into civil wars following Alexander the Good’s death. Stephen thus sought to diminish the strength of the boyars through the recovery of royal lands which they had gone off with. Stephen also sought to prevent the further expansion of boyar estates and reasserted royal domination over the Sfatul Domnesc, the princely council. Stephen expanded the army to an impressive force of some 40,000 to 60,000 men, while also reducing the authority of the boyars over the contingents that they sent to war.29

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Moldova: A History

The concept of divine order and the legitimacy of Stephen’s rulership through royal descent were given expression in the first chronicle of Moldovan history, which was produced at Stephen’s court during his lifetime. Previously, literary works in Old Church Slavonic had been almost entirely copies of Slavonic texts or translations from Byzantine-Greek originals. Few creative works were produced, with the notable exception of Grigore Ţamblac’s ‘Life of St John the New’. The chronicle written during Stephen’s reign provided the framework for the oldest surviving Moldovan chronicle in Old Church Slavonic, the sixteenthcentury ‘Anonymous Chronicle of Moldova’, which covers the history of the principality from its foundation by Dragoş to 1507, three years after Stephen’s death. The ‘Anonymous Chronicle of Moldova’ subsequently provided the source for the seventeenth-century Moldovan chroniclers, Grigore Ureche and Miron and Nicolae Costin, who produced the first historical chronicles in the Romanian language. The political importance of the sixteenth-century ‘Anonymous Chronicle of Moldova’ lies in its stress both on divine order and on dynastic continuity in legitimizing Stephen’s rule. The chronicle also integrates the major events in Stephen’s reign into Moldova’s history from its foundation by Dragoş.30 This sense of dynastic continuity and of the unfolding of Moldovan history around its rulers was given expression by Stephen’s removal of the wooden church erected by Dragoş at Volovăţ to his own monastic foundation at Putna. The monastery became the Muşat family necropolis and housed the tombs of Stephen and his wives, Maria of Mangup and Maria Voichiţa. The tombs, together with Maria of Mangup’s ornate, Byzantine burial shroud can still be seen at Putna. Stephen’s reign was both Moldova’s ‘Golden Age’ and its swansong. Moldova under Stephen the Great appeared poised to establish its independence from foreign suzerainty and to achieve the status of a regional power of military, political and cultural significance. Yet even at the height of Stephen’s power the signs of impending Ottoman domination were already evident. The reigns of his successors bore witness to the principality’s diminishing freedom of action in the political and economic sphere as Ottoman influence in the region grew.

3

Moldova and the Ottomans

Ottoman gains on the Black Sea shore in the late fifteenth century had already transformed the Black Sea into a ‘Turkish lake’. The fate of Christendom took a further turn for the worse when, at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Hungarian king was defeated by the Ottomans. Fifteen years later, central Hungary was transformed into an Ottoman pashalik, a province under direct Ottoman control headed by a pasha. Transylvania was also forced to accept vassal status like Moldova and Wallachia. Nevertheless, the Moldovan and Wallachian principalities retained considerable autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. Under agreements (or ahdnames, later misleadingly known as ‘capitulations’) between the sultans and the principalities, the princes became vassals of the sultan who retained control of their foreign policy. The princes also paid the sultan an annual tribute, together with various other contributions in money and kind. In exchange, the sultan was obliged not to interfere in the internal affairs of the principalities, and he agreed not to settle Muslims, build mosques or garrison Ottoman troops on Wallachian or Moldovan soil. Even so, the Ottomans were soon encroaching on the autonomy of the principalities. Ports and fortresses belonging to both Moldova and Wallachia on the Danube and Dniester rivers were occupied by the Ottomans. As early as 1419 the ports of Giurgiu and Turnu on the Danube had each been transformed into a raia – a territory occupied and administered by the Ottomans, usually around a fortress. Following their loss under Stephen the Great, Chilia and Cetatea Albă (the latter renamed Akkerman by the Ottomans) also became raia-s. In 1538, during the reign of Stephen’s illegitimate son, Petru Rareş, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent seized the fortress of Tighina on the Dniester, which became the  core of the Bender raia.1 Over the following century, the same fate befell the Danube ports of Brailă, Ismail and Reni. In 1714 the massive fortress of Hotin on the upper Dniester became a raia, occupied by an Ottoman garrison to prevent it falling

34

Moldova: A History

permanently into the hands of the Poles. The Ottomans and their followers increasingly acquired land in and around each raia and established mosques. When Prince Vasile Lupu entered Chilia and Ismail during the 1630s, he discovered to his horror that neither port had a single church, although both had mosques. The purpose of the raia-s was to secure the northern border of the Ottoman Empire against Christian attacks and to ensure the continued loyalty of the sultan’s Moldovan and Wallachian vassals. The raia-s also acted as collection points for tribute and agricultural produce from the principalities destined for delivery to Constantinople. The fortresses and land incorporated into each raia were not returned to the principalities until the early nineteenth century, despite the many attempts by the princes of Moldova to recapture them with the help of their Christian neighbours. The raia-s of Bender (Rom. Tighina) and Akkerman (Rom. Cetatea Albă) on the River Dniester served as a channel of communication between the Ottomans and their Muslim Tatars allies who lived beyond the Dniester.2 The Ottomans had already settled Tatar families in the Dobruja on the Black Sea coast in the early sixteenth century and had offered them land in the area around the raia-s of Chilia and Akkerman. From the mid-sixteenth century, Tatars began to settle in the triangle of land running roughly from the south of Bender on the Dniester in south-east Moldova, across to Chilia on the Danube mouth. This area was known as Budjak to the Tatars and Ottomans (Bugeac, or Bugiac, in Romanian), meaning a ‘corner’ or ‘nook’ in Tatar. By the early seventeenth century some 15,000 Tatars had been settled in the Bugeac and the name began to be used in official documentation. As a reward for the Tatars’ frequent military help against rebellious Moldovans, Poles and Cossacks, the Ottomans also created the massive Tatar-controlled pashalik of Silistria. This pashalik included the Danube ports of Turnu, Giurgiu, Brailă and Chilia, as well as Akkerman and Bender on the Dniester, together with the whole of the Bugeac and the Dobruja. A substantial area of the principality was thus dominated by the Muslim Tatars and proved a permanent source of conflict as Moldovan rulers and boyars frequently sought to expel the Tatars, often with the assistance of neighbouring powers. The Ottomans did not only encroach upon the territorial integrity of the principalities. In the sixteenth century, the sultan also became responsible for confirming the appointment of each new ruler and increasingly interfered in their election by the boyars. No ruler in either Moldova or Wallachia could remain long on the throne without the approval of the sultan. Meanwhile, the boyars tried to elect weak princes through whom they could exert control.



Moldova and the Ottomans

35

Stephen the Great’s attempt to ensure that the Moldovan throne remained the unique preserve of the House of Muşat proved abortive. Never again was the principality to have a prince who ruled as long as either Alexander the Good or Stephen the Great. The last representative of the Muşat line to rule in Moldova was Iliaş Alexandru whose reign lasted barely two years from 1666 to 1668. Long before this, however, the Moldovan throne had become ‘a plaything’ between the boyars, the Ottomans and foreign soldiers of fortune.3 The last of these groups included men of Albanian, Armenian and Greek origin, eager to become one of only two Orthodox Christian rulers within the sphere of the Ottoman Empire (the other being the prince of Wallachia). Aspiring candidates and their boyar supporters were not above colluding with neighbouring Christian powers, the Ottomans themselves or the otherwise much-despised Tatars, to secure the right to rule. The thrones of the principalities were increasingly obtained through money, treachery, cunning and murder.4 In addition to bearing the costs of the annual tribute, from the mid-sixteenth century the princes also had to pay a heavy ‘fee’ to the sultan as the price of their appointment. Both these payments rose quickly. Whereas the tribute paid by Stephen the Great in 1487 had been some 4,000 gold pieces, this had risen to 65,000 gold pieces by the 1560s and stood at a staggering 260,000 gold pieces by the seventeenth century, in addition to a separate fee due on appointment.5 The prince also had other obligations to the sultan such as providing financial assistance for Ottoman military campaigns as well as military service itself. The prince was forced to provide labourers for certain tasks, such as the repair of the Danube and Dniester fortresses, as well as frequent and sumptuous ‘gifts’ for the sultan and his family and for Ottoman officials. With such lucrative rewards on offer, it is hardly surprising that the sultans encouraged a rapid turnover of rulers. Between Petru Rareş’ second reign from 1541 to 1546 and the exceptionally long reign, by Moldovan standards, of Vasile Lupu from 1634 to 1653, there were some forty-five reigns in Moldova. Few princes survived as long as a decade, while many reigned for only months, or even weeks. Not a few were appointed, unseated and reappointed several times according to prevailing political and military winds. Yet despite the high costs, and personal risk, attached to it, the Moldovan throne remained much sought after. For a start, there was the considerable prestige of the prince’s unique relationship with the Orthodox Church. Moreover, if the prince was adept and had the favour of the sultan and his advisers, he could act as an absolute ruler at home, since there were few constitutional restraints upon

36

Moldova: A History

him.6 Sometimes Moldovan candidates for the throne acquired slaves while in Constantinople and took these slaves to Moldova once installed as prince. Some of these slaves were then freed and appointed to high court office or even ennobled. The Ottoman sultans condoned this as a means of checking the power of the native boyars.7 Although the prince ruled with his council, increasingly known as the ‘divan’ in the Ottoman period, this could easily be packed with the prince’s family or loyal retainers. In any case the divan had no legal means of restraining the prince. The only way to unseat an unpopular prince was by rebellion, recourse to which the boyars frequently took. The new incumbent on the throne could, moreover, easily recoup his financial losses and hopefully make a handsome profit, through the sale of offices. The holders of these offices then sold on subordinate offices. This practice, together with a crippling system of ‘tax-farming’, greatly profited the prince and many of the boyars. As evidence for the proliferation of taxes, it has been estimated that by the seventeenth century a single piece of land in Moldova could be subject to as many as seventy different imposts.8 The prince also profited through being awarded monopolies on certain agricultural goods by the sultan. The Ottomans reserved for themselves, however, a monopoly over a large share of Moldova’s plentiful agricultural produce, much of which came from the fertile lands, rich in black soil, between the Prut and Dniester rivers. This produce consisted primarily of cattle, sheep and horses, together with grain, butter, honey, wax, salt, wine and timber, the last of which went towards the construction of the Ottoman fleet. Cattle, sheep and grain could only be exported to Constantinople where they fed the city’s rapidly expanding population. Ottoman intervention in the Moldovan cattle trade devastated the lucrative trade with the German lands and Poland.9 It was the prince’s duty to purchase, collect and ship these products for the Ottomans at the lowest possible prices. The raia-s on the Danube and Dniester rivers enforced these procedures. A  janissary guard of 500 men was assigned to the princely court to ensure the prince’s loyalty to the sultan and the complete fulfilment of his obligation to provision Constantinople, as well as the prince’s other financial and military obligations. While many rulers, boyars, officials and merchants profited financially under Ottoman suzerainty, other sectors of society were drained of wealth. The taxation system ultimately fell upon the peasantry since both the better-off boyars and the Orthodox Church benefited from many exemptions. The ingenious way of charging tax on communities rather than individuals was designed to prevent peasants from fleeing in the face of their obligations. Urbanized sectors of Moldovan society clearly did not always benefit from the economic effects of



Moldova and the Ottomans

37

Ottoman suzerainty either. Notwithstanding the fact that Iaşi was the seat both of the princely court and of the Moldovan metropolitanate from the 1560s, the number of houses in the capital fell from 12,000 to 4,000 over the course of the seventeenth century.10 There was little incentive, however, for a prince to reform the system. Any prince who tried to ease the financial position of his subjects was able to raise less money in taxation to pay for the costs of the throne. A rival might then offer the sultan more money and have the incumbent prince ejected from the throne. Unsurprisingly perhaps, given the Ottoman breaches of Moldovan autonomy, the princes were not above breaking their side of their agreements with the sultan. In particular, the princes regularly entered into relations with foreign powers, a privilege reserved in theory for the sultan only. Petru Rareş’s first reign, which began in 1527, was ended by Suleiman the Magnificent’s invasion of Moldova in 1538 which had resulted from Rareş’s machinations with the Habsburg monarch (later Emperor) Ferdinand. Rareş was dethroned and Suleiman seized Tighina, which was renamed Bender and transformed into a raia. Petru Rareş was reinstated as prince in 1541. Although they could only be sustained on the throne with Ottoman approval, many of Petru Rareş’s successors were brought to power with the aid of the Polish-Lithuanian kings. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a continuation of Polish-Lithuanian political influence in Moldova. Alexandru Lăpuşneanu, whose mother came from the town of Lapuşna east of the River Prut, reigned from 1552 to 1561 and again from 1564 to 1568. Lăpuşneanu was on both occasions brought to power with the military help of the Poles. This did not prevent Lăpuşneanu, however, from ingratiating himself with the Ottomans. He paid the sultan his tribute regularly and made no attempt to regain Moldova’s lost fortresses, despite the boyars’ urging. Lăpuşneanu even burned Moldova’s surviving fortresses, saving only Hotin, so that they could not pose a threat to the Ottomans. At the request of the Ottomans, Lăpuşneanu moved the princely court and seat of the Moldovan metropolitanate from Suceava to Iaşi so that both institutions would be geographically removed from Polish influence and nearer to the Ottoman-controlled raia-s.11 Some rulers by contrast continued to swear fealty to the Polish-Lithuanian monarchs, as well as to the sultan, hoping to balance one power against the other and thus retain some freedom of action. A representative of the House of Muşat, Ştefan Răzvan, was replaced by Ieremia, a representative of the powerful Movilă boyar family, with Polish help in 1595. Ieremia subsequently recognized the Polish-Lithuanian king as his overlord.

38

Moldova: A History

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Moldovans also developed contacts with the Zaporozhian Cossacks who lived in the region of the River Dnieper in the Ukrainian borderlands of Poland-Lithuania. Alexandru Cornea who ruled Moldova from 1540 to 1541 sought to retake Bender and Akkerman with Cossack assistance in the first joint ‘anti-Ottoman’ venture of the Moldovans and Cossacks. In the 1560s the Cossacks even laid claim to the Moldovan throne since their commander or ‘hetman’ was distantly related to the Muşat royal line.12 A prince of Armenian origin, John the Brave (or alternatively ‘the Terrible’, owing to his attempt to force the boyars and the Orthodox Church to pay tax), who ruled from 1572 to 1574, refused to pay tribute to the sultan. Aided by the Cossacks, John the Brave attacked the Ottoman raia-s of Brailă in Wallachia, and Bender and Akkerman on the River Dniester, and invaded the Bugeac, with a view to expelling both the Ottomans and Tatars. John and his Cossack allies were, however, defeated by the Ottomans at the Battle of Cahul in June 1574. John was taken prisoner by the Ottomans and subsequently executed, which was a not uncommon fate for recalcitrant princes. Close relations between the Moldovans and Cossacks did not prevent the Cossacks from sometimes entering the principality as enemies and plundering its towns. Even Vasile Lupu, Moldova’s defender of the Orthodox faith in the mid-seventeenth century, suffered humiliation at the hands of the Cossacks. Lupu’s refusal to marry his daughter to the son of the Cossack hetman, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, led the Cossacks to sack Iaşi in 1650. Thus chastened, Lupu was forced to submit to the marriage of his daughter, Rozanda, to Khmelnitsky’s son, Tymish.13 Michael the Brave’s brief union of Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania was also achieved with some Cossack support, since it was they who assisted Michael in his invasion of Transylvania in 1599.14 Michael had become prince of Wallachia in 1593 where he consolidated his power sufficiently to enable him to defeat Ottoman forces on the River Danube in 1595 at the battles of Călugăreni and Giurgiu. Four years later, Michael invaded Transylvania and was elected prince. In the spring of the following year, he entered Moldova and unseated the Polish-backed Ieremia Movilă. Thus, for a few months the three principalities were governed by a single ruler. A  rebellion by the Transylvanian nobles and a Polish invasion of Moldova and Wallachia, however, brought this brief unity to an end. Movilă was reinstated by the Poles as ruler of Moldova in 1600 and Michael the Brave was murdered. Though his reign over the three Romanianspeaking principalities was short, Michael the Brave is, nevertheless, regarded by many Romanian historians as one of the forerunners of the movement for Romanian national unity.



Moldova and the Ottomans

39

Despite the short duration of most princely reigns, and the violent end which awaited many princes, the thrones of Moldova and Wallachia were regarded as highly prestigious prizes. As the only Orthodox rulers under Ottoman suzerainty, and indeed the only Orthodox rulers in Europe other than the prince of Muscovy, the Moldovan and Wallachian princes were viewed as the legitimate successors of the Byzantine emperors. It was, therefore, the duty of the rulers of the principalities to protect and sustain the Orthodox Church. Prior to their investiture by the metropolitans, the princes were often also anointed by the patriarch in Constantinople. The ceremony of anointing, which may go back to the sixteenth century, was symbolic of the intimate bond between the princes and the Orthodox Church and emphasized the nature of the ruler’s office as ‘God-given’.15 The sixteenth-century Moldovan princes continued to act as generous benefactors to the Orthodox Church both in the principality and beyond. Petru Rareş (reigned 1527–1538 and 1541–1546) completed monasteries established by his predecessors, such as Căpriana, east of the River Prut, and Moldoviţa, where he also built the church. Both these houses had been founded by Alexander the Good. Petru Rareş also founded new monasteries at Probota and Râşca. Alexandru Lăpuşneanu, despite his otherwise supine attitude towards the Ottomans, was also a generous benefactor of the Church. He founded the monastery of Slatina and built churches, including at Bistriţa monastery, as well as a church in Lviv in Polish Galicia. Wealthy boyars also played their part in supporting the Orthodox Church. The monastery of Humor was founded by one of Petru Rareş’s courtiers while Suceviţa monastery was built through the generosity of the influential Movilă family in the late sixteenth century. A characteristic of many Moldovan churches is the painted surfaces of their exterior walls. Notable examples are at Stephen the Great’s church in Suceava from the 1520s. The churches of the famous painted monasteries (now in northern Romania) at Moldoviţa, Voroneţ, Arbore and Humor were painted in the 1530s and 1540s, and the church at Suceviţa monastery was decorated in the later sixteenth century. The paintings include depictions of a typically religious nature, such as angels, saints, martyrs, apostles and prophets, as well as biblical scenes of the Last Judgement. More unusually, there are also depictions of a more profane nature such as an artist’s impression of the siege of Constantinople by the Persians in the early seventh century, a group of classical philosophers and portraits of a contemporary sixteenth-century metropolitan and a renowned hermit. Depictions of the life and martyrdom of St John the New feature in several paintings. Thus, on the south wall at Voroneţ there are scenes from his

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Moldova: A History

life, including the arrival of his relics in Suceava to be received by Alexander the Good and his wife.16 The highly unusual nature of these exterior paintings, together with other local influences, have led some historians to argue for the existence of a distinct Moldovan style of ecclesiastical art and architecture between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.17 We should note, however, Dimitrie Obolensky’s observation that local variations in ecclesiastical art and architecture were less significant than ‘the common pattern of values, beliefs and intellectual and aesthetic experiences which in the course of the Middle Ages, the Bulgarians, Russians, Serbians and Rumanians acquired from Byzantium’.18 Moldovan and Wallachian rulers from the sixteenth century onwards were in no danger of neglecting their duty, as heirs to the Byzantine emperors, to the Orthodox ‘Commonwealth’ beyond the borders of their principalities. Direct contact between the principalities and the patriarch of Constantinople was made in the early sixteenth century. Many patriarchs visited the principalities personally, including Patriarch Pachomios in 1513, asking for succour for the Orthodox ‘Church in Ottoman captivity’. The Moldovan prince Petru Şchiopul (reigned 1574–1577, 1578–1579 and 1582–1591) gave the patriarch a house in Constantinople and, for some years in the sixteenth century, the patriarch resided in a Wallachian monastery in Constantinople. The century also saw considerable support from the principalities (particularly by Alexandru Lăpuşneanu and Petru Şchiopul) for the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch (the latter was actually based in Damascus). Petru Şchiopul even sent monks from Iaşi to build a church in Jerusalem, which prompted the patriarch to pay a visit to Şchiopul’s court in Moldova. The patriarch of Antioch also visited both the principalities during the last of Petru Şchiopul’s three reigns. The princes were also generous in their support for the Orthodox Church throughout south-east Europe, giving both money and precious gifts. The monasteries on Mount Athos, in particular, were almost entirely dependent on the principalities for funding during the sixteenth century, and Petru Rareş and Alexandru Lăpuşneanu and his wife were notable donors.19 The Moldovan rulers also supported the monasteries on Mount Sinai and in Serbia and Macedonia, as well as in the lands of present-day Greece and Bulgaria.20 One sixteenth-century Moldovan prince, however, proved to be a notable exception to these stalwarts of Orthodoxy. Prince Ioan Iacob Heraclid, otherwise known as Despot Vodă, was a Greek soldier of fortune from the island of Samos who had converted to Protestantism. Following the prince’s investiture in 1561, the Moldovan boyars, doubtless pleased with their selection of a prince



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41

they believed would be pliable, indulged in two days of drunken revelry. The prince soon revealed his true colours, however, and introduced Protestantism into the Moldovan court and principality with the aid of the many contacts he had among Protestants in Germany, Denmark and Poland. Heraclid appointed a Polish Protestant bishop and opened a Protestant school at Cotnari. It was, however, his hatred of sacred images, so central to traditional Orthodox worship, which led to his downfall. Owing to his need for cash, Heraclid plundered the Orthodox monasteries and melted down their metal crosses and icon frames in order to mint coinage embossed with his image. This enraged the Orthodox population in the principality and led to Heraclid’s murder in 1563 by the now suitably sober Orthodox boyars. Despite the brevity of his reign, Heraclid was continental Europe’s first officially Protestant ruler.21 The seventeenth century represented the high point of Moldova’s relations with the rest of the Orthodox Christian world. There were new monastic foundations paid for by rulers and their wives, as well as by wealthy metropolitans and boyars. Many princes had direct contact with the various Orthodox patriarchs, either through correspondence or personal visits by the patriarchs to Moldova. There were also increasing contacts with the Georgian Orthodox Church and with the Russian Orthodox world. The vigour of the Orthodox Church in seventeenth-century Moldova, and the principality’s centrality to the Orthodox religious world as a whole, is especially associated with the reign of Vasile Lupu, which lasted without interruption for nineteen years from 1634 to 1653. Lupu, whose original name was Lupu Coci, had been a Greek-educated official at the Moldovan court, but was of Albanian and Moldovan descent. He changed his name to Vasile, the Romanian form of Basil, on becoming prince in honour of the ninth-century Byzantine emperor Basil I. This expressed Lupu’s desire to reign over Moldova with a ‘Byzantinestyle’ absolutism and to promote and protect the Orthodox Church at home and abroad in the manner of the former Byzantine emperors. Lupu succeeded in centralizing power and in controlling the political life of Moldova either directly or through his representatives, who were usually his relatives. He revitalized the use of Byzantine ritual in the daily life of the Moldovan court, which included the donning of elaborate Byzantine ceremonial costume. Thus, Lupu was seen to have, quite literally, inherited the mantle of the former emperors.22 Lupu built over twenty religious buildings in Moldova as well as the Stelea church in Târgovişte in Wallachia, constructed in the 1640s. The architecture of these buildings reflected the local Byzantine style, inherited from previous centuries, with newer cultural influences from Poland, Transylvania, Russia and

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the Orient.23 His foundations in Moldova included two in Suceava, the restoration of the Golia monastery in Iaşi and the creation of two new monasteries, one at Hlincea near Iaşi and the other Trei Ierarhi monastery in Iaşi. Trei Ierarhi, in addition to the Byzantine style, shows the influences of both the Middle East and Russia. While the external walls are covered in stone-carved patterns of Armenian, Georgian, Turkish, Arabic and Persian design, the paintings on the inside of the church were executed by artists from Moscow. The city of Iaşi was now well established as the Moldovan princely and religious capital. Lupu donated money and land, which sometimes included within it whole villages, for the use of monasteries in Moldova. His munificence towards the rest of the Orthodox ‘Commonwealth’ soon became legendary and was a testament not only to Lupu’s generosity but also to how much wealth a shrewd Moldovan ruler could accumulate. Monks, clergymen, artists and craftsmen from all over the Orthodox Christian world were made welcome by Lupu at his court in Iaşi and received gifts of money or precious religious treasures. In addition, he granted commercial privileges to Serbian and Croatian monasteries, as well as founding the monastery of St Lavră at Morea in the Peloponnese. Such was Lupu’s close involvement in the politics of the patriarchate in Constantinople that in 1638 he even paid off the patriarch’s debts. It was, therefore, no simple flattery when the patriarch described Lupu as ‘the living successor to the emperors who formerly reigned in Byzantium’.24 Lupu did not forget the Orthodox Church among the East Slavs and was generous in his support of the Orthodox populations in Poland-Lithuania, now under increasing pressure from the forces of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the Uniate movement. (As a result of the church union of 1596, a section of the Orthodox Church in Poland-Lithuania accepted the primacy of the Pope in Rome while retaining the Orthodox liturgy.) Lupu supported the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood, originally established in the fifteenth century by Lviv’s merchants to promote Orthodoxy. In addition, Lupu founded the church of St Paraschiva in Lviv in 1644, as well as giving donations to the Orthodox Church in Kyiv. The practice of ‘dedicating’ monasteries within the principalities to sisterhouses or Orthodox institutions elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, which began as early as the fourteenth century, increased considerably during the seventeenth century. Practically, this meant that a Moldovan monastery, together with all its land, property and revenues, would be placed under the jurisdiction of the house or institution to which it was dedicated.25 The Golia monastery in Iaşi, for instance, was dedicated to Mount Athos in the early years of the seventeenth century during the period in which members of the Movilă family ruled



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Moldova. One of Vasile Lupu’s other predecessors, Radu Mihnea, dedicated the Galata monastery in Iaşi to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in 1618 and the Aron Vodă monastery, also in Iaşi, to the Antioch patriarchate in 1625. Lupu himself dedicated Stephen the Great’s monastic foundation of Dobrovaţ to Zographou monastery on Mount Athos. Subsequent princes were no less generous. The wife of Gheorghe Ştephen, Lupu’s successor, dedicated Alexander the Good’s important foundation at Bistriţa to the patriarchate of Jerusalem. Dosoftei, metropolitan of Moldova from 1671 to 1686, dedicated Petru Rareş’s monastery of Probota to the patriarchate of Jerusalem in the 1670s and the great Căpriana monastery, east of the River Prut, was dedicated to Zographou monastery on Mount Athos by Antioch Cantemir in the 1690s. Increasingly, these so-called dedicated monasteries were also run by monks or clergymen, usually Greeks, who came to Moldova from the institution to which the Moldovan house had been dedicated. By the time the monasteries were secularized by the Romanian government in the 1860s, the dedicated monasteries and their ‘foreign monks’ were found to be in possession of onefifth of the total land surface of the two principalities.26 The building and restoration of churches and monasteries was partly a response to the great destruction and plundering of religious houses which took place during the frequent wars and other upheavals in the principality. Even so, the expansion of the monasteries in the seventeenth century meant that the monastic population was considerable and its influence significant. The monasteries were important not only for their central role as religious institutions and workshops, which produced religious artefacts and books, but also as centres of education and scholarship. The monasteries also acted as landowners, producing agricultural produce and as hospitals which cared for the sick. The centrality of religion in the life of the Moldovans in the seventeenth century was also reflected in the growing number of hermitages (many of which were also ‘dedicated’) and the proliferation of eccentric local saints, such as Chiriac of Bisericiani who spent sixty years living in a cave.27 The monastic communities continued to lie at the heart of Moldova’s religious, economic and social life until well into the nineteenth century, and indeed beyond. Vasile Lupu was also responsible for helping to maintain the doctrinal purity of the Orthodox faith by curbing Calvinist influences seeping into Moldova from neighbouring Transylvania. The Reformed Church not only attempted to convert individuals within the Romanian-speaking Orthodox community in Transylvania but even instigated reforms with the aim of incorporating the whole of the Orthodox Church in Transylvania into its own structure.28 The

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spread of Calvinist doctrines started to permeate the very core of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople. Kyrillos Lukaris, patriarch from 1620 to 1638, for example, was known to favour reforms of the Orthodox Church which were inspired by Calvinism.29 He also sent Greek students to study theology in the Calvinist universities in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and corresponded with the archbishop of Canterbury. In keeping with his role as defender of Orthodoxy, Lupu rose to the challenge posed by the spread of Calvinism and convened a synod at Iaşi in 1642. In attendance were Varlaam, metropolitan of Moldova from 1632 to 1653, together with representatives of the patriarch of Constantinople and of Petru Movilă, the metropolitan of Kyiv. Lupu himself ‘presided over the work of the synod like the former Byzantine emperors’.30 The synod eventually accepted Petru Movilă’s Confessio fidei orthodoxae (‘Confessions of the Orthodox faith’) as the Orthodox Church’s official refutation of Calvinist influences. This was subsequently endorsed by the patriarch of Constantinople and by the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch – a testament to the importance of the Moldovan court to the Orthodox world as a whole in this period. Lupu’s close relationship with Petru Movilă, a member of the Movilă family who had reigned in Moldova in the early seventeenth century, was of considerable importance in other developments which took place during Lupu’s reign. The academy opened by Lupu in Iaşi in 1640 was modelled on the Kyiv academy already established by Petru Movilă. The Iaşi academy taught Greek, Slavonic, Latin and Romanian, as well as theology, philosophy and rhetoric to up to 400 students. Lupu also opened elementary schools attached to Moldovan churches and monasteries. Printing was also introduced to the principality through the mediation of Petru Movilă. Hitherto, printed religious works had been imported into Moldova from Poland-Lithuania or Transylvania. In 1642, however, with Movilă’s assistance, Metropolitan Varlaam acquired a press from Kyiv which was placed in the Trei Ierarhi monastery in Iaşi. The following year, Varlaam’s Carte românească de învăţătură dumenecele preste an şi la praznice împărăteşti şi la svînţi mari (‘The Romanian Book of Teachings for Sunday and other Major Feasts and Religious Holidays’), or the Cazania lui Varlaam for short, achieved fame as the first religious book in the Romanian language printed in Moldova. The script used by the printing presses of the period continued, however, to consist of Old Church Slavonic characters. Like many Moldovan boyars fleeing the political upheaval which surrounded almost every change of ruler, Petru Movilă had originally taken refuge in PolandLithuania after the murder of his father Simeon, who had been prince of Moldova



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from 1606 to 1607. Much of Petru Movilă’s education took place in Poland, including a period at the school run by the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood. Pupils at the school were taught, among other subjects, Greek, Slavonic, Italian and Latin. By learning Latin, Moldovan boyars educated in Polish exile were exposed to the influence of Western Catholicism and to Renaissance and Humanist ideas. Such currents are apparent in the chronicles, written in the Romanian language, of Grigore Ureche (1590–1647), Miron Costin (1633–1691) and his son Nicolae Costin (1660–1712) who all undertook much of their education in Poland. Ureche’s Letopiseţul Moldovei (‘The Chronicle of Moldova’), which was produced in the 1640s, covered the history of the principality from its foundation to 1595; Miron Costin’s Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei (‘The Chronicle of the Moldovan Lands’) from the 1670s took the story from 1595 to 1661. Nicolae Costin’s Letopiseţul Moldovei de la facerea lumii până la 1601 was a history of Moldova ‘from the creation of the world until 1601’, which drew on the works of Ureche and Miron Costin and was published in 1712. Despite these Western cultural influences, it was, however, the relationship with the Orthodox Ukrainian population of Poland-Lithuania, rather than the Catholic Poles, which was most significant for the Moldovans. The migration of Ukrainians into the Moldovan lands, and of Moldovans into the largely Ukrainian-inhabited lands of Poland-Lithuania to the north and east of the Moldovan principality, had taken place throughout the preceding centuries and continued during the seventeenth century.31 Moldova’s trading and religious links with the city of Lviv, in particular, were long-established. Moldovan traders in the city had their own market and church, as well as the right to be tried by a Moldovan judge in the event of misdemeanours.32 Both Alexandru Lăpuşneanu and Petru Şchiopul had been generous benefactors of the Orthodox Church in Lviv in the sixteenth century, and the Movilă family and Vasile Lupu supported the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood and its school. In addition to Petru Movilă, several of Moldova’s future churchmen were educated at the Lviv school, including Metropolitan Dosoftei whose Greek family had taken refuge in Lviv. Close contact was established between the school at Lviv, and the Kyiv and Iaşi academies set up by Petru Movilă and Vasile Lupu, respectively. Petru Movilă’s years as metropolitan of Kyiv from 1633 to 1647 served to reinvigorate the Orthodox Church in Poland-Lithuania, as well as the Church in Moldova. The Church union of 1596 in Poland-Lithuania, through which a section of the Orthodox Church accepted the primacy of the Pope in Rome while retaining the Orthodox liturgy, had severely undermined the position of the Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. It was Petru Movilă who

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helped to restore the position of the Orthodox Church there. As metropolitan, he sought to ‘immunize’ the Orthodox Church against both Catholicism and Calvinism by employing some of their methods. He improved the organization of the Church, encouraged lay participation in the Church’s work and gathered scholars around him to produce and print updated editions of the Bible and the lives of saints. Movilă was subsequently influential in the spread of these activities to Moldova through his cooperation with Metropolitan Varlaam. In 1632 Movilă opened the academy at Kyiv which provided the model, as well as many of the teachers, for Lupu’s academy in Iaşi. Petru Movilă’s contribution to Moldovan culture was recognized in 1996 when a statue of Movilă was unveiled in Chişinău. He is recognized as a saint by the Romanian Orthodox Church. Movilă’s invigoration of the Orthodox Church in Poland-Lithuania also resulted in an increase in the output of religious literature produced by the Ukrainians. One of the most important Ukrainian Orthodox religious writers of the seventeenth century was Ioannichie Galeatovschi, a teacher and rector at the Kyiv academy, who had close links with the Church in Moldova. His greatest work was translated into Romanian as Cheia Inţelesului (‘The Key to Understanding’) in the 1670s and was highly influential in the development of religious literature in the Romanian language subsequently produced in Moldova and Wallachia. It has been argued, however, that the reciprocal religious and cultural relations between the Orthodox Ukrainians and Moldovans under Movilă and Lupu were ‘a late blossoming’.33 Indeed, by the late sixteenth century, Old Church Slavonic was already in decline as the lingua franca integrating the principalities into the religious and cultural world of their East and South Slavs neighbours. In part, this was the result of the ever-growing differentiation among the Slavonic languages which meant that Old Church Slavonic was becoming increasingly antiquated and out of touch with the spoken Slavonic languages. Much like Latin in the Western Church, Old Church Slavonic had become the preserve of an educated few. In the principalities this was even more marked, since the majority peasant population were Romanian speaking. Moreover, by the seventeenth century, the boyars, upper clergy and princes were increasingly falling under the influence of both the Greek and the Romanian languages. Writing in the early eighteenth century, Dimitrie Cantemir enumerated the diverse national groups who lived in Moldova, which included, in addition to the Moldovans themselves, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Greeks, Germans, Poles, Cossacks, Jews and Gypsies.34 The Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 had unleashed a flood of Orthodox refugees of various national backgrounds, who fled to the relative freedom of the



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principalities and to other Orthodox lands beyond Muslim control, such as the Orthodox areas of Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy. It was the Greeks who were, however, to become especially influential in the principalities as a result of their previously dominant position within the former Byzantine Empire, their control over the Orthodox Church in Constantinople and the importance of Greek as one of the ‘sacred’ languages of the Church and of the ancient world. Diaspora Greeks were already influential in Moldova by the sixteenth century and many were elected to the Moldovan throne. In addition, the Greek presence in Orthodox cities in Poland-Lithuania such as Lviv also proved to be important to the development of Greek culture in Moldova. Boyars seeking refuge in Lviv during the frequent Moldovan succession crises met these Greek families from whom many of them learned Greek.35 The boyars also came into contact with Greek-Byzantine culture at many of the schools in Poland, such as that run by the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood. In the seventeenth century, the academies at Kyiv and Iaşi (and the academy established later in the century at Bucharest) all taught Greek. Since these academies were beyond the direct control of the Ottoman authorities, they attracted many Greek students from within the Ottoman Empire, thus reinforcing the Greek presence and the importance of Greek as the lingua franca and language of culture in the principalities. It is usual to date the beginning of the Greek ‘Phanariot’ period of the principalities to the reign of Nicolae Mavrocordat in the early eighteenth century. It should be appreciated, however, that the presence of Greeks was a major factor in the life of the principalities well before the ‘official’ Phanariot era. The Basarab ruling family in Wallachia had thus been thoroughly Hellenized by the time of its extinction in the seventeenth century. In Moldova, members of the Cantacuzeno and Ghica families gained the throne during the course of the seventeenth century. The higher echelons of the Orthodox Church, especially in Wallachia, had also been occupied by Greeks or Greek-speakers by the end of the century. The Orthodox Church in the principalities did not entirely resent this ‘Hellenization’ since Greek money and influence were important in the fight against the Catholic Counter-Reformation and Uniate movement emanating from Poland-Lithuania and the Habsburg Empire, and against Calvinism. Meanwhile, those boyars who were heavily intermarried with the Greeks found it extremely useful that their relatives ‘could intrigue for them at the sultan’s court’.36 During the seventeenth century there were, nevertheless, revolts by the ‘native’ boyars against the influential Greeks. Matei Basarab, Vasile Lupu’s almost exact contemporary as prince of Wallachia (1632–1654), was brought to power

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by just such a revolt, as was Lupu himself. Lupu’s reign proved, however, a great disappointment to those boyars hoping to see Greek influence wane in Moldova. His generosity to the Orthodox Church at home and abroad, and the increasing number of Greek monks and clergymen in charge of the dedicated monasteries in Moldova, aroused resentment among sections of the boyar nobility. In addition, the number of Greek teachers in the principality rose as Greek became one of the main languages taught at the schools established by Lupu. The prince was generous in his provision for these teachers, granting estates for the upkeep of teachers at the school attached to the Trei Ierarhi monastery in Iaşi. It was largely as a result of Lupu’s generosity to the Greek clergy and the consolidation of Greek culture in the principality during his reign that Lupu’s rival, Gheorghe Ştefan, was able to wrest the throne from him in 1653. Lupu was by this time regarded ‘as a Greek and a supporter of the Greeks’, while the Moldovan boyars regarded Gheorghe Ştefan as being ‘from our own people’.37 Paradoxically, it was under the auspices of a largely Hellenized Orthodox Church and Greek-influenced court that Romanian began to emerge during the seventeenth century as the language of the Orthodox liturgy, of the court chancellery and administration, as well as a literary language in its own right.38 The printing of the Cazania lui Varlaam in Iaşi in 1643 was the start of the Moldovan Church’s transformation into a Romanian-language institution. Over the subsequent decades, religious and liturgical works were increasingly translated into Romanian. In part, this was an acknowledgement that Old Church Slavonic was a language incomprehensible to Moldova’s peasant masses and indeed to most of the lower clery. The village clergy’s ignorance of Slavonic was such that many were unable to conduct religious services. The move to the use of Romanian as the language of the Orthodox Church in Moldova was also the result of events in neighbouring Transylvania. Here, under the auspices of the Calvinist Reformed Church, service books in Romanian had been printed in the sixteenth century, followed by a Romanian-language Calvinist catechism. The first Romanian-language version of the New Testament was also printed in Transylvania in 1648. The Orthodox Church in Moldova was therefore on the defensive, anxious to ensure the continued loyalty of its Romanian-speaking flock. Metropolitan Varlaam himself wrote a riposte to the Romanian-language Calvinist catechism and his explanation of the seven Church sacraments, written in Romanian as Şapte Taine ale Bisericii, was printed in Iaşi in 1644. Metropolitan Dosoftei, who held office from 1671 to 1686, was influential in the Moldovan Church’s transformation, despite his Greek background. He was responsible for the translation into Romanian of numerous works of history,



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religion and literature. Most important, however, were his translations of liturgical works from Old Church Slavonic, such as the Dumnezeiasca Liturghie (‘The Divine Liturgy’) of 1679, which was dedicated to ‘the whole of the Romanian people everywhere who speak this Orthodox language’.39 Dosoftei’s Romanian version of a Slavonic edition of the psalms, Psaltire a lui David, was printed in the 1670s and was the first large-scale verse work produced in the Romanian language. The Psaltirea de înteles (‘The Psalter of Understanding’), a psalter with parallel Old Church Slavonic and Romanian texts, followed in 1680. In subsequent years, Dosoftei produced a four-volume Viaţa şi petrecerea sfinţilor (‘Lives and Deeds of the Saints’) from Greek and Old Church Slavonic sources, which included the deeds of the various Moldovan local saints. It was largely due to the works of clergymen like Varlaam and Dosoftei that ‘by the second quarter of the eighteenth century a service book in Slavonic in the Romanian lands became a rarity, and the Slavonic tradition can be said to have expired’.40 During the late seventeenth century, Romanian also began to emerge as the language of the chancellery and administration. It is indicative of the growing importance of the language that when Vasile Lupu decided to systematize the Moldovan legal system, he did so in Romanian. This was published as Carte românească de învăţătură de la pravilele împărăteşti şi de la alte guideţe (‘The Romanian Book of Teachings from the Imperial Statutes and Other Judicial Pronouncements’) in Iaşi in 1645. Changes within the chancellery were driven by the fact that Romanian was increasingly favoured by the boyars for use in private documents. Consequently, by the turn of the century, few official documents were being produced in Slavonic. Romanian also emerged as a literary language in its own right during the seventeenth century. The chronicles of Moldovan history produced by Grigore Ureche and Miron and Nicolae Costin were all written in Romanian. Metropolitan Dosoftei’s 1681 Poem cronologic despre domnii Moldovei (‘Chronological Poem regarding the Princes of Moldova’), covering the period from Dragoş’s foundation of the principality to the reign of Gheorghe Duca, was the first printed historical work in Romanian. This work also put forward the theory that the Moldovans were of both Dacian and Roman descent. The Moldovans’ Latin origin was the theme of Miron Costin’s De neamul moldovenilor (‘On the Origins of the Moldovans’) written during the second half of the century. Such arguments were expounded some decades later by Dimitrie Cantemir in his chronicle of Romanian origins, Hronicul vechimii a Româno-Moldo-Vlahilor, produced c.1720. In this work, Cantemir argued that the Romanian-speaking peoples of Moldova and Wallachia were of Roman origin. In his Descriptio Moldaviae,

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Cantemir even claimed that prior to the fifteenth century, the Moldovans had used the Latin script in written Romanian rather than Old Church Slavonic.41 Despite a growing acceptance of the theory of the common Roman origins of the Moldovans and Wallachians among certain intellectual circles in the late seventeenth century, belief in a Roman descent was by no means widespread and its national implications lay well in the future. As Cantemir’s own life-history was to show, relations with Moldova’s East Slav Orthodox neighbours remained central to the life of the principality well beyond the seventeenth century, despite the decline in the use of Old Church Slavonic. The decades after Vasile Lupu’s fall from power in 1653 saw several attempts at developing political and military relations with the expanding Russian Empire. Lupu’s successor, Gheorghe Ştefan, sought to form an alliance with Russia to win back the Moldovan fortresses occupied by the Ottomans since the fifteenth century. In 1655 the patriarch of Constantinople sent a mission to Moscow on Ştefan’s behalf, requesting that Moldova be placed under Russian protection and in 1658 a treaty between the two countries was drafted. The treaty came to nothing, however, since Ştefan refused to go to war against his Polish-Lithuania neighbour as the price of a Russian alliance.42 During the mid-seventeenth century, Poland-Lithuania lost parts of her territory to both Russia and the Ottomans. The acquisition by Russia of PolandLithuania’s Ukrainian borderlands east of the River Dnieper in 1667, including the city of Kyiv, brought Moldova into closer geographical proximity to Russia with all the potential for a new and more intimate political relationship. The Ottomans also acquired land from Poland-Lithuania in the 1670s, while a treaty between the Ottomans and Russians in 1681 allowed the Ottomans to take control of lands between the Dniester and Dneiper rivers, below the city of Kyiv. The Ottomans now installed the supposedly loyal Greek prince of Moldova, Gheorghe Duca (reigned 1665–1666, 1668–1672 and 1678–1683) as hetman, in charge of the Ottoman Ukrainian lands.43 Duca was declared ‘ruler of the Ukraine and Moldova’, a position he occupied until 1683. Duca now encouraged Moldovans to move into Ottoman Ukraine, east of Moldova’s Dniester border, by promises of tax freedom and local autonomy. Those who came joined landowners of Moldovan origin already present east of the Dniester, such as the Movilă family who had owned estates in the region since the 1580s. As Duca’s domain now reached the River Dnieper, and thereby bordered onto the newly enlarged Russia, he attempted, through the mediation of Metropolitan Dosoftei, to secure Russian support against both the Ottomans and Poles. The attempt



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failed and Duca’s status as vassal of the Ottomans forced him to give them military support against the Christian powers at the siege of Vienna in 1683. The Ottomans’ failure to capture Vienna, in part due to the intervention of the Polish king, John Sobieski, was a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire, marking the beginning of the Empire’s gradual contraction and decline. The Christian victory at Vienna led to a resurgence of Habsburg power in Central and Eastern Europe, while Poland, led by Sobieski, recaptured the Ukrainian lands previously lost to the Ottomans. Having done so, Sobieski’s army entered Moldova, with the intention of annexing the principality.44 As a result of the 1699 Peace of Carlowitz between the Ottomans and the Christian powers, the Poles were, however, forced to leave Moldova. The peace additionally confirmed the Habsburg Empire’s reacquisition of most of the Hungarian lands lost after the Battle of Mohács of 1526, as well as the principality of Transylvania, thus transforming the Habsburg Empire into Moldova’s immediate neighbour to the west. It was his expectation of Habsburg hegemony in the area following the 1683 siege of Vienna which prompted Constantin Cantemir, Moldovan prince from 1685 to 1693, to sign a secret treaty with the Habsburgs in 1690 to assist them against the Ottomans. It was, however, to the rising power of Russia that Constantin Cantemir’s son turned to help free Moldova from the Ottomans. Dimitrie Cantemir had been installed as prince in 1710 by the Ottomans in the mistaken belief that he would be a loyal vassal, since he had undertaken part of his education in Constantinople. There, Dimitrie had become conversant not only with the major European languages but also with Turkish and other oriental languages. While in Constantinople, Cantemir had written the earliest treatise on Ottoman music (in Turkish), as well as the dense allegorical romance, Istoria ieroglifică (‘A Hieroglyphic Story’), traditionally regarded as the first novel in Romanian.45 Cantemir was inspired by Peter the Great’s military successes which included the conquest of Ottoman Azov and the defeat of the seemingly invincible Swedish king, Charles XII, at the Battle of Poltava in the Polish Ukrainian lands in 1709. Charles XII subsequently went into exile in Ottoman-controlled Bender on the Dniester. Cantemir, therefore, began negotiations with Peter which culminated in the April 1711 Treaty of Lutsk. Cantemir accepted a Russian protectorate over Moldova on condition that the Moldovan throne remained the hereditary preserve of the Cantemir dynasty. The treaty also stipulated that the powers of the Moldovan state should remain in the hands of its prince and that the lands and fortresses lost to the Ottomans in previous centuries be restored.

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Cantemir promised to assist Russia in its war against the Ottomans with an army of 10,000 men.46 In his proclamation to the Moldovan boyars in July 1711, Cantemir justified his request for Russian protection against his Ottoman suzerain by recourse to the so-called theory of the capitulations. According to this, although vassals of the sultan, the rulers of the principalities had entered into agreements, or ‘capitulations’, with the Ottomans freely. (Capitulations did not at this time mean acts of surrender but referred to the way the agreements had been composed under a list of headings or capitula.) The sultan had agreed to protect the independence of Moldova and Wallachia in exchange for tribute. The Ottomans had violated these agreements, according to Cantemir, by their seizure of land and fortresses in both principalities and by interfering in the selection of rulers. In putting forward the claim that the Moldovan (and Wallachian) rulers and boyars had the right of resistance against the Ottomans, Cantemir was using arguments widespread in neighbouring Poland and Hungary.47 Moreover, although the ‘theory of the capitulations’ was not new to the principalities when Cantemir expounded it in 1711, it was frequently used in the next century and a half by boyars who sought to justify freeing the principalities from Ottoman suzerainty. Unfortunately, Cantemir’s passionate rhetoric was not matched by prowess on the battlefield, and at the Battle of Stănileşti, near the River Prut, the combined Russian and Moldovan forces were crushed by the Ottomans. Many Moldovan boyar families fled with Cantemir into exile in Russia, where he received a title of nobility and estates in Russian Ukraine. Cantemir became a counsellor to Peter the Great whom he exhorted to continue Russia’s imperial expansion against the Ottomans. Cantemir continued his historical and scholarly studies, which included his Descriptio Moldaviae, written at the request of the Prussian Academy in Berlin. He also wrote a history of the Ottoman Empire, thus becoming in effect Russia’s first orientalist. His Russian-educated son, Antioch Cantemir, achieved fame as the originator of satire in Russian literature. Cantemir’s flight from Moldova, however, left the principality entirely at the mercy of the Ottomans. The fortress of Hotin, Moldova’s largest fortification, was turned into a raia with an Ottoman garrison, its position on the Dniester making it a crucial stronghold against any future Russian attack on the principality. The Hotin raia was larger than any of the other raia-s established in Moldova, comprising in addition to the town of Hotin some hundred villages and three market towns. The raia’s western border reached as far as the River Prut. The estates of the boyars who had fled to Russia with Cantemir were divided among



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the Ottomans’ loyal supporters.48 Since the prince of Wallachia, Constantin Brâncoveanu, had also reached an agreement with Peter the Great similar to Cantemir’s, the treachery of the princes of both principalities frightened the sultan. He now decided to place the thrones in the hands of loyal Greek Phanariot families based in Constantinople. Thus, the most important result of Cantemir’s Russian escapade was the imposition of Phanariot rule in Moldova and Wallachia by the sultan. The installation of the Phanariot regime, however, was not simply due to Cantemir and Brâncoveanu’s betrayal of their overlord but should be seen within the wider context of international relations. Changes in the balance of power in the late seventeenth century, and the expansion of the Habsburg Empire following its re-conquest of Hungary and Transylvania, put Wallachia and Moldova on the ‘front line’ of the Ottoman confrontation with the Catholic Habsburgs. In the east, Moldova faced an increasingly powerful and expanding Russian Empire. It was, therefore, necessary for both principalities to be in loyal hands in the Ottoman Empire’s ongoing conflict with the Christian European powers.

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4

The Phanariots

The Greek ‘Phanariots’ took their name from the ‘Phanar’, or ‘lighthouse’, district of Constantinople, whence a number of Greek families had fled following the Ottoman conquest of 1453 in order to be close to the Orthodox patriarchal buildings.1 By the late seventeenth century, the Phanariots dominated the Orthodox Church hierarchy in Constantinople, as well as acting as the patriarchate’s bankers and financiers. The Phanariots had also risen swiftly within the Ottoman administration as a result of their expertise gained at the former Byzantine court. Due to their proficiency in foreign languages, they regularly began to fill the post of ‘grand dragoman’ to the sultan. Although the dragoman was at first just the sultan’s interpreter and translator, he became in effect foreign minister. Alexandru Mavrocordat was the first Phanariot to achieve international standing as grand dragoman, and he held this post from 1673 to 1709. In his additional capacity as the sultan’s private secretary, Mavrocordat had negotiated the Peace of Carlowitz with the Christian powers in 1699. The Phanariot families also acted as bankers, merchants and doctors to members of the Ottoman court. To consolidate their position, Phanariot Greeks sought to acquire land, but since there were restrictions on the purchase of land by non-Muslims within the Ottoman Empire, they began to cast their eyes upon the principalities. Besides having autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, the principalities were attractive to the Greeks for other reasons:  they were governed by the sole surviving Orthodox monarchs in south-east Europe and modelled their courts on preOttoman Byzantine imperial traditions. The Phanariots, and other important Greek families, began to purchase estates in Moldova and Wallachia and to marry into the native boyar and princely families. The Cantacuzeno, Rosetti and Ghica families were among the first to integrate themselves into Moldovan and Wallachian society. In the eighteenth century, however, the Ottoman government favoured Phanariots whose families were still largely based in Constantinople as

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rulers of Moldova and Wallachia, rather than Greek families already living in the principalities. Members of the Phanariot ruler’s close families in Constantinople could also serve as ‘hostages’ to ensure the prince’s loyalty to the sultan. The Mavrocordats were one such Constantinople family. The first ‘official’ Phanariot prince to rule in the principalities was Nicolae Mavrocordat, son of the sultan’s trusted grand dragoman, Alexandru. Nicolae had already ruled briefly in Moldova before Dimitrie Cantemir and was appointed once again as prince of Moldova from 1711 to 1715 and in Wallachia from 1715 to 1716 and 1719 to 1730. Since the practice of alternating rule in each principality was followed by all Mavrocordat’s successors, much of what follows below applies to both Moldova and Wallachia. In the first half of the eighteenth century the thrones of the principalities were dominated by three Phanariot families, the Mavrocordats, Ghicas and Racoviţăs. Subsequently, and until the removal of the Phanariots from power after the Greek revolt against the Ottomans in 1821, the Ipsilanti, Callimachi and Moruzi families dominated. Each ruler had normally acted as grand dragoman in Constantinople before his appointment as prince, having supposedly proved his loyalty to the Ottomans. The Phanariot era has generally been regarded by Romanian historians as a period of stagnation and decline in the principalities at a time when Western Europe was apparently reaping the benefits of the Enlightenment. The Phanariots, moreover, stand accused of ‘orientalizing’ Wallachia and Moldova and of cutting off its peoples from European civilization and their Latin ‘brethren’ in the West. Nicolae Iorga was the first eminent historian to argue that, on the contrary, the period was one of constructive reform owing to the work of ‘enlightened’ Phanariot princes. Volume seven of Iorga’s Histoire des roumains, published in 1940, which deals with the Phanariot period, is entitled ‘The Reformers’ and examines in particular the reforms of Nicolae and Constantin Mavrocordat.2 Iorga, moreover, pointed out that the ‘Greek’ Phanariot princes, and Greek families already integrated into Moldovan and Wallachian society, were by no means of purely Greek origin. The Cantacuzenos were probably of Byzantine descent and the Ipsilantis were certainly ethnic Greeks. The Rosettis, however, were of Levantine Italian origin, while the Ghicas were of Albanian extraction. Both the Racoviţă and the Callimachi families were of Moldovan origin.3 It would therefore appear that ‘the leading Phanariot families were a hodgepodge of enterprising Greeks, Romanians, Albanians and Levantine Italians’.4 A number of Phanariot rulers were both highly cultivated and keen to reform the chaotic government and administration of the principalities and were inspired by European Enlightenment ideas. Alexandru Mavrocordat, the ‘founder’ of the



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Mavrocordat ‘dynasty’, as well as being grand dragoman to the sultan, was a scholar and medical doctor, who had studied in Rome, Padua and Bologna. The princely academies in Iaşi and Bucharest utilized Alexandru’s many scholarly works on grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and theology. Alexandru’s son, Nicolae Mavrocordat, was also a scholar who bequeathed to his son a library so rich and vast that it was coveted by both King Louis XV of France and King George II of England. Besides manuscripts gathered from all parts of the Ottoman Empire, it included a large collection of printed books, including works by John Locke and Isaac Newton. Nicolae was an able administrator who, miraculously, even succeeded in lowering the tribute payable to Constantinople. He was concerned to improve education in the Moldovan principality and was responsible for strengthening the academy at Iaşi, established in 1707 following the closure of the academy originally founded by Vasile Lupu. Nicolae Mavrocordat’s writings included a tract on the dangers of nicotine, an early example of the genre and appropriate for the son of a doctor. Nicolae’s son, Constantin Mavrocordat, is perhaps especially deserving of the title ‘Enlightened Despot’. He ruled in Moldova from 1733 to 1735, 1741 to 1743, 1748 to 1749 and in 1769, as well as alternately in Wallachia.5 Constantin Mavrocordat was apparently ‘a man of extremely small stature, and a low appearance, cross-eyed and with a drowned-out voice’.6 Despite such physical shortcomings, he was responsible for reforms within the principalities. These included the abolition of several indirect taxes, such as those on cattle or fields under cultivation, both of which were damaging to agricultural productivity. He introduced instead a general tax, payable annually in instalments. Known as a Francophile and acquainted with the works of the French philosophes, Mavrocordat declared the right of serfs to redeem themselves (in 1746 in Wallachia and 1749 in Moldova) on payment of a recompense to their landlords. For those serfs who were unable to pay the remuneration, Mavrocordat reduced labour services due to their landlords to twelve days a year in Wallachia and twenty-four in Moldova. Since the principalities, and their foreign policies, were now directly under Ottoman control, the prince also downgraded the armies of both Wallachia and Moldova to little more than a princely guard. Constantin Mavrocordat also ensured that senior administrative and judicial officials were paid a regular salary in order to prevent them raising money through the sale of subordinate offices and the imposition of arbitrary fines and taxes, which were the traditional means whereby office holders enriched themselves. He improved the standards of schools attached to Moldova’s many monasteries and churches, ensuring that the Romanian language was taught in

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all such institutions. Mavrocordat was also concerned that priests should be able to conduct religious services in Romanian, which he also hoped to elevate as the administrative language in the principalities at all levels. In 1741, Mavrocordat was responsible for the publication of the first collection of documents illustrating the course of Moldovan and Wallachian history. Constantin Mavrocordat was also the first known leader of a Masonic lodge in Moldova and was initiated as the Worshipful Master of a lodge in Iaşi in 1735. Many Moldovan princes who succeeded Mavrocordat were also freemasons.7 Grigore Alexandru Ghica, who ruled Moldova from 1764 to 1767 and again from 1774 to 1777, was responsible for further improvements at the academy in Iaşi. Ghica also established lyceums in several provincial towns as well as setting up twenty-three elementary schools. Phanariot rulers also attempted to order Moldova’s chaotic legal system with its mixture of Byzantine-Roman law and Moldovan customary law. Scarlat Callimachi, who ruled in Moldova in 1806, 1807 to 1810 and again from 1812 to 1819, was responsible for the publication of Moldova’s first civil law code. The ‘Callimachi code’ was based on the Austrian civil code and remained in force until 1864 in Moldova, and longer still in Russian-ruled Bessarabia. Perhaps more significant for the Moldovan peasantry was, however, Callimachi’s introduction of the potato to the principality as an agricultural crop. Potato soup remains a popular dish in Moldova to this day. The Phanariot era also saw the translation and printing of many works of the European Enlightenment. Since Greek was one of the main languages of instruction at the princely academies and the monastic schools and was spoken by a substantial number of the boyars, it had become the language of high culture in the principalities. In addition, it was the second language, after Romanian, used in the chancellery and judiciary in the eighteenth century, as well as being the lingua franca of merchants and traders in the principalities. William Wilkinson, who served as British consul in Bucharest, observed early in the nineteenth century that ‘the modern Greek, introduced by the hospodars, is the language of the court but it is perfectly understood by the boyars, with whom it has become a native tongue’. Wilkinson added, however, that the use of Greek was less widespread in Moldova than in Wallachia.8 The first Greek press in the Ottoman lands had been established at Cetăţuia monastery near Iaşi in 1682. Both the monastery and the press owed their existence to the generosity of the Greek prince, Gheorghe Duca.9 In the relative autonomy of the principalities, away from the restrictive atmosphere of Constantinople, important works of the Enlightenment, including studies by John Locke and Montesquieu, were translated and circulated in Greek.10 Many



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more of the fruits of the Enlightenment were translated into Romanian, such as Catherine the Great’s philosophical and legal treatise, Nakaz (‘Instructions’), and the works of Voltaire which appeared in the 1770s. Indeed, from the middle of the seventeenth century French works were regularly translated into Romanian under the auspices of the Phanariot princes. Nevertheless, despite the many positive examples of Phanariot rule and the role of the princes in the circulation of the literature of the Enlightenment, the era certainly deserves something of the evil reputation that has been attached to it. In his defence of the Phanariots, Nicolae Iorga criticized the Greek doctor, Zallony, for his ‘Essay on the Fanariots’, originally published in France in 1824.11 Zallony’s aim had been to alert Europe to the abuses of the Phanariot system in the principalities. Zallony feared that the Phanariot families would take control of a future independent Greek state, over which they would have a corrupting influence. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Zallony’s work portrays the Phanariot system in a grim, and frequently absurd, light. Many of Zallony’s observations and criticisms, however, are borne out by observations made by Western travellers to the principalities, as well as by subsequent historians. The eighteenth century saw an intensification of all the defects of Ottoman suzerainty in the principalities that had been prevalent in previous centuries. The very institution of the Phanariot regime had come about as a result of the Ottoman government’s need for more direct control over the affairs of the principalities. These lands were now threatened by the growing power and influence of the Habsburgs and Russians. From the 1730s, the Moldovan or Wallachian ruler was appointed directly by the sultan, without even the pretence of consultation with the boyars.12 The foreign policy of the principalities was now entirely in the hands of the sultan, in practice and no longer only in theory. Miscreants who dabbled with foreign powers were frequently executed. During the eighteenth century, the number of Ottomans permitted to live within the principalities grew, especially in the areas around the raia-s where they acquired land and were useful in enforcing requisitioning. The Ottoman monopoly on agricultural produce also increased, especially after the middle years of the eighteenth century when the Ottomans lost their ‘bread baskets’ in Egypt and the Crimea to the Christian European powers.13 This made Moldovan and Wallachian grain even more essential for feeding Constantinople, where famine was not uncommon, and the inhabitants of the raia-s on the Danube and Dniester rivers. Requisitioning took place regardless of local needs. Meanwhile, the financial obligations placed on each new prince increased. As well as the annual tribute, and the fee for appointment, the Phanariots

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were obliged to make an additional payment after three years to renew their appointment. New incumbents were also responsible for paying off any debts left by their predecessors. In addition, the Ottomans proved inventive in finding supplementary means of raising money, which they then obliged their faithful vassals to pay. The historian of the region, Steven Runciman, provides a fine example of one such financial obligation. ‘The prince was appointed at Constantinople and consecrated there by the patriarch. He had to arrive at his new capital within thirty days, or else pay a fine of some sixteen gold pounds to the Aga of the Janissaries for every day over the thirty till he arrived. Tactful princes were never over-punctual.’14 The huge costs of the throne led to the financial ruin of both the Mavrocordat and Racoviţă families over the course of the eighteenth century. As in previous centuries, it was clearly very much in the Ottoman government’s financial interests to ensure a rapid turnover of rulers. Between 1711, when Nicolae Mavrocordat became prince, and 1821 when Phanariot rule in the principalities ended, there were some thirty-six changes of ruler in Moldova, and the average reign was just over two years. This situation was, however, little different to that which had prevailed in earlier periods of Ottoman suzerainty. As William Wilkinson, the British consul in Bucharest, explained, the sultan regarded the principalities ‘as farms which were to be let out to the highest bidders; the farmer-princes were therefore deposed and recalled, whenever the offers and promises of others of their countrymen appeared more advantageous’.15 Under these circumstances, even such well-meaning Phanariots as Constantin Mavrocordat had little freedom of action. He was forced to rescind many of his reforms due to financial pressure, and at one stage was temporarily exiled for failure to pay a ‘supplementary charge’, his throne being in the meantime occupied by a more cooperative prince. The system made any long-term attempts at reforms self-defeating. As Wilkinson explained, the princes ‘live under the incessant apprehension of sudden recall and disgrace, [which] induces them to bestow their whole attention on such resources only as are most immediately within their reach, and to neglect any plan that merely offers a remote prospect of gain’.16 These problems were often compounded by the many wars between the Ottomans, Habsburgs and Russians fought on the soil of the principalities during the eighteenth century, which created attendant conditions of lawlessness. Alexandru Ipsilanti, for example, had introduced significant reforms into the legal system in Wallachia, including the production of a printed law code in 1780 and the establishment of tribunals in Bucharest with the right to appeal against decisions of the princely divan. His attempts to bring about similar reforms in



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Moldova during his two-year reign from 1786 to 1788 were cut short by the Janissaries. These troops had been sent to guard the Moldovan border against the Russians but chose instead to plunder the princely capital of Iaşi. Despite these disadvantages, the thrones of the principalities remained attractive to the Phanariots for several reasons. There was the considerable prestige which continued to surround the princes’ status as the only Orthodox rulers under Ottoman suzerainty. This was symbolized by the grand investiture and anointing of the new princes by the patriarch in Constantinople. The Phanariot families’ desire to acquire the thrones was also intimately entwined with their hopes that the Ottomans could be expelled from Europe, in an endeavour for which the principalities might provide the base.17 The Phanariots’ pretensions to imperial grandeur were reflected in the court ceremonial which seems to have reached proportions unseen in previous centuries. The Greek doctor Zallony, criticized by Iorga for his wholesale condemnation of Phanariot rule in the principalities, vividly described the prince’s court and the fawning deference shown towards the prince by the boyars. The boyars regularly carried the prince around his palace ‘whilst two or three other lords hold the train of his robe. Under this aspect of a paralytic, he passes through his apartments’. At the dining table, even the prince’s bread was cut up for him into small pieces by fussing servants, while his wine was offered up in a crystal glass. Meanwhile, Bohemian musicians serenaded the pampered prince. The ringing of bells was thereafter deemed necessary, according to Zallony, to announce to the enthralled world that the prince was about to take his siesta, and again to inform the world of his awakening.18 That such excesses may have been a normal part of courtly life is suggested by Thomas Thornton, an English merchant in Constantinople, who described the princely courts in the principalities as being ‘a ridiculous combination of all that is grotesque in ceremony with all that is vulgar in manners’.19 For as long as the prince could maintain the sultan’s trust, which was rarely for long, the prince had almost limitless authority in his domestic affairs. The collective power of the boyars on the princely divan was insignificant because the prince controlled all appointments. As Zallony put it, once the prince was installed, he exercised ‘a despotic sovereignty’ and his ‘most earnest care’ was ‘to invest his nearest relatives with the first dignities’.20 The prince’s Greek relatives were described by Thomas Thornton as the ‘flock of harpies’ from Constantinople and they were a source of great resentment among the native boyars.21 William Wilkinson was greatly struck by the indolence and rapacity of both home-grown and Greek boyars alike.22 ‘Money’, he declared, ‘is their only

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stimulus; and the means they generally employ to obtain it are not the efforts of industry’, but rather those of tax-farming or sale of offices.23 The prince’s Greek relatives, however, specifically came to the principalities ‘for the express purpose of amassing a fortune, and immediately give themselves up to the seductions of luxury’.24 The profits that could be made by the prince and his relatives were often more than enough to offset the huge costs of appointment. Traditional means of raising funds such as tax-farming and the sale of offices continued apace. The post of chief minister to the prince was very expensive but much sought after since the minister could then sell on further offices to local boyars. Since few of these officials were paid proper salaries, the costs were ultimately paid by the peasantry who bore the brunt of taxation and the other financial extortions whereby officials made their money. Princes and tax-farmers were, like the Ottomans, adept at inventing new taxes and fines. The prince could also make his fortune by exploiting his role in requisitioning the agricultural produce bound for Constantinople under the terms of the Ottoman monopoly. William Wilkinson commented on the principalities’ great wealth of agricultural commodities, but all these products were subject to the Ottoman monopoly. Nevertheless, the prince and his followers could make a profit out of this since the goods bound for Turkey ‘are bought by the local governor for about one-fourth of the prices current in the market, and one-sixth of their value in Turkey’.25 Some Phanariot rulers even exploited the periods of dearth caused by the devastations of war and Ottoman requisitioning to their own advantage. Alexandru Moruzi, who ruled three times in Moldova between 1791 and 1797, extorted loans from the local monasteries during a time of famine. With this money he bought grain from the Bulgarian lands which he then sold to the starving Moldovan peasants at hugely inflated prices.26 There may well have been, therefore, some truth in Zallony’s comment that ‘the system of the hospodar … is plunder’. Zallony went on to observe that when the new prince proceeded to his capital, ‘the sound of bells … throws the people into consternation. Is it possible that they could rejoice at the sight of their new sovereign, who, like a vulture, is about to cast himself on a new prey?’27 It is perhaps to the period of Phanariot rule that the Romanian proverb owes its origin: ‘a change of rulers is the joy of fools’. According to the London merchant and visitor to the principalities, Thomas Thornton, the consequences of government by despotic Greeks and degenerate boyars led the general population into a state of apathy. Since they could not reap



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the fruits of their labour, the people ‘exert no ingenuity, and apply themselves to no new branches of industry’.28 William Wilkinson expressed similar views. He was fully aware of the great unexploited mineral resources of the principalities but observed that the inhabitants eschewed work which would only serve to ‘fill the prince’s coffers’. Wilkinson believed that ‘there does not perhaps exist a people labouring under a greater degree of oppression from the effect of despotic power, and more heavily burdened with impositions, and taxes, than the peasantry of Wallachia and Moldavia’.29 A further financial benefit accruing to the Phanariot incumbents of the Moldovan and Wallachian thrones derived from their intimate connection with the patriarchs of Constantinople. While simony may have been practised in the principalities in previous centuries, it now became so widespread as to be institutionalized. All high ecclesiastical offices in Constantinople and the principalities were sold for large sums and patriarchs were appointed and dismissed at will for the Phanariots’ financial gain. Yet despite the increasing levels of corruption, the Orthodox Church remained at the heart of Moldovan cultural life.30 New monasteries were established, especially in the lands of the present-day Republic of Moldova between the Prut and Dniester rivers. Hâncu and Japca monasteries were opened in the late seventeenth century, while over a dozen monastic houses were built in the region in the eighteenth century. These included the monastery of Hârbovaţ, founded in 1730, and Curchi, Rudi and Saharna which were established in the 1770s. The renovation of the medieval cave monastery at Tipova, where Stephen the Great is said to have married one of his wives, was also undertaken in the 1770s. Monastic expansion was in part due to the high levels of destruction and plundering which took place during the century’s many wars. Hospitals were also founded in the monasteries over the course of the century. Paradoxically, despite the Phanariots’ relationship with the Orthodox Church in Constantinople, most of the monasteries erected during their period of rule were undertaken through the generosity of wealthy boyars and churchmen rather than the princes themselves. Indeed, links with the Orthodox ‘Commonwealth’ were less strong in the Phanariot era than during the seventeenth century. Support for the monastic houses on Mount Athos declined and the patriarchs visited the principalities less often. Patriarch Silvestros of Antioch, who passed through Moldova en route to Moscow and installed an Arabic-language press in Iaşi, was a notable exception. The Phanariot rulers seemed to have been more interested in supporting Greek schools in the lands of present-day Greece and in Constantinople. Moreover, although the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church in

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Wallachia was heavily Greek dominated, this was not the case in Moldova where the Church authorities largely succeeded in blocking the elevation of Greeks to high office.31 The Orthodox Church in Moldova, therefore, retained a ‘native’, Romanian-speaking character throughout the Phanariot era. Despite the centrality of the Church in the life of the principalities, William Wilkinson was shocked to discover the prevalence of superstitions redolent of paganism among the peasantry. ‘They firmly believe in all sorts of witchcraft,’ he wrote, ‘in apparitions of the dead, in ghosts, and in all kinds of miracles.’32 This may have been a reflection on the poor quality of the village clergy, who were themselves drawn overwhelmingly from the peasant population. Indeed, Moldova retained its overwhelmingly rural character throughout the Phanariot era, and beyond. As late as 1849, only some 8 per cent of the population were engaged in full-time manufacturing or trade.33 Westerners travelling through the principality during the ‘high noon’ of the Phanariot period in the early nineteenth century extolled the beauties and fertility of the Moldovan landscape but were also struck by its archaic state. The Scottish army doctor, Adam Neale, for example, commented on the vast expanses of undrained marshes and lakes, as well as the grassy steppes, dotted with large flocks of sheep, herds of horned cattle and magnificent horses. ‘Moldova,’ he wrote, ‘remains in its primitive state … [with] … villages of the most primeval character, surrounded by wattle fences.’34 Such impressions of untamed nature were doubtless reinforced by a night in the forest where Neale’s sleep was disturbed by the howling of distant wolves and the rushing waters of ice-cold streams and rivers in the rocky crevasses.35 A Baltic German visitor to Moldova, Freiherr von Campenhausen, was able to appreciate the principality’s natural charms, unencumbered by the economic imperatives of many British travellers.36 Campenhausen was especially enchanted by the natural abundance of the Moldovan lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers on the eve of their annexation by Russia in 1812. The countryside teemed with rich animal and birdlife and flourishing plants. He described the area around Ismail and Chilia on the Danube river as ‘the homeland of the magpie’, which lived among the high and leafy trees, the wide variety of fruit trees and lush vineyards. Von Campenhausen also admired the beauty of the town gardens in Akkerman where fruit trees, roses, lilies, balsam and other sweet-smelling flowers grew together in unorganized abandon or, as he put it, ‘in Turkish style’.37 Campenhausen was charmed by the local Ottoman ‘flower-language’ (‘eine Blumensprache’) in which ‘every flower, every tree, every weed, has a meaning’. The cypress tree, for example, expressed sadness, and the oak, peace. Lavender



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symbolized work and industriousness, while rosemary spoke of faithfulness and the rose of beauty.38 That the principality had long been rich in flowers is borne out by the Hungarian Kelemen Mikes who travelled from Bucharest to Iaşi in the mid1730s. ‘Our journey was a delight,’ he wrote, ‘and a bride could have delighted in accompanying us; for all the way from Bucharest to Iaşi she would have trodden on nothing but many, many different sorts of flowers – everywhere the meadows were filled with flowers, so that our horses stepped on nothing but carnations and tulips.’39 Many visitors to the principality in the early nineteenth century commented on the similarity between Moldovan peasant dress and the peasantry’s putative Dacian ancestors depicted on Trajan’s Column in Rome. William Wilkinson, for instance, observed that ‘the dress of the male peasants bears some resemblance to that of the Dacians, as represented in the figures on Trajan’s pillar in Rome’.40 According to Adam Neale, ‘the dress and warlike aspect of the Moldavians is strikingly picturesque, and remains nearly the same as when … the Roman artists chiselled the basso reliev’ for the pillar of Trajan’.41 This is an interesting reflection of the dissemination of the ‘Daco-Roman continuity theory’ among certain European intellectuals. For Adam Neale, the somewhat barbaric appearance of the Moldovan peasants was reinforced by the fact that they lived ‘like Tartars as much on horseback as on foot’.42 Indeed, the many fine horses bred on the Moldovan steppes provided a plentiful supply for the Austrian and Prussian cavalries at this time.43 While admiring Moldova’s natural beauties, the Baltic German Freiherr von Campenhausen was, however, shocked to find that the streets of large settlements like Iaşi or Bender were narrow, dark and dirty. Moreover, the Moldovan towns were still subject to regular outbreaks of diseases, including the bubonic plague, now unheard of in the cities of Central and Western Europe.44 Moldova’s urban inhabitants, particularly those who surrounded the court, clearly had a pronounced ‘oriental’ air. This reflected a society infused with Ottoman and late Byzantine social codes, in which rank, status and occupation were reflected in dress. Campenhausen described the garb worn by the people of Iaşi as having a part-Turkish, part-Chinese and part-Jewish appearance. The coffee houses in the city were also in the Turkish style, with their low divans, and were full throughout the day with the city’s exotically dressed inhabitants.45 Women’s dress during the Phanariot period was essentially a layered look, consisting of a gauze chemise covered by a frock of taffeta or velvet and then one to two short gowns or coats. The colour palate consisted of vivid yellows,

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greens, blues, reds and whites with pastel prints for summer frocks. On grand occasions, and for those who could afford it, this clothing might be covered by a coat lined with ermine. Long, capacious clothes were common to the dress of both genders.46 The boyars were distinguished, however, from lesser mortals by the calpac, or bonnet, which consisted of black lambskin in a balloon shape adorned with a red tassel. The relative rank of the boyars was reflected in the size of their bonnets. Inevitably, the boyars were keen to outdo each other in the size of their headgear, the unfortunate consequence of which was to lead them to wear bonnets so ludicrously large as ‘to prevent a boyar from admitting a friend into his carriage’. The elaborate dress of the prince himself, meanwhile, reflected Ottoman fashion. Not being a Muslim, however, the prince could not wear a turban, but wore instead ‘a cylindrical bonnet of yellow cloth, surrounded by black sable’. The prince’s pre-eminent position was also symbolized by the practice of ‘ornamenting the interior of his slippers with red cloth’, perhaps a remnant of the Byzantine emperors’ sole right to wear the imperial ‘purple’ (actually a dark red).47 The ‘Byzantine’ and absolutist pretensions of the Phanariot princes and the widespread abuses of the system of government in the principalities in the eighteenth century provoked the ‘native’ Moldovan and Wallachian boyars into demanding limitations on the authority of the prince. These boyars also sought a return to the system of election of native princes. There was a great dislike especially of the Greek boyars who surrounded the prince and the influence they wielded. ‘Graecophobia’, already visible in the seventeenth century, became more widespread in the next. Byzantine culture and traditions, for centuries regarded as the very bedrock of civilization itself, were now perceived as both oppressive and alien by many of the boyars. This was compounded by the growth of Greek nationalism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which associated Greek identity with a specific territory rather than with a supranational heritage (although the so-called Megali Idea sought to reconcile the two). Thus, by the 1820s a sense of loyalty towards the ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’ which had previously tied together Orthodox believers of diverse ethnicities was felt by relatively few in the principalities.48 Several attempts were made during the course of the eighteenth century to oust the Phanariot rulers from the Moldovan throne.49 In 1753 the boyars sought to dethrone Constantin Racoviţă, infamous for his oppressive taxes and the abuses of the Greek boyars who surrounded him. In 1775 an angry mob, headed by the Moldovan metropolitan, stormed the court of Grigore III Ghica. Ghica’s



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successor, Constantin Moruzi, faced a similar challenge in 1778 and in 1796 a secret anti-Phanariot society was established in Moldova. None of these revolts were, however, successful in bringing down the Phanariot regime. As well as fomenting plots against the Phanariot rulers, the boyars in the principalities had another weapon in their armoury in the form of petitions sent to the European Great Powers. In these petitions the principalities’ problems were enumerated, together with proposals for reform and requests that the powers should intercede on behalf of the principalities with the Ottoman authorities. In particular, the boyars requested a return to the system of government led by native princes. Many petitions also sought limitations on the principalities’ economic obligations to the Ottomans; others listed possible administrative reforms and changes to the make-up of the princely divan. Some even drew attention to the plight of the peasantry under Phanariot rule. The goal of the petitioners was not, however, radical social reform, but an alteration in the scheme and manner of government. Calls for ‘national unity’ or full political independence were rare.50 The earliest proposal for the unification of the Moldovan and Wallachian principalities was the memorandum put together by Mihai Cantacuzeno in 1772 which was sent to the Habsburg, Prussian and Russian rulers. Nevertheless, the notion of the common Roman or ‘Latin’ origins of the Romanian-speakers in the principalities and Transylvania gained currency during the eighteenth century. The historical and philological studies produced by the so-called Transylvanian School of Uniate clergymen were especially influential in this regard. This emphasis on the ‘Latinity’ of Romanian-speakers coincided with the growing admiration for the French language and culture among the boyar class, both native and Greek. Through allowing the translation of French books into Romanian, the Phanariot princes were themselves in part responsible for the growing fashion for all things French. During the eighteenth century, the Phanariot rulers were obliged to be conversant in French, the lingua franca of diplomacy and cultivated society throughout much of Europe. Several Phanariot princes, such as Constantin Mavrocordat, were known francophiles. Indeed, Mavrocordat’s wife, Ecaterina, even had her portrait painted by the Swiss-French artist Jean-Etienne Liotard during the early 1740s when her husband was the ruler of Moldova.51 The princes regularly employed French secretaries at their courts and French tutors for their children, while the academies at Bucharest and Iaşi attended by the boyars also taught the French language.52 As a result of these developments, by the early 1830s French had replaced Greek as the principal vehicle of foreign influence in both the principalities.

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In addition, around the turn of the eighteenth century, many boyar families began to send their sons to be educated in France, where they fell further under the spell of French culture. As a result, these young boyars were increasingly disposed to view themselves as part of the ‘Latin’ family of Europeans:  a perception which only served to differentiate them yet further from their Greek and Slavonic co-religionists. Nowhere was this more apparent than in dress, where oriental garb became a thing of the past among the sons of boyars returning from Paris who now wore Western clothing. The discarding of oriental dress had, in fact, first taken place among boyars’ wives who had embraced the new French fashions, dances and soirées in advance of their husbands and sons.53 The ideological developments surrounding the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period were to provide Moldovan and Wallachian boyars with liberal and national ideas which were to bear fruit in the movement for Romanian national unity. Some boyars distanced themselves, however, from such ‘Latinist’ and national ideologies. Thomas Thornton’s meeting with representatives of some of the more ancient boyar families in the early nineteenth century is instructive in this regard. These families proudly informed Thornton that they were ‘the descendants of the Slavi [Slavs], and are of a distinct race from the people who have sprung from the alliance of the Romans with the original Dacians’.54

5

Russia, the principalities and Romania

Despite the growing attraction for many boyars and their wives for all things French, it was the Russian Empire’s military successes in the region which proved central to the principalities’ eventual independence from the Ottomans. The importance of Russia in the life of the principalities was reflected in the growing number of petitions sent to the Russian court, requesting the reform of the Phanariot system of government. French interest in the Danubian region during the era of Napoleonic expansion led the boyars to increase the number of petitions sent to France, but Russia remained the foremost recipient of petitions from the principalities from the 1760s right through until the 1830s.1 Political relations between Moldova and the principality of Muscovy, and subsequently Russia, had been slender in the centuries before Dimitrie Cantemir’s alliance with Peter the Great in 1711. Stephen the Great had close diplomatic relations with Ivan III, but this did not lead to any lasting links between the two countries. In the sixteenth century, Bogdan, son of Alexandru Lăpuşneanu, sought refuge in Moscow, and Michael the Brave had diplomatic contacts with the tsar, but to what end remains unclear.2 Moldova, in any event, was geographically separated from the Russian lands by Poland-Lithuania, and among the Orthodox East Slavs, it was with their Ukrainian and Cossack neighbours that the Moldovans had the closest relations. It was not until Russia began to emerge as a significant European power in the seventeenth century that the Moldovans began to seek the tsar’s aid against the Ottomans. The first bids in this direction, undertaken by Gheorghe Ştefan in the 1650s and Gheorghe Duca in the 1670s, proved a failure, but were clearly serious attempts to gain the tsar’s support. The patriarch of Constantinople also intervened with the tsar on Gheorghe Ştefan’s behalf, while Metropolitan Dosoftei acted as mediator with Moscow for Gheorghe Duca. Nevertheless, there is some truth in the assertion that ‘up until the reign of Peter the Great …

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relations between the principalities and Russia, that is to say Moscow, amounted to next to nothing’.3 While the peregrinations of numerous Orthodox clergymen and monks of Greek, Serb or Bulgarian origin in the Russian lands are recorded from the late fifteenth century onwards, there are few records of visitors from the principalities to Russia before the seventeenth century. This may well have been a by-product of the lack of political relations, but, more plausibly, it was because the Orthodox Church in the principalities was richly endowed by both the princes and the boyars and had no need of the tsar’s benevolence.4 Until well into the seventeenth century it was the Moldovan Church, even more so than that of Wallachia, which acted as the protector of the ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’ under Ottoman rule. In this capacity, Moldova acted as a bridge or mediator between the world of the South Slavs and Greeks and the world of the East Slavs. Several cultural streams reached the Russian lands through Moldova, including possibly the Hesychast monastic tradition, which flowed through Neamţ monastery in particular. Many Old Church Slavonic religious texts also arrived in Russia through the mediation of the scriptorium at Putna monastery. In the seventeenth century, Greek cultural influence spread to Russia in part through the products of the Greek press established at Cetăţuia monastery near Iaşi. It was only with the establishment of the Moscow patriarchate in the late sixteenth century that the Russian tsars began to regard themselves as the protectors of Orthodoxy with Moscow projected as the ‘Third Rome’. Even Russian historians apparently concur that until the seventeenth century, it was the Byzantine influence, mediated through the principalities, which enriched the Orthodox heritage in the Russian lands.5 Yet even in the mid-seventeenth century, especially during the reign of Vasile Lupu, it was still the Moldovan Orthodox Church which was at the heart of the Orthodox world and at the forefront of the struggle against Calvinism. Through its close association with the metropolitanate of Kyiv under Petru Movilă, Moldova was also Orthodoxy’s main bastion against Uniate and Catholic influences. The seventeenth century did, however, witness some strengthening of religious and cultural links between Moldova and Russia. Russian icons had long been prized in the principality. In the 1620s, Archimandrite Varlaam, the future metropolitan of Moldova, was sent on a mission to Moscow to procure icons for the religious houses in Iaşi. Vasile Lupu had extensive correspondence with Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich on the question of icons, as well as in the matter of the training of the artists employed to paint the Church of the Trei Hierarhi in Iaşi.



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Lupu also sent several representatives to Moscow and honoured the tsar with the gift of an Arab horse. But it was only in the eighteenth century that Moldovan political and religious connections with Russia became pivotal. The century saw Russia’s domination of the icon ‘market’, especially after 1770 when Russian factory-made icons began to circulate widely in the principalities.6 There was also a renewal of monastic spiritual life in Moldova which brought together members of both the Russian and Moldovan Orthodox Churches. The monk Paisie was originally from a monastery in Poltava in the Ukraine and established an order at Dragomirna monastery in Moldova in the 1760s which was dedicated to prayer, work, community living and care for the sick. Paisie subsequently moved to Neamţ monastery where he was responsible for the monastery’s spiritual renewal and a late-flowering of scholarly output. Paisie’s reputation attracted to Neamţ novices from throughout the Orthodox world, including many Russians and Ukrainians, as well as Moldovans. His pupils were responsible for the translation of many Russian books into Romanian, including the ‘Life of the Saints’ by Saint Dimitri of Rostov in c.1810. A Russian priest based at Iaşi printed the first RomanianRussian dictionary in the early nineteenth century.7 It was the military and territorial expansion of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century that had the most profound effect upon the fate of Moldova. In the years between the institution of the Phanariot regime in Moldova in 1711 and the Russian annexation of the Moldovan lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers in 1812, the clash of the three empires – the Ottoman, Russian and Habsburg – resulted in six major wars totalling twenty-three years. These wars were largely fought on the territory of the principalities. During the 1735 to 1739 war, the Habsburg Empire fought alongside the Russians against the Ottomans and during the final year of the war Moldova was occupied by Russian troops. Several leading Moldovan boyar families petitioned the tsar, requesting the annexation of the principality by Russia. It was Dimitrie Cantemir’s two nephews who drew up a draft treaty under which Moldova would be placed under Russian sovereignty, but with the boyars maintaining their traditional privileges, such as the right to elect the prince. Unfortunately for the pro-Russian Moldovans, the war proved to be a victory for the Ottomans and the Russians were obliged to withdraw from Moldova. The second half of the eighteenth century was, however, to see considerable gains by the Russian Empire (and the Habsburg Empire) at the Ottomans’ expense. During the 1768 to 1774 war between the Russians and the Ottomans, the Russian army occupied both principalities, receiving considerable military aid

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from their supporters in both Wallachia and Moldova.8 The boyars in Moldova once again requested annexation by Russia, regarding this prospect as preferable to remaining under Ottoman suzerainty. The war proved to be a massive victory for the Russians and the terms of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji greatly increased Russian influence both in the principalities and throughout the Ottoman lands. The treaty guaranteed the free exercise of Orthodoxy in the Ottoman Empire and granted the Russians the right to intercede with the sultan on behalf of all Orthodox Christians. In addition, Russian ministers in Constantinople were permitted to ‘remonstrate’ in favour of the principalities at the sultan’s court. Provision was also made for foreign consulates to be opened in Ottoman cities. The treaty was additionally an economic success for the Russians in that it officially made the Black Sea and the Straits open to all Russian commercial vessels. The Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji also gave Russian merchants complete freedom of movement throughout the principalities and along the course of the lower Danube river. Baron Thugut, the Habsburg minister of war, clearly recognized the importance of the treaty in promoting Russian hegemony in the Ottoman lands. Thugut commented wryly that ‘the whole erection of the stipulations of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji is a model of skill on the part of the Russian diplomatists, and a rare example of imbecility on the part of the Turkish negotiators. By the skilful combination of the articles which that treaty contains, the Ottoman Empire becomes from henceforth a kind of Russian province’.9 As a later commentator observed, the treaty ‘strangely entangled things spiritual with things temporal … [and] presented … an inexhaustible store of negotiations for times of peace, and standing pretext for declaring war’.10 Ottoman attempts to evade the stipulations of the treaty did indeed allow the Russians, prompted by their Moldovan and Wallachian petitioners, to intervene further in the affairs of the principalities. The close of the 1768 to 1774 war also saw the first dismemberment of Moldovan territory by one of the Christian European powers. This set a precedent for Russia’s own annexation of Moldovan lands a few decades later. Under the terms of a convention of May 1775, the Ottomans awarded the north-western corner of the Moldovan principality to the Habsburg Empire as a ‘reward’ for Habsburg neutrality during the war. This territory, of some 10,000 km2, became known in the Habsburg Empire as the ‘Bukovina’, a neologism referring to the many beech trees which grew in northern Moldova. The Bukovina remained part of the Habsburg Empire until it was incorporated into Romania after the First World War. The loss of the Bukovina was not only a major breach of the territorial integrity of the Moldovan principality but also a significant blow to



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the religious and cultural life of the principality. The Bukovina included within its frontiers the historic Moldovan capital of Suceava and many of Moldova’s foremost monastic foundations, including the ‘painted monasteries’ and Putna which housed the tomb of Stephen the Great.11 Meanwhile, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, the Russians opened consulates in Bucharest and Iaşi. These consulates were to prove immensely important in the cultivation of links with pro-Russian Phanariot rulers and boyars. The growing Russian influence in the principalities made it even more essential for the Phanariot princes to strengthen their contacts with the court at St Petersburg. One such pro-Russian prince was Alexandru II Mavrocordat who ruled Moldova from 1785 to 1786. Mavrocordat was dethroned owing to the machinations of the Habsburgs, who managed to convince the sultan that Mavrocordat was too closely linked to the Russians. As it turned out, the Habsburg diplomats were correct, since Mavrocordat was behind a Greco-Russian plot to provoke the Greeks and Moldovans in the principality to rise up against the Ottomans in favour of Russia. Once exposed, Mavrocordat fled to Russia with many of his boyar supporters. The war of 1787 to 1792 again saw military support for the Russians from within the principalities. Under the terms of the 1792 Treaty of Iaşi, the Russians, who had already seized the Crimea from the Ottomans in 1783, gained all the lands between the Bug and Dniester rivers. The Russian Empire thereby became Moldova’s immediate neighbour on her eastern, Dniester frontier. Several proRussian families withdrew with the Russian army across the River Dniester and Russian influence within the principalities went from strength to strength. Under the Russo-Ottoman convention of 1802, rulers of the principalities were to serve for a seven-year term and could not be appointed, or dismissed, without Russian approval. All state offices in the principalities were to be awarded to ‘native’ boyars where possible, and Russia had the right to intervene with the sultan if these provisions were violated. The new Russian ambassador in Constantinople from 1803, Andrei Italinsky, used this convention to expand Russian influence still further.12 Italinsky cultivated in particular the pro-Russian Phanariot, Constantin Ipsilanti, for whom the Russians secured the throne of Wallachia. Italinsky also opened contact with the grand dragoman at the Ottoman court, Dimitrie Moruzi, brother of the Moldovan prince, Alexandru Moruzi. The need for the Russians to increase their influence in Constantinople and in the principalities was occasioned by growing French interest in the fate of the Ottoman Empire in the period of territorial expansion which followed the French Revolution.13

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Dimitrie Moruzi, the grand dragoman, contacted the Russian court at St Petersburg in the years preceding the outbreak of war between Russia and the Ottomans in 1806. He assured the tsar of his family’s goodwill towards Russia and began to pass on vital information to the Russians regarding Ottoman foreign policy. A  similarly pro-Russian course was pursued by Constantin Ipsilanti, the Wallachian ruler, who also communicated details of Ottoman diplomacy to the Russians. French diplomatic pressure in Constantinople led, however, to Constantin Ipsilanti’s fall from power in 1806 and his flight to Russia. Once there, Ipsilanti requested that the thrones of both principalities should be united under him. He promised to supply the Russian army if it invaded the principalities. Unfortunately for Ipsilanti’s ambitions, however, Tsar Alexander I had already decided to occupy the principalities, thereby rendering Ipsilanti’s services superfluous. Russia’s invasion of the principalities in 1806 was once again met by considerable support within both principalities. In Moldova, many boyars were employed by the Russians in both administrative and military capacities during the six years of occupation.14 Nevertheless, the Russian occupation put pressure on Russia’s supporters in the principalities, as the negative economic effects of the Russian presence became apparent. Russian requisitioning of food supplies in the principalities, together with financial exactions, led to famine in some areas. The presence of Russian soldiers gave rise to frequent outbreaks of syphilis and other diseases. By the late summer of 1811, there were severe riots in Bucharest among boyars, traders and peasants, all of whom had been adversely affected by the Russian occupation.15 Nevertheless, it was clear to the politically active boyars that Russia alone offered the Moldovans and Wallachians the best chance of freeing themselves from the Ottomans. Grand Dragoman Dimitrie Moruzi continued to pass secret information on to the court at St Petersburg throughout the Russian occupation, despite the suspicions of his Ottoman superiors. The Russians themselves regarded the occupation of the principalities in 1806 as a prelude to their annexation. The ‘Greek Project’ of 1782 had already envisaged a partition of the Ottoman Empire between Russia and the Habsburg Empire, with the principalities, to be renamed ‘Dacia’, under Russian control. The Habsburg emperor, Joseph II, had, however, shrunk back from realizing the project. With Russia’s acquisition of a common border with Moldova on the River Dniester as a result of the 1792 Treaty of Iaşi, however, Russian plans to annex the principalities became feasible. Under the terms of the Treaty of Erfurt of 1808 Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I  agreed to Russia’s seizure of the principalities. Thus, in 1810 the Russians demanded that the Ottomans



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should cede to them both Moldova and Wallachia. The Ottoman negotiators agreed only to concede the Moldovan principality. The subsequent breakdown of relations between Alexander I and Napoleon forced the Russians to reduce their demands. Early in 1811 the Russians informed the Ottomans that they would only take possession of the Moldovan lands up to the River Siret. The Ottomans, sensing Russia’s weakness, rejected this proposal. In October, Alexander I’s fears of a French attack on Russia forced him to sign an armistice with the Ottomans and to lower his territorial demands still further. Dimitrie Moruzi, in his capacity as grand dragoman, now hastened the conclusion of a treaty between Russia and the Ottomans. Under the Treaty of Bucharest of May 1812, the Russians gained all the Moldovan lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers and subsequently named this territory ‘Bessarabia’. Moruzi did not long survive this Russian victory. He was rewarded for his betrayal of the sultan with execution. Under the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest, Russia received over 45,000 km2 of Moldovan territory. The lands ceded to Russia were larger in extent than the lands remaining to the truncated Moldovan principality, and included all the Turkish raia-s: Hotin, Bender, Akkerman, Chilia, Ismail and Reni, as well as the Bugeac. Russia’s new province had 17 market towns, 685 villages and a population of 482,630.16 Through her annexation of the lands between the Prut and Dniester, Russia gained one of the most important navigable branches of the lower Danube, the Chilia channel, with the right of free navigation for Russian commercial shipping as far as the mouth of the River Prut. Subsequent treaties gave Russia control of the other main channels on the Danube delta, allowing her effective control over navigation along the whole course of the River Danube. Furthermore, the Treaty of Bucharest assured Russia of a pre-eminent position of influence within Wallachia and the rump Moldovan principality through the confirmation of the Treaties of Kuchuk-Kainarji and Iaşi, as well as the 1802 convention. The Moldovan boyars did not let the truncation of the Moldovan principality go without protest and sent petitions to the European powers, including one to the Habsburg chancellor, Prince Metternich, in Vienna. In particular, the boyars pointed out that the fertile soil between the Prut and Dniester rivers was of huge economic importance to both Moldova and Wallachia. The land here had in the past provided the greatest proportion of the agricultural produce that the principalities were obliged to send to Constantinople.17 The loss of this Moldovan territory also had a popular resonance; in nineteenth-century Romanian poetry the River Prut became known as ‘the cursed river’.18

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The lands between the rivers Prut and Dniester, now known as Bessarabia, remained under Russian control for over a century. Bessarabia’s history under Russian rule will be examined in the next chapter. The rump Moldovan principality west of the River Prut, meanwhile, was to share a common destiny with its sister principality of Wallachia  – that of unification as the United Principalities, out of which the kingdom of Romania was created in 1881. Russia was to play its part in this process, although it was increasingly France which came to be regarded as the guarantor of Romanian independence and as Romania’s cultural ‘Latin brother’ by Romanian-speakers in the principalities. Tsar Nicholas I  (reigned 1825–1855)  and subsequent tsars were inspired by autocratic and conservative political principles. Russia, nevertheless, still represented a considerable degree of ‘progress’ for the Romanian-speakers under Ottoman suzerainty in the early nineteenth century.19 A case in point is provided by the so-called Organic Statutes which were introduced in Moldova and Wallachia by the Russian governor, Pavel Kiselev, in 1834 in an attempt to introduce a degree of constitutionalism and accountability into the running of the principalities. The armies of the principalities, abolished in the 1730s by Constantin Mavrocordat, were also restored under the statutes. Furthermore, the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829, the result of yet another Russian military victory over the Ottomans, was of considerable benefit to the principalities. The treaty not only confirmed earlier treaties whereby Russia had established an effective protectorate over the principalities, but the sultan in addition recognized the administrative autonomy of both Moldova and Wallachia. Crucially too, the treaty annulled the Ottoman monopoly on agricultural produce, allowing the principalities to trade freely on the open market. The deleterious economic effects of the Russian occupation of the principalities from 1829 to 1834 and again from 1848 to 1851 did little, however, to endear the Russians to the Moldovans and Wallachians.20 The heavy-handed and autocratic Russian administration prompted many of the politically active boyars to question whether replacing Ottoman hegemony with that of Russia really represented an improvement for the principalities. The ‘Organic Statutes’ of 1834 were also quickly regarded as too conservative and inadequate by Moldovan and Wallachian boyars inspired by Western liberalism. Russia continued, however, to be supported by many of the more conservative landowning boyars until late into the nineteenth century, especially in the rump principality of Moldova. There was considerable inter-marriage of Moldovan boyar families and the Russian aristocracy. Gorchakov, the Russian foreign minister during the 1877 to 1878 Russo-Ottoman war, for instance, was



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connected by marriage to the Moldovan Sturdza family. In addition, some of the higher Orthodox clergy with connections to the Russian Orthodox Church also tended to remain pro-Russian.21 By the 1830s and 1840s, however, such groups were no longer as politically significant as the younger generation of boyars educated at Western universities, especially in Paris. These young boyars looked to the liberal West rather than to autocratic Russia as their model for the reorganization of the principalities. They aspired to a secular state based on liberal and constitutional principles which would enshrine the ‘rights of man’ espoused by the French revolutionaries. To these young minds, it was France which now appeared as the beacon of ‘progress’ and civilization, while Russia seemed increasingly ‘oppressive and reactionary’.22 This generation of boyars had also absorbed the ideology of nationalism, both from French sources and through contact with Johann Herder’s nationalist and linguistic ideology circulating in the German universities. These Moldovans and Wallachians now regarded the ethnic nation as the primary focus of individual and communal loyalty and hoped to unite all the Romanian-speakers of the principalities, and even Transylvania, into a common Romanian national state. This, they hoped, would be governed by a foreign prince and thus enable them to throw off the burdensome Russian protectorate. This stress on the nation and secular liberal values was to sever any residual bonds of loyalty felt towards the Russians based on common Orthodoxy. The educated generation of the 1830s and 1840s regarded the fate of the principalities as being bound up with that of Western Europe and were emotionally drawn to their Latin ‘brethren’ in France. Thus, the 1848 revolutions in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldova had a decidedly pro-French and anti-Russian flavour. The revolutionaries, urged on by émigré groups in Paris, aspired to throw off the Russian protectorate and introduce liberal reforms. Hatred of Russia was inflamed by its military suppression of the revolution and the ensuing occupation of the principalities until 1851.23 The Russian protectorate over the principalities was, in any case, soon ended by Russia’s military defeat in the Crimean War. Under the terms of the 1856 Peace of Paris, which concluded the Crimean War, a protectorate of the seven European Great Powers, including the Ottoman Empire, was established over the principalities. Russia’s humiliation was completed by a stipulation of the peace treaty which obliged her to return to the rump Moldovan principality the southern areas of Bessarabia (i.e. the districts of Cahul, Cetatea Albă and Ismail). The purpose of this was to ensure that the Danube delta passed back under effective Ottoman control, thereby preventing Russia from dominating navigation on the Danube.24 Among those assigned to

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determining the new boundaries in southern Bessarabia was General Charles George Gordon (later known as ‘Gordon of Khartoum’). Gordon recorded in April 1857 that the Bessarabian territory newly ceded to the Moldovan principality ‘is in great disorder. The inhabitants refuse to obey the Moldaves (sic), and own nobody’s authority. This is caused, I suspect, by Russian intrigues’.25 Russia’s machinations in southern Bessarabia reflected its continuing strategic interest in the principalities. This ensured a degree of Russian involvement in the unification of the principalities and the creation of the Romanian kingdom. The Romanian national movement, which had gathered force since the failed revolution of 1848, was now, however, backed by the French government, which saw in the nationalists a means of extending French influence in the region. Romanian émigrés in Paris were an important component of this movement. They favoured the complete removal of Russian influence from the principalities and the installation of a foreign prince on the throne.26 None of this was pleasing to the Russians who could not hide their dislike of the French-educated Alexandru Cuza, elected as ruler in both Wallachia and Moldova in 1859. The legislative and administrative union of the principalities followed in 1862. The Russian authorities, nevertheless, scored a small propaganda coup when a group of monks from the Neamţ monastery in Moldova, angered by Cuza’s plans to secularize the monasteries in the principalities, moved across the River Prut to Chiţcani in eastern Bessarabia. Here, under Russian authority, the monks established the Noul Neamţ monastery. Fortunately for the Russians, Cuza was overthrown by a coup from within the principalities in 1864. Two years later Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (a cadet branch of the Prussian royal family) was elected to the throne of the newly created Romanian state as prince, although Romania remained under the protection of the Great Powers. The Russians only grudgingly accepted the prince’s election. Ideally the Russians would have preferred the principalities to remain separate entities under local rulers through whom Russia could continue to exert influence. Thus, by the 1860s Russian thinking was at odds with most politically active Romanians who desired complete independence for their new country and, when international conditions proved favourable, the incorporation of the Romanian-speakers of Transylvania into the state. There was, nonetheless, a significant minority of Moldovans who concurred with the Russian position. A movement to maintain the principality of Moldova’s separate status had existed since the end of the Crimean War in 1856 and consisted primarily of large-landowning boyars who had supported the Russian protectorate before the



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war.27 These Moldovan boyars feared that in a unified Romania, the Francophile liberals would introduce social reforms, including the distribution of the largest landed estates among the peasantry. The Moldovan boyars also anticipated the loss of their direct control over the Moldovan government which would result from the city of Iaşi losing its status as a capital since it was planned to designate Bucharest in Wallachia as the capital of the new country. The fall of Cuza in February 1864 gave renewed impetus to these Moldovan separatists, culminating in a demonstration in Iaşi in April led by pro-Russian boyars in which violence flared and several people were killed. Although Russian officials only gave unofficial support to the demonstration, the Russian foreign minister, Gorchakov, with his family links to the Moldovan boyars, was known to be in favour of Moldova’s separation from Wallachia. Relations between the new Romanian state and Russia continued to worsen, even though Romania joined a coalition together with Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, which sought to free themselves from Ottoman suzerainty with Russian military help. The ensuing Russo-Ottoman war of 1877 to 1878 was also prompted by Russia’s intention to recover southern Bessarabia from the principality of Moldova and restore Russian domination over the Danube delta and the Black Sea. Although Romania and Russia fought together during the war, friction arose over the question of the Russian army’s right of passage through Romania and use of Romanian supplies. This issue was inflamed by Romanian memories of previous Russian occupations, resentment of Russia’s annexation of Moldovan lands east of the River Prut in 1812 and fears that Russia intended to restore its authority over southern Bessarabia. Russia and her allies were successful in the war, but the Romanian declaration of independence in May 1877, confirmed by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, met with Russian disapproval. The treaty included one significant gain for the Russians, however, since it confirmed that southern Bessarabia should once again revert to Russia. This left all the former Bessarabian lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers under Russian control, where they were to remain until the end of the First World War. Romanian fears of Russian military hegemony in the Black Sea area and Russia’s potential threat to Romania’s newly won independence were deepened by the emergence of the new Russian-backed Bulgarian state on Romania’s southern border as a result of the 1877 to 1878 war. The threat of Russian control over the area was reinforced by France’s eclipse as a Great Power. France effectively withdrew from ‘the Eastern Question’ following her defeat by Prussia in 1870 and the creation of the German Empire. Fear of Russian ambitions led

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Romania, which had become a kingdom in 1881, to join the Triple Alliance of Germany, the Habsburg Empire and Italy in 1883. Romania was thus an ally of these powers in any future war against Russia. In the early nineteenth century, the Moldovans and Wallachians had regarded Russia as standing for order and progress. By the late nineteenth century, Romania, united by liberals educated in Paris, had come to view itself as ‘an outpost of French civilization on the Danube.’28This attitude was given concrete expression in the Romanian government’s decision of 1862 to replace the Old Church Slavonic script with the Latin alphabet for the writing of Romanian. The Romanian language spoken and written west of the River Prut was also infused with vocabulary of French and Latin origin during the nineteenth century. While it may be true that Russia had very little to offer the principalities once they had secured their independence from the Ottomans, Russia’s military contribution to Romanian independence should not be dismissed.29 Russia’s many wars against the Ottomans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their protection of the Orthodox peoples enabled the Romanians, as well as the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians, to secure greater autonomy, and eventually independence, from the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, it is a paradox that in regarding themselves as an ‘outpost of French civilization on the Danube’, and attempting to emulate France and other Western countries, the Romanians were to find themselves very much on the ‘periphery’ of European events. The Romanians shared few close historic bonds, political traditions or similarities in social and economic structure with the countries of Western Europe. Consequently, the Romanians became acutely conscious of their political, economic and cultural shortcomings in relation to more powerful Western nations. The introduction of French cultural influences into the principalities and Romania was thus responsible for important discontinuities in Romanian history. In turning decisively away from their Orthodox Slav neighbours, with whom they had lived in religious and political symbiosis for over a thousand years, the Romanians ceased to be at the geographic and cultural heartland of the Orthodox world and transformed themselves into ‘a Latin island in a sea of Slavs’.

6

Russian Bessarabia

While the fate of the Moldovan lands west of the River Prut was tied up with that of Wallachia after 1812, the lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers remained under Russian rule until their incorporation into the Romanian kingdom in 1918. The territory ceded to the Russians under the terms of the May 1812 Treaty of Bucharest was called Bessarabia by its new rulers. This name for all the lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers was, however, at that time not strictly accurate. ‘Bessarabia’ (Rom. Basarabia) previously only referred loosely to the lands between the Danube and Dniester rivers on the Black Sea coast which had been conquered from the Tatars and incorporated within the principality of Wallachia during the reign of Mircea the Old (reigned 1386–1418). These lands were subsequently absorbed into the principality of Moldova in the fifteenth century.1 By the late sixteenth century, the application of the name ‘Bessarabia’ had been extended to the Bugeac region inhabited by the Tatars. Cantemir in his early eighteenth-century Descriptio Moldaviae specifically recorded that Bessarabia consisted of the Bugeac, together with the ports of Akkerman on the Dniester mouth, Chilia and Ismail on the Danube, and the surrounding lands. He believed the name ‘Bessarabia’ derived from a tribe, the Bessi, which had dwelt in the region in remote antiquity.2 In the nineteenth century, many Russian scholars came to the same conclusion.3 As they pointed out, the Roman poet Ovid had experience of the Bessi, complaining in exile that I live now in mid-barbary, hemmed about by wild Sarmatians, Bessi, Getae, names unworthy of my talent!4

Alternatives abound, including the opinion that a mixed tribe of Cumans, Romanians and Slavs called themselves ‘Basarabi’ in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.5 More plausibly, Bessarabia derives from the name of the founder of the Wallachian principality, Basarab I, who also gave his name to the ruling Wallachian dynasty, the House of Basarab. The association of ‘Bessarabia’ with

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Wallachia is borne out by the fact that in medieval and early modern maps, the Wallachian principality is often labelled ‘Bessarabia’ and by the frequent description of Wallachia as the terra Basarabiae. The name ‘Basarab’ itself is of Turkic, probably Cuman origin.6 What seems to have happened is that name and territory became gradually disassociated, with the name shearing off and ending up elsewhere. A broadly analogous development happened in the case of Britain-Brittany. Many pro-Russian Moldovans and Wallachians had supported the Russians during the occupation of the principalities between 1806 and 1812. In Moldova, many boyars had been employed at this time in both the Russian administration and army. Following Russia’s formal annexation of Bessarabia under the Treaty of Bucharest, many pro-Russian boyar families from the principalities crossed to the east of the River Prut into Bessarabia. There they joined boyars who had already gone to live in Russia after the 1792 Treaty of Iaşi brought the Russian border to the River Dniester. These boyars received grants of land from the Russian authorities, together with the right to take part in the government of the new province. Among these pro-Russians were representatives of some of the most important families in the principalities. These included the Sturdza family, an old Moldovan boyar family, as well as the Ghica and Cantacuzeno families, and representatives of many lesser boyar families. By 1821, a quarter of all boyars in Bessarabia had close Russian connections. These boyars had either been partisans of pro-Russian princes in the principalities during the previous decades or had seen service in the Russian army during the Russo-Ottoman wars.7 It was from among these pro-Russian boyars that the administrators of post-1812 Bessarabia were drawn. The first civil governor of Bessarabia was the octogenarian Scarlat Sturdza who had served the Russian tsarina, Catherine the Great, during the 1787 to 1792 war. Sturdza had subsequently received a grant of land in the Russian territories east of the River Dniester and thereafter became a general in the Russian army. Sturdza’s deputy was a member of the Krupenski boyar family which was to wield great influence in Bessarabia right through into the twentieth century. Sturdza was immediately forced to deal with some of the repercussions of the creation of a border on the River Prut. Peasants living near the river complained to Sturdza that they had been forbidden from crossing over the river to the principality of Moldova to use a corn mill. Sturdza therefore requested of the Russians that all inhabitants be allowed to pass onto the Moldovan bank of the river to conduct their business.8 Scarlat Sturdza, as it turned out, died only one year after taking up his position and was the only ‘native’ governor



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of Bessarabia in the 106 years of Russian rule over the province. The Russian military governor, General Garting, now took overall charge of civil, judicial and military affairs until 1816. For the sixteen years from 1812 to 1828, Bessarabia enjoyed a period of autonomy.9 Immediately following the annexation, the province’s inhabitants were exempt from any taxation for three years by the Russians, as well as from military service. The Russians approved the continued use of traditional Moldovan laws, customs and the administrative system within the province, which essentially left the native boyars in a dominant position. Provision was made for the use of both Romanian and Russian as the languages of administration and justice. General Garting sincerely wished to reform the administration of Bessarabia, recognizing that the traditional forms of government in the principalities during the Phanariot era had been both chaotic and frequently oppressive of large sections of the population. Mindful of Russia’s wider foreign policy aims in the principalities and the Balkan peninsula, Garting believed that without reform in Bessarabia the ‘Russian promise of being able to govern on behalf of Balkan Orthodox Christians would never again be believed’.10 Garting’s attempts at reform were to come to nothing, however, since the Bessarabian boyars reverted to their time-honoured practice of petitioning the tsar in support of their ‘traditional rights’. Continued use of Moldovan laws and customs and the use of the Romanian language were confirmed in the 1818 statute whereby Tsar Alexander I accorded Bessarabia the highest degree of autonomy within the Russian Empire, commensurate with that of Finland. The province was placed under the authority of a military governor general, with day-to-day administration under a civil governor. Bessarabia was to preserve its separate form of administration under a supreme regional council. It was, however, the boyars who dominated Bessarabia’s supreme council which effectively allowed them to remain entrenched within the province’s legal, administrative and financial systems. In addition, the statute confirmed the privileges of the region’s various corporate groups. Indeed, the boyars’ privileges were extended by the elevation of all boyars to the rank of noble, which made them exempt from paying any taxes. The highest nobles alone, however, could pass on their title to their successors and enter the ranks of the Russian imperial nobility. The rights and privileges of the Orthodox Church were also confirmed, including the right to tithes and exemptions from taxes on church lands. The Orthodox Church thereby retained its position, which it had held since the medieval period, as one of the province’s most important landowners.

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The 1818 statute also confirmed the rights of various distinct communities further down the social scale. These were the relics of groups which had previously been granted special status, although some of their rights clearly had a customary origin. The so-called mazâli claimed historic descent from the lower nobility and were as such eligible to hold a limited number of state posts, which would otherwise be the sole preserve of the nobles. In addition, they could buy and sell land and paid less tax than the peasantry. The mazâli also had their own form of self-government under a captain appointed by the community. The ruptaşi, on the other hand, claimed descent either from the clergy or from foreign colonists. Although subject to taxation and labour services, these were less onerous than those imposed on the peasantry. The răzeşi were free peasants who were organized into village communities with joint ownership over their land. Traditionally, the răzeşi had performed military duties for the prince in return for their land. All these groups were confirmed in their rights under the 1818 statute.11 The status of Bessarabia’s Gypsy population (ţigani) was also clarified under the 1818 statute. A population of Gypsies had been present in the principality of Moldova since medieval times. These were divided into two categories: those who ‘belonged’ to the state and were therefore supervised by the governorgeneral and the ‘Gypsy-serfs’ (ţiganii şerbi) who ‘belonged’ to social groups such as the clergy, lower boyars, merchants and the mazâli. The ‘Gypsy-serfs’ were, in fact, allowed to maintain their nomadic lifestyle and undertook occupations as craftsmen, silversmiths, wheelwrights, locksmiths and musicians. The Gypsy population in Bessarabia was, however, never very large and amounted to only some 13,000, or 1.8 per cent of the population in 1835. Assimilation into the sedentary population and migration to Ukraine, Russia and the Moldovan principality had reduced the Gypsy population to a mere 0.5 per cent of the population by 1897.12 The personal freedom of Bessarabia’s peasant majority (the ţărani) was confirmed by the 1818 statute. The peasants owed their freedom to Constantin Mavrocordat’s abolition of serfdom in the principalities in the 1740s. The Russian annexation of Bessarabia, however, had led to rumours that serfdom would be reimposed and led to large numbers of peasants fleeing the province. The Russians, in fact, extended freedom from serfdom to all new colonists in Bessarabia. Despite their legal freedom, however, the Bessarabian peasants were discouraged from moving. They often had to perform labour services for their landlords under the contracts of indenture which they took out. It was the peasants, moreover, who continued to bear the brunt of the tax-farming system



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and who were also obliged to pay for the upkeep of the local law courts, the postal system, roads and bridges, as well as paying a tax on all sales and on their agricultural produce. In other words, Bessarabia retained much of the social and economic system inherited from the Phanariot era, with similar consequences. It was not unusual for peasants to flee the province entirely, or to refuse to grow crops, knowing all too well that they would see little, if any, of the profits. With little change in Bessarabia’s social structure in the first sixteen years after the Russian annexation, it is perhaps unsurprising that the province retained an ‘oriental’ appearance. When Tsar Alexander I visited Bessarabia in 1818 to grant the province its statute, he was apparently ‘astonished to find the Christian nobles dressed in elaborate Turkish gowns rather than jackets and breeches’.13 The Russian vice-governor, Filipp Vigel, who served in the province from 1819 to 1826, was likewise surprised to see bearded and gowned boyars reminiscent of those who had so angered Peter the Great in Russia a century earlier. Doubtless these sights reinforced Vigel’s sense of modern Russia’s ‘civilizing mission’ in the region.14 One might wonder why the Russians allowed this state of affairs to prevail until 1828. It was in large measure due to Russia’s lack of manpower in the wake of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, which forced the Russians to rely on the local boyars who were already entrenched in the administration in Bessarabia. Crucial to Bessarabia’s acquisition and preservation of autonomy was the presence among those who crossed the River Prut into Bessarabia with the Russians in 1812 of the deeply Russophile Moldovan churchman, Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni. Bănulescu-Bodoni provides us with a late example of the itinerant Orthodox clergyman. Part of Bănulescu-Bodoni’s education had taken place in Kyiv, as well as in Moldova itself. In 1799 he visited Constantinople and in subsequent years he taught philosophy at the seminary in Poltava in Russian Ukraine. In 1789, during the Russian occupation of the principalities, the Russians installed Bănulescu-Bodoni as bishop of Akkerman, which lay at the heart of one of the Turkish raia-s. In 1792, when the Ottomans were reinstated in Akkerman, Bănulescu-Bodoni moved to Russia and was appointed metropolitan of Cherson and the Crimea. In 1799 he became metropolitan of Kyiv. When Russia occupied Moldova and Wallachia once more in 1806, Bănulescu-Bodoni became head of the Orthodox Church in both principalities. The formal annexation of Bessarabia in 1812, however, cut the lands east of the Prut off from the metropolitanate of Moldova in which they had been incorporated since the medieval period. In 1813 Alexander I  created the eparchy of Chişinău and Hotin. The eparchy

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(i.e. the equivalent of a diocese in the Western Church) covered the area of the Russian Empire extending from Bessarabia’s western border on the Prut to the River Bug. Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni was the natural choice as metropolitan, a position he held until his death in 1821. He effectively acted as the ‘mouthpiece’ for the Moldovan boyars after 1812, especially after Governor Scarlat Sturdza’s death in 1813. Bănulescu-Bodoni’s high standing with the Russians helped ensure that the statute of 1818 gave Bessarabia a high degree of autonomy, as well as ensuring that Romanian achieved the status of an official language. Russia’s colonization policy in the nineteenth century was to have profound implications for the ethnic composition of Bessarabia, which was in 1812 still overwhelmingly Romanian speaking. According to a Russian census of 1817, the Bessarabian population was 482,630, of which 86 per cent were Moldovan (i.e. Romanian speaking). Regarding the term ‘Moldovan’ used here, Russian ethnographers in the nineteenth century in fact recognized the cultural and linguistic affinities between the Romanian-speaking populations on both sides of the River Prut. At the same time, however, Russian imperial censuses used the term ‘Moldovan’ to describe Bessarabia’s majority population precisely because this was the self-designation of the population.15 In addition, the Bessarabian population included some 30,000 Ukrainians, who were longestablished in the province, as well as smaller communities of Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Germans, Gypsies and Bulgarians. There were also a few thousand so-called Lipovans, the descendants of the ‘Old Believers’ who had left Russia during the reign of Peter the Great in protest against various Church reforms, including the shaving of beards.16 The Lipovans settled along the River Prut and in the Danube delta, where their bearded male descendants are still to be found as fishermen living in thatched homes painted in distinctive blue and white colours. At the time of Bessarabia’s formal annexation by Russia, the province was one of the most sparsely populated areas of the Russian Empire. This was partly due to the flight to Wallachia and elsewhere, of possibly as many as one-third of the population of the lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers during the Russian occupation of 1806 to 1812. General Kiselev, who later became governor of the Wallachian and Moldovan principalities, declared with reference to the Russian occupation that, ‘the inhabitants fled out of Bessarabia, preferring the Turkish regime, hard though it was, to our own’.17 While this flight was doubtless in part motivated by the economic burden of supplying the Russian army, some of the peasantry fled in the fear, false as it turned out, that the Russians would reimpose serfdom. The spread of disease, including several outbreaks of the bubonic



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plague at the end of the war and in the following decade, also led to a reduction of the population of Bessarabia and the principalities. The number of inhabitants of Bessarabia was also reduced by the expulsion during the 1806 to 1812 Russian occupation of most Tatars and Turks from the Bugeac and the Turkish raia-s of Bender, Chilia and Akkerman. The Russians feared that these Muslim groups would be ill-disposed towards them and would ‘stab them in the back’ as the Russian army advanced into the Balkans. Through the occupation of the principality of Moldova, all areas inhabited by the Tatars were now under Russian control. The Bugeac Tatars were transported to the Crimea where the Russian government was settling its Russian Tatar population. Russian colonization policies aimed to repopulate the Bugeac and the former Ottoman raia-s of Bessarabia. Russian motives for this colonization policy were closely linked to Russia’s general foreign-policy aims in the principalities and the Balkans. First, a well-populated and prosperous Bessarabia could act as a ‘showcase’ to advertise the benefits of Russian administration to all the Ottoman Empire’s Orthodox subjects over whom Russia claimed to act as a protector. Secondly, it was necessary for Russia to build up the agricultural and economic resources of the Bessarabian province. This was now Russia’s frontier zone with the Ottoman Empire and the territorial base from which future military campaigns against the Ottomans could be launched. Furthermore, it is possible that the Russian government specifically sought to change the ethnic balance in the province, especially in southern Bessarabia, against the indigenous Moldovan population and replace the Moldovans with groups which could be expected to be more loyal to Russia. The prohibition on Moldovans migrating from other areas of Bessarabia to the south is in this respect suggestive. The Russian government wished to place southern Bessarabia in more reliable hands since it bordered the Black Sea and the River Danube, both of which were essential to Russia’s broader economic- and foreign-policy aims in the region.18 The movement of peoples into southern Bessarabia began even before the end of the 1806 to1812 war. By 1812 there were already some 11,000 new settlers in the area. Most of these were Russians who had entered the province in an administrative or military capacity and who were given land there, as well as Ukrainians who came to Bessarabia from Russian Ukraine.19 In the aftermath of the war, the Russian government encouraged more colonists to settle in Bessarabia, and especially in the depopulated southern areas, by offering generous land grants and financial aid. Peasant migration from other parts of the Russian Empire was encouraged through the prohibition on serfdom in Bessarabia. In 1824, Russian state peasants were enticed into moving into the

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province by promises of land and tax exemptions. The prohibition on serfdom also made the area attractive to escaped Russian serfs, religious schismatics and even fugitives from the law who sought to take advantage of the relative freedom which existed in Bessarabia. Russian and Ukrainian migration into Bessarabia was encouraged throughout the nineteenth century. By 1858 the Ukrainians represented just over 13 per cent of the Bessarabian population, or 120,000 people. As a result of further migration, by 1897 the Ukrainians were just under 20 per cent of the population, or 380,000 people. The number of Russians, who were only 20,000 of the inhabitants of Bessarabia in 1858, had risen to 155,000 people, or 8 per cent of the total population, by 1897.20 Bulgarians had been entering the Moldovan and Wallachian principalities since the mid-eighteenth century, under the protection of the Russian army during periods of occupation. Southern Bessarabia became home to many Bulgarian settlers during the 1806 to 1812 war, where they replaced the Tatars and Turks expelled from the Bugeac by the Russians. More waves of Bulgarian migration into southern Bessarabia followed after 1817 and continued up until the 1870s.21 Bulgarian migration into Russian-controlled Bessarabia was especially motivated by the Bulgarians’ regard for Russia as ‘the defender of Orthodoxy’ in the Balkans.22 The privileges granted to the Bulgarian settlers included freedom from serfdom and a ten-year exemption from taxation and military service. The period from 1817 to the 1870s also witnessed the migration of the Gagauz, a Turkic people of Orthodox faith, into southern Bessarabia. The Germans were a numerically small but important group of migrants to Bessarabia. The principality of Moldova had lost a significant part of its longstanding German population when the Habsburg Empire took the Bukovina in 1775. The Russian government encouraged new German colonists to move to southern Bessarabia, especially between 1814 and 1824. A few hundred French and Swiss colonists also arrived in the 1820s at the same time as the Germans, giving rise to such unlikely village names as Paris, Brienne and Frèrechampenoise in southern Bessarabia. Most of the German settlers came from Prussian Poland, Mecklenburg, Pomerania and West Prussia, but some groups of settlers arrived from the south German lands, notably Württemberg.23 In addition to the incentive of leaving territories ravaged by the Napoleonic Wars and ensuing famines, the Germans were tempted into Bessarabia by offers of land, religious freedom, exemption from taxation for a full fifty years, as well as loans and the use of local peasant labour to build their homes. Over 90 per cent of the Bessarabian German community were Lutheran and the population was heavily engaged in agriculture. The German population, which was barely 10,000 strong



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in 1827, had risen to over 60,000 by 1897.24 A French traveller in Bessarabia in 1919, Professor de Martonne, recorded his impressions of the German villages built between 1816 and 1828 in the south of the province. Many of these, such as the village of Leipzig, were named in honour of German victories against the French in the Napoleonic Wars. De Martonne was impressed by the orderliness of the German villages, with their fine buildings, and by the well-cultivated lands surrounding them. In the German villages, he wrote, ‘you gain … a vivid impression of prosperity and even wealth, as well as of order and method. In the whole extent of the German colonies, I  have not seen a patch of ground lying waste’. De Martonne described the Germans as ‘an aristocracy of hardheaded landowners’ and particularly praised their excellence in the breeding of fine horses and cattle.25 Unlike the Germans present in the Moldovan principality in previous centuries, Bessarabia’s German colonists were not primarily engaged in trade and industry. These areas of the Bessarabian economy were overwhelmingly in the hands of the Jewish population, although Greek and Armenian merchants were also active in the province. Economic activity consisted largely of trade in agricultural produce. The first Jewish settlers to the Moldovan principality had been Sephardic, but from the sixteenth century, Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from the German and Polish lands began migrating to the principality.26 By the early eighteenth century, most of the urban areas in the lands between the Prut and Dniester had a Jewish population.27 In the countryside, Jews leased not only estates from landowners but also flour mills, orchards, fishing rights and bridges and the right to the payments applicable to them. Jews also sold alcohol and ran taverns in the countryside. In the decades after 1812, Jewish migrants to Bessarabia, which lay within the Russian ‘Pale of Settlement’, came mainly from Russian territories in Poland, Ukraine and the Crimea. Jews were tempted to settle in Bessarabia because they were initially exempt from the discriminatory legislation which applied elsewhere in the Russian Empire. Under the statute of 1818 awarded by Tsar Alexander I to Bessarabia, the Jewish population retained the rights which they had under the Moldovan princes of residing anywhere in the province and of being able to work where they pleased. Importantly, this meant that the Jews of Bessarabia could continue to live and work in the countryside, unlike the rest of Russia’s Jews. It was only in the 1850s that conscription into the army was enforced on the Jews of Bessarabia and the status of Jews began to resemble that of their counterparts elsewhere in Russia. The Jewish population of Bessarabia rose from around 20,000 in 1817 to some 228,000 (or just under 12 per cent of

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the population) by 1897. Jews amounted to over one-third of Bessarabia’s urban population by 1912. Chişinău (known to the Russians as Kishinev) became the Bessarabian capital in 1818. By 1897 Chişinău had a Jewish population of around 50 per cent. This comprised 25 per cent of the province’s total Jewish population.28 Chişinău’s Jews established many important synagogues and community buildings in the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These included the Synagogue of the Glaziers, opened in 1888 and which is still in use today by Chişinău’s small Jewish population. Indeed, by 1900 Chişinău had forty synagogues, compared with twenty Orthodox churches, one Roman Catholic church and one Lutheran church.29 The economically important city of Bălţi, in northern Bessarabia, also had a substantial Jewish population. The Jewish cemeteries in Chişinău and Bălţi are among the largest Jewish sites in the present-day Republic of Moldova, with graves dating back to the seventeenth century.30 Jews were involved in the development of the industrial sector and by 1900 were influential as factory owners producing bricks, wine, soap and farm machinery. Large sawmills and flour mills were also mostly in Jewish ownership, and Jews dominated the clothing and textile trade. The Jewish community was, however, like the Bessarabian population generally, affected by the economic downturn and agricultural depression which afflicted the Russian Empire in the 1880s. This led to the emigration of many Jews to the United States, Canada and Argentina. Notwithstanding the Jewish population’s urban profile in the nineteenth century, around 50 per cent of Bessarabian Jews continued to live in small towns and villages, where many worked as craftsmen, farmers, vineyard workers and even shepherds. This pattern of settlement was jeopardized by the Russian regulation of 1882 which prohibited new Jewish settlement outside towns and cities. The regulation was abused by the administration to try to expel Jews who already lived in the Bessarabian countryside. Nevertheless, rural Jews remained common in the province and many were still employed as agricultural workers as late as the 1930s. On the eve of the Russian acquisition of Bessarabia in 1812, Hassidism had already begun to take root among the Jewish population and continued to grow in popularity thereafter. By the early twentieth century, and at least in part as a reaction to the antisemitism of the tsarist regimes from the 1880s onwards, Zionism and Hebrew cultural activity also flourished in the province. Members of the Bessarabian branch of the ‘Lovers of the Hebrew Language’ society were, nonetheless, forced to conduct their meetings in Russian, as they apparently



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did not understand Hebrew. The period also witnessed the expansion of Russian-language Jewish libraries throughout the province which reflected the Russification of large sectors of the Jewish middle class.31 Russia’s colonization policy had thus transformed Bessarabia into a highly ethnically diverse province. According to the Russian census of 1897, the Bessarabian population was just under two million, of which only 47.6 per cent now identified themselves as ethnic Moldovans. While still the largest single ethnic group in Bessarabia, the statistics of 1897 represented a significant fall in the Moldovan population of the province, which had stood at some 66.4 per cent of the total population even as recently as 1858. Moreover, the Moldovans, together with the Ukrainians, made up the bulk of the province’s rural population. Only around 14 per cent of Bessarabia’s urban population comprised Romanianspeaking Moldovans even as late as 1897.32 While the Moldovans formed most of the population in the central area of Bessarabia, ethnic minorities outnumbered them in the north and south. Hence in the Hotin region on the upper Dniester, some 53 per cent of the population were Ukrainian and only 24 per cent Moldovan. South Bessarabia showed even greater disparities between the indigenous Moldovans and more recent colonists, especially in and around the former Turkish raia-s. Chilia, for example, which had been some 92 per cent Moldovan in 1806, was only 13 per cent Moldovan by 1844. Ismail, which was 85 per cent Moldovan in 1809, had a Moldovan population of a mere 6 per cent by 1884.33 In Cetatea Albă (Akkerman), the Moldovan population was only some 16.4 per cent of the population by the end of the nineteenth century.34 The ethnic Moldovan population of Bessarabia was affected not only by Russia’s policy of colonization in the nineteenth century but also by the administrative centralization and cultural Russification which followed Bessarabia’s loss of autonomy in 1828. The withdrawal of autonomy was brought about by a number of factors, including the death in 1821 of the reliably proRussian metropolitan, Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni. In addition, the Greek revolt and Tudor Vladimirescu’s anti-Phanariot rebellion which broke out in the Moldovan and Wallachian principalities in 1821 brought renewed tension into Russia’s relationship with the Ottomans. The Greek revolt was led by Alexandru Ipsilanti, leader of the Etairia movement which sought to liberate the Balkans from Turkish rule. The uprising began on Moldovan soil. Tudor Vladimirescu was initially connected with the Etairia movement, but he subsequently led an anti-Phanariot revolt in Wallachia. Ipsilanti and Vladimirescu had served as officers in the Russian army and both hoped for Russian support in their

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anti-Ottoman struggle. To make matters worse, a new war broke out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in 1828 and Russia once again occupied the principalities of Wallachia and Moldova. This situation prompted the Russians to reduce Bessarabia’s autonomy in favour of more direct control from Russia. The logistics of war required Bessarabia to be both efficiently run and economically productive if it was to help sustain Russia’s war effort.35 Such conditions appeared unlikely if the province continued to be run by the local nobility. The Russian governor of Bessarabia, Mikhail Vorontsov, who took up his post in 1823, was apparently appalled at the state of the province. He discovered that Bessarabia’s roads and bridges were largely in ruins, that policing was compromised by corruption and that the iniquitous tax-farming system was impoverishing the peasantry. These woeful conditions, coupled with the death of Tsar Alexander I in 1825 and the accession of the more autocratically minded Tsar Nicholas I, inclined the Russians towards a policy of increasing the powers of the central government over Bessarabia. The Russian authorities may also have feared the continuation of residual feelings of loyalty towards the Moldovan principality among some sections of the Bessarabian population. In 1826 Vorontsov ordered the supervision of certain nobles and clergymen who favoured the re-unification of Bessarabia with the rump principality of Moldova.36 Under the statute of 1828, the power of the local nobility within the Bessarabian supreme council and over the local law courts was greatly reduced in favour of the Russian governor who was also given substantial authority over the province’s financial and administrative affairs. Nevertheless, some concessions to local conditions were still made. Russian did not become the sole language of administration until 1833 and the privileges of the various antique social groups which had been recognized in the original 1818 statute of autonomy were maintained. Bessarabia remained free from serfdom, and military service was not imposed until 1874. Local laws prevailed, unless their insufficiency made the use of Russian law necessary. Notwithstanding these concessions to local conditions, however, Russia ruled directly in Bessarabia after 1828 as she had not done previously. In the three southernmost districts of Bessarabia, where the Romanian-speaking Moldovan population were no longer in a majority, Russian law prevailed, and all business was conducted in Russian. From 1828, moreover, Bessarabia, like other parts of the Russian Empire, was also subject to the tsarist government’s Russification policies. During the metropolitanate of Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni from 1812 to 1821, the Romanian language had flourished in Bessarabia. In 1813 Bănulescu-Bodoni opened a seminary in Chişinău, where both Romanian and Russian were



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taught. In the same year, he also opened a printing press in Chişinău through which he was responsible for the publication of religious works translated from Russian into Romanian. These included a catechism and a Russian grammar with Romanian parallel text for use at the Chişinău seminary. By the time of his death in 1821, Bănulescu-Bodoni’s press had published almost 20,000 books.37 In addition, Bănulescu-Bodoni oversaw the publication of a New Testament in Romanian (1817) and the first complete Orthodox Bible in Romanian since 1688. The Bible was published in 1819 under the auspices of the British and Foreign Bible Society in St Petersburg.38 Bănulescu-Bodoni’s successor as head of the Church in Bessarabia was Dimitrie Sulima who, despite being of Ukrainian origin, knew the Romanian language. Sulima continued Bănulescu-Bodoni’s work of translations from Russian texts into Romanian. These included the Instrucţia Bisericilor (‘Instructions of the Church’) in 1827. Sulima also published a Romanian-Russian primer in 1822 and was responsible for setting up elementary schools. In 1823, Sulima opened a school in Chişinău to prepare boys for the seminary previously established by Bănulescu-Bodoni. A  Church-run school for the daughters of priests and teachers was also subsequently opened in the capital in 1859.39 Despite the extensive use of Romanian under Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni and Dimitrie Sulima, the loss of autonomy in 1828 served to limit the use of the language in Bessarabia. From 1833 Romanian was no longer an administrative language or language of instruction in schools. In 1854 Russian became Bessarabia’s sole official language and thereafter Romanian was quickly eradicated from the school system. By 1867 there were no schools in Bessarabia which taught in the Romanian language.40 In the second half of the century, the education system had moved beyond its original core of ecclesiastical schools and those which had been established by the Moldovan princes, as the Russian state sought to expand primary and secondary education. By 1912 there were some 1,700 primary schools, over a thousand of which had been set up by the Russian government, while the rest were run by the ecclesiastical authorities. Not one, however, taught in Romanian. Likewise, of Bessarabia’s fifty-six secondary schools in 1912, none used Romanian. Paradoxically, it was the Russian lyceum, opened in 1833 in Chişinău, which allowed pupils the opportunity to learn Romanian until a halt was called to this in 1873.41 The only other important exception to Russification of the school system was in the southern districts of Bessarabia, Ismail, Cahul and Bolgrad, which were returned to the jurisdiction of the Moldovan principality, and subsequently that of the United Principalities, at the end of the Crimean War in 1856. Even though

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Romanian-speakers were no longer in the majority in this part of Bessarabia, the new Romanian administration opened a number of schools and churches which operated in Romanian, as well as a seminary in Ismail. In addition, the Romanians introduced the Latin alphabet, already in use west of the River Prut, for use in written Romanian. The districts of Ismail, Cahul and Bolgrad were, however, returned to Russia under the 1878 Treaty of Berlin and the Russian government reversed the Romanian reforms.42 The effects of Russification of the education system and the reduction of printed material in Romanian had various outcomes on different sections of the ethnic Moldovan population. The policy was largely successful among the nobility and the small ethnic Moldovan middle class. As Romanian disappeared as the language of education and administration, wealthy and wellconnected young Moldovans went from Russian secondary schools to imperial universities. Russian, rather than Romanian, became the language of the educated and cultured.43 A large part of the Romanian-speaking autochthonous Moldovan noble class disappeared during the nineteenth century. Their ranks were increasingly ‘diluted’ by an influx of non-Romanian-speaking ennobled families from outside Bessarabia, particularly Russians who had held state office in Bessarabia, together with Greeks, Armenians and Poles. The lingua franca of these nobles was Russian and thus their assimilation into Russian culture was assured. On the eve of the First World War, of the 468 noble families in Bessarabia, only 138 were indigenous.44 This did not mean, however, that the Bessarabian nobility had severed all links with their counterparts west of the Prut. A report of 1907 sent by the governor of Bessarabia to the police department in St Petersburg noted that ever since Bessarabia had become Russian there had been in leading circles of the native nobility a ‘distinct Moldovan party whose members have relations or are related to members of the dominant class in Romania and retain strong links with them’.45 When General Gordon visited Chişinău in 1857, he reported meeting Moldovan landowners from west of the Prut who also owned property in Bessarabia.46 The remnants of the indigenous Moldovan nobility in Bessarabia were not, therefore, entirely cut off from their compatriots further west. As far as the Moldovan peasantry was concerned, Russification of schooling and the printed word had little impact, except in increasing their ignorance. The Russian school system passed most peasants by, primarily due to the government’s inability to supply enough Russian-speaking teachers. Under Tsar Alexander II’s educational reforms, the Church was expected to establish schools in every parish. An impressive 400 schools with 7000 pupils were functioning



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in rural parishes in Bessarabia in the mid-1860s, but only 23 remained by 1880. This was because village priests, who usually also acted as the village teachers, were largely ignorant of Russian.47 The Russian education system thus resulted not in ethnic Moldovans acquiring Russian, but in high levels of illiteracy in any language. Russian statistics of 1897 revealed that only 10.5 per cent of ethnic Moldovan men and a mere 1.7 per cent of Moldovan women were literate. The Moldovans, together with the Gypsies, were the least literate group in Bessarabia, while the Germans were the most literate.48 The Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga also noted a further defect of the school system which negated the attempts to Russify the Moldovan rural population. Even those children enrolled at a school were only required to attend for three years, while the school ‘year’ itself was limited to only a few months during the winter.49 This was barely enough time to acquire more than the rudimentary knowledge of Russian, which was in any case often quickly forgotten. The Russian government’s attempts to Russify the Church in Bessarabia met with similarly mixed results. Following the death of Gavril BănulescuBodoni in 1821, the spiritual head of the Church in Bessarabia was demoted from metropolitan status to that of an archbishop and no ethnic Moldovan was appointed to the position after the death of Bănulescu-Bodoni. Following the death of Archbishop Dimitrie Sulima in 1844, the new archbishop, Irinarh Popov (1844 to 1858), sought to ensure that all higher administrative and spiritual positions in the Church in Bessarabia were occupied by Russians who were brought into the province for that purpose. Some of the larger parishes in Bessarabia were also forced to install Russian priests in their churches. In 1870 worship in the Romanian language was officially banned. Between 1871 and 1882, a further period of intense Russification of the Church was undertaken by Archbishop Pavel Lebedev, who was described by a later Moldovan political activist as ‘the worst tyrant in ecclesiastical garments that there ever was’. Russian became the language of the liturgy and even the Romanian hymnal was discarded for a Russian one. Lebedev also shut down more than 300 Moldovan churches because their priests could not conduct services in Russian. From 1875 Russian-language schools were established in Bessarabia’s monasteries. Three years later, following the return of the southern Bessarabian districts of Ismail, Cahul and Bolgrad from Romania to Russian-ruled Bessarabia, Lebedev obliged all the Romanian-speaking priests in southern Bessarabia to learn Russian or to lose their parishes. Lebedev closed the Romanian seminary in Ismail and forbade the use of Romanian in the Chişinău seminary set up by BănulescuBodoni in 1813.50 It appears, however, that the seminary had already produced

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enough clergymen with an attachment to the Romanian language to influence future generations of Moldovan intellectuals.51 Archbishop Pavel Lebedev, however, came up against the same problem as the Russifiers of the education system. He was unable to find enough Russianspeaking priests for Bessarabia’s churches. Consequently, hundreds of churches remained entirely without spiritual heads, while others simply ignored his orders. Of Bessarabia’s churches, 207 held their services in Romanian, 211 in Romanian and Russian and 608 continued to use Old Church Slavonic, a language which had long since died out in the Orthodox Church west of the River Prut. Of the province’s eighteen monasteries, thirteen continued to hold divine offices only in Romanian.52 Since the great bulk of the Moldovan peasantry remained ignorant of both Russian and of Old Church Slavonic, the result of Lebedev’s measures was to sink many of them into religious ignorance and apathy. A story circulating in Bessarabia at the turn of the century tells of a Ukrainian priest in a Moldovan village, who discovered, after commencing his service, that he had forgotten his prayer-book. Undaunted, the priest recited from memory a famous poem by a Ukrainian poet, ‘to the entire satisfaction of his hearers, who understood not a word, either of the Church Slavonic or any dialect of Russian’.53 Moreover, the policy of Russification undoubtedly affected the quality of the clergy both at the higher as well as at the village level. Knowledge of Russian and acquiescence to the Russian regime were now considered more important than spiritual qualities. Sergei Urusov, who became the last Russian governor of Bessarabia in 1903, was sufficiently unimpressed with the bishop of Chişinău to conclude that he ‘seemed to have none of the qualities of a spiritual pastor and minister of the Gospel’.54 It was perhaps not altogether surprising, therefore, that the ethnic Moldovan peasants, especially in areas where the liturgy was not conducted in Romanian, were increasingly drawn to religious movements which developed outside the confines of the official Church and which were of a more mystical and emotional nature. Many Moldovans were drawn to the cult growing up around Inochentie, a Moldovan monk from the monastery of Balta, east of the River Dniester in the Ukraine. Inochentie preached in Romanian and taught that the end of the world was at hand. He was also reputed to have the power of healing, such that by 1910 the monastery at Balta had apparently become a ‘Moldavian Lourdes, with shelters on every side for the invalids brought for [Inochentie’s] ministrations’.55 When the Russian authorities, worried by his popularity, exiled the charismatic monk to a monastery north of St Petersburg, many of his flock simply sold their possessions and followed him there. Inochentie was finally exiled to an island



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in the White Sea, but his spirit lived on as some of his better-educated followers continued to preach his chiliastic message throughout Bessarabia. The meetings of Inochentie’s followers, who were overwhelmingly ethnic Moldovans, were based on services in Romanian, led usually by laymen, and Bible readings, as well as more ecstatic forms of worship. The Russian Church authorities, worried by this phenomenon which was taking place entirely outside their control, undertook investigations into the movement. They concluded that the primary cause of the movement’s popularity was that the Church in Bessarabia had become alienated from its flock due to its failure to provide for the Moldovans’ spiritual needs in their mother tongue.56 Nor did the printed word in Romanian die out. The importation of books from the principalities had been forbidden since 1812, but some books from Wallachia and Moldova continued to circulate. Moreover, important libraries were located in Bessarabia’s monasteries, such as the medieval foundation of Căpriana. The significance of these in helping to keep the Romanian language alive in the province was recognized by Archbishop Pavel Lebedev who consequently ordered priests to destroy all works in Romanian held in ecclesiastical libraries.57 The overall outcome of Lebedev’s order is unclear, but it seems that Romanian-language books were indeed burned. Many Romanianspeaking clergy and monks greatly resented Lebedev’s policies.58 The period between the 1870s and the early twentieth century saw a marked decline in the number of works in Romanian printed in Bessarabia. In 1882 the press set up by Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni was shut down and by the end of the nineteenth century the public library in Chişinău did not possess a single work in Romanian.59 Nevertheless, throughout the 106  years of Russian rule, some printed matter in Romanian continued to be produced by presses in the Bessarabian capital. In particular, the production of leaflets and pamphlets in Romanian was deemed necessary in order to inform the Moldovan population of new laws, to provide information regarding censuses or health matters, or news relating to the imperial family, or foreign affairs. When, for example, the districts of Ismail, Cahul and Bolgrad in southern Bessarabia reverted to Russian rule in 1878, the local population was informed of this by a proclamation written in Romanian in the Latin script.60 Publications printed in the Latin script were, however, exceptional. The Russian civil alphabet had been introduced in the Russian Empire in 1710, but several alphabets appear to have been in use in nineteenth-century Bessarabia. Old Church Slavonic was still used to express written Romanian, especially not only in texts of a religious nature but also in other documents.61 Romanian works were also produced in both the ‘old’ and

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‘new’ Russian alphabets, or even a mixture of the Russian and Old Church Slavonic alphabets.62 Such confusion doubtless made the Moldovan population’s grasp of letters even harder. A small number of manuals on the Romanian language were also produced during the period of Russification. Iacob Hâncu published one such manual in 1848. Hâncu went on to teach Romanian at St Petersburg University where the language was taught between 1848 and 1858 and again from 1894 to 1905.63 Romanian was taught at the university because the Russian foreign ministry needed to prepare officials for the judiciary in Bessarabia, for the language of the courts still necessarily had to be conducted in the popular idiom. Moreover, although books from Romania were forbidden in Bessarabia, they were allowed in Russian universities, in particular at Dorpat (in present-day Estonia), Kyiv and Odessa, where ethnic Moldovan students were often in attendance.64 Ioan Doncev produced another important language manual in 1865 which, unlike any manual or grammar previously produced in Bessarabia, was printed in the Latin alphabet. The manual was briefly used in schools until the final crackdown on instruction in Romanian came in 1867. Thereafter, the book circulated in Moldovan intellectual circles, where it was used and read right up until the First World War. It was also used at the Church-run school for girls in Chişinău where the Romanian language reappeared as a subject from 1906 to 1917.65 Thus, the written Romanian word continued to retain a foothold in Bessarabia, albeit expressed overwhelmingly through the medium of the Old Church Slavonic and Russian alphabets. Moldovan students at some of the Russian universities were also able to make some contact with Romanian writings from the Romanian lands west of the River Prut through the Russian university libraries. This was enough to keep interest in the Romanian language alive among a small group of Moldovan intellectuals. This interest, together with growing apprehensions among the Orthodox clergy in Bessarabia regarding the effects of linguistic Russification in the Church, ensured that the Romanian language question emerged as a major cultural issue in Bessarabia during the Empire-wide revolution of 1905. During the early years of the twentieth century, the Orthodox Church authorities in Bessarabia agreed to allow greater use of the Romanian language in order to counteract the growing drift among the Moldovan peasantry towards religious apathy or religious movements developing outside the Church.66 The Church authorities even stipulated that village priests should preach in Romanian. The press originally established by Bănulescu-Bodoni in Chişinău



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was reopened and over the next couple of years, in the relatively liberal cultural atmosphere that followed the 1905 revolution, some publications in Romanian were published. These included the religious periodical, Luminătorul (‘The Illuminator’), in 1908. One of the young clergymen who worked for this publication was Gurie Grosu, who was to become the metropolitan of Bessarabia after the province’s union with Romania in 1918. Central to Moldovan cultural activity in Bessarabia during and after the 1905 revolution were Ion Pelivan and Pantelimon Halippa. These young Moldovans had studied at the university in Dorpat and had established there an underground Romanian-speaking students’ association with links to intellectual circles in Romania. In 1905 the leader of the students’ association, Pelivan, together with Halippa, founded the Society for Moldovan National Culture in Bessarabia. Pelivan and Halippa secured funds for a publication entitled Basarabia which appeared from 1906 to 1907. This was the province’s first Romanian-language journal, albeit written in the Russian alphabet. The authors whose articles appeared in the journal demanded autonomy for Bessarabia within the Russian Empire and the use of the Romanian language in Bessarabia’s schools and administration. Nevertheless, many publications and groups which emerged in Bessarabia at the time of the 1905 revolution were avowedly pro-Russian, although they were often financed by the Russian Ministry of the Interior in order to undermine demands for use of the Romanian language. Such was the case, for instance, with the weekly publication, Moldovanul, edited by Gheorghe Madan, despite its call for ‘national awakening’.67 Other such pro-Russian groups included the League of True Russians and the Union of the Russian People. Much of the work of the 1905 revolutionary period in Bessarabia was, however, undone by the installation of Serafim Chichagov as archbishop in 1908. Serafim returned to the policy of Russification of the Church and shut down all Romanian presses with the help of the influential and Russophile Krupenski family.68 Nevertheless, in 1907 Governor Urusov reported to the police department in St Petersburg that certain intellectuals continued to have nationalist, and even separatist, ideas.69 In 1913, the Society for Moldovan National Culture managed to produce another Romanian publication, Cuvântul Moldovenesc (‘The Moldovan Word’), which appeared in both the Latin and Russian alphabets. The overall failure of the Russian government’s attempts to Russify the Moldovans was most obvious among the peasantry, who continued to use the Romanian language in their daily lives and private worship. A  nineteenthcentury proverb puts it thus: ‘a man may die of thirst in Bessarabia if he cannot

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ask for water in Romanian’. The Moldovans’ loyalty to their mother tongue, however, should not lead us to conclude that they necessarily had a ‘Romanian’ national consciousness. Governor Urusov was probably correct when he reported to the police department in St Petersburg in 1907 that the great mass of the ethnic Moldovan population was not Romanophile.70 Apart from the three districts of southern Bessarabia, reunited with the Moldovan principality and subsequently with united Romania between 1856 and 1878, the Romanianspeaking population east of the River Prut were not part of the Romanian nationalist movement developing in the principalities and Transylvania during the course of the nineteenth century. This Romanian nationalist movement created a sense of common identity based on the ‘Latinity’ of the Romanian language and its speakers’ presumed Roman or Daco-Roman origins.71 Crucially as well, the Russification of the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia through the elimination of the Romanian language at seminaries and the dismissal of many Romanian-speaking priests meant that the Church as an institution lost its potential to create a sense of Romanian nationalism. This was the role that the Orthodox and Uniate Churches fulfilled in the principalities and Transylvania, under an increasingly ‘nationally conscious’ clergy.72 Furthermore, although the linguistic Russification of the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia failed in its overall objective of Russifying the ethnic Moldovan population, many other measures served to bring the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia closer to Russia. Romanians coming from west of the River Prut following Bessarabia’s union with Romania in 1918 noted the existence of a distinct ‘Bessarabian Orthodoxy’. This consisted of a more elaborate liturgy and priestly vestments and the use of Russian hymns and religious texts of Russian origin. (Most of Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni and Dimitrie Sulima’s earlier translations of hymns and texts had been from Russian originals.) Thus, the distinctive ‘religious mentality’ of the Moldovans was regarded by many Romanians in the interwar period as being closer to the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church than to those of the Romanian Orthodox Church.73 The introduction of military service among the male Moldovan population in 1874, moreover, drew many towards affinity with the Russians. Obliged now to spend seven years, primarily in the Russian far east, exposed to the Russian language and to Russian military culture, it was hardly surprising that many of these recruits returned to their Moldovan villages ‘feeling half Russian’.74 Some certainly developed a loyalty to the Russian imperial family which continued into the interwar period in Bessarabia, to the exasperation of Romanian administrators.



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The continued existence of the antiquated social categories whose privileges had been maintained by the Russian government throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may also have been a factor in preventing the emergence of a persuasive sense of national identity, whether ‘Moldovan’ or ‘Romanian’. In the principalities and Transylvania collective identities based on region or privilege were in the process of giving way to a new sense of national identity based on a common language. There is evidence that these corporate identities, and the privileges that went with them, were still fiercely guarded in Bessarabia in the early twentieth century. In 1905, for example, when the Russian authorities attempted to disregard the rights of the mâzili, who claimed certain privileges based on their presumed descent from the nobility, they were met with armed revolt. John Kaba, a captain in the US Army who visited Bessarabia shortly after the union with Romania in 1918, related how these social and legal categories served to divide rather than unite. Kaba records that the three classes mazâli, răzeşi and ţărani, ‘while they may be equally poor, or equally rich, or equally illiterate, behave with certain reservation toward each other, and do not usually intermarry’.75 Turning to the small Moldovan middle and intellectual class, however, we do find many people that developed at this time a ‘Romanian’ identity and a strong sense of identification with the Romanians west of the Prut. Among these were Ion Pelivan, whose journal Basarabia introduced its readers to literary currents from Romania. Among other ‘pan-Romanianists’ we should include Bogdan-Petriceicu Hasdeu (1838–1907), the philologist, Slavonicist, historian and poet, who moved from Bessarabia to Iaşi, in Romanian Moldova, and eventually to Bucharest. Hasdeu’s equally scholarly father had written an ‘epistle to the Romanians’ to celebrate the union of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldova in 1859. Constantin Stere (1865–1936) was another influential ‘pan-Romanian’. Stere was exiled to Siberia for anti-tsarist activities and in 1892 fled across the River Prut to Iaşi where he became a professor of law and rector of the university. He was responsible for the theory of poporanism which sought to place the social and economic problems of the Romanian peasantry, as well as the affirmation of peasant culture, at the heart of the Romanian state’s political agenda. Through his publication, Viaţa românească, Stere put forward his arguments in favour of land reform, universal suffrage and constitutional reform. In 1906 he returned temporarily to Chişinău where he helped produce Pelivan’s Basarabia. Fiercely anti-Russian, Stere was a vital influence in the negotiations leading up to Bessarabia’s union with Romania in 1918.76

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This sense of affinity with the Romanians west of the Prut was by no means universal among members of the Moldovan intellectual elite and middle class, many of whom had Russified during the nineteenth century. Those living in the cities with large Russian-speaking populations were often ‘Russified’ through a natural process of assimilation. Moreover, even the development of a Romanian national consciousness did not necessarily imply a belief in the necessity of Bessarabia’s political union with Romania, or a denial of the importance of the Slavs in the ‘ethno-genesis’ of the Romanians. The importance of BogdanPetriceicu Hasdeu’s arguments relating to the partial Slavonic origins of the Romanian people has been discussed earlier in this volume. The Moldovan poet Alexie Mateevici (1888–1917) provides a further illustration. This priest-poet, who wrote in Romanian and was part of the Moldovan students’ movement at the theological college in Kyiv, was very much against any attempts to introduce the Latin alphabet and literary language of Romania into Bessarabia. In a scholarly article of 1910 on the origins of the Romanian language, Mateevici stressed the positive importance of the Slavonic influence. Furthermore, he argued that the annexation of Bessarabia by Russia had been beneficial for the Moldovans since it had allowed them to retain the Old Church Slavonic script, which had disappeared west of the Prut.77 Such a complex sense of political and cultural identity among intellectual Moldovans was by no means uncommon in the period preceding Bessarabia’s union with Romania in 1918. The relative success of Russification, at least among the educated middle classes of the various nationalities, was not matched by a thorough-going transformation of the Bessarabian economy by the Russian authorities. General Gordon reported in 1856 that ‘the climate is delightful in Bessarabia … It is a tremendous country for melons, gourds, pumpkins, etc, of every colour, shape and size’.78 Half a century later, the province was still overwhelmingly agricultural, and its main exports consisted primarily of fruit, vegetables, grain, wine and wool, with some more recent additions such as tobacco. Most of these products were destined for Russia, with wine and grain also exported to other European countries. Wheat exports from Bessarabia increased eight-fold in the late nineteenth century, with exports through the nearby port of Odessa increasing some three-fold. Indeed, in 1900 the average production of wheat in the province was almost double the rest of Russia.79 The nepotism and corruption of the Russian administration, however, sometimes hampered the development of the agricultural sector in the Bessarabian economy. In his memoirs, Governor Urusov lamented the attempts made by the excise office to undermine the wine industry in Bessarabia in order



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to promote the consumption of whisky, which was a government monopoly. Urusov commented that even the ‘combined evils’ of a lack of skilled workers and the spread of the vine disease phylloxera were not as bad for the wine industry ‘as the noxious activity of the excise office’.80 According to General Gordon, the wine was, in any case, ‘nothing but bad vinegar’.81 By 1900, only some 30,000 people were employed in the industrial sector in Bessarabia, and food processing accounted for 90 per cent of all industry.82 Bessarabia’s proximity to military operations in the Balkans meant that the tsarist authorities took the decision not to develop Bessarabia’s economy and to continue funnelling Bessarabia’s largely agricultural exports through the port of Odessa. It was for this reason that good roads were never built to connect Bessarabia with the rest of the Empire.83 The Russian authorities did, however, establish other transport links. In the 1860s a canal was built linking Bessarabia to Russia through the Ukrainian lands, together with a telegraph link to Russia. In 1871 a railway bridge over the River Dniester was completed, with a railway line linking Tiraspol to Chişinău. In the same year the railway line to Odessa was completed, integrating the Bessarabian railway network with that of Ukraine and Russia. In 1877, a railway between Tighina (known as Bender to the Russians) and Galaţi in Romanian Moldova was opened which enabled military contact between Russia and Romania during the 1877 to 1878 Russo-Ottoman war. During the 1890s, further railway lines were laid down to facilitate contact between various towns within Bessarabia, while the line from Bălţi was extended west to link the province with the Habsburg Empire.84 Despite such advances, Bessarabia remained not only the least industrialized province of the Russian Empire but also one of the Empire’s most densely populated provinces. Consequently, by the 1860s all of Bessarabia’s open lands had been colonized. As the forests were cut down to make room for further colonizers and agriculture, the province began to suffer from severe deforestation. Meanwhile, the application of the 1868 Russian agricultural statute in Bessarabia, which allowed the transfer of peasant holdings, favoured the consolidation of peasant land by the wealthier peasantry. As a result of this measure, and of the rapid expansion of the population, some 23 per cent of the peasantry were entirely landless by 1905. Rural misery was compounded by a lack of agricultural machinery and by the frequent droughts and harvest failures to which the province was prone. Reporting on a famine in the spring of 1901, The Times reported that in many villages in the Soroca district in northern Bessarabia ‘the unfortunate people are utterly destitute, clad in rags, half of them

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suffering from typhus, without furniture or household necessities, huddled together in a loathsome state of filth, and living only on husks of maize boiled in water or other equally unwholesome food’. As a result of the lack of fodder, peasants had been forced to get rid of their horses, cattle and sheep at any price.85 The landowning nobility, meanwhile, had little direct contact with the peasantry. Often preferring to live in the towns, absentee landlords leased their estates to Jewish middlemen, who then sublet to the local peasants. The nobility, nevertheless, continued to retain considerable influence over Bessarabian affairs right up to the First World War, despite the introduction of imperial reforms to the province. Governor Urusov’s memoirs strongly attest to this. In 1869, for example, the zemstvo system of local councils was introduced in the Russian Empire, which permitted some local autonomy in areas such as education and public health. The Bessarabian zemstvo was regarded by Urusov as generally progressive in its attempts to develop local institutions. In the elections of 1906, however, ‘due to the machinations of various reactionary landlords and corrupt noble families’, such as the powerful Krupenskis, the liberal element was ousted. Subsequently many of the previous reforms undertaken by the zemstvo were revoked, including measures supporting public education.86 The remoteness of Bessarabia from the imperial centre effectively allowed a small group of conservative nobles to control many of the province’s affairs to the detriment of the general population.87 In particular, the noble-dominated local administration thoroughly exploited the peasantry. The rural population was thus still forced to bear the costs for the maintenance of the local police, lawyers and gendarmes, even though this practice had generally died out in the rest of Russia. Urusov also recorded high levels of bribery and corruption in the Bessarabian police force despite his efforts to curb these excesses. Meanwhile, the local garrison in Chişinău, far from being the bearer of law and order, added to incidents of ‘night-larceny, street brawls, and debauchery in nocturnal dives’.88 Chişinău, which had become the Bessarabian capital in 1818 in place of Tighina, was first recorded in a document in 1436. It was for a long time a remote market town surrounded by forests and hence of no special significance, despite its location on the River Byk which gave access to the Dniester. It was only with Russia’s advance into south-east Europe in the nineteenth century that the settlement became an important military provisioning centre.89 Even so, the city had only some 7,000–12,000 inhabitants in 1812. It had, however, some important churches, such as the Măzărache church built in the 1750s in traditional Moldovan architectural style and the Armenian Apostolic church



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that opened in 1802. The latter became the final resting place of the Armenian merchant, Manuc Bey, in whose Bucharest hotel (at the time the only one in the city) the negotiations for the 1812 Treaty of Bucharest had been negotiated. Even so, Chişinău was considered sufficiently remote and uncomfortable by the Russians to be granted the honour of acting as Alexander Pushkin’s place of exile in the early 1820s. The vice-governor of Bessarabia, Filipp Vigel, described the Bessarabian capital at that time in the most deprecatory terms: A vaster, more endless, ugly, and untidy village I have never seen … Driving into it, your sight and small suffer equally; it all consist of meandering alleys studded with hovels closely stuck together. Slops and sewage flow here from everywhere, running from here into the [River] Byk, and in the summer heat [they] infect the air so much that mass fevers are produced.

It appears that Pushkin himself acquired a veritable hatred of the city, which he called ‘Sodom-Chişinău’.90 Pushkin identified himself in his Bessarabian exile with the poet of the ancient world, Ovid, and wrote the verse composition ‘To Ovid’ in 1821 during his exile. In this poem, Pushkin played upon a local tradition that Ovid’s place of exile had been in Bessarabia, rather than further south in Tomis on the Black Sea. In verse 38 of the poem, Pushkin described himself as being, like Ovid, ‘In the fatherland of the barbarians unknown and alone’ and made allusions to Ovid’s poem Tristia and the Ex Ponto letters. Addressing Ovid directly in verses seven to ten, he wrote that You vividly imprinted on my imagination, The gloomy wilderness, the poet’s captivity, The misty vault of the heavens, the frequent snows And the meadows warmed by a brief spell of heat.91

Pushkin, despite his poetic reference to ‘captivity’, had sufficient freedom in his Chişinău exile to join the local masonic lodge in May 1821. Freemasonry was prohibited by the Russians in the following year, but Pushkin apparently hung on in later life to the triangle and compass which he had received at his initiation ceremony. He was allowed to travel with a Russian army officer to southern Bessarabia in December 1821. Pushkin also lived among the Gypsies of southern Bessarabia for several weeks, which led to the composition of his narrative poem The Gypsies, published in 1824. Pushkin also seduced a Gypsy in Chişinău, for which he was challenged to a duel by her husband. For this transgression, Pushkin was given ten days’ detention by the Russian authorities.92

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Chişinău underwent a transformation in the years after Pushkin’s exile and in 1834 the city was reorganized on a systematic plan with widened streets. But this failed to impress General Gordon who resided there in 1856 and described ‘Kichenau’ as ‘a place with nothing of interest about it. There was one regiment of cavalry in it’.93 By the 1900s, however, the city’s population had risen to around 125,000. Urusov, who arrived in Bessarabia in 1903 to take up his post as governor, observed that Chişinău was a well-laid-out city with many elegant buildings.94 These included the Cathedral of the Nativity with its bell tower, built in the 1830s in neoclassical style, and the Triumphal Arch erected in 1840 to commemorate Russia’s victory over the Ottomans in 1829. The Arch included within it an enormous copper bell made from smelted-down cannons captured from the Ottomans. The convent of St Theodor Tiron was opened in 1858 on the outskirts of Chişinău. Alexander Bernardazzi, a Russian of Swiss descent, was the city’s chief architect between the 1850s and 1870s. He was responsible for several important buildings, such as the city hall, the water tower which was crucial to the city’s water supply, the Byzantine-inspired churches of St Pantelemon and of St Theodore of Sihla, and a magnificent secondary school which is now the Moldovan National Museum of Fine Arts. Bernardazzi also remodelled the park, initially laid out in 1818 in central Chişinău, and which subsequently became the Stephen the Great Park. By 1867, the Bessarabian capital lay only behind St Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw and Odessa within the Russian Empire in terms of population. Thereafter, however, the city suffered from the tsarist authorities’ decision not to develop the Bessarabian economy and stagnated relative to other cities in the empire. Chişinău’s lack of growth was also a result of severe deforestation around the city and a dearth of clean water to support further expansion.95 Nevertheless, Carol Schmidt, mayor of Chişinău from 1877 to 1903, oversaw the modernization of the city’s infrastructure, including laying down the first trams, street lighting and modern paving.96 A bust of Schmidt was unveiled in Chişinău in 2014. Bessarabia had avoided the antisemitic pogroms of 1881 to 1882 which had broken out elsewhere in the Russian Empire, but on Easter Day, April 1903 two days of violence began in Chişinău.97 A mob of around two thousand went on the rampage and caused fifty-one deaths (forty-nine of them Jewish). Hundreds were wounded and there was widespread vandalism and destruction of Jewish property. The Chişinău pogrom may have been linked to a recent accusation of ritual murder (i.e. the myth that Jews used the blood of murdered Christians in the preparation of their Passover bread) against the Jewish community in a nearby town. Antisemitic propaganda, including the first publication of The Protocols of



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the Elders of Zion, had also been disseminated in Chişinău by Pavel Krushevan, editor of the newspaper Bessarabets (‘The Bessarabian’). During the pogrom, the mob was aided by the inefficiency and possibly even the encouragement of the local police, especially Levendal, the chief of the secret police. Hideous atrocities were carried out by gangs, largely of male urban workers, but these may have been joined by peasants from outside the city on the second day of violence. The Chişinău pogrom would, however, prove to be a turning point in terms of the response of the outside world to the increase in antisemitic violence within the Russian Empire. The impact of the pogrom was far greater than the effect of the Russian pogroms of 1881 to 1882 due to advances in printing and photography. Illustrations brought the horrors of the pogrom, with its dead and mutilated bodies in makeshift mortuaries, to the notice of the wider world. Meetings to condemn the violence were held across the world, from the United States to Europe to Australia. As a result of the antisemitic violence in Chişinău, the Russian word ‘pogrom’ (derived from the word ‘grom’ for thunder) was first used in the British press. ‘Pogrom’ entered regular usage in the English language following further antisemitic violence in Russia in 1905 and 1906. The pogrom also marked a turning point in terms of Jewish self-help and the rise of Zionism among the Jewish populations in Bessarabia and beyond. In August 1903, the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, visited the Russian Minister of the Interior to discuss the possible organized emigration of Russian Jews to East Africa. The pogrom was also memorialized by the famous Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik (1876–1934) in his epic poem of 1903  ‘In the City of Slaughter’ (Be-ir ha-haregah). Bialik had originally intended to write a book based upon the photographs he had taken and testimonies he had noted down from the victims of the pogrom before deciding to turn to poetry. The poem includes gruesome scenes of murder and torture based loosely on the testimonies Bialik collected. These included the testimony of Rivka Schiff, who had been raped by one of the gangs. In the second stanza of the poem, God commands the poet to witness the rape of Jewish women. God, however, apparently has no answer as to why the dead perished and why women were raped. Bialik suggests, therefore, that Jews must no longer await divine retribution for the wrongs committed against them and instead Demand the retribution for the shamed/ of all the centuries and every age!/ Let fists be flung like stone/ against the heavens and the heavenly throne!

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With its call for action and condemnation of alleged Jewish passivity, the poem was to provide the inspiration for future generations of Jewish writers and activists. A memorial to the victims of the pogrom was set up in 1993 by the government of the newly independent Republic of Moldova, and a series of events took place in 2003 to mark the centenary of the pogrom. While 1903 was a turning point for the Jewish population in Bessarabia, 1912 was a pivotal moment for Romanian nationalists within the Romanian kingdom. The year was the moment when Romanian irredentists turned their attention towards Bessarabia.98 The tsarist authorities celebrated the centenary of Bessarabia’s incorporation into the Russian Empire with religious services, lectures and festivities throughout the province, some of which were conducted in the Romanian language. This led, in response, to demonstrations in Romania against Russia’s hold on Bessarabia. Houses in towns and cities in Romanian Moldova displayed Romanian flags at half-mast and many inhabitants walked around in mourning clothes to display their patriotic feelings. Romanian intellectuals in Iaşi, grouped around Constantin Stere and the historian A. D. Xenopol, held public lectures setting forth the Romanian nature of Bessarabia. In the Romanian capital of Bucharest, meanwhile, the historian Nicolae Iorga, who had toured Bessarabia in 1905, organized lectures and poetry recitals. The funds raised by these events were used to help fund a dormitory for Bessarabian students wishing to attend Iaşi University. Iorga, who was chairman of the League for the Cultural Unity of All Romanians (founded in 1890), produced several publications to mark the anniversary. These included his provocatively entitled book ‘Our Bessarabia’.99 Russia’s grip on the province showed no sign of relaxing, however, when, in June 1914, a statue of Tsar Alexander I, under whose auspices Bessarabia had been annexed, was unveiled in Chişinău in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II. In the same month, the tsar had a meeting with King Carol I  of Romania in Constanţa. Despite Romania’s formal alliance with Germany, the Habsburg Empire and Italy under a treaty of 1883, the meeting represented a significant rapprochement between Russia and Romania. A  consequence of this was to divert Romanian irredentism away from Bessarabia and towards the Romanian inhabited lands in the Habsburg Empire.100

7

Bessarabia’s union with Romania

Romanian historians have traditionally argued that the unification of Bessarabia with Romania in 1918 was the outcome of the will of the whole population of Bessarabia, which had long seen in the Romanian ‘motherland’ a saviour from tsarist oppression. The Bessarabians had, moreover, never forgotten their Romanian, and Latin, origins. The proliferation of texts to this effect in the interwar period reflects, however, a certain unease among Romanian politicians and intellectuals about how the province had been acquired by Romania in 1918. In particular, the Romanian government had refused to hold a plebiscite in Bessarabia to measure the true extent of support for union with Romania. Typical is a pamphlet written by Andrei Popovici in 1931 in which he states that the hundred years of Russian oppression not only did not suppress the nationalistic sentiments of the population, but, on the contrary, the revolution of 1917 was seized upon by the Bessarabians as an opportunity to shake off the Russian yoke and to return to the mother country from which they were torn off by force a hundred odd years ago … Their activity and relentless efforts on behalf of their union with Romania are eloquent proofs of their sentiments which no ‘plebiscite’ can or could ever express better.1

Pro-Romanian writers sought, furthermore, to ‘prove’ to the outside world the ‘Romanian-ness’ of Bessarabia by seeking to diminish the extent of Russian influence in the province. Petru Cazacu, writing in 1926, for instance, defensively stressed the importance of Roman remains in Bessarabia as evidence that the area ‘had begun to take an active part in the life of civilised Western Europe, as far back as the third century of the Christian Era, when Kyiv and Moscow had yet hardly begun their existence’. Having recounted the evils of Russian administration in Bessarabia, Cazacu went on to deny ‘any ties between the Bessarabians and the Russian State, Russian Culture or the Russian people, despite the hundred years of Russian domination here’.2

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But there was little consensus, even among ethnic Moldovans, let alone the population of Bessarabia as a whole, in favour of union with Romania. From the Romanian perspective, moreover, the acquisition of Bessarabia was of less importance than the annexation of Transylvania and other Romanian-inhabited areas of the Habsburg Empire which were regarded as central to the Romanian nation-building project. There was, nevertheless, irredentist activity by the League for the Cultural Unity of All Romanians, especially by Bessarabianborn émigrés such as Zamfir Arbore. He published his Liberarea Basarabiei (‘The Liberation of Bessarabia’) in 1915, demanding liberation of the province from Russian rule. Other books were published in the same year expounding the Romanian claim to Bessarabia.3 The unification of Bessarabia with Romania came about, however, largely because of the international situation in the last year of the First World War rather than as a result of these intellectual arguments. The circumstances surrounding the Russian Revolution and Romania’s diplomatic relations with the Central Powers of Germany and the Habsburg Empire were central in this regard. Unification with Romania thus had relatively little to do with a strong pro-Romanian tendency among the Bessarabian population. The Moldovan cultural and political activity which had resulted from the 1905 revolution had been crushed by the Russification policies of Archbishop Serafim. It was not until the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 that Moldovans were once again stirred into significant political action. Councils of soldiers soon sprang up, demanding Bessarabian autonomy and the creation of a national assembly, as well as the use of the Romanian language in education and administration. In April 1917, the Moldovan National Party was created out of the Society for Moldovan National Culture which had been founded by Ion Pelivan and Pantelimon Halippa in 1905. The creation of the party was, however, by no means a victory for pan-Romanianism and cannot be seen as the first step in an inevitable unification with Romania. Indeed, it was not unusual for the party’s meetings to be held in Russian. Although some party leaders, such as Ion Pelivan, had spoken of the necessity of union with Romania even before 1917, this was not part of the party’s public platform. Rather, the party programme, elaborated at a congress in May 1917, envisaged a democratic, federal Russia in which Bessarabia would have autonomy. This would include a legislative assembly based on universal suffrage and the use of the Romanian language in the administration and education.4 One of the leading figures in the creation of the Moldovan National Party, and in drawing up the party programme, was the Transylvanian Romanian, Onisifor Ghibu. He later observed that in 1916 the Moldovans ‘were the most



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loyal subjects of Nicholas II’.5 Ghibu had apparently encountered considerable opposition from many party members who resented his stress on the national question at the expense of social issues. Party members were concerned about the whole question of land reform and the distribution of estates among the peasantry. In 1917, many Moldovans were preoccupied with social, rather than national, issues. A number of social radicals in the Moldovan National Party were not prepared to collaborate with ‘class enemies’, such as landowners or priests, for the sake of Moldovan ethnic solidarity, let  alone Romanian nationalism.6 These social radicals even included Ion Pelivan’s colleague, Pantelimon Halippa, who greatly resented what he described as ‘alien’ landlords in Bessarabia, ‘who sustained by the tsarist administration became masters of our land and our exploiters’. Halippa informed Ghibu that he was unwilling to establish links with Romanian politicians whom he believed would obstruct large-scale land reform in Bessarabia. Halippa regarded the Romanian government’s plans for land reform in Romania, which it put forward in 1917, as inadequate.7 Moldovan organizations from beyond the borders of Bessarabia had also been instrumental in the creation of the Moldovan National Party, especially Moldovans living in Odessa and Kyiv. These sought protection of their linguistic and cultural rights within their component states, not unification with Romania.8 Consequently, it was largely left to Romanians from outside Bessarabia, in particular those from Habsburg-ruled Transylvania and the Bukovina, to attempt to instil a sense of Romanian nationalism and identity into the Moldovans in 1917 and 1918. In addition to Onisifor Ghibu, these included the Transylvanian poet and Romanian nationalist Octavian Goga. The poet’s visit to Bessarabia in March 1917, did not, however, leave him with a favourable impression of the Moldovans.9 Notwithstanding this Romanian interest in Bessarabia, Transylvania, the Banat and the Bukovina, which lay within the Habsburg Empire, were the main object of Romanian irredentism before and during the First World War. Romania remained neutral on the outbreak of war in 1914 and evaded its treaty obligations towards Germany and the Habsburg Empire. The Romanian government, headed by the National Liberal politician Ion. I. C. Brătianu, used the period of neutrality to begin laying the diplomatic groundwork for Romania’s ultimate intervention on the side of the Entente.10 Brătianu expected the Entente of Britain, France and Russia to win the war and thus advance Romania’s claims to Habsburg territories. Brătianu accordingly took no interest in the Central Powers’ (i.e. Germany and the Habsburg Empire) repeated offers of Bessarabia as the reward for entering the war on their side against Russia.11 Finally, in August

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1916 the Brătianu government signed military and political conventions with the Entente in which Romania agreed to declare war on the Habsburg Empire in exchange for a guarantee of the right to self-determination of the Romanians who lived there and their subsequent union with Romania. There remained, however, some Romanian public figures who were committed to the cause of the Central Powers, and to Germany in particular. These included Alexandru Marghiloman, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, and the anti-Russian Constantin Stere, who had fled from Bessarabia to Romania. Marghiloman entered into discussions with the Central Powers over a reversal of Romania’s pro-Entente foreign-policy position. Marghiloman was promised Bessarabia as a reward in the event of the victory of the Central Powers over Russia.12 As a result of Romania’s poor military performance in 1916, however, some two-thirds of Romanian territory was occupied by the Central Powers, and the Romanian army and government were forced to flee to Romanian Moldova. The government installed itself in Iași and later in Odessa together with a French military mission headed by General Berthelot. It was events in Russia which, however, eventually forced Romania out of the Entente camp. Following the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917, Lenin sued for peace with the Central Powers. Bereft now of Russian military support, Romania was forced to sign an armistice with the Central Powers at Focșani on 9 December, although Romania continued to be formally allied to the Entente. In Bessarabia itself, officers and soldiers had convened an assembly in Chişinău following the Bolshevik revolution in November 1917. The assembly declared autonomy for Bessarabia and called for the creation of a national council, the so-called Sfatul Ţării, which met in Chişinău later in the month. The Sfatul included within its ranks two female politicians: Nadejda Evgenevna Grinfeld, who had been active in revolutionary organizations in Ukraine and Russia, and Elena Alistar-Romanescu. Alistar had been expelled from Bessarabia earlier in the war by the head of the Bessarabian gendarmes because she was a ‘convinced and extreme Romanophile’.13 On 2 December the Sfatul Ţării, with Ion Inculeţ as president, declared Bessarabia an autonomous republic within Russia. Later in December, however, the Sfatul Ţării, now facing Bolshevik incursions into Bessarabia, approached the French military mission which was still stationed in Iași. Representatives of the Sfatul requested that a French consulate be opened in Chişinău and for French instructors to be sent to help build up the security forces in Bessarabia against the Bolsheviks. Three French foreign ministry officials were duly dispatched to



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Chişinău. A second delegation from the Sfatul Ţării arrived soon after, however, headed by Ion Pelivan, who was now director of foreign affairs of the Sfatul Ţării. Pelivan requested more help against the Bolsheviks. Despite Pelivan’s subsequent avowals of the thoroughly Romanian make-up of Bessarabia, he turned down the French offer of regular Romanian troops in favour of units of other national groups, or Transylvanian ‘volunteers’. Pelivan was concerned about the antiRomanian sentiment among Bessarabia’s ethnic minorities and even among the ethnic Moldovan peasantry. Leaders of the peasants feared that if Romanian troops entered Bessarabia they would halt moves towards a thorough-going land reform. The French foreign minister in Iași also agreed to Pelivan’s request for ‘an explicit, public French declaration affirming the autonomy of Bessarabia visà-vis Romania’.14 The disorganization of the Transylvanian volunteers, however, meant that the French mission in Chişinău was forced to recommend the use of Romanian troops to guard railways and supply depots in Bessarabia from Bolshevik attacks. Nevertheless, the possibility of Romanian troops entering Bessarabia caused considerable controversy in the Sfatul Ţării. The president, Ion Inculeţ, was forced to calm ethnic minority deputies by stating that ‘here there is only a handful of men who turn their looks across the [River] Prut. The paths of Bessarabia merge into the paths of Russia, for Russia is a country much freer than Romania’.15 Romanian political and military leaders were reluctant to send Romanian troops into Bessarabia in late 1917 and early 1918, fearing that such an action could sour relations with Russia and with the Entente, to whom they were still technically allied.16 The Romanian military and government thus found themselves precariously poised between the Entente and the Central Powers. Over the following year, however, Romania’s deft handling of the diplomatic and military situation was to lead to the creation of a Greater Romania containing both lands from the Habsburg Empire and Bessarabia. Early in 1918, the Germans suggested that the Romanians should occupy Bessarabia. This was attractive to those prepared to collaborate with the Germans, led by Alexandru Marghiloman. He believed that the Central Powers were now bound to win the war, following Russia’s withdrawal from the conflict. By midJanuary 1918, the Romanians were thoroughly alarmed by Bolshevik activities in Bessarabia and the possibility that revolutionary violence might spread to Romania. On 17 January, the Bolsheviks occupied Chişinău and dissolved the Sfatul Ţării. Meanwhile, Rumcerod (‘the central executive committee of the soviets of the Romanian front, Black Sea fleet and the Odessa region’) spread its tentacles throughout Bessarabia.17 Consequently on 19 January 1918, the

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Romanian army, led by General Broșteanu, entered Bessarabia. Evidently neither Broșteanu nor his troops made themselves especially popular with the inhabitants of Bessarabia. In fact, they doubtless astonished the population for the officers were corseted and wore make-up.18 The troops crushed all signs of hostility towards the Romanians which Broșteanu, not without justification under the circumstances, regarded as evidence of Bolshevik sympathies. The Romanian army succeeded in driving the Bolsheviks out of Bessarabia and restored the Sfatul Ţării, but further complications had now developed as a result of Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Russian Empire on 13 January 1918. This broke the direct geographic link between Bessarabia and Russia and brought with it the possibility of annexation by Ukraine. The new Ukrainian government harboured claims on Bessarabia on account of its substantial Ukrainian population. To outmanoeuvre the Ukrainian government, the Sfatul declared the independence of Bessarabia as the Moldovan Democratic Republic on 24 January. The Sfatul further attempted, unsuccessfully, to gain official French recognition of Bessarabia’s independence. The new republic was, however, militarily and economically weak. The Sfatul was thus increasingly dependent upon the Romanian army to maintain order and to run utilities in the ever-increasing chaos which engulfed Bessarabia.19 Ukraine continued to make territorial claims on the newly independent republic and this proved a crucial factor in the Sfatul’s declaration of conditional union with Romania on 27 March 1918.20 Under the terms of the union, Bessarabia was to retain a degree of autonomy within Greater Romania, including an elected assembly, budgetary control, rights for ethnic minorities and the completion of land redistribution. Of paramount importance also in the Sfatul’s declaration of conditional union with Romania was the fact that the Romanian government had signed a preliminary peace with the Central Powers at Buftea in Romania on 5 March 1918. Accordingly, Bessarabia had been offered to the Romanians as compensation for Romania’s loss to Bulgaria of the Dobrudja region on the Black Sea. German troops had already occupied northern Bessarabia in February and were thus in a position to give the Romanians military support, if necessary, in their acquisition of Bessarabia. Under the conditions of the Peace of Buftea, the French military mission was forced to leave Iași. Consequently, the Sfatul Ţării was left with no basis of support against the Bolsheviks other than Romania and her German ally.21 It seems, therefore, that the Sfatul Ţării did not play the central role in the unification with Romania which the traditional Romanian historiographical account suggests. It was the Romanian government and the Central Powers



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which were the main actors in Bessarabia’s union with Romania. Thereafter, conflict between the Romanian government and the Sfatul Ţării was avoided due to the diplomatic intervention of Alexandru Marghiloman and Constantin Stere with the leaders of the various factions in the Sfatul Ţării. Marghiloman took over the Romanian government on 19 March.22 The Sfatul Ţării’s vote on the question of union with Romania was held on 27 March 1918 and was won by eighty-six votes in favour, with only three votes against. Forty-nine deputies either abstained or were absent. As the historian Charles King has written, ‘with Romanian troops already in Chișinău, Romanian planes circling above the meeting hall, and the Romanian prime minister waiting in the foyer, many minority deputies chose simply not to vote’.23 On 3 April, Constantin Stere was voted president of the Staful Ţării.24 During 1918, Romania’s foreign policy was to undergo a transformation leading to Bessarabia’s integration into Greater Romania irrespective of the autonomy which had previously been agreed. The failure of the German offensive on the Western Front in July 1918 and the subsequent collapse of the Habsburg Empire in the autumn led to Romania’s re-entry into the war on the side of the Entente just before the armistice in November 1918. The Romanians were thus able to argue that they were one of the victorious powers of the war and to lay claim to Habsburg territories. By late November 1918, the Romanians of the Bukovina and Transylvania were preparing to declare their union with Romania. Under these circumstances, and encouraged by Pantelimon Halippa’s ‘Moldovan Bloc’, the Sfatul Ţării in Chişinău voted for union with Romania and subsequently dissolved itself. Once again, as in March 1918, the vote appeared to be far from convincing, since it was conducted in the middle of the night without a quorum.25 Deputies were encouraged to renounce the conditions attached to the 27 March vote on union with Romania by news of the Romanian government’s decision to go ahead with large-scale land reform.26 Fears that the Romanian government would not institute wide-ranging land redistribution had been a major factor in the peasantry’s animosity towards the Romanians in 1917 and 1918. Nevertheless, there were already signs that relations between the Romanians living west of the River Prut and the inhabitants of Bessarabia would not be entirely cordial. On 20 November, only a week before the vote which accepted union with Romania, a group of Sfatul Ţării deputies had submitted a memorandum. Writing in Russian, the authors of the memorandum criticized the behaviour of the Romanian administration in Bessarabia and demanded that the Romanian government respect the autonomy accorded to Bessarabia under the act of union

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of 27 March.27 Nevertheless, Bessarabian autonomy was formally abolished by the Romanian government in December 1918. This move was resented even by formerly pro-Romanian deputies in the Sfatul Ţării.28 At the 1919 Paris peace conference, Western approval of Romania’s acquisition of Bessarabia came slowly. Anti-Romanian elements within Bessarabia, such as the pro-Russian landowner, Alexander Krupenski, whose family had remained staunchly pro-Russian since 1812, petitioned the peace conference against Romania. Krupenski denied that Romania had a historic right to Bessarabia since the Romanian state had not existed in 1812 when Bessarabia was separated from the principality of Moldova. He also rejected the Romanian claim on national grounds, arguing that the Moldovans ‘cannot possess any other than pro-Russian sentiments’. Although clearly an exaggeration, Krupenski was near the mark in stating that ‘Romanian nationalism was born during the thirties of the last century, in Wallachia and Moldavia, and was progressively developed in Romania by the aid of schools and other institutions of the country. Bessarabia was always outside of this national movement’.29 More significantly, perhaps, the US delegation at the peace conference was ‘sceptical about the way Romania had acquired the territory’ and this was reinforced by Ion Brătianu’s refusal to hold a plebiscite in Bessarabia.30 Although the Treaty of Trianon, which confirmed the new frontier between Romania and Hungary, was signed on 4 June 1920, the council of ambassadors at the Paris peace conference did not present the Romanian delegation with a treaty of union between Bessarabia and Romania until the end of October 1920. The treaty was suitably ambiguous regarding the province’s status. Romanian sovereignty over the lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers was confirmed, but the treaty stipulated that ‘Russia should adhere to the treaty when a government comes to power with which the Allies can do business’. Negotiations for a settlement, however, were to be in the hands of Romania and Russia, with arbitration over details in the purview of the League of Nations.31 The October treaty was thus hardly a ringing endorsement of Romania’s claim to the province, and signatories to the treaty included neither the United States nor Soviet Russia. Ratification of the treaty by the other Great Powers was also slow, with Britain signing in May 1922, France in 1924 and Italy only in 1927. Japan never ratified the treaty. Most significantly of all, the Soviets consistently refused to acknowledge Romanian sovereignty over Bessarabia, although at one point it seems the cashstrapped Bolshevik regime in the Kremlin did consider recognition of Romania’s right to the province in exchange for Romania’s gold and Queen Marie of Romania’s crown jewels. The Romanian government and royal family declined.32 The Soviet



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Union’s refusal to accept the loss of Bessarabia, even after Romania’s diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union in 1934, was a major factor in Romania’s gradual diplomatic shift towards the German-Italian Axis in the late 1930s. * The Romanian government’s attempt to integrate Bessarabia into Greater Romania after 1918 would not prove easy. To the inadequacies of the previous Russian administration in the province were now added the devastation of the First World War which transformed Bessarabia into a war zone and left the economy and infrastructure in tatters. The Russian Revolution only served to exacerbate this situation. Nowhere was this state of dereliction more apparent to Western visitors to post-war Bessarabia than in the state of the roads. In southern Bessarabia, the Frenchman, Professor de Martonne, observed that ‘on the plateau, skeletons of horses abandoned on the roadside are not a rare occurrence. At a crossroads, two magnificent vultures, busy feeding on a fresh piece of carrion, fly away a few yards from my car’.33 The American Captain Kaba commented that ‘in no country in Europe have I seen such bad roads as in Bessarabia’. The roads were ‘full of holes, four or five yards apart, causing great damage to vehicles and animals. On May 6th, 1919, I travelled from Chişinău, by automobile, to Orhei, 45 km distance, and saw four broken down vehicles, and three dying horses. The road is full of dead horse bones’. Kaba also observed that methods of working the land were primitive and what agricultural machinery existed had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks.34 In addition to these practical problems of post-war reconstruction, multiethnic Bessarabia reflected to an even greater extent the problem of national integration facing Romania as a whole. Out of a total population of just under 2,900,000 people in Bessarabia, only around 56 per cent were ethnic Moldovans (i.e. Romanian-speakers).35 While Romanian-speakers throughout Romania were predominantly peasants, the urban centres and their related economic and professional sectors tended to be dominated by members of the ethnic minority groups. Over one-third of Bessarabia’s total urban population was Jewish and the Bessarabian provincial capital, Chişinău, was overwhelmingly Jewish and Russian.36 While the Romanian-speaking peasantry tended to distrust the ‘alien’ cities, the urbanized minorities looked down on the less educated and poorer Romanian-speaking rural population and Romanian culture in general. The interwar Romanian governments and intellectuals, for their part, aimed to elevate the status of the Romanian rural majority who were perceived as having been disadvantaged over the course of many centuries. The purpose of the Romanianization policies undertaken by the Romanian governments during the

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1920s and 1930s was to reverse this situation by promoting Romanians in the country’s educational system, administration and economy and by adjusting the country’s cultural life to make it reflect the demographic balance. The first and most obvious manifestation of Romanianization in Bessarabia was that all street names, shop signs and public notices had now to be written in Romanian rather than Russian. Bessarabia’s minorities were largely ill-disposed towards the Romanian government from the outset and remained staunchly Russophile despite (and, in some cases, because of) the seizure of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks. Worryingly for the Romanian authorities, in 1920 the French military attaché reported that the minorities’ middle classes would welcome the Russian army into Bessarabia to rid them of the Romanians.37 A report by a member of the Romanian ministry of the interior in 1921 pointed out that the various ethnic groups in Bessarabia each sought their own ‘state within a state’, including their own independent school systems. The hostility of the urban population to the new Romanian authorities was noted by a French diplomat in 1922 who remarked that town dwellers were ‘purely Russian and Israelite and violently anti-Romanian’.38 Relations between the Romanians from west of the River Prut and the various peoples of Bessarabia were severely compromised by frequent Bolshevik incursions into Bessarabia. Russia and Ukraine had harboured irredentist ambitions towards Bessarabia in 1917 and 1918 and did not fail to take advantage of the Romanian government’s poor relations with the national minorities in Bessarabia to disseminate Bolshevik propaganda. This was combined with anti-Romanian sentiment designed to stir up the population of the province against the Romanian authorities. In June 1918 Ukrainian agitators in Ismail in southern Bessarabia informed the local population that Bessarabia would soon be annexed to Ukraine and urged the people to flee the province and join the Russian army.39 There were major Bolshevik incidents on the River Dniester near Hotin in January 1919 and in Tighina in May 1919. The level of unrest was such that the Romanian government was forced to declare a state of emergency in March 1921 in Bessarabia, but disturbances continued. Between 1921 and 1925 there were 118 Bolshevik incursions over the River Dniester from the Soviet Union into Bessarabia. Several thousand smaller incidents took place within Bessarabia itself, ranging from spying and the sabotage of trains to minor outbreaks of violence. Between 1919 and 1925, the Romanian authorities made over 3,000 arrests in connection with Bolshevik terrorist organizations in Bessarabia; 818 arrests alone were made in connection with the



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Soviet-backed Tatarbunar rebellion in southern Bessarabia in September 1924.40 The Soviets wasted no time in circulating anti-Romanian propaganda to the outside world regarding the trials of those arrested.41 The consequence was that the Bessarabian population was subjected by the Romanian authorities to strict police surveillance and a heavy military presence. Even a hospital near Chişinău was not exempt from requisition as a barracks.42 Relations between the Romanian civil and military authorities and the Bessarabian population were further aggravated by the large number of refugees fleeing from the excesses of the Russian Revolution into Bessarabia in the immediate post-war years. Between January 1918 and April 1922, 168,000 refugees entered Bessarabia and in some towns in the province these newcomers constituted as much as 60 per cent of the overall number of people. Most of these refugees were of Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish origin.43 In Chişinău alone, which had 133,000 permanent residents, there were some 66,500 additional people in 1919.44 This expansion of the population was clearly difficult for the authorities to cope with, especially at a time when Bessarabia was in the grip of a number of serious epidemics, which included typhoid, diphtheria and even smallpox.45 Many of the refugees who entered Bessarabia in the wake of the Russian Revolution were suspected by the Romanian authorities of being Bolshevik infiltrators. It was not only the ethnic minorities, however, which the Romanian authorities suspected of possible Bolshevik and Russian sympathies. Within the majority Romanian-speaking population, in whose name the province had been acquired by Romania, relatively few had a clear sense of a Romanian identity. One of the results of the Russification process in the nineteenth century had been the cultural alienation of a substantial part of the small, ethnic Moldovan urban and professional middle class from the peasants and from the Romanian language which they spoke. Thus, in the interwar period the Moldovan middle class was often strongly Russophile and regarded only Russian as the language of high culture, dismissing Romanian as a peasant language. This was particularly problematic for the Romanian government in the sphere of education where many teachers of ethnic Moldovan origin, whom the government hoped to employ as teachers of Romanian, identified so heavily with the Russian language that their knowledge of Romanian was often rudimentary. To compound the problem, Romanians who lived west of the River Prut had transferred from the Old Church Slavonic to the Latin alphabet in 1862, while in Bessarabia the Slavonic and Russian Cyrillic alphabets continued to be used for the written Romanian language right up to 1918.

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Long before the twentieth century there had been a strong Slavonic influence on the Romanian language spoken east of the River Prut. This was a result of the Moldovans’ long co-habitation and cultural and political interaction with the East Slavs, in particular with the Ukrainians and Poles. Dimitrie Cantemir, writing in the early eighteenth century, thus observed that the ‘Moldovan language’ spoken by the Moldovans who lived along the River Dniester included many words of Polish origin.46 Early in the twentieth century, the historians Alexandru Boldur and Gheorghe Brătianu likewise observed that the Ukrainian connection had greatly influenced both the language and customs of the Moldovans over the course of many centuries, especially in the north of the Moldovan principality.47 Such influences were reinforced in Bessarabia after 1812 by the number of settlers entering the province from Russian Ukraine. The introduction of the Latin alphabet to the Romanian principalities west of the River Prut and the stress on the Romanians’ links to the Latin nations of Western Europe led to the introduction of many words of French, Italian and Latin origin into the Romanian language.48 There were, therefore, certain differences between the Romanian spoken west of the Prut and that spoken in Bessarabia at the time of its unification with Romania in 1918. Indeed, with regard to the French influence on Romanian, ethnic Moldovans were inclined to complain about the ‘spoiled’ language imported by the Romanians into Bessarabia.49 The different cultural and political orbits of Bessarabia and of the Romanian lands west of the River Prut over the preceding centuries were thus felt in language and, since language is one of the markers of nationality, in popular perceptions of identity. The differences which had developed in the Romanian used on either side of the River Prut, together with the Russian orientation of much of the Moldovan middle class, made the Romanianization of education in interwar Bessarabia highly contested.50 As early as the summer of 1917, the Romanian government began organizing instruction in the Romanian language for Moldovan teachers. The Latin alphabet was introduced, and adult language courses were set up in rural areas. Lectures on the culture, history and geography of Romania were delivered to potential teachers. The lecturers included the historians Ştefan Ciobanu and Ion Nistor. Romanian books and maps were distributed among the population and Romanian libraries were opened throughout Bessarabia. Nevertheless, the lack of fully trained Romanian teachers made it necessary to send teachers from elsewhere in Romania to Bessarabia. The Romanian government also introduced language tests to ascertain the proficiency of Moldovan teachers. Both these measures were resented by the local population.



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The Romanian government took specific measures to ‘Romanianize’ the whole education system in Bessarabia in the 1920s. The ministry of education in Bucharest banned the use of Russian as a means of communication in schools and teachers of Russian were purged from the education system. By the late 1930s, there were no state-financed schools operating in either Russian or Ukrainian. Ethnic minorities could set up their own privately-funded schools, although even these were forced to give some instruction in Romanian. Yet despite the government’s efforts at ‘Romanianizing’ the province, much of the Bessarabian population retained an attachment to Russian culture. Even many of the new teachers of Romanian continued to converse in Russian at home. To the disgust of Romanian officials, Moldovan peasants were often found to have pictures of the former Russian imperial family still adorning their walls as late as the 1930s in the belief that they were still being governed by the tsar. By that time there were indications that the Russian language was re-emerging as the vehicle of instruction in many schools, despite the government’s prohibition. Southern Bessarabia, with its large number of long-established minority groups, was particularly susceptible to back-sliding. A school inspector reported in 1936 that ‘the twenty years of Romanian rule and of nationalisation of the minority villages through the schools in Cetatea Albă county have not borne fruit’.51 Nevertheless, the Romanian government’s educational endeavours led to a rise in the literacy rate from its appallingly low level under the tsarist regime. Even so, only 30 per cent of the Bessarabian population was literate compared to 60 per cent of the population in Transylvania.52 Confusion created by the introduction of the Latin alphabet probably accounted for some of this, together with traditionally low attendance at school. Almost one-third of children of all ethnic groups in Bessarabia were still not attending elementary education as late as 1939.53 The ethnic Moldovan peasantry as a whole was, therefore, unlikely to have developed a clear sense of a distinct Romanian national identity during the comparatively brief period of Romanian rule. It is perhaps no surprise that the Romanian-speaking peasantry of Bessarabia should have drawn the attention of the extreme Romanian nationalist (and anti-communist) Legion of the Archangel Michael. The Legion’s founder, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, had been born in Huşi just over the River Prut in Romanian Moldova and had attended university in Iaşi. It was in remote Bessarabian villages in Cahul county that the Legion first began its propaganda campaigns in the early 1930s to mould the Romanian-speaking population into nationally conscious ‘new Romanians’.54 The Romanian government also pursued a policy of Romanianization within the Bessarabian administrative system inherited from the tsarist period.

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Russian-speaking bureaucrats were gradually squeezed out of the administration. Yet even some of the bureaucrats of Moldovan origin were impervious to the admonitions of the Romanian authorities to use the Romanian language. Many bureaucrats were even unwilling to take the required oath of loyalty to the Romanian king and state. As with the Romanianization of the education system, the lack of Romanian-speaking trained personnel proved a problem and many administrators had to be sent from Bucharest to work in the province. For several years after the 1918 union Russophone functionaries had to be utilized and there was considerable administrative overlap between the new Romanian and the older Russian systems. Despite the many examples of corruption and malpractice which emerged, the Romanian government found it impossible to dispense immediately with the Russian zemstvo system in Bessarabia owing to its popularity among the rural population. The fact that local peasant representatives attended meetings of the zemstvo gave the impression that decisions were made in the interests of the peasantry. This contrasted with Greater Romania’s centralized system which depended on (the frequently corrupt) bureaucrats, tax collectors, policemen and teachers appointed directly from Bucharest, over whose selection the local population had no control. By June 1925, however, the Romanian administrative system finally applied to the whole of Bessarabia.55 Attempts to Romanianize the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia likewise proved controversial and unpopular. The Church was now removed from Russia’s religious control and placed under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Orthodox Church with its patriarchate in Bucharest. In 1928, Chişinău regained its metropolitan status and was placed under Metropolitan Gurie Grosu who was assiduous in attempting to reverse Archbishop Lebedev’s Russification policies of the previous century. Grosu either closed Russian churches or forced them to conduct their services in Romanian. This outraged Russian priests and their flocks and early in 1918 Anastasie Gribanovski, the last Russian archbishop in Bessarabia, vainly attempted to create an autonomous Bessarabian Church outside the control of the Romanian patriarchate. The Orthodox faithful of all national groups opposed the conversion from the traditional Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in use west of the Prut. Demonstrations against the change took place in Chişinău in February 1926 and had to be dispersed by the police.56 Many Romanians from outside the province recognized that religious life in Bessarabia, since it was suffused with Russian influences, had a markedly different quality to that in the rest of Romania. The existence of this so-called



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‘Bessarabian Orthodoxy’ created tensions between the local population and Romanian officials as a result of the relative religious indifference sometimes displayed by teachers, administrators and policemen introduced from elsewhere in Romania. Orthodox believers in Bessarabia resented the fact that many priests were detained by the Romanian civil authorities in the early years of the union on suspicion of being pro-Russian. The Romanians feared that the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia might act as a ‘Trojan horse’ for Russia revisionism.57 Interwar Bessarabia’s economic predicament also made it difficult to reconcile the Bessarabian population to the Romanian central government.58 The general agrarian problems affecting Romania during this period were particularly marked in Bessarabia, which had a greater relative proportion of peasants in its overall population than the other provinces of Romania. The peasantry throughout Romania laboured under a 40 per cent tax burden which was largely used to maintain the Romanian bureaucracy and army. The ministry of agriculture received only 3 per cent of the national budget, despite the country’s overwhelmingly rural nature.59 Many Bessarabian peasants had seized land from monasteries and large landowners at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In December 1918, King Ferdinand of Romania had agreed to the radical land reform proposed by the Bessarabian Sfatul Ţării, but the Romanian government subsequently weakened the provisions of the land reform through legislation passed in 1920. Consequently, some land in Bessarabia was returned to former owners or even handed over to Romanians from west of the River Prut. The Bessarabian peasants consequently felt they had been deceived by the Romanian government.60 Land reform in any case failed to solve the problem of rural overpopulation since peasant holdings were continually sub-divided between heirs. Holdings thus quickly became insufficient to provide for the needs of peasant households. Such problems were compounded in Bessarabia by the closure of the border with Russia and the consequent loss of traditional agricultural markets in the Russian Empire. The fruit-growing villages on the lower Dniester were especially affected. Indeed, the Romanian authorities recognized the valuable commercial character of Bessarabia’s fruit plantations which had been created to provision Russia and had been highly profitable before the First World War. As the authors of the interwar Romanian encyclopaedia lamented, as a fruit-growing region Bessarabia ‘could have become in time a California of Europe’ had the border with Russia not been closed.61 The loss of the Russian market was especially disastrous since the rest of Romania, being largely agricultural itself, had little need of Bessarabia’s produce.

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To this were added the problems created by the liquidation of the Russian banks in 1918 and the Romanian government’s initial lack of provision for peasant credit. Some Bessarabian peasants were thereby forced to pay interest as high as 40 per cent to private creditors for loans. As a result, many peasants were forced to sell their livestock, or indeed their land, in order to repay their debts. Whereas the number of horses and other livestock had stood at over four million animals in 1923, this had fallen to well under three million by 1929. Matters were made worse by the frequent droughts which afflicted Bessarabia and crop failure in 1928 led to famine conditions in many areas.62 The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 led to the price of grain in Bessarabia tumbling by between a half and a third.63 Productivity improved in the agricultural sector in the 1930s largely as a result of Romania’s growing economic links with the Third Reich which helped increase exports. With the help of I. G. Farbenindustrie’s ‘Soya’ company, soya bean cultivation expanded in Bessarabia, with the whole crop being sold and exported to Germany.64 A law of 1934 improved the situation of the peasantry by reducing agricultural indebtedness by 50 per cent and by the establishment of Romanian banks. By 1936 there were eighteen banks offering loans at low interest.65 Nevertheless, as Henry Roberts, the historian of early-twentiethcentury rural Romania writes, ‘Bessarabia seems never to have recovered from its loss of the Russian market for its agricultural produce.’66 The Romanian central government made little attempt to expand Bessarabia’s tiny industrial sector, envisaging that Bessarabia would remain an agricultural producer. It is possible that the government was unwilling to invest in the province because a Soviet annexation of Bessarabia could not be ruled out.67 Industrial levels in the 1930s were much the same as they had been in the late tsarist period. Industry was largely restricted to food processing, including the production of vegetable oil and basic consumer items such as textiles and soap. Much of the food processing ‘industry’ was, however, barely industrialized. The Bessarabian milling industry, large as it was compared to that in the rest of Romania, consisted of tens of thousands of primitive mills which harnessed water power directly through a horizontal paddle and vertical axle, without any gearing. A particularly impoverished region within Bessarabia was the drought-ridden Bugeac region in the south of the province. The Bugeac had been inhabited since the nineteenth century by the Gagauz people, who spoke a Turkish dialect but were of Orthodox religion. Notwithstanding the Romanian government’s attempts at Romanianization, the Gagauz underwent a cultural renaissance



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during the interwar period. This was in no small degree owing to the work and writings in the field of Gagauz culture, language and religion of Father Mihail Çakir, who was the first to devise a script for the Gagauz language. The script was initially based on the Cyrillic alphabet but following Romania’s absorption of Bessarabia, Çakir devised a new Latin script similar to the Romanian alphabet.68 Çakir translated religious works into Gagauz, which were the first published texts in the Gagauz language. In the mid-1930s, he also produced a Gagauz-language Orthodox newspaper, as well as a history of the Gagauz. Çakir additionally sought to bring knowledge of Gagauz culture and religion to a wider Romanian audience through contributions to the Romanian journal Viaţa Basarabiei. As a result of his work, Çakir is generally regarded as being the ‘founding father’ of the Gagauz people.69 Nevertheless, the Romanian authorities continued to regard the Gagauz, and even their Orthodox religion, with suspicion. The authors of the interwar Romanian encyclopaedia thus described them as ‘a curious ethnic specimen  – they speak Turkish, have Moldovan names, are Orthodox to the point of bigotry – their walls are covered in icons and religious objects’.70 The Gagauz for their part maintained a consistent hostility to Romanian rule. Of all the new provinces Romania had acquired after the First World War, Bessarabia was almost certainly the least well-integrated into Greater Romania by the eve of the Second World War. Nevertheless, given the enormity of the problems in interwar Bessarabia, the achievements of the central government in modernizing Bessarabia and integrating the province into Romanian life and culture should not be underestimated. Improvements included the extension of democracy (flawed as it was) and the Romanian political party system into Bessarabia. The Romanian government doubled the number of primary schools in Bessarabia as compared with the tsarist era.71 It was under Romanian auspices that the first tractors and other modern agricultural machinery began to be used in rural Bessarabia. The Romanian government did much to develop the province’s transport infrastructure, which included permanent bridges across the River Prut, and road and rail links to the rest of Romania. The journey time between Chişinău and Galaţi on the River Danube in Romanian Moldova, for example, had taken over nineteen hours in 1919. This had been reduced to a mere eight hours and twenty-five minutes by 1939, although the trains continued to travel at a grindingly low speed.72 Roads within Bessarabia remained rudimentary, however, and bad weather adversely affected motorized vehicles. In the 1930s, Bessarabian peasants were still heard to say that ‘if it rains you may reach the nearest town in one day on horseback, two days by ox-cart and three days by motor car’.73 The Romanian authorities proved more successful with modern

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technology and new airports were opened in Chişinău, Cetatea Albă (formerly Akkerman) and Ismail. The Romanian government made considerable strides in improving public health in Bessarabia. By 1940 the rate of infectious disease had been greatly reduced and there were some eighty-two hospitals in Bessarabia, together with numerous sanatoriums.74 Many of these medical facilities were designed and built in the modernist style for which the Romanian capital, Bucharest, was becoming famous in the 1930s. The hospitals in Hotin and Ismail were cases in point. A number of other important modernist buildings, as well as ones designed in the more traditional ‘neo-Romanian’ and ‘neoByzantine’ styles, were built in Ismail in the period 1924 to 1940. Among the ‘neo-Byzantine’ buildings was the Episcopal Cathedral for Cetatea Albă and Ismail, while modernist edifices included a tennis club and the Ismail airport terminal. These buildings transformed the city into an important regional administrative and cultural centre in southern Bessarabia and gave Ismail a distinctive, modern and Romanian aspect.75 Present-day Moldova is still dotted with many buildings erected by the Romanian authorities in the interwar period and designed by Romanian and local architects. These works range in style and size from Nicolae Mertz’s small art deco ‘Coral’ gallery building in Chişinău to the monumental neo-Byzantine Saints Constantine and Elena Cathedral in Bălţi. The Romanian government’s creation of higher educational and cultural institutions was, however, more important for the development of a distinct Romanian identity among at least some of Bessarabia’s Romanian-speaking population. These institutions included the music academy opened in 1920 and the faculties of theology and agronomy opened in 1926 and 1933, respectively, in Chişinău. In 1923 the National Theatre (now the ‘Mihai Eminescu’ National Theatre) was opened in the Bessarabian capital, initially using stage sets and costumes borrowed from the National Theatre in Iaşi. In 1928 the People’s Romanian University was opened in Chişinău on the initiative of intellectuals from Bessarabia and from west of the River Prut to promote Romanian culture and national unity, although the province still lacked a state-sponsored university. Romanian-language reviews such as Viaţa Basarabiei (‘Bessarabian Life’) and Cuvânt Moldovenesc (which had been founded in tsarist Bessarabia) flourished, although their editors did not always approve of the centralizing tendencies of the Romanian government. Cultural houses were also established in rural areas and Romanian culture was propagated through organizations such as the Cultural Society of Romanians in Bessarabia and the Bessarabian branch of the



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Transylvanian Romanian cultural society ‘ASTRA’. ‘Radio Bessarabia’ began its first broadcasts in 1939.76 Cultural Romanianization was reinforced by regular visits by Romanian officials and members of the royal family to Bessarabia. King Carol II and his son, Prince Michael, visited the province on many occasions during the 1930s. The Romanian authorities also erected statues to commemorate Romanian heroes and other icons of Romanian identity. Among these was a copy of the Roman Capitoline wolf, emblematic of the Latinity of the Romanian people and their presumed descent from the Romans, set up in Chişinău in 1921. Carol II’s predecessor, King Ferdinand (d. 1927), under whose auspices Bessarabia had been unified with Romania, was memorialized in three statues, including one in Chişinău unveiled in 1939. The most culturally significant statue erected in Chişinău by the Romanian authorities was, however, that of the medieval prince Stephen the Great by the Moldovan sculptor Alexandru Plămădeală. This was unveiled in 1928 just outside what is now known as the Stephen the Great Park and replaced the statue of Tsar Alexander II set up in 1914. Stephen the Great had already emerged as one of the foremost Romanian national heroes during the nineteenth century and a statue of Stephen had been erected outside the Palace of Culture in Iaşi in Romanian Moldova in 1883. The purpose of the statue in Chişinău was to convey the message that there was a historical basis for the unity of the former Moldovan lands between the Prut and Dniester rivers with the Romanian lands west of the Prut. In the 1990s, Stephen and his Chişinău statue were, however, to become potent symbols of a Moldovan identity distinct from that of the Romanians.77 Despite the endeavours of the Romanian government in the interwar era, many ethnic Moldovans remained relatively unmoved by the attempts to persuade them of their affinities with the Romanians west of the Prut. Significantly, the daily press in Chişinău and other cities and towns, which informed the world view of literate Moldovans, remained largely in the hands of Russians and Jews. Despite the appearance of a number of Romanian-language newspapers in Bessarabia in the immediate aftermath of unification with Romania, by 1931 there was not a single Romanian daily newspaper in the province, compared to one in Yiddish and seven in Russian.78 The British observer, H. Hessell Tiltman, who visited Chişinău in the 1930s, observed that the city still retained its Russian aspect in everything from hotel furnishings to the ubiquity of vodka. The only exception to this was, he claimed, the presence of corseted Romanian army officers. Tiltman, who clearly regarded the Romanian authorities as incompetent and corrupt and the Romanian military as vain and indolent, commented that

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‘Not for nothing are corset shops for men, the photographers’ studios, and the brothels the only business at Kishinev (sic) which are flourishing under Rumanian rule’.79 The Jewish population of Bessarabia remained by and large a community apart from the Moldovan peasant majority. Of the 200,000 Jews in Bessarabia in 1930, the majority spoke Yiddish as their native language, while their second language of communication was invariably Russian rather than Romanian.80 The Jewish population overwhelmingly regarded itself as Jewish by nationality as well as religion and were thus among the least acculturated of the Jewish populations living in interwar Romania.81 Bessarabia was the strongest base in Romania for Zionism and Zionist youth groups, as well as being the home of the Romanian Yiddish press. It was a Jewish Bessarabian poet, Yankev Sternberg, who brought Yiddish literature and theatre to Bucharest. The Romanian government, in its efforts to undermine Russian culture in Bessarabia, initially gave financial support to Yiddish and Hebrew schools. This policy was ultimately undermined by the Romanianization of the education system throughout the country, although privately funded Hebrew schools continued to flourish. Throughout the interwar period, the Jewish population of Bessarabia, especially its youth, was the subject of constant surveillance by the secret police (Siguranţa). The secret police regarded the Jews of Bessarabia as fundamentally anti-Romanian and inclined towards socialism and communism.82 The Jewish population throughout Romania was greatly affected by the emergence of official antisemitic legislation in the later 1930s. The government of the notorious antisemites Octavian Goga and Alexandru Cuza enacted laws to shut down Jewish-owned newspapers and Jewish libraries. The antisemitic course was continued when King Carol II set up his personal dictatorship in February 1938. By September 1939, some 270,000 Romanian Jews had been deprived of their citizenship and many had lost their economic assets as a result of the Romanianization of the economy. With Romanianization policies affecting all of Bessarabia’s ethnic minorities, it was hardly surprising that many developed an anti-Romanian sentiment. This, together with the ethnic Moldovans’ relatively weak sense of national kinship with the Romanians west of the Prut, meant that throughout the interwar period Bessarabia continued to be a target for infiltration by its powerful Soviet neighbour, which had never accepted the loss of the province. As a contemporary observer noted, ‘Bessarabia was honey-combed with revolutionary organisations, financed and directed from Soviet Russia. These



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exploited the post-war economic and political difficulties of the country, [and] the mistakes of the new regime.’83 The most significant Soviet incursion into Bessarabian territory occurred on 14 September 1924. The revolutionary agitator known as ‘Nenin’, a former revolutionary commissar and head of the Odessa revolutionary committee, instigated an occupation of the southern Bessarabian town of Tatarbunar, which was mainly inhabited by ethnic Bulgarians. Nenin, armed by the Russians, hoped to incite the local population into rebellion against the Romanians. The Romanian authorities crushed the uprising, but Nenin’s frequent references to the imminent foundation of a ‘soviet republic of Moldova’ indicated that the Soviets were not about to end their pressure on Bessarabia.84 A few weeks later, in October 1924, the Soviet Union announced the creation of the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR). This was created out of lands belonging to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on the left bank of the River Dniester, a region which the Romanians knew as ‘Transnistria’. The territory of the MASSR had never formed part of the historic principality of Moldova or of Russian-ruled Bessarabia. The purpose of the MASSR was to undermine the sovereignty claimed by the Romanian state over Bessarabia and to act as the launching pad to provoke revolution in Bessarabia against Romanian rule. The MASSR was thus to provide a firm territorial base from which the Soviets could continue their physical and propagandistic incursions into Romanian Bessarabia. In keeping with their revisionist claim to Bessarabia, the Soviets declared the whole of Romanian Bessarabia to be part of the new MASSR, with the official capital at Chişinău (in Romanian Bessarabia) but with a provisional capital first in Balta (in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) and from 1929 in Tiraspol in the MASSR. In reality, however, the MASSR was administered from offices in Kyiv, in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.85 Almost 50 per cent of the MASSR’s population were in fact Ukrainian, and there were also substantial Russian and Jewish minorities. Only a minority of the MASSR’s population were in fact Romanian-speaking ethnic Moldovans. A significant number of Romanian-speakers who lived in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were left out of the new MASSR. Within the new republic the highest Communist Party and state positions were reserved for nonMoldovans.86 The Soviet authorities hoped, nevertheless, that the success of the republic would convince the Moldovans of Bessarabia of the benefits of Soviet ‘progress’ and undermine their loyalty to the Romanian state. Thus, according to a work written in the 1950s, the interwar MASSR was a ‘beacon of liberty’

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and ‘the glow of electric light seen across the river [Dniester i.e. in Bessarabia], the sound of happy song, the roar of tractors, and the sight of collective-farm trucks loaded high with rich produce, was in itself sufficient propaganda for socialism’.87 In reality, however, in the 1920s and 1930s the republic’s unfortunate inhabitants were subjected to collectivization, requisitioning and starvation, as in neighbouring Ukraine.88 Such inconvenient realities did not deter the Soviet political and cultural elite of the MASSR from expending considerable intellectual energy on a Moldovan nation-building project as part of the attempt to undermine the unity of Romania. Thus, the Soviets claimed in the 1920s that the Moldovans of both Bessarabia and of the MASSR were an ethnic group distinct from the Romanians who lived west of the river Prut. According to this view, the Moldovans and Romanians spoke entirely separate languages.89 Soviet linguists, who included the People’s Commissar for Enlightenment in the MASSR, Pavel Chior, as well as I. A. Malai and Leonid Madan, set about creating a Moldovan language. This was to be based upon the dialect spoken by the Moldovan peasantry in central Bessarabia. Out of this, the Soviets hoped to construct a standardized grammar and a literary Moldovan which would be clearly distinct from the ‘Frenchified’ Romanian employed west of the River Prut. In 1929, Leonid Madan’s Moldovan grammar in the Cyrillic script was published in Tiraspol. In his other writings, Madan even claimed that there were racial differences between the Moldovans and Romanians.90 Once they began the serious work of imposing the new language upon the ethnic Moldovans in the MASSR, the Soviet authorities ran into the same problems faced by Romanianizers in interwar Bessarabia, and the Russifers before them. These problems included a lack of trained teachers, insufficient textbooks and a foot-dragging peasantry. Such problems were compounded by the fact that schools in the MASSR had previously been heavily ‘Ukrainianized’. The lands of the MASSR had after all been carved out of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was perhaps therefore not entirely surprising that propagandists frequently discovered that villagers found the newly constructed language impenetrable. In any case, in 1932 the Soviet authorities drew a halt to the ‘Moldovanization’ campaign and the theory of a separate Moldovan language and identity. The Latin alphabet was now introduced to the MASSR and the Soviet authorities informed linguists that the Moldovan language should be comprehensible throughout the MASSR, Bessarabia and Romania. The move to the Latin alphabet effectively signified recognition by the Soviet authorities of the identity of the Moldovan language with Romanian and of the affinity



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between the Moldovan people and the Romanians.91 The Soviets now hoped that through these revised policies they could successfully disseminate pro-Soviet propaganda throughout Romania. Leonid Madan’s works, together with those of his colleagues who had advocated a separate Moldovan language and identity, were removed from libraries in the MASSR. The arrest and imprisonment of the ‘Moldovanists’ predictably ensued. The attempt to undermine the Romanian state through the creation of the MASSR proceeded together with continued Soviet armed incursions over the Dniester border into Bessarabia. A  dangerous incident occurred in October 1929 when a Soviet boat approached the Romanian shore near Tighina and opened fire on Romanian border guards. The exchange of fire lasted over quarter of an hour, while an individual, who had appeared on the Romanian bank of the river from behind some bushes, threw hand grenades at the border post.92 By the early 1930s, there was, nonetheless, some improvement in Soviet-Romanian relations and in 1934 Romania finally established full diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The Soviets, however, still refused to acknowledge Romanian sovereignty over Bessarabia. This factor, together with the strong anti-Bolshevik sentiments of King Carol II and the Romanian political establishment, prevented the Romanian foreign minister, Nicolae Titulescu, from concluding a mutual assistance pact with the Soviet Union in 1936.93 Indeed, a growing number of people in Romania began to see in Germany a potential counterweight to the spread of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe in general and as a potential ally against Soviet ambitions in Bessarabia in particular. The Romanian government therefore sought to establish closer diplomatic and economic relations with the Third Reich in the later 1930s. Romania’s rapprochement with Germany did not, however, prevent the Soviet Union from continuing to apply pressure on Romania. In 1937 the Soviet authorities made renewed claims to Bessarabia.

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8

The Second World War and Soviet rule

In September 1939, the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union under the terms of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact eliminated Romania’s only ally against the Soviet Union. Rumours now circulated in Bucharest that Germany had recognized the Soviet Union’s ‘interest’ in Bessarabia under a secret protocol attached to the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Romanian diplomats sought to convince German officials of their countries’ common traditions of antiBolshevism and the advantages of containing Soviet expansionism. Germany’s need to retain Soviet goodwill throughout 1940, and the concentration of German forces in Western and Northern Europe meant, however, that Germany was unwilling to support Romania against the Soviet claim to Bessarabia. On 26 June 1940, the Soviets presented their ultimatum to the Romanian government. The ultimatum demanded the surrender of Bessarabia within twenty-four hours, together with northern Bukovina. The ultimatum justified the Soviet claim on Bessarabia on the spurious grounds that it had an overall Ukrainian majority. The excuse for the annexation of northern Bukovina ‘was a novelty of international law: as a compensation for the twenty-two years of Romanian occupation in Bessarabia!’1 The Soviets also demanded the Herța region, which had belonged neither to Bessarabia nor to Bukovina, but was in fact in the northeast of Romanian Moldova.2 This demand for Herța came about due to the thick pencil line which Molotov, the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, had drawn on the map of the area which he handed to the Romanian ambassador at the time of the ultimatum. The line covered a band of territory several kilometres wide, which the Soviets subsequently interpreted to their own advantage.3 On 28 June 1940 King Carol accepted the ultimatum. The king had been strongly advised to do so by German and Italian officials who feared that Romania was insufficiently prepared for a military conflict with the Soviet Union. Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, who evidently had taken a dim view of the fighting ability of the Romanians, recorded in his diary for that day

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that ‘Romania yields, rather sadly, but also with a swiftness worthy of Romanian traditions as a belligerent people’.4 As a result of the Soviet annexations, Romania lost 50,762 km2 of territory and some 3.7 million people, of which more than half were Romanian-speakers.5 The loss of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and fear of further Soviet incursions into Romania, led directly to King Carol’s request for an alliance with the Third Reich. During July and August 1940, the Soviets openly backed Hungarian and Bulgarian revisionist claims on the Romanian provinces of Transylvania and the Dobruja on the Black Sea, respectively. By late August, the Romanians expected an imminent invasion by the Soviets from newly-annexed northern Bukovina. The Romanian rapprochement with Germany did not, however, prevent Romania’s loss of northern Transylvania to Hungary under the Axis’s Vienna Award of 30 August 1940. During the events leading up to Romania’s loss of northern Transylvania in the summer of 1940, it became clear that both the Romanian government and public regarded Transylvania as more integral to the Romanian state than Bessarabia, hard though the loss of this province had proved. This attitude was reflected in a note written by Romanian Prime Minister Ion Gigurtu to German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop on 27 August 1940. Gigurtu informed Ribbentrop that the Romanian people had accepted the need to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union in order to avoid war. The question of transferring part of Transylvania to Hungary was of a quite different order, however, since ‘Transylvania was always considered by us as a fortress of Romanianism, in which our nation … developed’. The Romanian people had thus relinquished Bessarabia, Gigurtu argued, precisely in order to resist revisionist claims on Transylvania where the Romanians had ‘lived for eighteen centuries’.6 Despite the anger resulting from the loss of northern Transylvania to Hungary under the terms of the Vienna Award, it was clear to King Carol that in the international situation of 1940, protection from further attack by the Soviet Union, acting in concert with Hungary and Bulgaria, could only be provided by the Third Reich. Moreover, alliance with, and loyalty to, Germany in a war against the Soviet Union brought with it the possibility of the return of all the lost Romanian territories as part of a post-war German-brokered peace settlement. Even though King Carol abdicated in September, a victim of his own mismanagement that had brought massive territorial losses to Romania, his policy of rapprochement remained under General Ion Antonescu, who assumed the regency on behalf of Carol’s young son, King Michael I.



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General Ion Antonescu’s signing of the Tripartite Pact on 23 November 1940, which brought Romania into alliance with Germany, Italy and Japan, was thus the culmination of the policy of rapprochement with Germany begun by King Carol as a direct result of the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia in June 1940. A year later, on 22 June 1941, the Romanian army, commanded by Antonescu, crossed the River Prut into Soviet Bessarabia as Germany’s ally in the invasion of the Soviet Union. On 29 June, the Romanian authorities unleashed a series of pogroms against the Jewish population of Iaşi which now lay behind the Romanian army’s front line. Many thousands of Jews perished in what was effectively the start of the Romanian genocide of the Jewish population.7 By late July, the Romanian army had annexed the territories seized by the Soviet Union in 1940. On 3 September 1941 Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and Herţa were officially reincorporated into Romania. Antonescu took the decision to continue the fight against the Soviet Union beyond the former Romanian-Soviet Dniester frontier into ‘Transnistria’, although he did not envisage that the Romania occupation of Transnistria would be permanent. Antonescu feared that in such an event the Germans would regard Romanian gains in Transnistria as sufficient compensation for the loss of northern Transylvania to Hungary. Antonescu’s ultimate objective was not a permanent expansion of Romanian territory east of the River Dnieser. Rather, he envisaged the reconstruction of Romania in its pre-June 1940 borders, which had included Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, Herţa and northern Transylvania.8 It was, nevertheless, necessary for Antonescu to establish a Romanian-run administration in Transnistria in 1941 in order to maintain order behind the Axis’s military front line.9 Romanian wartime Transnistria included Ukrainian lands stretching up to the southern Bug River, which lay 100 km east of Romania’s 1940 border. As it turned out, the Romanian occupation lasted only until early 1944 when the Romanians withdrew in the face of the Red Army’s advance through Ukraine. Short though the Romanian occupation was in Transnistria, the period witnessed a savage and murderous Romanian policy towards the Jews and Gypsies of Transnistria. Jews were also deported to Transnistria from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina where they were accused of having supported the Red Army’s annexation of the provinces.10 Between July 1941 and April 1942, a Jewish ghetto was established in Chişinău by the Romanian authorities. Some 10,000 Jews of all ages were held here. The ghetto was gradually emptied through mass shootings and deportations to Transnistria.11

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Despite Antonescu’s unwillingness to countenance a permanent incorporation of Transnistria into Romania, works were published during the occupation justifying a permanent Romanian claim to the area on historic and ethnic grounds. Such arguments with respect to Transnistria had already been put forward following the union of Romania with Bessarabia in 1918. Thus, the historians Nicolae Iorga and Ion Nistor had alleged that the Romanian population of the Transnistrian area was some 400,000–500,000 persons. This was clearly an exaggeration since in the 1920s the Romanian-speaking population of the region was only some 10 per cent of a total population of about 2.5  million.12 Iorga and Nistor further argued that although the River Dniester had been the eastern border of the medieval principality of Moldova, it was a political, rather than an ethno-national, frontier. According to Iorga, ‘by 1400 the Dniester was not only a Moldovan border, but also a Romanian river’. In other words, the River Dniester was populated on both banks by Romanianspeakers. Iorga and Nistor stressed the importance of Moldovan landowners and traders throughout the centuries in Transnistria, which was not without foundation, but they denied any significant Slavonic presence or influence in the area before the eighteenth century (in the face of much evidence to the contrary).13 Similar justifications were put forward during the Romanian occupation of Transnistria in the Second World War. Emil Diaconescu claimed a continuous Romanian-speaking presence in the area, and even beyond the southern Bug river, from antiquity up until the contemporary occupation. Like Nicolae Iorga before him, Diaconescu stressed a Romanian-speaking presence in, and administration over, the Transnistrian area until Catherine the Great’s conquests of the lands which established Russian rule there in 1792. Diaconescu alleged that before Catherine’s reign, ‘life in Moldova beyond the Dniester did not differ from the rest of the Romanian lands’.14 An even more explicitly ‘blood and soil’ argument was put forward by Vasile Netea who stated in 1943 that ‘The Transnistrians are blood of our blood and their soul part of the great soul of Romania’. Netea failed to find any differences whatsoever in the lifestyle, culture or folklore between the ‘Romanians’ on either side of the Dniester.15 Without denying the presence and influence of Romanian-speakers beyond the River Dniester throughout the previous centuries, their true numbers in Romanianoccupied Transnistria in the early 1940s were hardly sufficient to justify longterm occupation by the Romanian authorities. The existence of the works cited, however, suggests that some Romanians believed a permanent annexation of Transnistria by Romania was viable. The



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Romanian Orthodox Church was particularly active in wartime Transnistria and writers stressed the links between the Orthodox churches in Moldova and Transnistria from the seventeenth century onwards. Certainly, ecclesiastical links on either side of the Dniester were strong during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni was active in both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church in the principalities. The eparchy of Chişinău and Hotin, presided over by Bănulescu-Bodoni and his successor Dimitrie Sulima between 1813 and 1837, had also extended from the River Prut to the Bug.16 In August 1941, when the Romanian administration was being established in Transnistria, the organization Misiunii ortodoxe române în Transnistria (The Romanian Orthodox Mission to Transnistria) was set up. Its purpose was to ‘re-Christianize’ the area and reorganize the Orthodox Church following its lapse into Bolshevik atheism. Some 250 ‘missionary’ priests were sent to Transnistria from Romania to collaborate with over 200 local priests on this project. By 1943 the mission had rebuilt several hundred churches and chapels and re-established religious instruction in schools in Transnistria. Two seminaries had also been opened, as well as a theology department in Odessa.17 Visarion Puiu, who had been metropolitan of Bukovina prior to the annexation of northern Bukovina by the Soviets in 1940, became head of the diocese of Transnistria which had its episcopal seat in Odessa. These Romanian initiatives were well-received by local Ukrainians who had been unable to practise their Orthodox faith under the Soviet regime.18 Notwithstanding these successes in the revival of Orthodox spirituality in Transnistria, it became clear to the Romanian government following the German disaster at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 that the Soviet Union was likely to defeat the Third Reich. The Romanians opened negotiations with the Western Allies, and subsequently the Soviet Union, in order to bring Romania into the war on the Allied side. By March 1944 the Red Army had reached the River Prut (the western border of Bessarabia), and in April the Soviet government declared the Prut to be the permanent frontier between Romania and the Soviet Union. The demarcation of the Prut frontier, and thus the incorporation of Bessarabia into the Soviet Union, was endorsed by the armistice between Romania and the Soviet Union which was signed following the ‘palace coup’ of 23 August 1944. The coup, organized by the young King Michael, led to Marshal Antonescu’s fall from power and Romania’s entry into the war on the Allied side. The Soviet Union’s possession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina was subsequently confirmed by the Paris peace treaties of February 1947.

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Following the original annexation of Bessarabia by the Soviet Union back in June 1940, Stalin had incorporated the northern Bessarabian district of Hotin and the southern Bessarabian districts of Cetatea Albă and Ismail (which included the port of Chilia) into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The northern Bukovina and the Herța region were also awarded to the Ukraine. All these territories had significant Ukrainian populations. Hotin subsequently became known as Khotyn, Ismail became Izmail, and Chilia and Cetatea Albă were renamed Kilija and Bilhorod Dnistrovsky, respectively. In placing large areas of Bessarabian territory within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Stalin ensured that the strategically important Danube mouth and a large area of the Black Sea coast (the historic Bugeac) were in the loyal hands of the Ukrainians. These had, after all, been fully ‘Sovietized’ in previous decades unlike the Moldovans. Through the transfer of the former Romanian territories, however, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic also gained a substantial Moldovan minority of some 337,000 people.19 On 2 August 1940 the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) was created from the union of the remainder of Bessarabia with the western part of the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) which the Soviets had created on the left bank of the River Dniester in 1924. The larger, eastern portion of the former MASSR was returned to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The new MSSR thus included left-bank towns such as Tiraspol, which had never belonged to the principality of Moldova or to Bessarabia but had been the capital of the interwar MASSR. In 1941, Tiraspol was subordinated to Chişinău which now became the capital of the new Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic.20 At only 33,700 km2, the MSSR was the second smallest republic in the Soviet Union. The population of the new republic was 2.4  million of which the proportion of ethnic Moldovans had risen to some 68.8 per cent of the population owing to the loss of those areas in northern and southern Bessarabia with substantial Ukrainian populations. Additionally, the number of Germans and Jews living in the republic had been significantly reduced during the Second World War. The German population of Soviet Moldova, which had numbered some 81,000 in 1930, was depleted as a result of wartime deportation to the Third Reich and elimination after the war as collaborators. By the 1950s there were fewer than 4,000 Germans in Moldova. The Jewish population numbered less than 100,000 by 1945 and declined thereafter due to emigration to Israel, standing at only 2 per cent of the Moldovan population by 1979.21



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The MSSR was to undergo further significant demographic changes under Soviet rule. The Soviet deportations of the indigenous population of the MSSR were designed to ensure ideological and economic conformity. Stalin was well-known for his persecution of peoples who had been exposed to non-communist systems. He regarded the inhabitants of the MSSR, who had belonged to ‘bourgeois’ Romania during the interwar period, as fundamentally untrustworthy and likely to be hostile to the elimination of private property through collectivization. Executions and deportations were thus the result of the Soviet annexations. Following the initial seizure of Bessarabia in June 1940, Romanian officials, army officers, former Sfatul Ţării members, politicians and nationalists, who had not already fled to Romania, were eliminated by deportation or execution. Landowners, traders and many ordinary Bessarabians met a similar fate. Over four hundred people were executed in July 1940 in Chişinău and buried in the grounds of the Metropolitan Palace, the Theological Institute and the backyard of the Italian consulate where the NKVD had established its headquarters. A further wave of shootings and deportations took place in mid-June 1941 prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union.22 Following the return of the Soviets to the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic in 1944, even members of the Communist Party were not immune from the charge of ‘collaboration’ with the wartime Romanian regime and were subject to murder and deportation. A further mass deportation took place in July 1949 in connection with the collectivization campaign which primarily targeted ‘kulaks’ or wealthier peasants. These ‘class enemies’ were transported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. The MSSR’s last major deportation took place in April 1951 and was largely directed at religious elements, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses. It has been claimed that together with the 150,000–200,000 victims of the 1946–7 famine (and the victims of executions, deportations and the famine of the early 1930s in the MASSR), the total number of direct victims of Stalinism in Soviet Moldova may amount to as many as 300,000–350,000 people. In addition, untold numbers of people suffered indirectly from Soviet policies.23 The Stalinist deportations were subsequently condemned by Nikita Khrushchev, but migration from the MSSR continued as part of Khrushchev’s ‘Virgin Lands’ project in the Soviet east. During the late 1950s and early 1960s thousands of Moldovan peasants ‘volunteered’ to take part in the development of new agricultural land in Soviet Asia. Levels of deportation were so high that villages made up solely of Romanianspeakers were to be found in the area between the Ural and Altai mountains in the Soviet Union. In 1964 a policy of forced assignment of Moldovan graduates to compulsory work places across the Soviet Union was rolled out and many

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ethnic Moldovans were sent to Central Asia and the Far Eastern territories.24 To this day, there are villages of ethnic Moldovans in Siberia who continue to maintain their Moldovan folk traditions.25 Economically primitive at the best of times, Moldova had been devastated by the Second World War, which led to massive loss of livestock and agricultural equipment. With the onset of Soviet collectivization in 1944 in the MSSR came the attendant evils of agricultural taxation and requisitioning of food stuffs. Communist officials were not above applying the use of torture to achieve their targets.26 The effects of the war and drought gave rise initially to the famine of 1946–7. There can be no doubt, however, that the continuation of agricultural taxation and requisitioning was a crucial contributing factor in prolonging the famine.27 (In this regard, it is instructive that a severe drought in Bessarabia in 1935 did not lead to famine due to the intervention of the Romanian authorities and the Red Cross.) Once the decision to give the starving peasantry food aid was finally taken in 1947, bureaucratic incompetence, theft and malice took its toll. One president of a Soviet village refused to distribute food to starving villagers, advising one woman to make ham out of her four deceased relatives.28 Indeed, as in the famine of the early 1930s in the Soviet Union, cannibalism was not unknown. For the Soviet authorities, these desperate conditions in 1946–7 undoubtedly assisted the process of collectivization since it forced many otherwise reluctant peasants to join the collective farms in the hope of being fed. Fear of being classified as a ‘kulak’ and the deportation of 1949 were further incentives which led to 80 per cent of land being collectivized by November of that year. Fear and violence were thus crucial factors in the march to collectivization since with an average of one cow, thirteen sheep and ten hens per farm, it was hardly surprising if the peasants were unconvinced of the benefits of joining the collective farms.29 Being a member of the collective was not, however, the end of the peasants’ woes since all farms were under the centralized control of the agricultural commissariat whose officers were often incompetent. A collective farm ‘aristocracy’ of party bureaucrats and local NKVD staff quickly grew up, the members of which frequently stole agricultural produce, livestock and even land itself from the collectives.30 There was no mass armed resistance to the communist takeover and collectivization in the immediate post-war era in the MSSR comparable to that in the Baltic states or the Ukraine. This was perhaps owing to a relative paucity of nationally conscious Moldovan intellectuals and representatives of the liberal professions, most of whom, if they had not succumbed to Soviet brutality and



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deportations, had fled to Romania in 1940.31 The extent of Moldovan resistance should not, however, be underestimated, especially in connection with collectivization. In this context, resistance could involve anything from nondeclaration of land or harvests to violent attacks on party and state institutions and personnel. The assassination of collective farm organizers and the burning of their houses together with bread depots and mills was not unknown. Some of this Moldovan resistance reflected continued pan-Romanian sentiment. It manifested itself in anti-Soviet propaganda leaflets affirming that Moldova would soon return to Romania and including prayers for the exiled Romanian King Carol II and his son King Michael. Moreover, six armed Moldovan resistance organizations which harassed Soviet officials have been identified from the postwar period. These included the Arcaşii lui Ştefan (the Archers of Stephen, i.e. Stephen the Great) which specifically sought Bessarabia’s reincorporation into Romania.32 Resistance to Sovietization ended following Leonid Brezhnev’s appointment as first secretary of the Communist Party in the MSSR in 1950. During his two years in office, Brezhnev oversaw the completion of collectivization, together with its attendant deportations. Despite the grim conditions in the republic during Brezhnev’s time in office, he was accepted with some enthusiasm by sections of the Moldovan population. A general with a distinguished war record, Brezhnev was a dashing young man. The former Hungarian communist Sándor Kopácsi recalled meeting Brezhnev when the Red Army entered Budapest in November 1944. ‘[Brezhnev] wore a uniform cut of English cloth and boots fashioned of the finest kid. He smoked through a long cigarette-holder. The ladies couldn’t help but stare after him.’33 Open and accessible, Brezhnev established life-long links with members of the Communist Party in the MSSR. For his part, Brezhnev had a genuine affection for Moldova and its people and aided the development of sport in the republic. Brezhnev was responsible for opening the republic’s first football stadium in 1952, as well as popularizing water polo. Brezhnev maintained links with Moldovan football players and other sportsmen all his life. Another future leader of the Soviet Union who spent part of his career in Moldova was Konstantin Chernenko. It appears that Chernenko had fallen foul of his superiors on account of his sexual dalliances and was sent to Moldova as punishment. Chernenko worked as head of propaganda in the republic from 1948 to 1956.34 Brezhnev and his colleagues ensured that the economic and administrative systems within the republic were fully coordinated with those across the rest of the Soviet Union.35 This included the application of official atheism. Signs

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and public symbols of religion were prohibited and the interwar Bessarabian Metropolitan Church was dismantled. Its priests, if they had not fled to Romania, were forced underground, deported or executed. Evangelists for atheism were sent by the Soviet authorities to towns and villages throughout the republic to ensure that Christians abandoned their faith. Church property of all denominations, together with that of the Jewish community, was confiscated and churches either demolished or converted for secular use. The Cathedral of the Nativity in Chişinău became an exhibition centre, while the city’s Church of the Transfiguration was transformed into a planetarium. Moldova’s monasteries were also given over to secular purposes. The medieval foundation of Căpriana, for example, became a sanatorium and its refectory became a club for parties and weddings. Saharna monastery was converted into a storehouse, while the cave monastery of Tipova became a tobacco warehouse. Japca monastery alone remained open during the communist period. Church schools and seminaries throughout the MSSR were closed and theology was no longer taught at university. Not a single religious text was published in Moldova between 1944 and 1990.36 Soviet policies affected all ethnic groups in the MSSR but the authorities particularly distrusted the ethnic Moldovans who had once lived among their Romanian co-nationals.37 In the post-war decades, Soviet leaders attempted to ‘dilute’ the potentially disloyal indigenous Moldovan population by encouraging immigration by Russians and Ukrainians into the MSSR. These were sent as political and administrative workers to staff industrial enterprises. Immigration ran at around 200,000–300,000 between 1944 and 1959, and some 10,000 per annum in subsequent years.38 Nevertheless, the ethnic Moldovan proportion of the MSSR’s overall population was still a relatively healthy 64.5 per cent in 1989, on account of the Moldovans’ higher birth rate relative to the other nationalities.39 Ukrainians and Russians dominated the Communist Party in Moldova together with its organs of coercion and the state-run economic sector. Consequently, in the post-war era, many Moldovans felt they had become second-class citizens in the republic which bore their name.40 In 1940, Ukrainians dominated the Moldovan Communist Party and even by the late 1980s the number of ethnic Moldovans in the party was under 50 per cent, with Ukrainians and Russians making up the rest of the membership. Tellingly, the MSSR’s longest running first secretary, Ivan Bodiul (1961–1980), was a Russified Moldovan from the Ukraine who never mastered the Moldovan language. Consequently, Bodiul required an interpreter when Romania’s President Ceauşescu visited the MSSR



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in 1976. Bodiul was much more comfortable dealing with Russian-speakers than Moldovans. Of the five individuals whom Bodiul awarded the title ‘Hero of Socialist Work’, only one was an ethnic Moldovan.41 Ethnic Moldovans who did rise to importance within the republic, such as Semion Grossu, first secretary from 1980 to 1989, tended to come from the leftbank, or ‘Transnistrian’, side of the Dniester which had once been part of the MASSR. These ‘Transnistrians’ were completely loyal to the Soviet Union and fully integrated into Russian culture. The fact that the Ukraine and the MASSR had been collectivized and Sovietized in the pre-war decades made their inhabitants infinitely more reliable from the Soviet authorities’ point of view than those who lived on the ‘Bessarabian’ right bank of the Dniester. Only as late as 1989 did the MSSR get a ‘Bessarabian’ (i.e. non-Transnistrian) first secretary, Petru Lucinschi (1989–91), although even he had spent most of his career elsewhere in the Soviet Union. The Khrushchev era did see ‘Bessarabian’ Moldovans enter middling and higher positions of power, but the relative underrepresentation of ethnic Moldovans in higher education meant that few Moldovans entered politics. Leonid Brezhnev’s elevation to the highest office in the Soviet Union in 1964 also proved detrimental to the ‘Bessarabian’ Moldovans. As first secretary in Moldova in the early 1950s, Brezhnev had built up particularly strong links with party apparatchiks from the left bank of the Dniester. Transnistrians thus continued to be favoured in the running of Moldovan affairs. This situation gave rise to the saying ca să fii ministru – tre’ să fii de peste Nistru (‘to become a minister, you must be from the other side of the Dniester’). By the 1980s this had created something of a fifth column of resentful ‘Bessarabian’ Moldovans within the Communist Party who would play a crucial role in the ultimate downfall of the Soviet republic.42 The overriding importance of the ‘Transnistrian’ portion of the MSSR east of the River Dniester was also apparent economically and militarily after the Second World War. Transnistria, although only some 12 per cent of the republic’s landmass, came to account for one-third of industrial output and 90 per cent of the republic’s energy production. The hydroelectric centre on the Dniester at Dubăsari was built in the early 1950s. The Moldavskaia thermal power station, opened in the early 1960s on Lake Cuciurgani on the MSSR’s Ukrainian border, was one of the biggest electrical plants in the south-west of the Soviet Union. This power station still produces a substantial proportion of Moldova’s electricity. Other heavy industries located in Transnistria included the Rîbniţa steel works, opened in 1984, which produced high-quality rolled metal. Much of the postwar Ukrainian and Russian emigration to the MSSR was to supply personnel

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for these factories. Some four-fifths of the Transnistrian population was thus involved in industry, construction or the service sector.43 From 1956 the Soviet 14th Army, which formed part of the Soviet Union’s Odessa military district, was also based in Transnistria. In the event of war, the 14th Army was to invade the Balkans, Greece and Turkey, with the Suez Canal and North Africa as secondary strategic objectives.44 Associated industries established in Tiraspol transformed the region into a major supplier of weapons and technical equipment for the Soviet military, and a military airfield was built nearby. Transnistria thus became strategically vital to the military capabilities of the Soviet Union. The ‘Bessarabian’ part of the MSSR, on the right bank of the Dniester, remained largely rural (together with most of the ethnic Moldovan population who resided there). Indeed, the MSSR had the largest rural population of all the Soviet republics save Kyrgyzstan. Soviet-era industrialization led to engineering, tractor-assembly and manufacturing of washing machines and refrigerators in Chişinău, but with some three-quarters of Moldova’s land comprising fertile black soil, agricultural produce became the MSSR’s main contribution to the Soviet economy. In the post-war decades, some small-scale private enterprise farming was gradually allowed, and agriculture in the republic was, therefore, relatively productive. Some of the republic’s most talented citizens took up careers in agricultural management.45 From the 1950s onwards, the republic produced a significant proportion of the Soviet Union’s agricultural produce, especially fruit, together with wines and cognac. Moldova also had an important canning industry, which apparently had its origins in a tomato purée factory set up in the cellar of a house in Tiraspol in the MASSR in 1924.46 The Soviet authorities also exploited Moldova’s traditionally rich variety of flowers and herbs for industrial purposes. The republic became the Soviet Union’s main producer of essential oils, especially those of rose, lavender, sage and mint, used in the perfume, pharmaceutical and confectionery industries.47 Following the completion of the Sovietization of the MSSR in the 1950s, the republic became a ‘quiet backwater on the periphery of the Soviet federation’ and a vacation destination for the Soviet elite due to its supply of alcohol, tourist hotels and its warm summer weather.48 The Moldovan climate contrasted so strongly with that of the rest of the Soviet Union that the republic was termed ‘Sunny Moldova’ and represented by palm trees in Soviet television weather forecasts. Such a climate was greatly conducive to the continued growth of the tobacco industry in the republic. The Times thus reported in 1981 that many Moldovan villages had a ‘pleasantly sleepy look, with strings of tobacco



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drying like clothing in the sun. The tobacco is used to make one of Moldova’s greatest status symbols: genuine American Marlboro cigarettes, manufactured under licence’.49 Soviet tourists to Moldova would have been reassured by the fact that the republic’s towns and cities were taking on an increasingly Soviet visual character. Wartime destruction necessitated considerable urban reconstruction from the late 1940s. This was coordinated from Moscow, where it was decided that the republic’s towns should take on a new Soviet image.50 In Chişinău the chief architect was Alexey Shchusev, who had been born in the city and was the architect of Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow. Shchusev died before he was able to undertake the complete reconstruction of the city, but he was responsible for rebuilding the city’s neo-Byzantine railway station and other public buildings. Street names, which had been converted to Romanian during the interwar era, once gain reverted to Russian throughout the republic. The Soviet authorities erected statutes to Lenin and built Second World War memorials throughout the republic. These commemorate Soviet soldiers who had died in the liberation of the republic from German and Romanian occupation. The memorial and eternal flame which still stand in central Chişinău feature five enormous red pillars to represent the five years of the Second World War. A statue to Grigory Kotovsky was set up in Chişinău in 1954. This Bessarabian Russian had been instrumental in the establishment of the MASSR in 1924. The village of his birth, Hânceşti, was renamed Kotovsk in his honour. The Pushkin House and Museum opened in 1948, to commemorate the years which the poet had spent exiled in Chişinău from 1820 to 1823 and where he wrote over a hundred poems. The village of Dolna, some sixty kilometres from Chişinău, was even renamed Pushkino to mark the three weeks spent there by the poet in 1821. The Soviet authorities opened a museum in the village in 1964. In the immediate post-war years in neighbouring communist Romania, meanwhile, all references to Bessarabia and its annexation by the Soviet Union under the terms of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact had been expunged from Communist Party speeches and historical writing. This changed in the 1960s, when Nicolae Ceauşescu’s regime, with its emphasis on Romanian nationalism and autonomy within the Warsaw Pact, reopened the Bessarabian ‘question’ in public debate. In 1964 the Romanians had published Karl Marx’s notes in which the father of scientific socialism had condemned the Russian seizure of Bessarabia in 1812. In a speech to the Communist Party in 1965, Ceauşescu also quoted Friedrich Engels’s censure of the Russian annexation. In May 1966, Ceauşescu even went so far as to excoriate the interwar Romanian Communist

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Party for supporting the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in 1940.51 The estrangement between Ceauşescu’s Romania and the Soviet Union encouraged the growth of Romanian nationalism within the MSSR.52 As early as the 1960s, certain intellectuals protested against Russification and demanded a return to the use of the Moldovan language in the Latin script.53 In 1969, a group of young Moldovan intellectuals based in Chişinău established the National Patriotic Front of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina which sought to unite these territories with Romania. One of its founder members, Gheorghe Ghimpu, served six years in a Soviet gulag for his part in founding the organization. Ghimpu would re-emerge to prominence in the 1980s as a ‘pan-Romanianist’.54 Historians within Romania continued to argue the case for the Romanian nature of the lands between the rivers Prut and Dniester so vehemently that in 1976 there were rumours of a Soviet military intervention on the Prut.55 In June of that year, the Romanian government informed US President Ford that while it regarded the MSSR as an integral part of the Soviet Union, it could not accept that Moldovans were not Romanians. Leonid Brezhnev and Nicolae Ceauşescu subsequently met up in the Crimea in August 1977. Brezhnev argued that during his visit to the MSSR in 1976, Ceauşescu had received clear evidence that the Moldovans were a people distinct from the Romanians with a separate language. Ceauşescu replied, ‘Yes, I did, but they spoke with me in Romanian’.56 The tensions between Romania and the Soviet Union with regard to the MSSR had certain consequences for the language policies pursued by the Soviet authorities in Moldova. Throughout its existence, the Soviet Union was never able to resolve the contradiction between the concept of the ‘merging’ of nations throughout the Union by means of Russification and the idea of the ‘flourishing’ of the individual nationalities and their separate languages. Russification would, so it was believed, eventually lead to the creation of ‘Soviet man’ and the completion of socialist modernization. The ‘flourishing’ of nationalities and their languages, on the other hand, was deemed necessary for increasing literacy and the diffusion of communist ideas.57 The contradictory policies of the ‘merging’ and ‘flourishing’ of nations, together with the possibility of Romanian territorial claims to the territory of the republic, led the Soviet authorities on the one hand to favour the use of Russian throughout Moldova, while at the same time exaggerating the differences between the Moldovan and Romanian languages and peoples. The purpose of this was to break the historic, cultural link between the MSSR and Romania. Following Bessarabia’s reincorporation into the Soviet Union and reconstitution as the MSSR in 1944, Russian had become the republic’s official



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language. Russian was made compulsory in all schools and was the language of educational instruction, inter-ethnic communication and public life. The Cyrillic alphabet was reinstated for written Moldovan.58 But at the same time the Soviet authorities sought to create a distinct language, culture and identity which was specifically Moldovan. This policy entailed exaggerating the Slavonic influence upon the Moldovan language. In the writing of history, the influence of the East Slavs upon the Moldovans was stressed at the expense of historic relations with the Romanians.59 Since Moldovan identity was deemed to be partly Slavonic, there was an insistence in historical accounts that the Moldovan population could only flourish under the auspices of either Russia or the Soviet Union.60 The chief proponent of the attempt to transform Moldovan into a Slavonic language in the immediate post-war era was a Russified Moldovan from Ukraine, I. D. Ceban, who promoted the gradual Russification of Moldovan vocabulary. But Ceban’s star quickly waned following a conference held in Chişinău in 1951 in which linguists rejected the assumption that Moldovan was a Slavonic language and even recognized the affinity between Moldovan and Romanian.61 The 1960s saw, however, the re-emergence of the theory of the Moldovan language’s ‘independence’ from Romanian, although it was now categorized as an ‘East Romance’ language.62 One scholar, whose erudition got the better of his common sense, even went so far as to claim that the Moldovan language had diverged from Romanian and become an independent language as early as ad 271.63 The contradictory and confused nature of Soviet language policy within the MSSR led, in effect, to the republic being dominated by the Russian language and Russian culture. Instruction in Russian held sway at the State University in Chişinău, which opened in 1946. The Moldovan Academy of Sciences, set up in 1949, and its affiliated History Institute were staffed primarily by Russians and Ukrainians, who operated in Russian. Television programmes, newspapers and books throughout the MSSR were overwhelmingly in Russian.64 Nikita Khrushchev’s relatively liberal cultural policy of the late 1950s did lead to the reprinting of certain Moldovan literary masterpieces, albeit in the Cyrillic script. Such works included those by Dimitrie Cantemir, the chronicles of Miron Costin and the writings of great nineteenth-century Romanian authors, such as Mihai Eminescu. Such a policy may have been in part a consequence of the return to the MSSR of certain members of the Romanian-educated intelligentsia from the interwar era who had been deported in the 1940s. In March 1957 some one hundred former members of Romanian nationalist organizations were said to be resident in Chişinău.65 In 1958 the Soviet authorities opened the Alley

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of the Classics of Moldovan Literature in Pushkin Park (now the Stephen the Great Park) in central Chişinău. The Alley comprised twelve busts of important Moldovan writers, including several born west of the River Prut such as Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creangă. It was, however, a bust of Alexander Pushkin which took centre stage at the head of the Alley. The study of the Moldovan language was not, however, compulsory in schools in the republic. The feeling of resentment regarding the low status and visibility of the Moldovan language was compounded by the fact that very few Russians who lived within the republic, or indeed members of any other ethnic minority, were likely to have functional Moldovan.66 This situation led to deepseated dissatisfaction among many ethnic Moldovans regarding the status of the Moldovan language which was to come to the fore during the glasnost era in the 1980s.67 As one Moldovan put it, the Soviet authorities regarded the Moldovan language as ‘primitive, fit only for singing and peasant discussions’.68 The stress on the use of Russian as the language of the ‘Soviet people’ led, nevertheless, to an increase in bilingualism among ethnic Moldovans in the post-war decades. This had a marked effect on spoken, vernacular Moldovan which became heavily permeated by Russian loan words. Crucially, however, the written language used in Moldovan literary circles did not differ from that of Romanian writers west of the River Prut.69 It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the chief exponents of ‘pan-Romanianism’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s were ethnic Moldovan members of The Writers’ Union, the Moldovan Academy of Sciences and the State University of Chişinău.70 A precondition for the growth of the 1980s Moldovan independence movement was the gradual increase in the ethnic Moldovan proportion of the urban population of the republic. In the post-war years, Moldovans migrated to long-established towns or to newly created urban centres.71 By 1970 Moldovans had become the dominant ethnic group within the MSSR’s towns and cities, including Chişinău. For the first time in its history, Chişinău was now sufficiently populated by ethnic Moldovans to become a genuine ‘indigenous capital’.72 Further development of the city took place in order to accommodate the expanding population. The Botanica residential area was the first part of Chişinău to have high-rise blocks of flats in the post-war era. The adjacent gleaming white ‘Gates of the City’, which still greet the visitor arriving from the airport, were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The republic’s capital, however, was never fitted with a proper drainage system and many houses lacked basic sanitation. Sewage water was not uncommon in Chişinău’s streets as late as



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the 1980s. Even today, to be caught in a rainstorm in Chişinău is to find oneself rapidly wading knee-deep through flood water. Outside the three major cities of Chişinău, Tiraspol and Bălţi, however, ‘urbanization’ often meant nothing more than an overgrown village which had acquired some light industry or a town which increasingly employed rural commuters who lived in nearby villages. The republic’s urban centres were not, therefore, necessarily markedly different in appearance to its rural areas.73 The rustic character of many Moldovan towns, sometimes complete with chicken coops and other small farm animals, is still a striking feature for Western travellers. By the 1980s there was an increasing resentment among the ethnic Moldovan majority. Despite rapid urbanization, Moldovans still remained relatively marginalized within Communist Party and state structures and the skilled sectors of the economy in comparison to Russians and Ukrainians. The Russophone population was also accorded preferential treatment in housing. Moldovans were more likely to be found in less skilled, poorly paid positions in agriculture or relegated to the role of folk dancing for Russian tourists in dress manufactured in state factories. Moreover, despite the republic’s post-war industrialization and urbanization, Moldova remained an economic backwater within the Soviet Union as a whole. The republic had the lowest income per head of any Soviet republic in Europe.74 By the 1980s, the Moldovan economy was in crisis and even first secretary Ivan Bodiul admitted in his memoirs that the republic’s population had a poor quality of life. The MSSR also had the highest infant mortality and one of the lowest life expectancies in the western Soviet Union.75 The perception among the ethnic majority that they were both discriminated against and languishing within a stagnant republic was very strong. Moldovans were not the only ethnic group which felt itself to be marginalized within the republic. The Gagauz-inhabited regions of the Bugeac in southern Moldova remained impoverished and produced a negligible proportion of the republic’s industrial output. With high illiteracy rates and poor provision for secondary education, few ethnic Gagauz went to university or rose far within the Communist Party and state structures. The Gagauz language, despite its renaissance during the interwar period of Romanian rule, remained largely a domestic language and Russian dominating public life. The Cyrillic script was adopted in 1957 for the representation of Gagauz but few books were published in Gagauz.76 Nevertheless, the late 1960s saw the growth of cultural activism in

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the field of Gagauz language and history, which was to result in political activism in the reform era of the 1980s.77 Several other problems were also becoming apparent in Moldova by the 1980s, including corruption. During Ivan Bodiul’s long incumbency as first secretary from 1961 to 1980 close links had developed between the Moldovan party leadership and the Brezhnev patronage network. Bodiul and members of his administration apparently embezzled millions of roubles and used their contacts with the Soviet hierarchy to evade punishment.78 Severe environmental problems were also taking their toll. The early 1970s had seen the launch of a campaign to boost agricultural production which entailed the widespread use of chemicals and pesticides, including DDT. The government also intensified factory farming of cows and pigs as a result of which both soil and groundwater in and around the rivers Prut and Dniester and their tributaries were polluted by effluent. In 1983 over a billion gallons of salts from a fertilizer plant near L’viv in the Ukrainian SSR leaked into the River Dniester, killing plants and animals along the river’s course in both the Ukraine and Moldova. The water sources of several cities, including Chişinău, became contaminated.79 The Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986 also led to severe health problems among the republic’s population.80 Even the apparently successful agricultural economy faced severe difficulties. Tonnes of fresh fruit destined for shops in Russia often rotted at Moldovan railway stations due to a lack of railway wagons and engines. It was not unknown for neighbouring Ukrainians to ‘kidnap’ Moldovan trains destined for Odessa in order to boost their own railway stock. Meanwhile, new fruit-picking machines left a full one-quarter of the Moldovan fruit crop unpicked and tractors stood idle for lack of spare parts. Consequently, a good deal of agricultural work still had to be undertaken by hand.81 The Transnistrian Semion Grossu replaced Ivan Bodiul as first secretary in 1980. A deeply ascetic man and an ideological hard-liner, Grossu was to fall foul of Gorbachev who initiated his glasnost and perestroika reform agenda in the Soviet Union in 1987. Despite encouragement from Gorbachev, Grossu refused to ‘liberalize’, but Gorbachev’s policies gave encouragement to those within the MSSR who wished to see political and economic transformation, a new environmental awareness and to express their long-held dislike of Russification policies. In 1987 the new, reformist leadership of The Writers’ Union gained editorial control of mass circulation news organs and began to endorse radical restructuring. The following year, several informal reform groups came together as the Democratic Movement in Support of Restructuring which pressed for



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democratization and for the use of Moldovan in the Latin script as the official state language. It also endorsed greater cultural rights for other, non-Russian, ethnic groups.82 The Alexie Mateevici Literary-Musical Club was also founded in 1988 and named after the poet-priest who had written in Romanian in the early twentieth century. The Club’s members initially met to recite works of Moldovan literature and to listen to national songs, but their meetings quickly became both popular and politicized. December 1988 witnessed student demonstrations against the government in Chişinău and on 12 March 1989 the military had to be brought in to prevent disgruntled demonstrators storming the Central Committee building in the capital. The Moldovan opposition groups had a strong showing in the March 1989 elections to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies. Here the Moldovan delegates joined with representatives from the Baltic republics to force the Congress to issue a declaration condemning the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact whereby both Bessarabia and the Baltic republics had been seized by Stalin and incorporated into the Union. Latvian support was crucial in the publication of the first Moldovan-language periodical to be published in the Latin script since the 1940s. Glasul (The Voice) was published in Latvia in March 1989 and smuggled into the MSSR. The Popular Front of Moldova was established in May 1989 out of the two main opposition organizations (the Democratic Movement in Support of Restructuring and the Alexie Mateevici Literary-Musical Club) and was initially supported by the MSSR’s ethnic minorities. Several members of the Popular Front were Communist Party functionaries who realized that to retain power they would need to embrace reform. The Popular Front advocated state sovereignty for Moldova and the use of Moldovan in the Latin script as the state language. Many of its members also looked forward to the MSSR’s political union with Romania. The Popular Front’s call for union with Romania and the use of Moldovan as the state language in the Latin script led, however, to the ethnic minorities deserting the Front. In May 1989, the Gagauz minority formed the cultural association Gagauz Halki (the Gagauz People) which initially supported the Popular Front but subsequently drew up plans for Gagauz autonomy. Meanwhile the republic’s Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian peoples created Edinstvo (Unity) to counter the proposed reforms and defend the position of the Russian language. Russian and Ukrainian workers began organizing themselves in Transnistria in the United Council of Workers’ Collectives (Obedenionyi Soiuz Trudovykh Kolektivov, or OSTK) and demanded the equality of the Russian language with Moldovan as a state language. Branches of OSTK soon spread throughout the

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MSSR. The leader of the revolt was Igor Smirnov who had come to Moldova from the Ukraine in 1987 and was manager of the Elektromash machinebuilding factory in Tiraspol. Smirnov became the chairman of OSTK in August 1989 and subsequently coordinated strikes and demonstrations. Gagauz and Russian leaders continued to demand that Russian should have equal status with Moldovan. As Russian workers went on strike in Tiraspol, Tighina and Chişinău, Gagauz leaders announced plans for autonomy. In late August 1989, a Popular Front rally in Chişinău was attended by around 500,000 people, many bearing the Romanian tricolour. Speakers made calls for full sovereignty and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the MSSR. There were also demands for the right to secede from the Soviet Union. Consequently, on 31 August 1989 the Moldovan Supreme Soviet declared Moldovan in the Latin script to be the state language and recognized Moldovan’s essential unity with the Romanian language. Strikes among Russian-speaking workers now spread to over a hundred and fifty factories, as well as the railway network, and lasted over a month. This pressure by the Russophone citizens of the MSSR led the republic’s Supreme Soviet to concede that Russian should be a language of interethnic communication equal to Moldovan. Tensions between the ethnic Moldovan majority and the Soviet authorities came to a head in Chişinău on 7 November 1989 on the commemoration of the October Revolution. Popular Front supporters climbed onto Soviet tanks and were arrested. On 10 November the Popular Front demonstrated again to demand the release of those detained and stormed the ministry of the interior building. Order was only restored by the imposition of a curfew and the arrival of security troops from other parts of the Soviet Union. At this point, Gorbachev defused the situation by replacing the much-hated Semion Grossu with Petru Lucinschi. To the bitter end, Grossu had refused to accept the identity of Moldovan with Romania, while Lucinschi was a reformist. Notwithstanding his Moldovan origins, Lucinschi had enjoyed a distinguished career within the Communist Party, although in order to do so he had moved to Moscow. In 1978, Lucinschi became the highest-ranking Moldovan within the CPSU hierarchy as secretary to the central committee. With Lucinschi in power as first secretary in Moldova, the mass demonstrations and ethnic mobilization which had marked 1989 ceased. In early January 1990, Lucinschi called for closer ties between the MSSR and Romania. The Popular Front of Moldova was made up of several strands. A  few Moldovan intellectuals had protested against Russification and advocated greater use of the Moldovan language in the Latin script as early as the 1960s. By the



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late 1980s, such demands were being proclaimed by a new generation of young academics for whom the use of the Moldovan language was a weapon against the older generation of largely Slavonic-speaking academics who dominated the Moldovan Academy of Sciences and its History Institute.83 These Chişinăubased intellectuals, educated at the Chişinău State University or the Chişinău Agricultural Institute, were supported in their demands for greater use of the Moldovan language by many rural Moldovan-language teachers. Members of this intellectual group recognized the Moldovan and Romanian languages as one and the same and many had emerged as ‘pan-Romanianists’ seeking to unify Moldova with Romania. Another important faction supporting the reforms comprised, however, the ‘Bessarabian’ Moldovans within the Communist Party itself. These sought to challenge the entrenched position of the ‘Transnistrian’ Moldovans in the republic’s political, economic and cultural institutions. These ‘Bessarabians’ held positions within the agricultural economy and bureaucracy which brought them into contact with the concerns of rural Moldovans. Mircea Snegur was typical of this group as a graduate of the Chişinău Agricultural Institute and chairman on the central committee responsible for agriculture. Snegur was the first among the communist reformers to collaborate with the Popular Front and to advocate the Front’s official recognition. He took part in numerous meetings of the Front in central Chişinău to shouts of ‘Snegur and the People’!84 It was with the Popular Front’s support that Snegur became president of the republic’s Supreme Soviet in July 1989. Snegur, and like-minded communist reformers, thus utilized the Moldovan language question against the older generation of Russian-speaking Transnistrians. The late 1980s thus witnessed a convergence between the young, intellectual ‘pan-Romanianists’ and a group of reform communists who saw in the language issue a means of toppling the entrenched Transnistrian party and state elite. Both groups were able to tap into the resentment of the Moldovan masses about the low status of the Moldovan language and social, economic and environmental grievances against the Soviet regime. In elections in February 1990, the Popular Front of Moldova won the largest number of seats to the Moldovan Supreme Soviet and thereby broke the communist monopoly of power. Ethnic Moldovans now made up 69 per cent of the Soviet’s deputies and held 83 per cent of legislative leadership positions within the Soviet. The decision of a hundred Russophone deputies to withdraw from the Supreme Soviet in May left the Moldovans in complete control.85 In April 1990, the Soviet adopted a version of the Romanian blue, yellow and red vertical striped flag as the Moldovan national flag. The Moldovan flag,

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unlike the Romanian, included a Roman eagle with its breast adorned by the auroch’s head which was Stephen the Great’s personal seal and the symbol of his dynasty, the House of Muşat. In late April 1990 a simplified border crossing between Romania and Moldova was agreed and 6 May was designated the day of open borders  – the so-called flower bridge (Podul de Flori) over the Prut. In May 1990, the ‘pan-Romanian’ Mircea Druc, who had displayed nationalist tendencies since his youth, became the republic’s first prime minister. Druc celebrated his first day in office by burning a portrait of Lenin.86 Druc now inaugurated a purge of non-Moldovans from cultural institutions and advocated Moldova’s swift unification with Romania. In the same month, the Communist Party’s constitutional monopoly on power was revoked. On 23 June 1990, the Moldovan Supreme Soviet issued a declaration of sovereignty which specified the supremacy of the Moldovan constitution and laws throughout the republic and declared that the 1940 annexation of Bessarabia by the Soviet Union had been illegal. Shortly after, and in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet Union’s annexation of Bessarabia, thousands of Moldovan and Romanian citizens formed a ‘human chain’ across the River Prut as an act of national solidarity. The renewal of links with Romania and the growing ‘pan-Romanianism’ of the Popular Front led, however, to a reaction among the republic’s ethnic minorities, who comprised some 35 per cent of Moldova’s population.87 Fearing that they would be Romanianized, in August 1990 five raions (administrative districts) in southern Moldova inhabited by ethnic Gagauz declared a Gagauz Soviet Socialist Republic (or Gagauz Yeri  – Gagauz Land) with its capital in Comrat.88 The Gagauz population was just over 153,000 people and, with the support of Transnistrian separatists (see below), Gagauz militants established a force of some 600 men (the so-called Bugeac battalion) which launched sporadic attacks on government buildings in southern Moldova. In October, elections to the Gagauz Yeri Supreme Soviet were held in the face of opposition by some 50,000 armed Moldovan nationalists egged on by Prime Minister Mircea Druc. Violence was only prevented by the appearance of Soviet troops. In December 1990, Stephen Topol, former chairman of the regional Supreme Soviet, was elected as president of Gagauz Yeri. In Transnistria, meanwhile, an autonomous Dniester Soviet Socialist Republic was declared as a constituent part of the Soviet Union in September 1990. Its leaders regarded their new republic as the legitimate heir to the interwar MASSR.89 The population of Transnistria was some 740,000, of which around 50 per cent were Russians and Ukrainians and 40 per cent were ethnic Moldovans.



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While an ethnic dimension to the conflict should not be entirely discounted, this was essentially a political rather than an ethnic dispute. Indeed, around 70 per cent of Moldova’s Slavs lived outside Transnistria and did not support the region’s independence from Moldova. Following Transnistria’s declaration of autonomy, police stations on the left bank of the Dniester (i.e. within Transnistria) loyal to the Moldovan government in Chişinău were besieged by the separatists until they surrendered. On 2 November, the first military encounter took place at Dubăsari leading to three deaths. In the following month, in an indication that Russia was not entirely neutral, Gorbachev requested that the Moldovan parliament annul the August 1989 language laws and declared that the territorial integrity of Moldova could only be guaranteed within the Soviet Union.90 Transnistria has been described as ‘quintessentially Soviet’ with identities and livelihoods traditionally orientated towards the Soviet centre (rather then towards Chişinău) and towards the Communist Party, state-run industry and the Soviet military.91 During the late 1980s, Transnistrian Communist Party chiefs and managers of industry had opposed reform, especially when the new language laws suggested that the balance of power was shifting to the ethnic Moldovan majority. Members of the Transnistrian communist elite were concerned that they would lose their power base and their direct link to Moscow in the event of Moldovan independence.92 Moreover, the position of the Soviet 14th Army had been central to the life of Transnistria for decades. By the 1990s some 3,000 officers and tens of thousands of soldiers were stationed in Transnistria. Many of these men were recruited from the local population and often chose to stay in the region on retirement. Consequently a close bond had developed between the military personnel of the 14th Army and the local Transnistrian population. A referendum held in January 1990 in Tiraspol, and subsequently in other towns, suggested that some 90 per cent of the population in the region favoured autonomy. By the spring of 1991, the self-proclaimed Transnistrian authorities had also effectively gained control of some settlements on the right, ‘Bessarabian’, bank of the Dniester, including Tighina. The town had a largely Russian and Ukrainian population which favoured incorporation into the new Transnistrian republic. The medieval fortress at Tighina subsequently became a base for the 14th Army.

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Democratic politics

In May 1991, the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed the Republic of Moldova and Moldova’s Supreme Soviet became the country’s parliament. On 27 August 1991, following the Moscow coup which had aimed to reverse the dismantling of the Soviet Union, Moldova declared its independence and banned the Communist Party. Igor Smirnov, leader of the United Council of Workers’ Collectives (OSTK), had supported the instigators of the Moscow coup and he was consequently arrested by the government in Chişinău. Smirnov’s imprisonment led in turn to a railway blockade in Transnistria organized by the women’s committee affiliated to OSTK. Since Moldova’s transport communication with the Ukraine and thence the rest of the Soviet Union passes through Transnistria, the blockade had the effect of choking the Moldovan economy. Following Smirnov’s release, he was duly elected president of the Dniester Moldovan Republic (hereafter, the DMR), which had previously been known as the Dniester Soviet Socialist Republic. The DMR declared its independence from the Moldovan Republic on 1 December 1991. This was confirmed by a referendum in which 97.7 per cent of the Transnistrian population apparently endorsed the new republic’s independence. By now there were almost daily military confrontations between forces supporting Chişinău and the separatists. The presence, and tacit support, of the Soviet 14th Army was crucial for the flow of arms and men into the so-called Dniester Guards and for the besieging of Transnistrian police stations still loyal to Chişinău. On 29 March 1992, President Snegur, who had become the Moldovan Republic’s first democratically elected president in 1991, demanded full compliance with Moldovan legislation. When Transnistria’s leaders ignored him, Snegur declared martial law in the region. Military skirmishes now escalated into all-out war. The major battles took place in June 1992 in Tighina (known as Bender to the Russians), which was strategically important both as a major arms repository and as the last intact transport hub which linked Moldova with the former Soviet Union. Moldovan forces initially recaptured

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Tighina but were driven out on the night of 20–21 June 1992 after personnel and tanks from the 14th Army intervened on behalf of the separatists. The Russian Federation, which had taken control of the 14th Army in April 1992, put weapons, soldiers and training facilities at the disposal of the Transnistrians. The violently outspoken Major-General Alexander Lebed became commander of the 14th Army in June. Lebed claimed in a newspaper that ‘The Transnistrian people are being systematically … annihilated, in a way that makes the SS of fifty years ago look like amateurs.’1 Significantly, due to its strategic location, Lebed referred to Transnistria as ‘the key to the Balkans’ and observed that ‘if Russia withdraws from this little piece of land, it will lose that key and its influence in the region’.2 The 14th Army was also assisted by a contingent of Cossacks whose contribution to the fight against Moldovan forces included an attack launched by bus and the looting of various villages.3 The involvement of the Russian 14th Army in the conflict led to a ceasefire which effectively meant that the separatists had won the war at the cost of some five hundred dead and countless others wounded or rendered homeless. An agreement reached in July 1992 between Russia’s President Yeltsin and Moldova’s President Snegur foresaw the creation of a security zone on the Dniester and a peacekeeping force to ensure compliance with the ceasefire. The peacekeeping force was to comprise Russian, Moldovan and Transnistrian troops. The Russian military had thus aided and abetted the creation of a ‘Soviet-style outpost’ on the territory of the post-communist, sovereign state of Moldova.4 The Transnistrian war not only served to entrench the separatists, headed by Igor Smirnov, in power east of the Dniester but also had a profound impact on Moldovan politics in Chişinău. By 1991 the Popular Front was already starting to fragment and in May the ‘pan-Romanianist’ Mircea Druc, who was mistrusted by the reform communists within the Front for his nationalism, was forced to step down as prime minister. The nationalist Druc subsequently went to live in Romania. In February 1992, the Popular Front was transformed into the Christian Democratic Popular Front which resigned from government in June of that year in the wake of the government’s military defeat by the Transnistrians.5 Indeed, many Moldovans blamed the Christian Democratic Popular Front for the escalation of the war and for the dire economic situation which afflicted Moldova following the break-up of the Soviet Union. The reform communist Andrei Sangheli now became prime minister, a role he was to fill until January 1997, and negotiated a new coalition government. The Democratic Agrarian Party of Moldova, which had been formed by those Popular Front supporters who had not joined the Christian Democratic Popular Party, now became the



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dominant voice in the Moldovan parliament. The Democratic Agrarians were led by Petru Lucinschi. The party’s members were overwhelmingly reform communists, most of whom were based in the agricultural bureaucracy and the ministry of agriculture. These former communists, which included President Snegur and Prime Minister Sangheli, were supported by village mayors and collective farm managers who were able to mobilize rural support for the party. The Democratic Agrarians and their supporters opposed the ‘pan-Romanianist’ plans for speedy reunification with Romania and advocated the maintenance of economic links with Russia. The war in Transnistria had, in effect, enabled reform communists within the former Popular Front to grasp the initiative from the more radical ‘pan-Romanianist’ nationalists. Moldova’s first multiparty elections were held in February 1994 and the Democratic Agrarian Party emerged as the largest party with just over 43 per cent of the vote. The Christian Democratic Popular Party had a poor showing which reflected the waning of public enthusiasm for unification with Romania. Moldova’s reunification with Romania had seemed almost inevitable to many informed observers in the early 1990s.6 The nationalism of the Moldovan majority had initially manifested itself as ‘Romanian’ rather than Moldovan. The attempt to separate the Moldovan language from Romanian and to create a distinct Moldovan identity had been resented as a Soviet contrivance which barely concealed the domination of Moldovan society by the Russian language and Russian culture.7 Thus, in the perestroika era of the late 1980s, many ethnic Moldovans regarded the movement towards the use of the Romanian language as a symbol of unity both with the Romanians and with the West as a whole and against the Soviet Union.8 Moldovan emancipation from the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 was thus based upon an assertion of Romanian identity among Moldovans.9 The statue of Stephen the Great, originally set up in Chişinău in 1928 by the Romanian authorities but subsequently removed to Romania during the Soviet occupation of 1940, was returned to its original position at the entrance to the Stephen the Great Park on 31 August 1989. The statue provided a meeting point for ‘pan-Romanianists’ for the next couple of years.10 The reinstatement of Moldovan in the Latin script as the state language in 1989 proved highly popular among ethnic Moldovans. There was considerable initial enthusiasm for increasing links between Romania and Moldova from the side of the Romanian government and public opinion. Academics in the Romanian city of Iaşi, located on the RomanianMoldovan border, and in other Romanian cities drafted proposals for union with Moldova at the time of the 1989 Romanian revolution.11 Political events in

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Moldova received considerable media coverage in Romania. The new Romanian president, Ion Iliescu, head of the ruling National Salvation Front, favoured strong links with Moldova and denounced the Nazi-Soviet Pact in December 1990. During a National Salvation Front convention in 1991, a map with the MSSR incorporated into Greater Romania was displayed. Romania was the first country to recognize Moldova’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and donated a new copy of the Capitoline Wolf to the republic. This replaced the interwar statue which had been destroyed by the Russians in 1940. The Capitoline Wolf, symbolic of the common Latinity of Romanians and Moldovans, was even represented on a stamp produced by the Moldovan postal service in August 1992. Scholarships and cultural exchanges were provided for Moldovans to study in Romania and many Moldovans sought and received Romanian citizenship. Within the newly emerged Romanian nationalist-right in the early 1990s, there was a strong ‘annexationist’ contingent. This called for the unification of Moldova with Romania, together with all the former Bessarabian lands now in Ukraine, to create a new, Greater Romania.12 There was, however, a rival annexationist idea under public discussion in the early 1990s. The ‘Greater Moldova’ concept foresaw the recreation of the historic principality of Moldova as a nation-state. The new Greater Moldova was to include all the territory which had once belonged to the principality of Moldova, but which was now under Romanian and Ukrainian sovereignty. This scenario was naturally rejected by those who sought Moldova’s union with Romania.13 While the Greater Moldova project was clearly unviable from the outset, it is perhaps not so clear why Moldova failed to reunify with Romania. Several factors have been suggested for this turn of events.14 There were strong economic disincentives to union with Romania. Moldova’s overwhelmingly agrarian economy was dependent on fuel and raw materials imported from the former Soviet Union in exchange for the export of Moldova’s agricultural goods. The first legislation for de-collectivization of agricultural land was passed in 1991 and 1992, and Moldovan farmers immediately developed strong links with the Russian market. Moreover, President Snegur and members of the Democratic Agrarian Party with their roots in Moldova’s agricultural bureaucracy feared loss of influence in the event of union with Romania. Snegur and his colleagues argued for the economic expediency of participation in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Many Moldovans also feared that reunification could export Romania’s considerable economic and social problems to Moldova. It was, after all, Moldova which had sent emergency economic aid to Romania in 1991 in the form of agricultural machinery and fuel. The Moldovan population also



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recalled that in the 1980s Romania under Ceauşescu had been afflicted by food and electricity rationing.15 Even among ethnic Moldovans, Romanian rule in the interwar period had left a collective memory of over-centralization and lack of sensitivity to Bessarabia’s needs. Moreover, it was clear by 1991 that those ethnic minorities living outside Transnistria were reconciled to Moldovan independence but were strongly opposed to unification with Romania. It was believed that Romania’s centralist administration and sometimes hostile attitude towards her own minorities were inappropriate for Moldova where the public was broadly supportive of government plans to award territorial autonomy to Transnistria and Gagauz Yeri. Interethnic harmony, therefore, required the maintenance of an independent Moldova. Furthermore, with ethnic Moldovans still relatively underrepresented within the republic’s economic, administrative and professional institutions, there was apprehension that these posts would be filled by Romanians. The Moldovans feared they would be marginalized, as they had been within interwar Greater Romania. To compound these problems, the differences which had developed between the Moldovan dialect and standard Romanian had impaired many ordinary Moldovans’ knowledge of literary Romanian and of specialized, professional Romanian vocabulary. This had created something of a Moldovan ‘linguistic inferiority complex’ vis-à-vis Romanians.16 The political situation in Romania also diminished the appeal of reunification with Romania. The Moldovans enjoyed access to Romanian television from 1990 and were thus exposed to Romania’s considerable post-revolutionary political turmoil. Yet at the same time, access to the Romanian media and the possibilities of travel to Romania had undoubtedly increased the sense of a common Moldovan and Romanian cultural and linguistic identity. This led to the emergence by 1991 of the concepts of ‘cultural Romanianness’ but ‘political Moldovanness’, or the doctrine of ‘one people, two states’. Representatives of this doctrine pointed ‘to the roughly analogous situation of Austria in relation to Germany as a precedent for the Moldovan-Romanian relationship’.17 It was Mircea Snegur in particular who emerged as the foremost exponent of Moldovan independence. The Moldovan public were broadly supportive of Snegur and his claims for independence. This was reflected in the election results of December 1991 when 81 per cent of the electorate supported Snegur in his bid for the presidency. Indeed, even at the height of ‘pan-Romanianism’ between 1989 and 1991, there had been a certain ambiguity in the choice of symbols to represent the republic. The Moldovan flag with its tricolour clearly represented a rejection of communism and a recognition of the Moldovans’ affinity with

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the Romanians. The incorporation of the Moldovan aurochs was, however, ‘a distinctive assertion of cultural identity that harked back to a “golden age” of the Moldovan polity in the late middle ages’.18 The first postage stamps issued by the post-communist government of June 1991 highlighted the arms of the republic and the eagle bearing the Moldovan auroch’s head. The Romanian government also had cold feet regarding the absorption of Moldova. The Transnistrian war was a sobering moment for Romania which had sent arms to Moldova for the use of government-backed forces but was keen to avoid any tension with Russia with which it had signed a treaty endorsing good neighbourly relations in April 1991.19 Crucially, the Romanian government did not wish to be involved in hostilities or interethnic tension which could imperil Romania’s entry into the European Economic Community and other Western institutions, which by the early 1990s was the only game in town for Romania’s political elite.20 Among most Romanian nationalists, fears over Hungarian irredentism in Transylvania rapidly outweighed concerns about unification with Moldova which, therefore, failed to become a major rallying cry in Romanian politics. The concept of ‘cultural Romanianness’ but ‘political Moldovanness’ or ‘one people, two states’ which had emerged in 1991 underwent a transformation in the mid-1990s. On 5 February 1994, at a pre-election congress, President Snegur made his Casa noastră (Our Home) speech in which he ignored the role of Russians and Slavs, which had been central to Moldovan nation-building under the Soviets, in the construction of a Moldovan identity. In contrast to the ‘panRomanianists’, however, Snegur argued that the Romanians and Moldovans were two peoples sharing one language, albeit with different nuances.21 Following the Democratic Agrarian Party’s electoral victory in February 1994, a referendum saw 90 per cent of the population of Moldova favour a policy of independence. Significantly, the government confirmed Moldova’s membership of the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States in April, a move which was clear proof that it was not considering union with Romania. In July 1994 a new constitution was promulgated which strengthened the role of the president and declared Moldova to be a sovereign and independent state. The basing of foreign troops on Moldovan soil was banned and the country was set on a course of permanent foreign-policy neutrality. The constitution declared Moldovan, written in the Latin script, to be the country’s official language but also recognized the use of Russian and other minority languages spoken in Moldova. References to the Romanian language and Romanian people which had appeared in earlier constitutional documents were absent from the new



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constitution. The autonomy of Transnistria and Gagauz Yeri was guaranteed. The Democratic Agrarian government also began to reverse some of the Popular Front of Moldova’s earlier ‘pan-Romanian’ reforms. This included replacing the Romanian national anthem, which had been adopted by the Moldovans as their anthem in 1991, with Alexie Mateevici’s Limba noastră. Mateevici had been part of the Moldovan students’ movement before the First World War but had opposed attempts to introduce the Romanian literary language into Bessarabia. The Moldovan parliament consistently refused the demands subsequently made by the ‘pan-Romanian’ nationalists within the Christian Democratic Popular Party that the Moldovan language should be officially renamed ‘Romanian’. The government and its ‘Moldovanist’ supporters revived, in a modified form, the old Soviet arguments regarding the distinctiveness of the Moldovans in relation to the Romanians in order to justify Moldova’s continued independence from Romania. According to this argument, although the Moldovans and Romanians shared common Roman origins in Emperor Trajan’s Dacia, the annexation of Bessarabia by the Russians in 1812, the proclamation of an independent Moldovan republic in 1918, the harsh nature of Romanian rule in the interwar period and the creation of a Moldovan republic by the Soviet Union had forged a Moldovan nation distinct from that of the Romanians.22 Nevertheless, there were clear signs that the pan-Romanian position had not disappeared among certain sections of the public, especially in the education sector whence it had originally sprung.23 The spring and autumn of 1995 thus witnessed student demonstrations in favour of a return to ‘Romanian’ as the state language and opposition to the newly introduced ‘History of Moldova’ which had replaced the ‘History of Romania’ on the curriculum of the Chişinău State University. In the country’s religious life, there was also a ‘pan-Romanianist’ element. Following the revival of Orthodoxy (and Judaism) in the independent republic and the reopening of churches, synagogues and monasteries, the Metropolitanate of Chişinău and All Moldova was established by the Moscow Synod in January 1991. In September 1992, however, a Bessarabian Metropolitan Church was set up which looked to Romania rather than to Moscow.24 The patriarchate in Bucharest duly recognized the Bessarabian Metropolitan Church, under Petru Păduraru, as the canonical successor to the interwar Metropolitan Church of Bessarabia. Successive Moldovan governments consistently refused to give the Bessarabian Church official recognition amid concerns that doing so would alienate the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian government and thereby undermine ethnic harmony within Moldova. The Moldovan governments also

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feared that the Church would act as a ‘Trojan horse’ for Romanian influence in Moldova. In fact, it was Chişinău’s failure to recognize the Bessarabian Metropolitan Church which led to tension between Moldova and Romania, especially due to the harassment and intimidation meted out to members of the Bessarabian Church. These included the attempted murder of Bishop Petru whose house was destroyed by a grenade. Having failed to gain recognition from the Moldovan government, representatives of the Bessarabian Metropolitan Church lodged an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which was accepted. The Moldovan government officially recognized the metropolitanate, but only on 30 July 2002, one day before the deadline set by the ECHR. At the time of its recognition, the Bessarabian metropolitanate had around one million members and had consistently been supported by members of the ‘pan-Romanian’ Christian Democratic Popular Front. The authority of the ruling Democratic Agrarians was ultimately undermined not so much by the continued existence of ‘pan-Romanianism’ but by Moldova’s steady economic decline. Moldova’s economic transition following independence and the break-up of the Soviet Union, into which the MSSR’s economy had been thoroughly integrated, was so disastrous as to lead certain commentators to describe it as a ‘transition to destitution’.25 Economic links with Romania (which were expedited by the building of a new bridge over the River Prut) could not make up for the loss of the Soviet market. There were, moreover, severe economic problems created by the fragmentation of the Soviet Union in 1991 such as the setting up of new trade barriers, the disintegration of transport networks and the breakdown of law and order over regions of the former Union. Additionally, Moldova faced recurring natural problems in the years immediately following independence. Water shortages devastated agricultural production in 1992 and 1994, and two years later Moldova suffered a further drought followed by destructive flooding.26 Yet Moldova had been described as ‘the model of right reformism’ by The Economist in March 1995 due to the speed with which the post-independence Moldovan governments had moved towards the market economy. The first privatization legislation was passed as early as July 1991 and within three years more than a third of state assets had been sold off. De-collectivization of agriculture also began in the early 1990s, although most redistribution took place between 1998 and 2000 under the National Land Programme. Efficiency was hampered, however, by the initial decision to distribute land equally in order to avoid social inequality. Consequently, while the rural population was able to feed itself, it remained largely underemployed and cash-deficient.27



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Despite these attempts to embrace the free market, by 1997 Moldovan GDP had fallen to 35 per cent of its 1989 level. Huge swathes of the population were living in poverty, with wages and pensions frequently unpaid for months. By 1998 the black economy was worth a staggering 70 per cent of all economic activity. Matters were worsened by the government’s inability to collect taxes, partly owing to the corruption of the officials who collected them. Moldova’s increasing reliance on trade with Russia during the 1990s meant that the country was deeply affected by the Russian financial and economic crisis of August 1998. This led to a further downturn in Moldova’s industrial and agricultural production. Moldova now reached the unenviable position of being classified as Europe’s poorest country. The unresolved issue of Transnistria’s de facto independence compounded Moldova’s economic problems. The government’s lack of control over the region deprived Chişinău of around 40 per cent of the country’s industrial capacity as well as Moldova’s main power-generating outlets. The largest power station, which provided 90 per cent of all Moldova’s energy, was at Dubăsari on the left bank of the Dniester. The Moldovan government also lost considerable agricultural output and tax revenue as a result of the loss of the breakaway republic. Transnistria also straddled the main transport links to Ukraine and Russia, as well as oil and gas pipelines, which gave the Transnistrian authorities considerable opportunity to blackmail the Moldovan government. Chişinău suffered a three-day energy blackout in July 1991 over an ongoing dispute about Transnistria’s unpaid electricity debts to Russia’s Gazprom which the Transnistrian authorities expected the Moldovan government to pay. Moreover, Chişinău had no control over Transnistria’s eastern border with Ukraine where various criminal activities were rife. These included smuggling, tax evasion, human trafficking and the shipping of arms, under cover of darkness, to the Balkans, Africa and the Caucasus. The Moldovan government’s accommodation with Gagauz Yeri proved relatively easy and uncontentious.28 Under a law of February 1995, Gagauz Yeri was accorded autonomy with Gagauz to be an official language, together with Russian and Moldovan. Legislative power was invested in a regional, popular assembly (the Halk Toplusu) with a directly elected Başkan to hold semipresidential powers. Local referenda were held in the five districts in southern Moldova in which the ethnic Gagauz were a majority. The Bugeac Battalion was disbanded and its members were incorporated into a specially created ‘Military Union 1045’ within the Moldovan ministry of the interior. These new arrangements meant that the local Gagauz elite of former communist-era district

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administrators maintained control over local government while ensuring that the impoverished region continued to receive financial support from the central government in Chişinău. It was, however, one thing to allow the Gagauz to take control of an area of the republic which was essentially a rural backwater, but quite another to relinquish control of industrialized Transnistria to the separatists.29 Attempts to reach agreement with the Transnistrian leadership, which had effectively won the war of 1992 with the support of the Soviet 14th Army, proved frustrating. Transnistrian officials personally benefited from the region’s black economy and other criminal activities and were thus reluctant to lose control over the region. While the Moldovan government was intent on maintaining the territorial integrity of their country, the Transnistrians insisted upon the construction of a confederal state. In 1993 the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) set up a permanent mission in Moldova to internationalize the problem. The OSCE’s representatives were subsequently declared personae non gratae by the Transnistrian authorities. A  point of controversy between Chişinău and Tiraspol was the continued presence of the Russian (formerly Soviet) 14th Army in Transnistria. This contravened the clauses in Moldova’s 1994 constitution which proclaimed Moldova’s foreign policy neutrality and banned the stationing of foreign troops on Moldovan soil. In October 1994, therefore, a new agreement was reached between Russia and Moldova whereby the 14th Army was to withdraw from the breakaway republic within three years. The agreement was not, however, ratified by the Russian Duma. In April 1995 the 14th Army was simply downsized and renamed the Operational Group of Russian Forces (OGRF) with its headquarters in Tiraspol. (It continued, however, to display its former, Soviet insignia in military offices.) The Russian Duma and government were thus able to claim that the October 1994 agreement was no longer applicable since the 14th Army no longer existed. The unwillingness of many in Russia to abandon Transnistria was given voice by the Duma’s request in November 1996 that the Russian Federation declare Transnistria ‘a zone of special strategic interest’. A referendum held in Transnistria in the spring of 1995 saw some 91 per cent vote against the withdrawal of the 14th Army. Local elections confirmed the domination of the so-called Union of Patriotic Forces which had governed the republic since 1991. In December 1995 a further two referenda were held, the first of which confirmed the new constitution which had proclaimed Transnistria an independent state. The second referendum saw almost 90 per cent endorsement for the republic becoming a sovereign state within the Commonwealth of



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Independent States. Such a situation was naturally unacceptable to the Moldovan government. President Snegur opposed a memorandum for a peace settlement drawn up in July 1996 which envisaged Transnistria receiving ‘special status’ within a Moldovan confederation. Although the international community refused to recognize the legality of the DMR as a de jure independent state, it had all the trappings of statehood, including a constitution, a flag (which included the Soviet-era hammer and sickle), an anthem (‘We sing the praises of Transnistria’), a passport (which was effectively useless), a currency (the Transnistrian rouble with notes printed with depictions of the Russian military hero, Alexander Suvorov, who had secured the region for Russia in 1792)  and regular elections. Igor Smirnov’s apparent popularity continued, and he was elected president for the second time in December 1996. But human rights abuses were rife within Transnistria. These included arrests for political motives, detention of business personnel in order to extort money to be used for the maintenance of the state, the denial of the population’s right to take part in Moldovan elections and the barring of the use of the Latin script in Romanian language schools.30 Perhaps the most well-known case of prolonged imprisonment concerned Ilie Ilaşcu and three other men who were arrested by the Transnistrian authorities in June 1992 on an alleged charge of killing two separatists. Although the death sentence imposed upon him was commuted, Ilaşcu remained in prison despite being twice elected to the Moldovan parliament, elected a senator of the Romanian parliament and becoming a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Ilaşcu was finally released in 2001, after having filed a complaint with the ECHR and following pressure applied on the Transnistrian leadership by the Russian government. Ilaşcu’s three colleagues were also subsequently freed. Petru Lucinschi had, meanwhile, been installed as the new president of Moldova in place of Mircea Snegur in January 1997. Lucinschi had spent a considerable part of his career in Russia and he won the presidency in part due to the expectation that he had the credentials to solve the Transnistrian crisis. In May 1997, Lucinschi and Smirnov signed a memorandum on the normalization of relations which had been drawn up by the Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov. It committed both sides to continue negotiations, with Russia and Ukraine acting as guarantors of the agreement. According to the memorandum Moldova was designated ‘a “common state” within its internationally recognised borders’.31 Igor Smirnov, however, interpreted the ‘common state’ as meaning a confederal state of two sovereign entities. Lucinschi, like President Snegur before him, rejected this interpretation.

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Despite the stalling of negotiations between Transnistria and Moldova, both Gagauz Yeri and Transnistria were officially designated as autonomous entities by the Moldovan government in May 1999. The question of Russian troops stationed on what under international law was still Moldovan soil remained unresolved. There was also the problem of how to dispose of the considerable amount of military hardware remaining in Transnistria. At the OSCE meeting in Istanbul in November 1999 it was agreed that Russia would withdraw its OGFR troops, now numbering 2,500 men, by the end of 2002, with military equipment to be removed by 2001. Some destruction of the material did take place, much to the annoyance of the Transnistrians who wished to retain the equipment for their own use. By the summer of 2002, however, Russia still had its troops in Transnistria. It remained to be seen whether any future Moldovan leader would be able to resolve the impasse. On a more positive note, relations between Moldova and Ukraine had greatly improved by the later 1990s. Moldovan-Ukrainian links had been strained earlier in the decade owing to certain ‘pan-Romanian’ and ‘Greater Moldova’ plans which had envisaged the return to Moldova of lands lost to Ukraine earlier in the century. In 1998 the borders between Ukraine and Moldova were confirmed, and the Ukrainian government awarded Moldova a small strip of some 500 metres of the maritime Danube, in exchange for a stretch of contested road. This arrangement enabled Moldova to regain indirect access to the Black Sea. The Giurgiuleşti International Free Port, which can receive sea-going vessels, was subsequently developed by a Dutch company. In the Moldovan elections of March 1998, the Democratic Agrarian Party’s support collapsed. The party barely won 4 per cent of the vote and failed to capture a single seat.32 Many Democratic Agrarian Party members now joined the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) which won 30 per cent of the vote and thereby became the largest party in the Moldovan parliament. The Communist Party had been banned in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union but was reconstituted as the PCRM in 1994 under Vladimir Voronin. The latter had been born near Dubăsari on the Transnistrian side of the Dniester and had risen from humble beginnings as a baker to become the MSSR’s last minister of the interior. Just as the Transnistrian war had proved the undoing of the Popular Front of Moldova, so economic problems had in turn destroyed the Democratic Agrarian Party. The success of the PCRM in the elections had been due in large part to the desperate economic condition of the country under the Democratic Agrarian government. In the run-up to the 1998 elections, the PCRM had promised



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better economic conditions and social stability. It attacked the market reforms undertaken by the Agrarian Democrats and argued in favour of a return to a command economy and renationalization of private enterprises. These pledges enabled the PCRM to gain votes from ordinary Moldovans and move beyond its core pro-Russian support base. Crucially as well, as the Communist Party’s successor, the PCRM was still the best organized of Moldova’s political parties and had a historic legitimacy which other, more recently formed, parties lacked.33 Following the March 1998 elections, however, a parliamentary coalition, led by former president Mircea Snegur, was created from among the smaller parties which had gained representation. This anti-communist coalition was thus able to exclude the PCRM from parliamentary and government posts. While the communists in the parliament attempted to topple the parliamentary coalition, which was itself increasingly fragmented by in-fighting, President Lucinschi was locked in a power struggle with the parliament. Lucinschi sought resolution of this problem through an increase in presidential powers. In January 1999, Moldova suffered severe power cuts as a result of the government’s failure to pay its debts to Russia’s Gazprom. Lucinschi threatened to declare a state of emergency which would have given him presidential powers similar to those of the Russian president and reduced parliament to a consultative role. The constitutional court ruled, however, that only parliament could make such changes. Subsequently, in July 2000 the Moldovan parliament rejected a more powerful presidency by opting to transform the country into a parliamentary republic. The president was now to be elected by a two-thirds parliamentary majority rather than by the popular vote as before. During the 2001 parliamentary electoral campaign, the PCRM once again pledged to reverse the country’s economic decline, which had been further aggravated by the effects of the August 1998 Russian financial crisis and resulting social dislocation. With Moldova suffering in the 1990s the largest fall in GNP and living standards of any former European socialist state, the public responded positively to the PCRM’s populist campaign based on nostalgia for the Soviet Union and its state-directed economy.34 The PCRM also offered the electorate the promise of possible membership of the Russian-Belarusian union and a solution to the Transnistrian problem. All this seemed entirely plausible given that Voronin himself came from Transnistria and was consequently expected to have a good relationship with the Russians. The fact that by 2001 over half a million citizens had left Moldova in search of work elsewhere in Europe was also most likely a factor in bringing the communists to power. Since these emigrants were overwhelmingly young and disaffected, they might well have voted for

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reformist parties had they stayed in the country.35 As it was, the older generation, fearful for the future and recalling the apparent stability of the communist era, voted overwhelmingly for the PCRM. In the general election of February 2001, the PCRM won a resounding victory by securing just over 50 per cent of the vote. This majority, which translated into 71 of the 101 parliamentary seats, enabled the PCRM to both form the government and to elevate their leader, Voronin, to the presidency. Voronin subsequently threatened to make Moldova the ‘Cuba of Europe’ if the PCRM’s right to rule was threatened. Thus, at the start of the twenty-first century, democratic elections brought the Communist Party back to power in Moldova.36 Native Russian speakers had been at the core of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova’s electoral support in the 2001 elections. Consequently, in April President Voronin pledged to strengthen the country’s political and economic ties with Russia and to boost the status of the Russian language within the republic.37 The constitution was amended to make Russian the Moldovan state’s second official language and to enforce the compulsory study of Russian at schools. The ‘History of the Romanians’, which was then being taught at schools and university, was to be replaced by a ‘History of the Moldovans’. These policies were met with opposition and rallies early in 2002 organized by ‘panRomanianists’ led by the Christian Democratic People’s Party chairman, Iurie Roşca. Even though Roşca’s party had only won 8 per cent of the vote in the 2001 elections, many among the educational and cultural elite in Moldova continued to be the bastion of ‘pan-Romanianism’. Consequently, tens of thousands of people took part in the rallies in Chişinău. Intervention by the Parliamentary Association of the Council of Europe forced the Voronin government to withdraw its plan for compulsory Russian language classes and changes to the history curriculum. President Voronin accused the Romanian government of supporting the nationalist opposition. Voronin’s government regarded itself as a Moldovan nation-builder and utilized arguments from the Soviet policy of ‘Moldovanism’ carried out intermittently in the twentieth century by the Soviet authorities. Government representatives and ‘Moldovanist’ intellectuals once again argued that the Moldovans had diverged long ago from the Romanians and that consequently the Moldovan and Romanian peoples were separate and ethnically distinct. According to this view, the Moldovans had achieved independent statehood in the medieval period and subsequently resisted Romanian ‘expansionism’. Moldovan identity was thus deemed to be partly Slavonic and the Russification process which took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a positive



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process of ‘modernization’ for Moldova. A  number of ‘neo-Soviet’ national holidays were instituted by the Voronin government, including 9 May to mark the Soviet victory in the Second World War in 1945, and 28 June to celebrate the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia in 1940. The PRCM government also resurrected the Soviet-era Mărţişor international festival of music. The Mărţişor is a small red and white decorative string traditionally given out by Moldovans to friends and relations to wear on 1 March to herald the arrival of spring. This folk tradition was transformed by the Soviets into an annual festival of music in Moldova, beginning in March 1966. It was now revived as part of the PCRM’s ‘Moldovanist’ nation-building ideology. The rebirth of nature on 1 March each year thus also symbolized the resurrection of the Moldovan nation under communist auspices.38 The historian and politician Vasile Stati emerged as a leading ‘Moldovanist’ in the early 2000s, producing a Moldovan history, which portrayed the country as having evolved within the Russian sphere of influence. Stati also published a Romanian-Moldovan dictionary in 2003 which was mocked by many intellectuals in both Romania and Moldova. Even President Voronin was eventually forced to admit that the RomanianMoldovan dictionary was otiose, but his government continued to pursue a nation-building programme which sharply differentiated the Moldovans from the Romanians. Under the January 2004 Nationality Concept it even became possible to prosecute individuals for questioning the existence of a separate ‘Moldovan’ language and identity. ‘Romanians’ were now registered as an ethnic minority distinct from ethnic Moldovans and listed sixth on the list of the republic’s minorities, much to the anger of the ‘pan-Romanianists’. The Voronin government also sought to utilize the cult of Stephen the Great as a symbol of Moldovan identity and independence. Problematically for the regime, however, Stephen the Great had long been one of the most significant national icons for the Romanians west of the Prut. Stephen had been canonized by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1992 and was now referred to as Stephen the Great and Saint (Ştefan cel Mare şi Sfânt). His burial place at Putna monastery (in the Romanian Bukovina) was a well-established centre of Stephen’s Romanian national cult. Voronin was, however, determined to appropriate Stephen and define him as a purely Moldovan hero. He therefore refused Romanian President Iliescu’s invitation to attend the Romanian celebrations at Putna in July 2004 to mark the quincentenary of Stephen’s death. Instead, the Moldovan government issued three stamps bearing images of Stephen in July, and members of the Moldovan government laid flowers at the base of Stephen’s statue in Chişinău on

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24 August to mark the city’s liberation from the Nazis (and, by extension, their Romanian allies) by the Red Army in 1944.39 President Voronin visited Putna in November 2004 and presented the monastery with twelve silver coins engraved with images of Moldovan monasteries. Romania’s President Illiescu was not in attendance. There were high hopes that President Voronin, with his pro-Russian credentials and origins in Transnistria, would be able to find a solution to the Transnistrian ‘frozen conflict’. In July 2002, Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE presented the Kyiv Agreement to Moldova and Transnistria. The agreement, which was based upon a federalization of Moldova, was received well by President Voronin, as well as the EU and the United States, which were now involved in mediation of the Transnistrian dispute. Many Moldovans, however, regarded the document as little more than a Russian excuse to undermine Moldova’s territorial integrity. With the failure of the Kyiv Agreement, Russia’s Vladimir Putin appointed Dmitrii Kozak to come up with a solution to the Transnistrian problem. The November 2003 Kozak Memorandum envisaged a neutral, demilitarized Moldova with Russian as an official language and Russian troops stationed indefinitely in Transnistria as peacekeepers. The memorandum also advocated the establishment of a federal Moldovan state with a senate in which half of the twenty-six members were to be elected from Transnistria and Gagauz Yeri. This would have given these regions an effective veto on Moldovan national legislation. President Voronin initially accepted the memorandum, but many Moldovan groups again expressed concern that it undermined Moldova’s territorial integrity. The EU and the United States were also now concerned about the political implications of the memorandum. On the very eve of the highprofile official signing in Chişinău, over which President Putin was to preside as peacemaker-in-chief, demonstrations in Chişinău and Western pressure forced Voronin’s hand and he withdrew his consent to the document. President Putin was embarrassed and responded by blocking any further deadlines for withdrawing Russian troops and equipment from Transnistria.40 Around 2,000 Russian troops remain in Transnistria to this day. Relations between the Moldovan government and Transnistrian leaders, meanwhile, took a turn for the worse when the Transnistrian authorities closed seven Romanian-language schools on its territory which were using the Latin script. The Transnistrian police vandalized the schools and confiscated equipment. The Moldovan government imposed economic sanctions on Transnistria which responded by blocking rail transportation across its territory, thereby breaking Moldova’s links with Ukraine and Russia.41



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With relations with Russia and the breakaway republic at a new low, the PCRM hoped that an orientation to the West might strengthen Moldova’s position in the Transnistrian problem. Despite the fact that Moldova had but a slim chance of entering the EU, European integration was put forward as a key aim of the PCRM in the 2005 election campaign and was a genuinely popular policy among many sections of the electorate. The communists emerged as the largest party in the March 2005 elections but were five deputies short of being able to elect the president. Several opposition deputies, including the ‘pan-Romanian’ Iurie Roşca of the Christian Democratic People’s Party, agreed to support Voronin for the presidency. They aimed to ensure that Voronin would adhere to the EU Action Plan (which laid out a framework for cooperation between Moldova and the EU) and to prevent Russia taking advantage of a weak Moldovan parliament. The new communist government’s relations with its Romanian neighbour underwent a temporary improvement as Romania was now seen as a potential lobbyist for Moldovan entry into the EU. Undoubtedly, Voronin’s turn to the EU was opportunistic and prompted by his fear of being ousted like the communists in neighbouring Ukraine during the ‘Orange Revolution’ of late 2004. It seems, nonetheless, that Voronin, who had previously admired Vladimir Putin ‘as coming from a Soviet tradition akin to his own’ had come to regard Putin’s government ‘as a tsarist, even fascist, regime’ which had little respect for Moldovan sovereignty.42 Nevertheless, Russia had far more leverage in Moldova than the EU, particularly in the economic sphere. In early 2006, Gazprom cut energy supplies to Moldova when the government refused to pay tariffs twice the previous price. In March Russia imposed an embargo on Moldovan wines, cognacs and agricultural produce which was crushing for the Moldovan agricultural sector since it remained heavily orientated towards Russia. There seemed to be no end in sight to the disastrous economic conditions which had originally brought the PCRM to power in 2001. On 9 July 2001, BBC 2’s Newsnight programme reported on a growing number of young men in Moldova who were prepared to sell their kidneys for money. The donors were transported to Turkey, many of them in the belief that they were simply giving blood, where the operation was carried out. The men were paid the sum of $2000 each and the organs were then sold on to Israel. In one village in Moldova as many as fourteen men had sold their kidneys, with inevitable repercussions for their health. Moldova continues to be one of the leading countries in the world dealing in the trafficking of human organs. On 22 September 2010, The Times reported on an organ-sale scandal in the village of Mingir on the border

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with Romania. Sixteen men had sold their kidneys, some simply in exchange for winter fuel. Two of the sixteen died, and the surviving fourteen required expensive medicine to prolong their lives. One of the sixteen had apparently bought a car with the money he had acquired through the sale of his kidney but had become drunk on home-made wine and smashed the new car into a tree.43 On 15 July 2002, The Economist confirmed that Moldova was the poorest country in Europe, beating Albania to reach this unenviable position by some margin. Many of Moldova’s best minds either left the country in search of work or went into organized crime. In Transparency International’s global corruption index of 2003, Moldova ranked high among the countries surveyed. Bribes to public officials equalled one-third of the state budget in 2002. In particular, the trafficking of women was a significant part of the corruption problem and was worth more to Moldova than subsidies from the IMF and the World Bank put together. Young women were trafficked in particular to the Middle East, Turkey and Russia, often through Transnistria and Ukraine. Trafficking victims have alleged that there is a market in Istanbul with an entire section where everything is written in Russian and where Russian slave traders barter for women coming from Eastern Europe. Chişinău also developed a lively sex tourism trade in the early 2000s. In 2002 a number of Turkish business groups invested in hotels and clubs in the Moldovan capital and Turkish Airlines increased its flights from Istanbul to Chişinău to cater for Turkish sex tourists. Many Gagauz men and women also found themselves enslaved in Turkey, either on construction sites or in brothels. Moldova passed anti-trafficking legislation in 2003, but with corruption rife and female flesh so lucrative, few traffickers have ever been punished.44 Despite the worsening economic conditions which drove so many women into slavery, it was, nevertheless, under communist auspices that Moldova had its first female prime minister, Zinaida Greceanîi, who held office from March 2008 until September 2009. Her parents had originally been deported from Moldova to Siberia in 1951 as part of the crackdown on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Agriculture remains the country’s largest legal employer, but the sector was still heavily dependent on Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States in the 2000s. Much of the agricultural workforce were either parttime or went unpaid. The high dependency on agriculture left the Moldovan economy highly vulnerable both to Russian pressure, such as the 2006 embargo on Moldovan produce, and to the natural disasters of drought and flood which regularly afflicted the country. The increase in Moldovan GDP in 2000s was thus largely due to remittances from Moldovans working abroad rather than



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internal reforms. By 2007, over 300,000 Moldovan citizens, around a quarter of the working-age population, worked abroad (primarily in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Western Europe) and over a third of Moldova’s GDP came from remittances. Most of this money was used for conspicuous consumption, such as building ostentatious houses, and thus did little to stimulate real economic growth. The large numbers of people migrating out of Moldova also came at the expense of many Moldovan children who were either left with grandparents or even to fend for themselves. The 2008 worldwide economic crisis dramatically reduced the value of remittances to Moldova. An opinion poll carried out in 2009 reflected regret for the dissolution of the Soviet Union among almost half the population. Parliamentary elections were scheduled for April 2009 and the electorate was divided between those who hoped for closer connections to the former Soviet countries and those who aspired to EU integration for Moldova. There were fears among many of the communists’ opponents that the PCRM would abuse its position as the outgoing administration to retain power. From its inception, the Voronin government had expanded its control over society and the media through censorship, harassment of journalists and the replacement of judges with government supporters. Central government control over the regions had also been strengthened by reinstating the Soviet-era territorial administrative system whereby local officials were appointed from Chişinău rather than elected. The run-up to local elections back in May 2003 had witnessed government control of the media, the misuse of public resources and intimidation of opponents. In the local elections of 2007 the PCRM had begun to lose ground to pro-European opposition parties, and the 29-year-old, Romanian-educated Dorin Chirtoacă of the Liberal Party had become mayor of Chişinău. The communists were, therefore, on the back foot, and there was apprehension among the opposition that they would use electoral fraud to retain power in the 2009 elections. On 5 April 2009, the PCRM won sixty seats but the opposition called for demonstrations in Chişinău on the following day to protest against what they regarded as falsification of the results. The OSCE observer mission had declared that the elections had been generally ‘free and fair’ but there was some suggestion that the Russian contingent within the OSCE delegation had influenced the report. According to the opposition, the new voter lists, which contained some 400,000 extra names compared to the voter lists used in the 2007 local elections, were the main source of fraud.45 The opposition made appeals through ‘Twitter’ and other social media to encourage more people to join the demonstrations in Chişinău. The events of April 2009 thus became known as the ‘Twitter revolution’

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even though most Moldovans did not actually use this social network. Protesters in the capital ran to some tens of thousands, most of them youths. A riot broke out in the area between the presidential palace and the parliament, both of which were looted and partially destroyed. The PCRM government applied heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the protesters, which led to three deaths. Voronin accused the Romanian government of planning a coup and expelled the Romanian ambassador. He also recalled the Moldovan envoy to Bucharest and introduced visas for Romanians entering Moldova. Romania denied the charges and on 14 April Romania’s President Băsescu pledged to expedite the granting of Romanian citizenship to Moldovans, claiming that some one million Moldovans had applied for citizenship. The PCRM’s sixty mandates enabled them to form a government but they were one deputy short of being able to elect the president. The opposition parties, in contrast to the aftermath of the 2005 elections, refused to support the government. With the parliament unable to elect a president, new elections were called for July 2009 which were won by a pro-European platform of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party. The parties banded together to form the Alliance for European Integration. Their combined fifty-three seats enabled the Alliance to form a government but not to elect the president. On 11 September 2009 Voronin resigned as president and Mihai Ghimpu, the Liberal Party leader, succeeded him as acting president by virtue of his position as speaker of the parliament. Vlad Filat of the Liberal Democratic Party became prime minister, a role he was to fulfil until 2013. The pro-European, and anti-Russian, bias of the new government was symbolized by the official commemoration on 28 June 2010 in Chişinău of the Soviet occupation of Romanian Bessarabia in 1940. Whereas the previous communist regime had marked the day of Soviet occupation as a positive experience for Moldova, the new government used the occasion to unveil a monument to the victims of Soviet occupation. The commemoration was presided over by Ghimpu, draped in the Romanian tricolour. In November 2010, the third parliamentary elections in two years were held in order to end the deadlock over parliament’s failure to elect a president. The Alliance for European Integration won the election, but again with insufficient deputies to elect a new president. Only in March 2012 was a president, Nicolae Timofti, eventually elected. The election of a new president did not, however, provide Moldova with political stability. Prime Minister Vlad Filat’s government was forced to resign in March 2013 following a vote of no-confidence by the PCRM, and the diplomat Iurie Leancă became the new prime minister. In



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September 2013 Russia banned the import of Moldovan wines and spirits, claiming that they contained impurities, and threatened to disrupt energy supplies. Russia was, in fact, trying to stall Moldova’s attempts at EU integration. In March 2014, following Russia’s seizure of the Crimea in neighbouring Ukraine, President Timofti warned Russia against the annexation of Transnistria, whose leaders had requested incorporation into Russia. There were fears in the Moldovan government that the autonomous region of Gagauz Yeri in southern Moldova also favoured closer ties with Russia. Nevertheless, in June 2014, Iurie Leancă’s government signed an Association Agreement with the EU which granted Moldova tariff-free access to the EU market. The following month, Russia placed an embargo on Moldovan fruit and vegetables as punishment and threatened to place restrictions on Moldovans working in Russia. The pro-European Alliance for European Integration again won a narrow victory in the November 2014 parliamentary elections. It was, however, the pro-Russian Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova led by Igor Dodon which emerged as the largest single party with some 20 per cent of the vote. In November, the country was also rocked by revelations of a banking scandal in which some $1 billion, which amounted to around 12 per cent of Moldova’s GDP, was stolen from the republic’s three largest banks through fraudulent loans. Ilan Shor, chairman of the board of the Savings Bank of Moldova, owned several companies which benefited from the loans. In early 2015, investigations by a US consultancy reported that Shor’s companies had gradually taken control of the three banks which had then issued loans back to his companies. None of this prevented Shor from becoming mayor of Orhei following local elections in June 2015. The banking crisis led to a credit crunch and fall in the value of the Moldovan leu which further impoverished much of the Moldovan population. This, and anger that the government had failed to prosecute anyone for the bank fraud, led to large-scale anti-government, anti-corruption protests and demands for early general elections throughout 2015 and 2016. While most of the demonstrations took place in Chişinău, some also took place among the Moldovan diaspora in Bucharest and other European capitals. The protests were coordinated by, among other groups, the Dignity and Truth movement, which stood on a platform opposed to ‘oligarchic, mafia government’. Many of these protests involved the crowd, especially Moldovan youth and intellectuals, demanding unification with Romania. Such was the case with the large demonstration in Chişinău in April 2015. In early July 2015 tens of thousands of protestors met in the centre of the capital. Thousands of the young people present then began the so-called

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‘Stephen the Great March’ to Bucharest which lasted a week. On 11 July, the protestors reached the River Prut and re-enacted the Podul de Flori (Bridge of Flowers) which had taken place in 1990 to represent the unity of Moldovans and Romanians. When the protestors arrived in Bucharest, they marched, together with several hundred Romanians, to President Klaus Johannis’s residence at the Cotroceni Palace to ask for his support for the unification of Moldova with Romania. Demands for unification with Romania were also at the centre of a demonstration held in Chişinău on 27 March 2016 to mark the 98th anniversary of Bessarabia’s union with Romania in 1918. Many protestors during the 2015 to 2016 disturbances in Moldova were, however, pro-Russian and the period in fact witnessed a fall in the number of Moldovans who supported Moldova’s integration into the EU.46 Parliament approved another minority pro-European government in February 2015, but it fell in June. This followed the popular demonstrations which took place in April and May. There were also accusations that the prime minister, Chiril Gaburici, had forged his degree certificate. A  new coalition government was dismissed in October 2015 following further demonstrations of up to 100,000 people held in Chişinău in September. This constituted the largest demonstration in Moldova since the protests surrounding independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Demonstrators set up a tent-encampment in the centre of the city and there were clashes with the police. Prime Minister Vlad Filat was arrested on corruption charges in October and was sentenced to nine years imprisonment in 2016 for his part in the banking scandal. Renewed protests in November 2015 spread from Chişinău to other Moldovan cities, such as Bălţi, Orhei and Soroca. Beyond the banking scandal, the country’s unfortunate reputation for criminal activities was further enhanced when it emerged that the Moldovan police, working with the FBI, had uncovered attempts to smuggle radioactive material out of the country. Between 2010 and 2015 criminal gangs made four attempts to sell nuclear material to Islamist extremists, including one to sell bomb-grade uranium, plus weapon designs, to a buyer from Sudan. In June 2016 another gang, seeking to export over $200,000 worth of uranium out of the country, was exposed by the Moldovan security forces.47 On the political front, meanwhile, Pavel Filip of the pro-European Democratic Party formed a new coalition government in January 2016. Both pro-European and pro-Russian demonstrators subsequently broke into parliament to protest against Filip’s ties to Moldova’s wealthiest oligarch, Vlad Plahotniuc, whose appointees controlled the Moldovan justice system. Meanwhile, President



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Timofti’s term of office expired in March 2016 and presidential elections were held that autumn. These were won by the pro-Russian Igor Dodon, a former member of the PCRM and leader of the Party of Socialists. Dodon sought the normalization of economic links with Russia, although Russia’s recent export bans on Moldovan produce had led to considerable reorientation of Moldovan trade from Russia towards the EU. Dodon also hoped for the reintegration of Transnistria into Moldova. Transnistria remains, however, firmly directed towards Russia and the breakaway republic’s leadership hope for annexation by Russia in the future. Several internationally unrecognized referenda held in Transnistria over the years also suggest this is popular among the public there. In the years since the 1992 war against the Moldovan government, the Transnistrian authorities have embarked upon a ‘nation-building’ project of their own to create a ‘Transnistrian’ identity among the multi-ethnic population. This identity is essentially Soviet, built around an unwillingness to accept the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a sense of alleged victimization at the hands of the Moldovan government and people. In the capital, Tiraspol, 2 September, the day Transnistria declared its independence from Moldova in 1991, is marked every year by an Independence Day military parade. A large war memorial which lists and commemorates all those who died between 1990 and 1992 to secure the independence of the region was also set up in Tiraspol by the Transnistrian authorities. Soviet-era holidays continue to be observed. Where statues of Lenin in Moldova have often been removed from pride of place or even desecrated, they abound in Transnistria. A  particularly imposing granite statue of Lenin, seemingly in flight, stands outside the parliament, or Supreme Soviet, in Tiraspol. For the Moldovans of Transnistria, who constitute some 26 per cent of the population, all these factors mean that their identity is increasingly regarded by others and themselves as connected to Russia and the former Soviet Union, rather than to Romania and the ‘Bessarabian’ part of the Republic of Moldova.48 The reality of life in Transnistria behind the Soviet façade is, however, one of great hardship for most citizens. The Transnistrian population has been reduced by 50 per cent over the past twenty years as a result of outward migration by working-age people. As in Moldova, this has led to many children being left with struggling grandparents or living alone. Meanwhile ‘gangster-politicians’ enrich themselves by establishing monopolies over the lucrative energy and weapons industries and other branches of the Transnistrian economy. Armaments continue to be exported in vast quantities from Transnistria to help fuel conflicts around the world.49 Smuggling, bribery and human trafficking on Transnistria’s

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borders with Ukraine and Moldova are rife and helped to enrich the Smirnov family in the 2000s when President Igor Smirnov’s son, Vladimir, was head of the Transnistrian customs office. The most flagrant corruption was (and is) practised by the Sheriff company, founded in the 1990s by two former KGB officers closely connected to the police and military and to President Smirnov and his son. The Sheriff business empire expanded to absorb most of the profitable business in Transnistria, including petrol stations, media outlets (radio and television channels) and a mobile phone outlet, a Mercedes-Benz franchise, bread factories and the nineteenth-century Tiraspol KVINT distillery. Sheriff owns the FC Sheriff Tiraspol football club, the most successful football team in Transnistria and Moldova, and the Sheriff stadium built in the early 2000s at considerable cost. The Sheriff empire, which is now Transnistria’s largest employer, also includes a chain of supermarkets which are highly profitable, especially since Moldovan products entering Transnistria are prohibitively taxed. Sheriff’s nefarious activities within its supermarkets include mistreatment of workers, purchase of expired dairy products for resale and the sale of counterfeit products such as ‘Colgate’ toothbrushes, which result in bleeding gums, and deodorants which cause underarm rashes.50 In December 2006, Igor Smirnov was re-elected as Transnistria’s president for the fourth time, but by this time Sheriff was supporting an opposition party, called Renewal, which was led by Evgeny Shevchuck who had ties to Sheriff. Shevchuck defeated Smirnov in the November 2011 presidential elections. Shevchuck pledged to pursue ‘friendly relations’ with Moldova while continuing to press for Transnistrian independence and eventual union with Russia. Shevchuck’s time in office was notable for his promotion of several young women to his government, including the 34-year-old foreign minister Nina Shtanski whom he later married. Shevchuck and his inexperienced team quickly lost public support and, more importantly, that of Sheriff. In the December 2016 presidential elections, the Russian-born Vadim Krasnoselsky defeated Shevchuck, with the help of Sheriff. Krasnoselsky envisaged Transnistria’s future in union with Russia and not in reintegration with Moldova.

Conclusion

Throughout its history, Moldova has stood at the edge of empires  – of the Roman and Byzantine empires, of the empires of the nomads, of the expanding Hungarian and Polish-Lithuanian kingdoms and of the Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian and Soviet empires. Moldova’s people and rulers have on occasions been able to utilize this circumstance, balancing one neighbour against the other in order to preserve independence. On other occasions, however, the contest for its space has led to Moldova’s dismemberment and partition. The age of empires has given way to the age of nations, and with this the nature of the contest for Moldova has been rewritten in terms of linguistic affiliation and cultural orientation. Moldovan identity rests, however, on foundations as fluid as its territory. While most ethnic Moldovans recognize the affinity between Romanian and the Moldovan language, only around 14 per cent regard themselves as ethnic Romanians. Orientation towards Romania, which was so important at the time of Moldova’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has been replaced for many by a desire for EU integration. Nevertheless, a small, but influential, ‘pan-Romanian’ tendency has continuously existed in Moldova, especially among intellectuals, since the nineteenth century. This tendency has gained wider support among the Moldovan public during times of deep social, political and economic crisis, such as existed during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It re-emerged powerfully again in 2015–16 among some sectors of the population owing to the country’s economic malaise and the corruption of its political elite. These internal problems were compounded by fears relating to the war in Ukraine and the growth of Russian military power in the region.1 Since the early 1990s, however, Romanian governments have shown little desire to reabsorb impoverished Moldova and assist instead Moldova’s EU aspirations.

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Despite the fact that the political unification of Moldova and Romania remains highly unlikely, the creation of a distinctive Moldovan national identity, pursued so assiduously by Moldovan ‘nation-builders’ in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has proved incomplete. The cultural components which underpin Moldovan identity are not always easily distinguishable from those upon which Romanian identity is based. For example, the Soviet-era Mărţişor international festival of music revived by President Voronin in the 2000s as part of his government’s Moldovan ‘nation-building’ project is based upon the Mărţişor folk traditions which the Moldovans share with Romanians west of the River Prut. On 27 August 2001, folk dancers performed the Moldovan national dance, the horă (circle dance), in central Chişinău to celebrate a decade of Moldovan independence, but the horă is also considered to be Romania’s national dance.2 Voronin’s attempt to co-opt Stephen the Great as a purely Moldovan national hero was similarly flawed. In a television poll in Romania in 2006, Stephen the Great was elected by the public as ‘the greatest Romanian of all time’. The Alley of Classics of Moldovan Literature in the Stephen the Great Park in central Chişinău also illustrates the problems in differentiating between Moldovan and Romanian identities. Many of the busts placed there, especially since 1990, are of authors and intellectuals from Moldova west of the Prut or from elsewhere in Romania. Yet a Moldovan regional identity and linguistic dialect clearly existed long before Bessarabia’s annexation by Russia in 1812 and the Soviet Union’s exaggerated ‘Moldovanization’ campaigns of the twentieth century. More recent Russian and Soviet influences have also had a profound effect on those Moldovans living east of the River Prut. The Bessarabian and subsequently the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic’s economy became orientated towards Russia and the Soviet Union. Many Ukrainians and Russians migrated into nineteenth-century Bessarabia and the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic which transformed the world in which the Moldovans lived. Crucially as well, the Moldovans missed out on the Romanian ‘nation-building’ educational and cultural project taking place west of the River Prut in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For some contemporary Moldovans, therefore, as well as Ukrainians and Russians (especially those in Transnistria), Moldova’s future belongs in some sort of close connection with Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. For its part, Russia has not given up its centuries-old interest in the region. It can be argued, however, that the contemporary Moldovan identity is essentially opportunistic in that Moldovans adopt a pro-Russian or proRomanian identity according to circumstance and when it brings advantage. At

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the same time, globalization and the spread of the English language are also having its effects upon the Moldovans. Since the 2000s, English has grown in popularity as a second language in Moldova because proficiency in English is needed for relatively well-paid jobs in the cities.3 Moldova is thus likely to remain for the foreseeable future as contested a cultural and political space as it has always been. It may well prove, however, that Moldova’s geopolitical orientation and related identity conundrum are not the republic’s most pressing problem. Since independence in 1991 the Moldovan authorities have established three new nature reserves to supplement the Codri reserve in central Moldova set up in 1971. The Prutul de Jos (Lower Prut) reserve in south-west Moldova where the lower Prut river merges into wetlands and lakes was opened in 1991. The Plaiul Fagului (Land of the Beeches) reserve north-west of Chişinău, near Moldova’s highest point at Bălăneşti hill, was set up in 1992. The Pădurea Domnească (Royal Forest) reserve in north-west Moldova was opened in 1993 and is the largest of the nature reserves. Among its fauna are bison imported from Poland. These reserves, together with Moldova’s varied fauna and flora, have been celebrated on many of the republic’s beautiful stamps which reflect the Moldovan governments’ attempts to establish an emotional connection between the Moldovan population and its natural environment. But all is not well in the Moldovan Eden. Moldova was the most densely populated province of both the tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union. Since the nineteenth century the region has been increasingly deforested to make way for human colonization and farming. The intensive agriculture practised under both communist and post-communist governments has led to further environmental degradation. A United Nations review of the Moldovan environment published in 2005 reported that soil erosion was increasing and that just under 34 per cent of the republic’s agricultural land had already been eroded. At the same time, soil fertility was decreasing, pastures were being overgrazed and forest coverage had contracted to 11 per cent of the republic’s surface. A subsequent United Nations environmental review reported that the cutting down of trees for fuel by the population was such that forests are unable to regenerate. The review noted the dominance across much of the republic of acacia trees which, although good for fuel, are less ecologically beneficial than old grown forests. Forty per cent of Moldova was affected by soil erosion by 2014, with 112,000 hectares at risk of complete desertification due to bad agricultural practice. Sustainable development, said the review, ‘has not yet emerged as a core principle of policy development’, while biodiversity trends were described

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as ‘alarming’ due to excessive hunting, overfishing, the poaching of birds and loss of all major habitats, including pastures, forests, wetlands and steppe-lands. A staggering 150 species of invasive animals and 460 species of invasive plants were also recorded. These were causing annual losses of up to 10 per cent in cereal crops. The republic’s drinking water quality is also fast deteriorating. These factors, together with Moldova’s age-old susceptibility to frequent droughts, suggest that Moldova, long famous for its fertile black soil and rich agricultural produce, could be on the brink of regular food and water shortages such as that which affected the republic in 2007. This can only lead to the further impoverishment, and outward migration, of the Moldovan population.4

Notes Introduction: Places and questions 1 Natalia Sineaeva-Pankowska and Rafal Pankowski, ‘The Rock Group Zdob şi Zdub as an Example of National Identity Construction’, in Natalia Cwicinskaja and Piotr Oleksy (eds), Moldova: In Search of Its Own Place in Europe (Bydgoszec, Poland, 2013), pp. 92–102 (p. 96). 2 Donald L. Dwyer, The Romanian Dialect of Moldova: A Study in Language and Politics (Lampeter, Wales, 1999), p. 13. 3 For a discussion of the intricacies of the Ukrainian nationality question, see Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: An Unexpected Nation (New Haven, CT, 2000), pp. 1–20.

1 Origins 1 For this and much of what follows, see Ioana A. Oltean, Dacia: Landscape, Colonisation, Romanisation (London, 2007), pp. 41–59. 2 Ovid: The Poems of Exile, translated with introduction, notes and glossary by Peter Green (London, 1994), Tristia: Book III, 4B, line 52 (p. 48); Tristia: Book III, 10, lines 54–56 (p. 57). 3 Nicolae Iorga, A History of Roumania: Land, People, Civilisation (London, 1925), p. 35. Iorga’s more scholarly works, however, contradict this assertion. 4 For a discussion of the ‘Daco-Roman continuity theory’ in the Ceauşescu era, see Dennis Deletant, ‘The Past in Contemporary Romania: Some Reflections on Recent Romanian Historiography’, in László Péter (ed.), Historians and the History of Transylvania (New York, 1992), pp. 133–58. 5 For a discussion of this, see Frederick Kellogg, A History of Romanian Historical Writing (Bakersfield, CA, 1990), pp. 31–41. Gheorghe Brătianu’s classic account has been translated into English as An Enigma and Miracle of History: The Romanian People (Bucharest, 1996). 6 Alexandru Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei (Bucharest, 1992), pp. 81–6, 100. This is a reprint of three volumes originally published as Istoria Basarabiei. Contribuţii la studiul istoriei românilor, 2 vols (Chişinău, 1937 and 1940) and Basarabia românească (Iaşi, no date of publication). On the Cuman origin of Moldovan

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place-names, see also, Gábor Lükő, ‘Havaselve és Moldva népei a X-XII században’, Ethnographia – Népélet, 46 (1935): 90–105. 7 Michael F. Hamm, ‘Kishinev: The Character and Development of a Tsarist Frontier Town’, Nationalities Papers, 26, no. 1 (1998): 19–38 (20); Laurenţiu Rădvan, At Europe’s Borders: Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities (Leiden, 2010), p. 371. 8 For this and much of what follows, see Dennis Deletant, ‘Some Considerations on the Emergence of the Principality of Moldavia in the Middle of the Fourteenth Century’, in Dennis Deletant (ed.), Studies in Romanian History (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 47–65. See also, Victor Spinei, Moldavia in the 11th–14th Centuries (Bucharest, 1986), pp. 49–52 and László Makkai, A milkói (kún) püspökség és népei (Debrecen, 1936). 9 Dimitrie Cantemir, Descriptio Moldaviae, trans. Gh. Guţu (Bucharest, 1973), pp. 51–2. 10 Luminiţa Bejenaru, Archaeozoological Approaches to Medieval Moldavia (Oxford, 2009), p. 27. 11 For a magico-religious interpretation of the Moldovan ‘foundation myth’ and the ‘ritual hunt’, see Micea Eliade, Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religions and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe (Chicago, 1972), pp. 131–63. 12 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 136. 13 Deletant, ‘Some Considerations on the Emergence of the Principality of Moldavia in the Middle of the Fourteenth Century’, pp. 59–60. 14 Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki (ed.), Documente privitore la istoria românilor, 19 vols (Bucharest, 1887–1938), vol. 1, part 2, pp. 61–2. 15 Ibid., p. 94. 16 Ion Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 25–6 (first published in Cernăuţi in 1924). 17 Constantin C. Giurescu, Transilvania în istoria poporului romȃn (Bucharest, 1967), pp. 51–2. 18 Ibid., p. 50. 19 Spinei, Moldavia in the 11th–14th Centuries, pp. 134–9. 20 Liviu Onu (ed.), Grigore Ureche. Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei (Bucharest, 1967), pp. 75–6. 21 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 25. 22 Gheorghe I. Brătianu, Die Moldau und ihre historischen Grenzen (Bucharest, 1941), p. 19. 23 Rădvan, At Europe’s Borders, p. 361. 24 Robin Baker, ‘On the Origin of the Moldavian Csángós’, Slavonic and East European Review, 75, no. 4 (1997): 658–80. 25 Eliade, Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God, pp. 191–9.

Notes 187 26 Gheorghe I. Brătianu, Tradiţia istorică despre întemeierea statelor româneşti (Bucharest, 1980), p. 142 (first published in 1945). 27 Franz Adolf Wickenhauser, Die deutschen Siedlungen in der Bukowina, 2 vols (Czernowitz, 1885–7), 1, p. 9. 28 Adam Neale, Travels through Some Parts of Germany, Poland, Moldavia and Turkey (London, 1818), p. 165. 29 Constantin C. Giurescu and Dinu C. Giurescu, Istoria românilor până astăzi (Bucharest, 1975), p. 210. 30 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 63. 31 For much of what follows, see Gheorghe Brătianu, Tradiţia istorică despre întemeirea statelor româneşti (Bucharest, 1980), pp. 148–52; Dennis Deletant, ‘Genoese, Tatars and Romanians at the Mouth of the Danube in the Fourteenth Century’, in Dennis Deletant, Studies in Romanian History (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 25–46. 32 Şerban Papacostea, ‘Desăvîrşirea emancipării politice a Ţării Româneşti şi a Moldovei (1330–1392)’, Revista istorică, 2, nos 9–10 (1991): 471–94; Dennis Deletant, ‘Moldavia between Hungary and Poland, 1347–1412’, in Dennis Deletant, Studies in Romanian History (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 66–91. 33 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 29–30. 34 Alexandru I. Gonţa, ‘Mitropolia şi episcopiile ortodoxe moldoveneşti în sec. XV’, in Mitropolia Moldovei şi Sucevei. Revista oficială a Arhiepiscopiei Iaşilor şi a Episcopiei Romanul şi Huşilor, 34, nos 1–2 (1958): 21–36; M. Heppell, The Ecclesiastical Career of Gregory Camblak (London, 1979), pp. 18–23.

2  The Late Middle Ages: Athletes of Christ 1 For this and much of what follows, see Dennis Deletant, ‘Slavonic Letters in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Centuries’, in Dennis Deletant, Studies in Romanian History (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 92–115; P. P. Panaitescu, Alexandru cel Bun. La cinci sute de ani dela mortea lui (Bucharest, 1932), pp. 10–30. 2 Mircea Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche (Erlangen, 1994), pp. 86–7. 3 Grigore Nandriş (ed.), Documente slavo-române din mănăştiirile Muntele Athos (Bucharest, 1937), pp. 7–15. 4 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Silence: A Christian History (London, 2013), pp. 110–13. 5 Dennis Deletant, ‘Some Aspects of the Byzantine Tradition in the Romanian Principalities’, in Dennis Deletant (ed.), Studies in Romanian History (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 186–200 (p. 189).

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6 Heppell, Ecclesiastical Career, pp. 19–23. 7 For this and much of what follows, see C. Cihodaru, Alexandru cel Bun (Iaşi, 1984), pp. 150–70. 8 Ibid., p. 153. 9 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 162. 10 Deletant, ‘Moldavia between Hungary and Poland, 1347–1412’, pp. 66–91. 11 For much of what follows, see Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 30–6; Cihodaru, Alexandru cel Bun, pp. 120–49, 170–97. 12 Vlad Ghimpu, Biserici şi mănăstiri medieval în Basarabia (Chişinău, 2000), p. 59. 13 Alan Ogden, Revelations of Byzantium: The Monasteries and Painted Churches of Northern Moldavia (Iaşi, 2002), pp. 214–15. 14 Rădvan, At Europe’s Borders: Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities, pp. 332–3, 514, 520–1. 15 Ghimpu, Biserici şi mănăstiri medieval în Basarabia, p. 44. 16 Martyn Rady, ‘Jiskra, Hussitism and Slovakia’, in Eva Doležalová and Jaroslav Pánek (eds), Confession and Nation in the Era of Reformations: Central Europe in Comparative Perspective (Prague, 2011), pp. 77–90 (p. 89); M. Şesan, ‘Husiţii şi Ortodoxia’, in Mitropolia Moldovei şi Sucevei. Revista oficială a Arhiepiscopiei Iaşi şi a Episcopiei Romanul şi Huşilor, 34, nos 3–4 (1958): 218–27. For Peter Payne, see ‘Peter Payne in England’, in R. R. Betts (ed.), Essays in Czech History (London, 1969), pp. 236–46. 17 Cihodaru, Alexandru cel Bun, p. 197. 18 Cantemir, Descriptio Moldaviae, pp. 135–6. 19 For what follows on the political and military events of Stephen’s reign, see Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 48–70; Şerban Papacostea, Ştefan cel Mare domn al Moldovei (1457–1504) (Bucharest, 1990), esp. pp. 11–66; Mustafa Mehmet, ‘Din raporturile Moldovei cu Imperial Otoman în a doua jumătate a veacului al XV-lea’, Studii revistă de istorie, 13, no. 5 (1960), pp. 165–78. 20 Papacostea, Ştefan cel Mare, p. 42. 21 Ogden, Revelations of Byzantium, p. 188. 22 Quoted in N. Iorga, Histoire des roumains et de romanité orientale, 9 vols (Bucharest, 1937–44), 4: Les Chevaliers, pp. 252–3. 23 For what follows regarding Stephen’s relations with Ivan III, and the political importance of the prince’s three marriages, see Gheorghe Gonţa, ‘Unele considerenţe privind evoluţia raporturilor internaţionale ale Moldovei şi mentalităţii politice în timpul domniei lui Ştefan cel Mare’, Revistă de istorie a Moldovei, 7, no. 3 (1996): 40–54. 24 At this point, Kyiv was an appanage principality within Lithuania. 25 Nevertheless, Pocuţia remained a bone of contention between Moldova and Poland-Lithuania for several generations. John the Terrible was the last prince

Notes 189 to attempt to incorporate the area into Moldova in 1572. For a full account, see Johann Nistor, ‘Die Moldausichen Ansprüche auf Pokutien’, Archiv für österreichische Geschichte, 100 (1911): 1–182. 26 Andrei Pippidi, Tradiţiă politică bizantină în ţările române în secolele XVI–XVIII (Bucharest, 1983), p. 35. 27 For what follows on religion and culture under Stephen the Great, see Alexandru Elian, ‘Moldova şi Bizanţul în secolul al XV-lea’, in M. Berza (ed.), Cultura moldovenească în timpul lui Ştefan cel Mare (Bucharest, 1964), pp. 97–179; Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche, pp. 158–80; N. Iorga, Istoria bisericii româneşti, 2 vols (Bucharest, 1995), 1, pp. 98–104 (first published in 1928–30). 28 For the gifts of the Moldovan and Wallachian princes to Mount Athos, see Marcu Beza, Urme româneşti în răsăritul orthodox (Bucharest, 1937), pp. 35–59. 29 Papacostea, Ştefan cel Mare, pp. 22–9. 30 Eugen Stănescu, ‘Cultura scrisă moldovenească în vremea lui Ştefan cel Mare’, in M. Berza (ed.), Cultura moldovenească în timpul lui Ştefan cel Mare (Bucharest, 1964), pp. 9–45.

3  Moldova and the Ottomans 1 For the raia-s, see Ion Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 65–7. 2 For what follows on the Tatars, see N. Iorga, Geschichte des rumänischen Volkes im Rahmen seiner Staatsbildungen, 2 vols (Gotha, 1905), 2, pp. 11–13. For a discussion on the Bugeac, see Ion Chirtoagă, ‘Evoluţia semnificaţiei teritoriale a noţiunii Basarabia’, Revistă de istorie a Moldovei, 5, no. 2 (1994): 9–13. 3 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 171. 4 Ibid., p. 172. 5 Orest Subtelny, Domination of Eastern Europe: Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism, 1500–1715 (Kingston, Canada, 1986), p. 39. 6 Keith Hitchins, The Romanians 1774–1866 (Oxford, 1996), p. 11. 7 Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London, 2006), p. 92. 8 Subtelny, Domination of Eastern Europe, pp. 39–40. 9 Ian Blanchard, ‘The Continental European Cattle Trades, 1400–1600’, The Economic History Review, New Series, 39, no. 3 (1986): 427–60 (440). 10 Subtelny, Domination of Eastern Europe, p. 40. 11 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 77–80. 12 Demetrius Dvoichencko-Markov, ‘The Ukrainian Cossacks in the Early AntiOttoman Struggle for the Independence of Moldova’, East European Quarterly, 14, no. 2 (1980): 241–50.

190

Notes

13 Frank E. Sysyn, ‘The Khnel’Nyts’kyi Uprising: A Characterization of the Ukrainian Revolt’, Jewish History, 17, no. 2 (2003): 115–39 (120–1). 14 N. Iorga, Histoire des relations russo-roumaines (Iaşi, 1917), p. 42. 15 For this and much of what follows, see Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche, pp. 146, 202–37. 16 Ogden, Revelations of Byzantium, pp. 94–5, 252. 17 See, for example, Luminiţa Ilviţchi, Mănăstirile şi schiturile din Basarabia (Chişinău, 1999), p. 15. 18 Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500–1453 (London, 2000), p. 294. 19 For photographs of monasteries established on Mount Athos and sacred objects donated by Moldovan rulers and churchmen, see Pavel Bălan, Rugă pentru neam: artă moldovenească din secolele XIV–XX (Chişinău, 2015), pp. 92–123. 20 N. Iorga, Byzance après Byzance. Continuation de l’histoire de la vie Byzantine (Bucharest, 1935), pp. 129–54. 21 Ekkehard Völkl, Das rumänische Fürstentum Moldau und die Ostslaven im 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1975), pp. 32–3; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London, 2004), pp. 266–7. 22 On ceremonial costume at the court of Vasile Lupu, see Ana Dobjanschi and Victor Simion, Arta în epoca lui Vasile Lupu (Bucharest, 1979), pp. 71–7. 23 For this and much of what follows, see Constantin Şerban, Vasile Lupu, domn al Moldovei (1634–1653) (Bucharest, 1991), pp. 11–121, 181–93. 24 Deletant, ‘Some Aspects of the Byzantine Tradition in the Romanian Principalities’, pp. 186–200 (p. 192). 25 The monastery of St Michael the Archangel at Peri in Maramureş was founded in the fourteenth century, possibly by Dragoş’s son Saş, and was dedicated to the patriarchate of Constantinople at the end of the century. The monastery was an important focus of religious life for both the Romanian-speakers and the Ukrainians of Maramureş and surrounding areas. It is an example of the longstanding religious links between the two peoples: see Şt. Ciobanu, Începuturile scrisului în limba românească (Bucharest, 1941), pp. 31–7. 26 Marin Popescu-Spineni, Procesul mănăstirilor închinate: contribuţii la istoria socială românească (Bucharest, 1936), pp. 6, 19–20. 27 Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche, p. 292. 28 Maria Crăciun, ‘Building a Romanian Reformed Community in SeventeenthCentury Transylvania’, in Maria Crăciun, Ovidiu Ghitta and Graeme Murdock (eds), Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 146–72. 29 Völkl, Das rumänische Fürstentum Moldau und die Ostslaven im 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert, p. 83. 30 Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche, p. 261.

Notes 191 31 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 227–30; Gheorghe Brătianu, Die Moldau und ihre historischen Grenzen (Bucharest, 1941), pp. 24–32. 32 I. Nistor, Der Nationale Kampf in der Bukowina mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rumänen und Ruthenen historisch beleuchtet (Bucharest, 1918), pp. 29–30. 33 Völkl, Das rumänische Fürstentum Moldau und die Ostslaven im 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert, p. 108. 34 Cantemir, Descriptio Moldaviae, p. 297. 35 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 277. 36 Ibid., p. 365. 37 Popescu-Spineni, Procesul mănăstirilor închinate, pp. 19, 29. 38 For what follows see, Deletant, ‘Slavonic Letters in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Centuries’, pp. 92–115; Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche, pp. 254–64. 39 Ibid., p. 264. 40 Deletant, ‘Slavonic Letters in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania’, p. 106. 41 Cantemir, Descriptio Moldaviae, p. 371. 42 Pavel Parasca, ‘Antecedente ale înstrăinării Basarabiei pînă la 1812’, Revistă de istorie a Moldovei, 3, no. 3 (1992): 27–32 (28–9). 43 Demetrius Dvoichenko-Markov, ‘Gheorghe Duca Hospodar of Moldavia and Hetman of the Ukraine, 1678–1684’, Balkan Studies, 31, no. 1 (1990): 73–86; Demetrius Dvoichenko-Markov, ‘Transnistria: A Rumanian Claim in the Ukraine’, Südost-Forschungen, 16, no. 2 (1957): 375–88. 44 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 130–5. 45 For Cantemir’s considerable contribution to the understanding of Turkish and Persian music, see Victor Ghilaş, Dimitrie Cantemir – muzicianul în contextul culturii universal (Chişinău, 2015). 46 On the Cantemir campaign and relations with Russia, see Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 137–41. 47 Orest Subtelny, ‘The Contractual Principle and Right to Resistance in the Ukraine and Moldavia’, in R. J. W. Evans and T. V. Thomas (eds), Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke, 1991), pp. 287–99. 48 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 142–4.

4  The Phanariots 1 For this and much of what follows, see Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 360–70.

192

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2 N. Iorga, Histoire des roumains et de la romanité orientale, 9 vols (Bucharest, 1937– 44), 7, pp. 19–37, 153–70. 3 N. Iorga, Roumains et grecs au cours des siècles (Bucharest, 1921), pp. 48–50. 4 Cyril Mango, ‘The Phanariots and the Byzantine Tradition’, in Richard Clogg (ed.), The Struggle for Greek Independence: Essays to Mark the 150th Anniversary of the Greek War of Independence (London, 1973), pp. 41–66 (p. 45). 5 For Nicolae and Constantin Mavrocordat, see Florin Constantiniu, Constantin Mavrocordat (Bucharest, 1985). For the Phanariots in general, see Demir M. Dragnev, ‘Instaurarea regimului Turco–Fanariot în Moldova’, Revistă de istorie a Moldovei, 3, no. 2 (1992): 65–76. 6 Quoted in Alex Drace-Francis, The Making of Modern Romanian Culture: Literacy and the Development of National Identity (London, 2006), p. 59. 7 R. S. M., ‘The History of Masonry in Moldova (1733–1812)’, Masonic Athenaeum: The Official Journal of the Grand Lodge of Moldova, 1 (2014): 10–15. 8 William Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: with Various Political Observations Relating to Them (London, 1820), p. 134. 9 There was a short-lived Greek press in Constantinople in 1838: Völkl, Das rumänische Fürstentum Moldau und die Ostslaven im 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert, pp. 25–6. 10 Hitchins, The Romanians, 1774–1866, pp. 123–4. 11 For Iorga’s criticism, see his Roumains et grecs au cours des siècles, p. 48. For Zallony, see ‘Essay on the Fanariots in which the Original Causes of Their Elevation to the Hospodariate of Walachia (sic) and Moldavia Is Explained; Their Mode of Administration, and the Principal Reasons for Their Fall’, in Charles Swan (ed.), Journal of a Voyage up the Mediterranean Principally among the Islands of the Archipelago and in Asia Minor, Including Many Interesting Particulars Relative to the Greek Revolution … to which Is Added, An Essay on the Fanariots Translated from the French of Mark Philip Zallony, a Greek, 2 vols (London, 1826), 2, pp. 271–422. 12 For this and much of what follows, see Hitchins, The Romanians 1774–1866, pp. 12–25. 13 Daniel Chirot, Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The Creation of a Balkan Colony (New York, 1976), p. 64. 14 Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, p. 373. 15 Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, p. 98. 16 Ibid., p. 73. 17 Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, p. 375. 18 Zallony, ‘Essay on the Fanariots’, pp. 294–6. 19 Thomas Thornton, The Present State of Turkey; or a Description of the Political, Civil, and Religious Constitution, Government and Laws of the Ottoman Empire, Together

Notes 193 with the Geography, Political and Civil State of the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, 2 vols (London, 1809), 2, p. 343. 20 Zallony, ‘Essay on the Fanariots’, p. 290. 21 Thornton, The Present State of Turkey, p. 342. 22 Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, pp. 131–47. 23 Ibid., p. 131. 24 Zallony, ‘Essay on the Fanariots’, p. 297. 25 Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, pp. 75–9 (p. 79). 26 Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III 1789–1807 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 238. 27 Zallony, ‘Essay on the Fanariots’, pp. 292–3, 298. 28 Thornton, The Present State of Turkey, 2, pp. 336–7. 29 Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, pp. 73, 155. 30 For much of what follows, see Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche, pp. 416–27. 31 Hitchins, The Romanians, 1774–1866, p. 123. 32 Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, p. 156. 33 Andrew C. Janos, ‘Modernization and Decay in Historical Perspective: The Case of Romania’, in Kennneth Jowitt (ed.), Social Change in Romania, 1860–1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 72–116 (p. 75). 34 Adam Neale, Travels through Some Parts of Germany, Poland, Moldavia, and Turkey (London, 1818), p. 155. 35 Ibid., pp. 169–70. The wilds of Moldova made a similar impression on Thornton, see Thornton, The Present State of Turkey, 2, pp. 316–26; also A British Resident of Twenty Years in the East, The Frontier Lands of the Christian and the Turk; Comprising Travels in the Regions of the Lower Danube in 1850 and 1851, 2 vols (London, 1853), 2, p. 20. 36 Freiherr von Campenhausen, Bemerkungen über Russland besonders einige Provinzen dieses Reichs und ihre Naturgeschichte betreffend, nebst einer kurzgefassten Geschichte der Zaporoger Kosaken, Bessarabiens, der Moldau und der Krimm (Leipzig, 1807), pp. 114–82. 37 Ibid., p. 131. 38 Ibid., p. 142. 39 Kelemen Mikes, Letters from Turkey: Kelemen Mikes, Chamberlain of the Last Prince of Transylvania, ed. and trans. Bernard Adams (London, 2000), p. 205. 40 Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, p. 159. Similar comments were made by Thornton. See The Present State of Turkey, 2, p. 329.

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41 Adam Neale, Travels through Some Parts of Germany, Poland, Moldavia, and Turkey, p. 170. 42 Ibid. 43 Thornton, The Present State of Turkey, 2, p. 323. 44 Campenhausen, Bemerkungen über Russland, pp. 138, 153. 45 Ibid., p. 179. 46 Angela Jiancu, ‘Women, Fashion and Europeanization: The Romanian Principalities, 1750–1830’, in Amila Buturović and İrvin Cemil Schick (eds), Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History (London, 2007), pp. 201–30 (pp. 207–8). 47 Zallony, ‘Essay on the Fanariots’, p. 296. 48 N. Iorga, Byzance après Byzance. Continuation de l’histoire de la vie Byzantine (Bucharest, 1935), pp. 242–5; Andrei Pippidi, Tradiţia politică bizantină în ţările române în secolele XVI–XVIII (Bucharest, 1983), pp. 115–22. 49 For much of what follows, see Vlad Georgescu, Political Ideas and the Enlightenment in the Romanian Principalities (1750–1831) (New York, 1971), pp. 30–8. 50 George F. Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia, 1774–1828: A Study of Imperial Expansion (New York, 1976), p. 21. 51 Jiancu, ‘Women, Fashion and Europeanization’, pp. 206–7. 52 Pompiliu Eliade, Influenţa franceză asupra spiritului public în România (Bucharest, 1982), pp. 116–44. 53 Constanţa Vintilă Ghiţulescu, ‘Constructing a New Identity: Romanian Aristocrats between Oriental Heritage and Western Prestige (1780–1866)’, in Constanţa Vintilă Ghiţulescu (ed.), From Traditional Attire to Modern Dress: Modes of Identification, Modes of Recognition in the Balkan (XVIth to XXth Centuries) (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2011), pp. 104–28. 54 Thornton, The Present State of Turkey, 2, p. 350.

5  Russia, the principalities and Romania 1 Vlad Georgescu, Mémoires et projets de réforme dans les principautés roumaines 1831–1848. Répertoire et texts. Avec un supplément pour les anneés 1769–1830 (Bucharest, 1972), p. 8. 2 Iorga, Histoire des relations russo-roumaines, pp. 64–78. 3 N. S. Govora, Relaţiile româno-ruse (Madrid, 1979), p. 55. 4 For this and much of what follows, see Silviu Dragomir, ‘Contribuţii relaţiile bisericii româneşti cu Rusia în veacul XVII’, Analele academiei române, Series

Notes 195 2: Memoriile secţiunii istorice, 34 (1911); 1065–1247 (1067, 1081–98, 1106–18); Völkl, Das rumänische Fürstentum Moldau und die Ostslaven im 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert, pp. 7–38. 5 Grigore Nandriş, Christian Humanism in the Neo-Byzantine Mural Paintings in Eastern Europe (Wiesbaden, 1970), p. 98. 6 N. Iorga, Vechea artă religioasă la români (Vălenii-de-Munte, 1934), pp. 38–9. 7 Păcurariu, Geschichte der rumänischen orthodoxen Kirche, pp. 424–7. 8 For much of what follows, see Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements 1806–1914 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 1–9. 9 Quoted in Albert Sorel, The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth Century: The Partition of Poland and the Treaty of Kainardji (London, 1898), p. 250. 10 Ibid., pp. 249–50. 11 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 162. 12 Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III 1789–1807 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 33. 13 For much of what follows, see Armand Goşu, ‘Pacea de la Bucureşti şi Moruzeşti’, in Ovidiu Cristea and Gheorghe Lazar (eds), Naţional şi universal în istoria românilor. Studii oferite prof. dr. Şerban Papacostea cu ocazia împlinirii a 70 de ani (Bucharest, 1998), pp. 362–87. 14 Iorga, Histoire des relations russo-roumaines, p. 247. 15 ‘Arhiva senatorilor dela Chişinău şi ocupaţia rusească dela 1806–1812’, Analele academiei române, Series 3: Partea administrativă şi desbaterile, 31 (1908–9): 581– 723 (658–84). 16 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 178. 17 Ibid., pp. 173–7; Brătianu, Die Moldau und ihre historischen Grenzen, pp. 34–5. 18 Alain Ruzé, La Moldova entre la Roumanie et la Russie de Pierre le Grand à Boris Eltsine (Paris, 1997), p. 63. 19 For Russia’s foreign-policy motivations regarding the principalities, see Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements 1806–1914, pp. 3–28, 92–110. 20 Thomas Thornton, The Russians in Moldavia and Wallachia (London, 1849), pp. 13–24. 21 Barbara Jelavich, Russia and the Formation of the Romanian National State 1821– 1878 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 88–9. 22 Charles and Barbara Jelavich, ‘The Danubian Principalities and Bulgaria under Russian Protectorship’, in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 9 (1961): 349–66 (357). 23 Barbara Jelavich, ‘The Russian Intervention in Wallachia and Transylvania, September 1848 to March 1849’, in Rumanian Studies, 4 (1976–9): 16–74. 24 Barbara Jelavich, The Ottoman Empire, the Great Powers, and the Straits Question, 1870–1887 (Bloomington, IN, 1973), p. 20.

196

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25 Demetrius C. Boulger (ed.), General Gordon’s Letters from the Crimea, the Danube and Armenia, August 18, 1854, to November 17, 1858 (London, 1884), p. 134. 26 For this and much of what follows, see Jelavich, Russia and the Formation of the Romanian National State 1821–1878, pp. 33, 50–5, 130–74. 27 Barbara Jelavich, ‘Russia and Moldavian Separatism: The Demonstration of April 1866’, in Alexander Fischer, Günter Moltmann and Klaus Schwabe (eds), Russland-Deutschland-Amerika. Festschrift für Fritz T. Epstein zum 80. Geburtstag (Wiesbaden, 1978), pp. 73–87. 28 Charles and Barbara Jelavich, ‘The Danubian Principalities and Bulgarian under Russian Protectorship’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 9 (1961): 349–66 (p. 366). 29 Ibid., p. 365.

6  Russian Bessarabia 1 Ion Chirtoagă, ‘Evoluţia semnificaţiei teritoriale a noţiunii Basarabia’, Revistă de istorie a Moldovei, 5, no. 2 (1994): 9–13. 2 Cantemir, Descriptio Moldaviae, pp. 83–91. 3 Ion Ţurcanu, În căutarea originii numelui Basarabia (Chişinău, 2010), p. 32. 4 Ovid: The Poems of Exile, trans. Peter Green, Tristia, Book III, 10, lines 4–6 (p. 55). 5 Ţurcanu, În căutarea originii numelui Basarabia, pp. 155–9. 6 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 78. 7 George F. Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia, 1774–1828: A Study of Imperial Expansion (New York, 1976), p. 20. 8 Valentin Tomuleţ, Cronica protestelor şi revendicărilor populaţiei din Basarabia (1812–1828), 2 vols (Chişinău, 2007), 2, p. 3. 9 For what follows on Bessarabian autonomy, see Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia, 1774–1828, pp. 58–133. 10 Quoted in ibid., p. 95. 11 For further information on the social groups in Bessarabia under Russian rule, see Zamfir C. Arbure, Basarabia în secolul XIX (Bucharest, 1898), pp. 126–40. 12 Valentin Tomuleţ, Basarabia în epoca modernă (1812–1918) (Chişinău, 2014), pp. 621–2; Viorel Achim, Ţiganii în istoria României (Bucharest, 1998), pp. 114–15. 13 Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture (Stanford, CA, 2002), p. 23. 14 Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia, 1774–1828, pp. 135–6. 15 King, The Moldovans, p. 26. 16 Keith Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947 (Oxford, 1994), p. 240.

Notes 197 17 Quoted in Charles Upson Clark, Bessarabia: Russia and Roumania on the Black Sea (New York, 1927), p. 71. Many Moldovans and Ukrainians also fled to Habsburgcontrolled Bukovina. 18 Ion Chirtoagă, Din istoria Moldovei de sud-est până in anii ’30 al sec. al XIX-lea (Chişinău, 1999), p. 184. 19 Ibid., p. 161. 20 King, The Moldovans, p. 24. 21 Ibid. 22 Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia, 1774–1828, p. 71. 23 For what follows on the Germans in Bessarabia, see Dirk Jachomowski, Die Umsiedlung der Bessarabien -, Bukowina -, und Dobrudschadeutschen. Von der Volksgruppe in Rumänien zur “Siedlungsbrücke” an der Reichsgrenze (Munich, 1984), pp. 6–18. 24 Hannes Hofbauer and Viorel Roman, Bukowina, Bessarabien, Moldawien: vergessenes Land zwischen Westeuropa, Russland und der Türkei (Vienna, 1993), p. 60; King, The Moldovans, p. 24. 25 Em. De Martonne, What I Have Seen in Bessarabia (Paris, 1919), pp. 21–2. Professor de Martonne was an ethnographer of the Carpathian region and part of the French delegation at the Paris peace conference in 1919–1920. 26 Arbure, Basarabia în secolul XIX, p. 111. 27 For much of what follows, see Eliahu Feldman, ‘The Jews of Bessarabia from Their Arrival to the End of the 19th Century: Prologue’, https://www.jewishgen.org/ yizkor/pinkas_romania/rom2_00279.html (accessed 13 January 2019). 28 King, The Moldovans, pp. 23–4; Michael F. Hamm, ‘Kishinev: The Character and Development of a Tsarist Frontier Town’, Nationalities Papers, 26, no. 1 (1998): 19–38 (27–9). 29 Ibid. 30 Samuel D. Gruber, ‘Jewish Heritage Sites and Monuments in Moldova’, 2010. https://surface.syr.edu/rel/25/ (accessed 13 January 2017). 31 Jeffrey Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Bloomington, IN, 2009), pp. 51, 121. 32 King, The Moldovans, pp. 23–4. 33 Chirtoagă, Din istoria Moldovei de sud-est până în anii ’30 al sec. al XIX, pp. 130, 191. 34 Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, p. 241. 35 For what follows on the withdrawal of autonomy from Bessarabia, see Jewsbury, The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia, 1774–1828, pp. 131–55. 36 Gheorghe Negru, Ţarismul şi mişcarea naţională a românilor din Basarabia (Chişinău, 2000), pp. 58–9.

198

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37 Paul and Zamfira Mihail, Acte în limba română tipărite în Basarabia. I (1812–1830) (Bucharest, 1993), p. xxi. 38 For the works printed by Bănulescu-Bodoni and his successor, Dimitrie Sulima, see Ştefan Ciobanu, Cultura românească în Basarabia sub stăpânirea rusă (Chişinău, 1923), pp. 36–67; Drace-Francis, The Making of Modern Romanian Culture, p. 64. 39 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 254. 40 Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca, NY, 1995), p. 94. 41 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 258–9. 42 Nicolae Ciachir, Basarabia sub stăpînire ţaristă (1812–1917) (Bucharest, 1992), p. 64. 43 Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, p. 100. 44 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 450–7; Ion G. Pelivan, Bessarabia under the Russian Rule (Paris, 1920), pp. 30–1; Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, p. 240. 45 Negru, Ţarismul şi mişcarea naţională a românilor din Basarabia, p. 61. 46 Demetrius C. Boulger (ed.), General Gordon’s Letters from the Crimea, the Danube and Armenia, August 18, 1854, to November 17, 1858 (London, 1884), p. 128. 47 Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, p. 245. 48 Clark, Bessarabia, pp. 90–1. David Mitrany recorded the same abysmal statistics for 1907: David Mitrany, The Land and the Peasant in Rumania: The War and Agricultural Reform (1917–21) (London, 1930), p. 510. 49 Iorga, Geschichte des rumänischen Volkes im Rahmen seiner Staatsbildungen, 2, p. 448. 50 Pelivan, Bessarabia under the Russian Rule, pp. 22–3. 51 Dimitrie Gusti et al. (eds), Enciclopedia României, 4 vols (Bucharest, 1936–43), 1, p. 450. 52 Ciobanu, Cultura românească în Basarabia sub stăpânirea rusă, p. 147. 53 Clark, Bessarabia, p. 105. 54 Prince Sergei Dmitriyevich Urusov, Memoirs of a Russian Governor, trans. Herman Rosental (London, 1908), p. 86. 55 Clark, Bessarabia, p. 108. 56 For a full account of the Inochentie movement, see Nicolae Popovschi, Mişcarea dela Balta sau Inochentizmul în Basarabia. Contribuţii la istoria vieţii religioase a romănilor din Basarabia (Chişinău, 1926). 57 Paul and Zamfira Mihail, Acte în limba română tipărite în Basarabia, p. xliii. 58 Andrei Eşanu et al., Mănăstirea Căpriana (sec. XV–XX): studie istoric, documente, cărţi, inscripţii şi alte material (Chişinău, 2003), p. 83. 59 Arbure, Basarabia în secolul XIX, p. 531. 60 Paul Mihailovici, Tipărituri româneşti în Basarabia dela 1812 până la 1918 (Bucharest, 1941), pp. 152–3.

Notes 199 61 Ibid., p. 185. 62 Ibid., pp. 33, 77, 155. 63 Ciobanu, Cultura românească în Basarabia sub stăpânirea rusă, pp. 109, 172–83. 64 Ion Pelivan, The Union of Bessarabia with Her Mother-Country Roumania (Paris, 1920), pp. 7–8. 65 Ciobanu, Cultura românească în Basarabia sub stăpânirea rusă, pp. 121–34. 66 For what follows, see King, The Moldovans, pp. 28–31. 67 Negru, Ţarismul şi mişcarea naţională a românilor din Basarabia, p. 71. 68 Pelivan, The Union of Bessarabia with Her Mother-Country Roumania, p. 11. 69 Negru, Ţarismul şi mişcarea naţională a românilor din Basarabia, p. 61. 70 Ibid., p. 63. 71 King, The Moldovans, p. 22. 72 Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, p. 95. 73 Boris Buzilă, Din istoria vieţii bisericeşti din Basarabia (1812–1918; 1918–1944) (Bucharest, 1996), pp. 239–61. 74 Hofbauer and Roman, Bukowina, Bessarabien, Moldawien, p. 75. 75 Captain John Kaba, Politico-Economic Review of Basarabia (Paris, 1919), p. 27. 76 For a discussion on Stere, and other ‘pan-Romanianists’, see Eugen Şt. Holban, Contribuţia Basarabiei la cultura românească. Toponimie şi identitate naţională (Chişinău, 1997), pp. 14–118. 77 Ciobanu, Cultura românească în Basarabia sub stăpânirea rusă, pp. 273–84, 326–7. 78 Boulger (ed.), General Gordon’s Letters from the Crimea, p. 116. 79 Feldman, ‘The Jews of Bessarabia from Their Arrival to the End of the 19th Century’. 80 Urusov, Memoirs of a Russian Governor, p. 91. 81 Boulger (ed.), General Gordon’s Letters from the Crimea, p. 116. 82 Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, p. 243. 83 Michael F. Hamm, ‘Kishinev: The Character and Development of a Tsarist Frontier Town’, Nationalities Papers, 26, no. 1 (1998): 19–38 (22). 84 Ibid. 85 The Times, ‘Famine in Bessarabia’, 3 May 1901. 86 Urusov, Memoirs of a Russian Governor, pp. 70–3. 87 King, The Moldovans, p. 42. 88 Urusov, Memoirs of a Russian Governor, pp. 27–63. 89 Gusti et al. (eds), Enciclopedia României, 2, pp. 598–9; Hamm, ‘Kishinev: The Character and Development of a Tsarist Frontier Town’: 20. 90 Yuri Druzhnikov, Prisoner of Russia: Alexander Pushkin and the Political Uses of Nationalism (New Brunswick, 1999), pp. 78, 130. 91 Jostein Børtnes, ‘Pushkin’s Ovid’, in Timothy Saunders et al. (eds), Romans and Romantics (Oxford, 2012), pp. 225–41 (p. 232).

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92 Druzhnikov, Prisoner of Russia: Alexander Pushkin and the Political Uses of Nationalism, pp. 84, 107; Børtnes, ‘Pushkin’s Ovid’, p. 227. 93 Boulger (ed.), General Gordon’s Letters from the Crimea, p. 108. 94 Urusov, Memoirs of a Russian Governor, pp. 96–7. 95 Hamm, ‘Kishinev: The Character and Development of a Tsarist Frontier Town’: 22. 96 Ion Varta and Tatiana Varta, Primarul Carol Schmidt: opera de modernizare a oraşului Chişinău: studiu introductive. Documente (Chişinău, 2014), pp. 19–34. 97 For what follows on the Chişinău pogrom, see Sam Johnson, Pogroms, Peasants, Jews: Britain and Eastern Europe’s ‘Jewish Question’, 1867–1925 (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 77–95; Monty Noam Penkower, ‘The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903: A Turning Point in Jewish History’, Modern Judaism, 24, no. 3 (2004): 187–225 (187); Mikhal Dekel,‘“From the Mouth of the Raped Woman Rivka Schiff ”, Kishinev, 1903’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 36, nos 1/2 (2008): 199–207; Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire, p. 7. 98 For what follows, see Andrei Cusco, A Contested Borderland: Competing Russian and Romanian Visions of Bessarabia in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century (Budapest, 2017), pp. 131–50. 99 Nicolae Iorga, Basarabia noastră. Scrisă după 100 de ani la răpirea ei de către ruşi (Vălenii-de-Munte, 1912). 100 Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London, 2013), p. 278.

7  Bessarabia’s union with Romania 1 Andrei Popovici, The Political Status of Bessarabia (Washington, DC, 1931), pp. 121–2. 2 P. Cazacu, The Truth about the Question of Bessarabia (Bucharest, 1926), pp. 15–53 (pp. 16, 53). 3 Cusco, A Contested Borderland, pp. 213, 244–57. 4 Ion Ţurcanu, Unirea Basarabia cu România 1918. Preludii, premise, realizări (Chişinău, 1998), pp. 27, 41, 70. 5 Quoted in Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, p. 96. 6 Irina Livezeanu, ‘Moldavia, 1917–1990: Nationalism and Internationalism Then and Now’, Armenian Review, 43, nos 2–3 (170–1) (1990): 153–93 (158–61). 7 Onisifor Ghibu, În vîltoarea revoluţiei ruseşti. Însemnări din Basarabia anului 1917 (Bucharest, 1993), p. 32; Pantelimon Halipa (sic) and Anatolie Moraru, Testament pentru urmaşi (Chişinău, 1991), pp. 108–9. 8 Ţurcanu, Unirea Basarabia cu România 1918, pp. 11, 27.

Notes 201 9 Ghibu, În vîltoarea revoluţiei ruseşti, pp. 29–32. 10 For much of what follows, see Glenn E. Torrey, Romania and World War 1: A Collection of Studies (Iaşi, 1998). 11 Ibid., p. 14. 12 Ibid., pp. 110–13. 13 Cusco, A Contested Borderland, p. 238, fn. 79. 14 Torrey, Romania and World War 1, pp. 312–30 (p. 316). 15 Quoted in Livezeanu, ‘Moldavia, 1917–1990’, p. 166. 16 Ţurcanu, Unirea Basarabia cu România 1918, p. 169; Torrey, Romania and World War 1, p. 318. 17 Paul Cernovodeanu, Basarabia. Drama unei provincii istorice româneşti în context politic internaţional (1806–1920) (Bucharest, 1993), p. 150. 18 Norman Stone notes that ‘among the first prescriptions, on mobilisation [of the Romanian army in 1916], was a decree that only officers above the rank of major had the right to use make-up’: Stone, The Eastern Front 1914–1917 (London, 1998), pp. 264–5. 19 Ţurcanu, Unirea Basarabia cu România 1918, pp. 152–9; King, The Moldovans, p. 33. 20 Ţurcanu, Unirea Basarabia cu România 1918, p. 166; for Ukraine’s constant pressure on Moldova, see, for example, documents 75, 91 and 92 in Ion Calafeteanu and Viorica-Pompilia Moisuc (eds), Unirea Basarabia şi a Bucovinei cu România 1917– 1918. Documente (Chişinău, 1995), pp. 185–6, 231–5, 235–48. 21 Torrey, Romania and World War 1, pp. 324–5. 22 Ţurcanu, Unirea Basarabia cu România 1918, pp. 171–6. 23 King, The Moldovans, p. 35. 24 Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, p. 277. 25 King, The Moldovans, p. 35. 26 Hamilton Fish Armstrong, The New Balkans (New York, 1926), p. 147. The Romanian government passed a decree-law on 15 December 1918 for the full expropriation of crown lands, lands held by institutions, absentee landlords and foreigners and all private property over 500 hectares. 27 Ţurcanu, Unirea Basarabia cu România 1918, p. 8. 28 Svetlana Suveică, ‘Between the Empire and the Nation-State: Metamorphoses of the Bessarabian Elite (1918)’, Euxeinos: Governance and Culture in the Black Sea Region (Special issue: Moldova: A Borderland’s Fluid History), 15–16 (2014): 34–45. 29 A. N. Krupenski and A. Ch. Schmidt, What Is the ‘Bessarabian Question’ (Paris, c. 1919), p. 5. For a full account of the activities of Krupenski and other Russians at the Paris peace conference to reverse the incorporation of Bessarabia into Romania and return the province to Russia, see Svetlana Suveica, ‘ “Russkoe Delo” and the

202

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“Bessarabian Cause”: The Russian Political Émigrés and the Bessarabians in Paris (1919–1920)’, Arbeitsbereich Geschichte, IOS Mitteilungen, no. 64 (2014). 30 Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, p. 289. 31 Ibid., p. 290. 32 Hannah Pakula, Queen of Roumania: The Life of Princess Marie, Grand-Daughter of Queen Victoria (London, 1989), p. 307. 33 Em. de Martonne, What I Have Seen in Bessarabia, p. 16. 34 Kaba, Politico-Review of Basarabia, pp. 13–15. 35 Russians made up 12.3 per cent of the province’s population, Ukrainians 11 per cent, Jews 7.2 per cent, Bulgarians 5.7 per cent, Gagauz 3.4 per cent, Germans 2.8 per cent, with other smaller ethnic groups making up the remainder: Stefan Ciobanu, La Bessarabie sa population – son passé – sa culture (Bucharest, 1941), pp. 42–3. 36 Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, p. 123. 37 Ibid., p. 99. 38 Quoted in ibid., p. 90. 39 Svetlana Suveică, ‘Integrarea administravă a Basarabiei în România (1918–1925)’, Anuarul Institutului de istorie ‘A. D. Xenopol’, 36 (1999): 125–45 (136–40). 40 Georges Tataresco, Bessarabie et Moscou. Discours pronnoncé à la chamber des députés de Bucarest le 9 décembre 1925 (Bucharest, 1926), pp. 5–35. 41 See, for example, the following pamphlet for polite left-wing circles in London: Bessarabia! The Roumanian Hell: The Mass Trial of 500 Bessarabian Peasants. Giving a History, and a Picture of Bessarabia Today under the Rule of the Roumanian Boyars and Capitalists. An Account of the Tatar-Bunar Rising (London, c. 1925). 42 H. Hessell Tiltman, Peasant Europe (London, 2005), pp. 126–7. (This work was originally published in 1934.) 43 Nicolae Enciu, ‘Mişcarea migratorie a populaţiei rurale din Basarabia (1918–1940)’, Revistă de istorie a Moldovei, 6, no. 2 (1995): 15–24 (16). 44 Ciobanu, Chişinăul (Chişinău, 1996), p. 51. (This work was originally published in 1925.) 45 Nicolae Enciu, Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în Basarabia anilor 1918–1940 (Chişinău, 2013), pp. 122–30. 46 Cantemir, Descriptio Moldaviae, p. 365. 47 Boldur, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 227–30; Gheorghe Brătianu, Die Moldau und ihre historischen Grenzen, pp. 24–32. 48 Livezeanu, ‘Moldavia, 1917–1990’, p. 158. 49 King, The Moldovans, p. 64. 50 For what follows on the establishment of a Romanian education system in Bessarabia, see Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, pp. 100–20.

Notes 203 51 Quoted in ibid., p. 120. 52 Holban, Contribuţia Basarabiei la cultura românească, p. 6. 53 Ion Agrigoroaiei and Gheorghe Palade, Basarabia în cadrul României întregite 1918–1940 (Chişinău, 1993), p. 99. 54 For the Legion of the Archangel Michael in Bessarabia, see Viorica Nicolenco, Extrema dreaptă în Basarabia (1923–1940) (Chişinău, 1999), pp. 71–96. 55 Suveica, ‘Integrarea administravă a Basarabiei în România (1918–1925)’, pp. 125–35; Svetlana Suveică, Basarabia în primul deceniu interbelic (1918– 1928). Modernizare prin reforme (Chişinău, 2010), pp. 193–259. For attitudes towards the zemstvo system, see Cristina Petrescu, ‘Contrasting/Conflicting Identities: Bessarabians, Romanians, Moldovans’, in Balázs Trencsényi et al. (eds), Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies (Budapest, 2001), pp. 153–78 (pp. 162–3). 56 Vlad Darie and Mihai Potârniche (eds), Cronica Basarabiei 1918–1944. Mărturii din presa timpului şi imagini de epocă (Chişinău, 2012), p. 126. 57 Buzilă, Din istoria vieţii bisericeşti din Basarabia, pp. 209–52; Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan, ‘Church-State Conflict in Moldova: The Bessarabian Metropolitanate’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 36 (2003): 443–65 (446–8). 58 For most of what follows on the economy in interwar Bessarabia, see Ion Agrigoroaiei and Gheorghe Palade, Basarabia în cadrul României întregite 1918– 1940 (Chişinău, 1993), pp. 81–7. 59 Hessell Tiltman, Peasant Europe, pp. 112–13, 116. 60 For the details of land reform in Bessarabia, see Henry Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven, CT, 1951), pp. 32–5 and Svetlana Suveică, Basarabia în primul deceniu interbelic (1918–1928). Modernizare prin reforme (Chişinău, 2010), pp. 120–92. 61 Gusti et al., Enciclopedia României, 3, p. 423. 62 David Mitrany, The Land & the Peasant in Rumania: The War and Agricultural Reform (1917–1921) (London, 1930), p. 329. 63 Charles Upson Clark, United Roumania (New York, 1932), pp. 89–90. 64 Roberts, Rumania, p. 203. 65 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 317–18. 66 Roberts, Rumania, p. 117. 67 Andreas Johansson, Dissenting Democrats: Nation and Democracy in the Republic of Moldova (Stockholm, 2011), p. 50. 68 James Kapaló, ‘The Career of Father Mihail Çakir (1861–1938) – The Cyril and Methodius of the Gagauz’, Solanus, 21 (2007): 5–18 (11). 69 James Alexander Kapaló, Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice (Leiden, 2011), p. 65. 70 Gusti et al. (eds), Enciclopedia României, 2, p. 325.

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71 Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, p. 309. 72 Ibid., pp. 323–31. 73 Tiltman, Peasant Europe, p. 131. 74 Enciu, Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în Basarabia anilor 1918–1940, pp. 289–98. 75 Leonid Dumitraşcu, ‘Arhitectura oraşului Ismail în perioada interbelică’, Revista ARTA, 1 (2016): 80–4. 76 Larisa Noroc, Cultura Basarabiei în perioada interbelică (1918–1940) (Chişinău, 2009), pp. 18–29. 77 Jonathan Eagles, Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism: Moldova and Eastern European History (London, 2014), pp. 195–7. 78 National Historical Archives of Romania (Bucharest), Fond Preşedenţia Consiliului de Miniştri, dosar nr 3/1931, ff. 223–6 (225), Letter to the President of the Council of Ministers (Nicolae Iorga) and Senators from Senator for Soroca, D. Iov, 11 December 1931. 79 Tiltman, Peasant Europe, p. 131. 80 Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, p. 123. 81 For much of what follows, see Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington, IN, 1983), pp. 176–208. 82 Katherine Sorrels, ‘Police Harassment and the Politicization of Jewish Youth in Interwar Bessarabia’, East European Jewish Affairs, 47, no. 1 (2017): 62–84. 83 Clark, Bessarabia, p. 261. 84 For the Tatarbunar rebellion and its link to the establishment of the MASSR, see Ludmila Rotari, Mişcarea subversive din Basarabia în anii 1918–1924 (Bucharest, 2004), pp. 233–78. 85 King, The Moldovans, p. 55. 86 Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography: Nationalist and Communist Politics and History-Writing (New York, 1994), pp. 121, 138. 87 Y. Zlatova and V. Kotelnikov, Across Moldavia, trans O. Shartse (Moscow, 1959), pp. 36–7. 88 Vadim Guzun, Imperiul foamei. Foametea artificială din URSS şi impactul asupra spaţiului românesc 1921–1922, 1931–1933, 1946–1947 (Bucharest, 2014), pp. 184–220. 89 For what follows on Soviet language policies in the MASSR, see King, The Moldovans, pp. 63–88; van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 126–31. 90 Charles King, ‘The Ambivalence of Authenticity, or How the Moldovan Language Was Made’, Slavonic Review, 58, no. 1 (1999): 117–42 (125). 91 Dennis Deletant, ‘Language Policy and Linguistic Trends in the Republic of Moldavia, 1924–1992’, in Donald L. Dyer, Studies in Moldovan: The History, Culture,

Notes 205 Language and Contemporary Politics of the People of Moldova (New York, 1996), pp. 53–87 (p. 58). 92 Darie and Potârniche (eds), Cronica Basarabiei 1918–1944, pp. 203–4. 93 For much of what follows on interwar Romania’s diplomacy concerning Bessarabia, see Rebecca Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 1936–1940 (London, 2000), pp. 2–6, 99–166.

8  The Second World War and Soviet rule 1 van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 85. 2 Herţa had formed part of the historic principality of Moldova and subsequently of Romania and had never been part of Bessarabia: Ioan Chiper, ‘Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina’, in Tuomas Forsberg (ed.), Contested Territory: Border Disputes at the Edge of the Former Soviet Empire (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 107–27 (p. 110). 3 Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940-44 (Basingstoke, 2006), p. 20. 4 Galeazzo Ciano, Ciano’s Diary 1937–1943, ed. M. Muggeridge (London, 2002), pp. 366–7. 5 Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, p. 21. 6 Arhiva Ministerului Afacerilor Externe (Archive for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bucharest), Fond 71/Germania, vol. 80, ff. 129–34, Letter Addressed to His Excellency Ribbentrop, Reich Foreign Minister, by the Prime Minister, I. Gigurtu, on 27 August 1940. 7 Radu Ioanid, ‘The Holocaust in Romania: The Iaşi Pogrom of June 1941’, Contemporary European History, 2, no. 2 (1993): 119–48. 8 Ion Constantin, România, marile puteri şi problema Basarabiei (Bucharest, 1995), pp. 146–54. 9 For the Romanian administration of Transnistria, see Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 166–9. 10 For the Holocaust in Transnistria, see ibid., pp. 166–204. 11 For the history of the ghetto, see Paul A. Shapiro, The Kishinev Ghetto 1941–1942: A Documentary History of the Holocaust in Romania’s Contested Borderlands (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2015). 12 Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, p. 167. 13 Nicolae Iorga, Romînii de peste Nistru. Lămuriri pentru a-i ajuta în lupta lor (Iaşi, 1918), pp. 3–35 (p. 8); Nistor, Ion, ‘Românii transnistrieni’, extras din Codrul Cosminului, offprint of Buletinul institutului de istorie şi limbă dela Universitatea din Cernăuţi, 1925, pp. 4–22.

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Notes

14 Emil Diaconescu, Românii din răsărit. Transnistria (Iaşi, 1942), pp. 13–14 (p. 121). See also, Constantin C. Giurescu, ‘Populaţia moldovenească dela gura Niprului şi a Bugului in veacurile XVII şi XVIII’, offprint of Glasul Nistrului (Craiova, 1942). 15 Vasile Netea, ‘Transnistria’, offprint of Cunoştinţe Folositoare din Lumea Largă, Series C, no. 122 (Bucharest, 1943), p. 14. 16 Diaconescu, România din răsărit, p. 155; Antim Nica, Viaţă religioasă în Transnistria, Chişinău, 1943, pp. 5–17. 17 Ibid., pp. 69–75. 18 Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, p. 168. 19 King, The Moldovans, pp. 94–5; Ciobanu, La Bessarabie sa Population – son passé – sa culture, pp. 42–3. 20 Ronald J. Hill, Soviet Political Elites: The Case of Tiraspol (London, 1977), p. 14. 21 King, The Moldovans, pp. 95, 101. 22 Igor Caşu, ‘Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia, 1940–1953’, in Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (eds), Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression (Manchester, 2010), pp. 39–56; van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 122–6; King, The Moldovans, p. 93. 23 Caşu, ‘Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia, 1940–1953’, p. 53. 24 George Ciorănescu, Bessarabia: Disputed Land between East and West (Bucharest, 1993), p. 214. 25 Iurie Raileanu and Dumitru Pogorea, Moldova: sărbători şi obiceiuri (Chişinău, 2013), pp. 128–31. 26 Mihai Gribincea, Agricultural Collectivization in Moldavia: Basarabia during Stalinism, 1944–1950 (New York, 1996), pp. 45–120. 27 Vadim Guzun, Imperiul foamei. Foametea artificială din URSS şi impactul asupra spaţiului românesc 1921–1922, 1931–1933, 1946–1947 (Bucharest, 2014), pp. 405–33. 28 Gribincea, Agricultural Collectivization in Moldavia, pp. 88–9. 29 Ibid., p. 110. 30 Ibid., p. 111. 31 Caşu, ‘Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia, 1940–1953’, p. 52. 32 Elena Postică, Rezistenţa antisovietică în Basarabia 1944–1950 (Chişinău, 1997), pp. 109–10, 144–56. 33 Sandor Kopacsi, In the Name of the Working Class: The Inside Story of the Hungarian Revolution (New York, 1986), p. 24. 34 Gheorghe Gorincioi, RSS Moldovenească de la Leonid Brejnev la Ivan Bodiul. Cronici despre epocă şi oameni (Chişinău, 2012), pp. 9–22, 31–2. 35 King, The Moldovans, pp. 95–8. 36 Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan, ‘Church-State Conflict in Moldova: The Bessarabian Metropolitanate’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 36 (2003): 443–65 (449).

Notes 207 37 Michael Bruchis, Nations-Nationalities-People: A Study of the Nationalities Policy of the Communist Party of Soviet Moldavia (New York, 1984), p. 4. 38 van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 122. 39 King, The Moldovans, p. 101. 40 Bruchis, Nations-Nationalities-People, p. 5. 41 Gorincioi, RSS Moldovenească de la Leonid Brejnev la Ivan Bodiul (Chişinău, 2012), p. 53. 42 Gribincea, Agricultural Collectivization in Moldavia, p. 38; King, The Moldovans, pp. 99–100; van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 138–41. 43 For the economy of Transnistria and the rest of the MSSR, see Ronald J. Hill, ‘The Moldovan Economy: From “Model” to “Crash”?’ in Rebecca Haynes (ed.), Moldova, Bessarabia, Transnistria: Occasional Papers in Romanian Studies No 3 (London, 2003), pp. 163–79 (pp. 163–4); Andreas Johansson, Dissenting Democrats: Nation and Democracy in the Republic of Moldova (Stockholm, 2011), p. 53; King, The Moldovans, pp. 181–4. 44 Trevor R. W. Waters, ‘Security Concerns in Post-Soviet Moldova: The Roots of Instability’, in Haynes (ed.), Moldova, Bessarabia, Transnistria, pp. 189–204 (pp. 192–3). 45 Ibid., p. 191. 46 M. Shukhat, Moldavia: A Guide (Moscow, 1986), p. 148. 47 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 31 vols (New York, 1970–9), 16, p. 434. 48 King, The Moldovans, p. 98. 49 The Times, 28 October 1981. 50 Valentina Ursu, Politica culturală în RSS Moldovenească 1944–1956 (Chişinău, 2013), p. 158. 51 King, The Moldovans, p. 105. 52 Jonathan Eyal, ‘Moldavians’, in Graham Smith (ed.), The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union (London, 1992), pp. 123–45 (p. 129). 53 van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 144. 54 See, Gheorghe Ghimpu, Conştiinţa naţională a românilor moldoveni (no place of publication, 2010). 55 Adrian Pop, ‘When the Mouse Challenges the Cat: Bessarabia in Post-War SovietRomanian Relations’, in Odd Arne Westad et al. (eds), The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 94–109 (p. 101). 56 Larry Watts, ‘The Soviet-Romanian Clash over History, Identity and Dominion’, The Cold War International History Project, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/ the-soviet-romanian-clash-over-history-identity-and-dominion (accessed 13 January 2019). 57 For an overview of Soviet policies on nationalities and languages, see Graham Smith ‘Nationalities Policy from Lenin to Gorbachev’, in Graham Smith (ed.), The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union (London, 1996), pp. 1–20.

208

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58 For what follows on Soviet language policies in the Soviet Union and in the MSSR in particular, see van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 106–45; Michael Bruchis, One Step Back, Two Steps Forward: On the Language Policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the National Republics (New York, 1982). 59 On Moldovan historiography in the Soviet era, see van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, pp. 173–204. 60 Luke March, ‘From Moldovanism to Europeanization? Moldova’s Communists and Nation Building’, Nationalities Papers, 35, no. 4 (2007): 601–25 (603). 61 van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 131. 62 Deletant, ‘Language Policy and Linguistic Trends in the Republic of Moldova, 1924–1992’, pp. 53–87 (p. 63). 63 Donald L. Dyer, ‘The Making of the Moldavian Language’, in Donald L. Dyer (ed.), Studies in Moldovan: The History, Culture, Language and Contemporary Politics of the People of Moldova (New York, 1996), pp. 89–109 (pp. 89–90). 64 Jonathan Eyal, ‘Moldavians’ in Graham Smith (ed.), The Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union, pp. 123–45 (pp. 126–30). 65 Igor Caşu, ‘ “The Quiet Revolution”: Revisiting the National Identity Issue in Soviet Moldavia at the Height of Khrushchev’s Thaw (1956)’, Euxeinos: Governance and Culture in the Black Sea Region, Special issue: Moldova: A Borderland’s Fluid History, 15–16 (2014): 77–91. 66 King, The Moldovans, p. 115. 67 Deletant, ‘Language Policy and Linguistic Trends in the Republic of Moldova, 1924–1992’, pp. 73–5 (p. 75). 68 Vlad Grecu, O viziune din focarul conflictului de la Dubăsari (Chişinău, 2005), p. 618. 69 Deletant, ‘Language Policy and Linguistic Trends in the Republic of Moldova, 1924–1992’, pp. 64–5. 70 King, The Moldovans, p. 230. 71 For what follows on urbanization and bilingualism, see Nicholas Dima, Moldova and the Transdniester Republic (New York, 2001), pp. 100–8; Irina Livezeanu, ‘Urbanization in a Low Key and Linguistic Change in Soviet Moldavia. Part 1’, Soviet Studies, 33, no. 3 (1981): 327–51; and Irina Livezeanu, ‘Urbanization in a Low Key and Linguistic Change in Soviet Moldavia. Part 2’, Soviet Studies, 33, no. 4 (1981): 573–92. 72 Ibid., part 1, p. 336. 73 Ibid., part 2, p. 584. 74 William Crowther, ‘The Politics of Ethno-National Mobilization: Nationalism and Reform in Soviet Moldavia’, The Russian Review, 50 (1991): 183–202 (201). For photos of folk-dancing Moldovans, see M. Shukhat, Moldavia: A Guide (Moscow, 1986), pp. 32–4.

Notes 209 75 Boris Vizer, Economia şi starea social a populaţiei din Moldova anii ’40–’80, sec. XX (Chişinău, 2012), p. 224; King, The Moldovans, p. 102. 76 Ibid., pp. 211–15. 77 Hűlya Demirdirek, ‘In the Minority in Moldova: (Dis)Empowerment through Territorial Conflict’, in Oliver Schmidtke and Serhy Yekelchyk (eds), Europe’s Last Frontier? Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine between Russia and the Soviet Union (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 115–31 (p. 124). 78 William Crowther, ‘The Politics of Democratization in Post-Communist Moldova’, in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (eds), Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 282–329 (p. 287). 79 Dima, Moldova and the Transdniester Republic, pp. 141–2. 80 King, The Moldovans, p. 103. 81 The Times, 28 October 1981 and 16 July 1983. 82 On the growth of the opposition movement in the MSSR, see Crowther, ‘The Politics of Ethno-National Mobilization’, pp. 188–202; King, The Moldovans, pp. 120–44; Stephen D. Roper, ‘From Frozen Conflict to Frozen Agreement: The Unrecognized State of Transnistria’, in Tozun Bahcheli, Barry Bartmann and Henry Srebrnik (eds), De Facto States: The Quest for Sovereignty (London, 2004), pp. 102– 17 (pp. 105–7). 83 For a detailed discussion of this argument, see King, The Moldovans, pp. 131–46. 84 Gorincioi, RSS Moldovenească de la Leonid Brejnev la Ivan Bodiul, p. 109. 85 For most of what follows on Moldova in the early 1990s, see Crowther, ‘The Politics of Democratization in Post-Communist Moldova’, pp. 301–19; King, The Moldovans, pp. 146–61; Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, pp. 105–18, 199. 86 Ursu, Politica culturală în RSS Moldovenească 1944–1956, p. 159. 87 In 1989, the MSSR population was 64.5 per cent Moldovan, 13.8 per cent Ukrainian, 13 per cent Russian, 3.5 per cent Gagauz, 2 per cent Bulgarian, 1.5 per cent Jewish, 0.2 per cent German and 1.6 per cent smaller minorities. See Ioan Chiper, ‘Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina’, in Tuomas Forsberg (ed.), Contested Territory: Border Disputes at the Edge of the Former Soviet Empire (Aldershot, 1995), p. 115. 88 For the Gagauz in the 1990s, see King, The Moldovans, pp. 217–20 and Demirdirek, ‘In the Minority in Moldova’, pp. 115–31. 89 For Transnistrian/Moldovan relations in the early 1990s and the Transnistrian war, see King, The Moldovans, pp. 184–204; Pål Kolstø, Andrei Edemsky and Natalya Kalashnikova, ‘The Dniester Conflict: Between Irredentism and Separatism’, Europe-Asia Studies, 45, no. 6 (1993): 973–1000; Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, 114–17; Jeff Chinn and Steven D. Roper, ‘Ethnic Mobilization and Reactive Nationalism: The Case of Moldova’, Nationalities Papers, 23, no. 2 (1995): 291–325.

210

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90 Adrian Pop, ‘The Conflict in the Transnistrian Region of the Republic of Moldova’, in Haynes (ed.), Moldova, Bessarabia, Transnistria, pp. 205–18 (p. 208). 91 King, The Moldovans, p. 184. 92 Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, p. 112.

9  Democratic politics 1 Quoted in King, The Moldovans, p. 200. 2 Quoted in Trevor R. W. Waters, ‘Security Concerns in Post-Soviet Moldova: The Roots of Instability’, in Rebecca Haynes (ed.), Moldova, Bessarabia, Transnistria, Occasional Papers in Romanian Studies No 3 (London, 2003), pp. 189–205 (pp. 192–3). 3 Vlad Grecu, O viziune din focarul conflictului de la Dubăsari (Chişinău, 2005), p. 83. 4 Trevor Waters, ‘Security Concerns in Post-Soviet Moldova’, p. 194. 5 For the break-up of the Popular Front of Moldova, see King, The Moldovans, pp. 153–4. 6 See, for example, Eyal, ‘Moldavians’, pp. 143–4. 7 Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, p. 109. 8 Luke March, ‘From Moldovanism to Europeanization? Moldova’s Communists and Nation Building’, Nationalities Papers, 35, no. 4 (2007): 601–25 (603). 9 Vladimir Socor, ‘Why Moldova Does Not Seek Reunification with Romania’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report (31 January 1992): 27–33 (32). 10 Eagles, Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism, pp. 196–9. 11 Eyal, ‘Moldavians’, p. 143. 12 See, for example, Victor Crăciun, Pierdem Basarabia? Liga culturală pentru unitatea românilor de pretutindeni (Bucharest, 1992), p. 112. 13 Socor, ‘Why Moldova Does Not Seek Reunification with Romania’, p. 29. 14 For what follows, see ibid., pp. 27–33; Claus Neukirch, Die Republik Moldau: Nations- und Staatsbildung in Osteuropa (Münster, 1996), pp. 123–6. 15 Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, p. 55. 16 Socor, ‘Why Moldova Does Not Seek Reunification with Romania’, p. 29. 17 Ibid., p. 31. 18 Eagles, Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism, p. 195. 19 King, The Moldovans, pp. 150–1. 20 Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, p. 117. 21 van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question, p. 204; Wim van Meurs, ‘Carving a Moldavian Identity out of History’, Nationalities Papers, 26, no. 1 (1998): 39–56 (53–4).

Notes 211 22 Charles King, ‘Who Are the Moldovans?’ in Dennis Deletant (ed.), Occasional Papers in Romanian Studies, no. 1 (London, 1995), pp. 61–9 (p. 65). 23 Charles King points out that in the 1990s the pan-Romanianists retreated back to the institutions which had originally spawned them, in particular the State University in Chişinău, the Academy of Sciences and The Writers’ Union: King, The Moldovans, p. 230. 24 For the Bessarabian Metropolitan Church, see Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan, ‘Church-State Conflict in Moldova: The Bessarabian Metropolitanate’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 36 (2003): 443–65. According to a 1989 census, 98.5 per cent of Moldovan citizens were nominal Orthodox Christians. 25 Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, p. 55. 26 For most of what follows on the Moldovan economy in the 1990s, see Ronald J. Hill, ‘The Moldovan Economy: From “Model” to “Crash”?’, in Rebecca Haynes (ed.), Moldova, Bessarabia, Transnistria: Occasional Papers in Romanian Studies, No 3 (London, 2003), pp. 163–80. 27 For an account of de-collectivization and its consequences, see Jennifer R. Cash, ‘What Do Peasants Want? Equality and Differentiation in Post-Socialist Moldova’, Martor: The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review, 19 (2014): 163–74. 28 For what follows on the Gagauz Yeri and Transnistria, see Demirdirek, ‘In the Minority in Moldova’; King, The Moldovans, pp. 200–20; Roper, ‘From Frozen Conflict to Frozen Agreement’, pp. 102–17. 29 Demirdirek, ‘In the Minority in Moldova’, p. 129. 30 Natalia Gherman, ‘Transnistria since 1990 as Seen from Chişinău’, in Rebecca Haynes (ed.), Moldova, Bessarabia, Transnistria: Occasional Papers in Romanian Studies No 3 (London, 2003), pp. 181–8 (p. 186). 31 King, The Moldovans, p. 202. 32 For what follows, see Paul D. Quinlan, ‘Moldova under Lucinschi’, Demokratizatsiya, 10, no. 1 (2002): 83–102; Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, pp. 119–21; King, The Moldovans, pp. 162–4. 33 Quinlan, ‘Moldova under Lucinschi’, p. 84. 34 Paul D. Quinlan, ‘Back to the Future: An Overview of Moldova under Voronin’, Demokratizatsiya, 12, no. 4 (2004): 485–504 (485–6). 35 William Crowther, ‘Moldova’s Post-Communist Transition: Ambiguous Democracy, Reluctant Reform’, in Ann Lewis (ed.), The EU and Moldova: On a Fault-line of Europe (London, 2004), pp. 27–49 (p. 43). 36 Quinlan, ‘Back to the Future’, p. 486. 37 For most of what follows on the PCRM governments of 2001 to 2009, see Quinlan, ‘Back to the Future’, pp. 485–504; Johansson, Dissenting Democrats, pp. 56–61, 122–9; Luke March, ‘From Moldovanism to Europeanization? Moldova’s Communists and

212

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Nation-Building’, Nationalities Papers, 35, no. 4 (2006): 601–26; Steven D. Roper, ‘Post-Soviet Moldova’s National Identity and Foreign Policy’, in Oliver Schmidtke and Serhy Yekelchyk (eds), Europe’s Last Frontier? Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine between Russia and the European Union (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 79–96. 38 Ludmila Cojocaru and Rozita Dimova, ‘ “Nature” and “Nation” in the Republic of Moldova: Rebirth and Rebuilding through the International Festival of Music “Mărţişor” ’, History and Anthropology, 24, no. 1 (2013): 13–35. 39 Eagles, Stephen the Great and Balkan Nationalism, pp. 89–92. 40 William H. Hill, who was head of the OSCE mission to Moldova from 1999 to 2006, argues that the failure of the Kozak Memorandum was a pivotal moment in the breakdown of relations between Putin and the West. See, William H. Hill, Russia, the Near Abroad and the West: Lessons from the Moldova-Transdniestria Conflict (Baltimore, 2012). 41 Steven D. Roper, ‘The Politicization of Education: Identity Formation in Moldova and Transnistria’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 38, no. 4 (2005): 501–14. 42 March, ‘From Moldovanism to Europeanization?’ p. 616. 43 The Times, 22 September 2010. 44 Siddharth Kara, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (New York, 2009), pp. 108–28 (p. 112). 45 Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Igor Munteanu, ‘Moldova’s “Twitter Revolution” ’, Journal of Democracy, 20, no. 3 (2009): 136–42 (139). 46 Iuliana Enache, ‘UE pare să piardă lupta cu Rusia pentru Republica Moldova’, https://www.mediafax.ro/externe/ue-pare-sa-piarda-lupta-cu-rusia-pentrurepublica-moldova-14311781/foto (accessed 13 January 2019). 47 The Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2016. 48 Magdalena Dembinska and Julien Danero Iglesias, ‘The Making of an Empty Moldovan Category within a Multiethnic Transnistrian Nation’, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, 27, no. 3 (2013): 413–28. 49 Katherine Hirschfeld, Gangster States: Organized Crime, Kleptocracy and Political Collapse (Basingstoke, 2015), pp. 120–1. 50 Michael Bobick, ‘Profits of Disorder: Images of the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic’, Global Crime, 12, no. 4 (2011): 239–65.

Conclusion 1 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 16 May 2015, ‘Thousands Rally in Moldova for Unification with Romania’, (accessed 13 January 2019). According to this

Notes 213 report, opinion polls suggest between 10 and 20 per cent of Moldovans support unification with Romania. 2 Jennifer R. Cash, Villages on Stage: Folklore and Nationalism in the Republic of Moldova (Vienna, 2011), pp. 137–9. 3 Matthew H. Ciscel, The Language of the Moldovans: Romania, Russia and Identity in an Ex-Soviet Republic (Lanham, MD, 2007), pp. 72–6. 4 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe: Committee on Environmental Policy, Environmental Performance Reviews: Republic of Moldova, Second Review (New York, 2005), p. 17; ibid., Third Review (New York, 2014), p. 113.

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Index Adrianople, Treaty of (1829) 76 agriculture 1, 36, 59, 102, 103, 123–4, 144, 149, 150, 174, 183 Akkerman (see also Cetatea Albă) gardens 64 port 81 raia (Ottoman administrative region) 33, 34, 38, 75, 87 Alexander I (the Good), prince 16, 19, 20–7, 30, 31, 35, 39–40 Alexander I, tsar 74–5, 83, 85, 89, 92, 108 Alexander II, tsar 94, 127 Alistar-Romanescu, Elena 112 Alliance for European Integration 176–7 alphabets used in printed word 20, 80, 94, 97–9, 102, 119–20, 130, 147, 159 Andrew II, king of Hungary 10 Antioch patriarchate 31, 40, 43, 44, 63 Antonescu, Ion 134–7 Arbore monastery 30, 39 Arbore, Zamfir 110 archaeology 2, 12 architecture 3, 20, 30, 41, 106, 126, 145 Armenians 24, 86, 89, 94, 105 Augustus, Roman emperor 7 aurochs 11, 162 Baia 12, 13, 24, 27 Bălți 1, 90, 103, 126, 149, 178 Bănulescu-Bodoni, Gavril 85–6, 91, 92–3, 95, 97, 98, 100, 137 Basarab I, prince of Wallachia 14, 81 Băsescu, Traian 176 Bayezid II, sultan 28 Bender (see also Tighina) raia (Ottoman administrative region) 33, 34, 37, 75, 87 town 51, 65 Berlin, Treaty of (1878) 79 Bernardazzi, Alexander 106

Bessarabia abolition of serfdom 84, 86–8, 92 Bulgarian settlers in 86, 88, 129 1818 Statute 84–6, 89, 92 German settlers in 87–9, 138 Jewish communities in 86, 89–90, 117 origins 81–2 population and ethnic composition 86, 88, 91, 117, 202 and Romania 102, 110, 114–15, 125 (see also Sfatul Țării) Romanianization in 120–2, 124, 126–8 under Russian rule 83–4, 89, 91, 92, 94–5, 104, 108 Russian settlers in 87–8 Russification in 93–100 in Second World War 133–5, 137 sense of identity 101–2, 119–21, 127 southern Bessarabia 77–8, 95, 100, 121 under Soviet rule 138, 144 Ukrainian communities in 13, 86–8, 120 Bialik, Hayim Nahman 107 Bilhorod Dnistrovsky (see also Cetatea Albă and Akkerman) 138 Bistrița monastery 30, 39, 43 Black Sea 7–8, 14–15, 23, 28, 33–4, 72, 79, 81, 87, 105, 114, 168 Bodiul, Ivan Ivanovich 142–3, 149, 150 Bogdan I, prince 11–12, 15, 20 Bolsheviks 112–14, 117–18, 119 boyars in Bessarabia 82–3, 85 dress 66, 68, 85 educational and intellectual influences upon 45, 46, 47, 67–9, 76–7 Moldovan separatism 79 oppose Ottoman rule 52, 71, 72 patrons of the Orthodox Church 30–1, 39, 41, 63 relationship to the prince 21, 26, 28, 31, 34–6, 40–1, 61–2, 66–7

232

Index

Brătianu, Gheorghe 9, 120 Brătianu, Ion 111–12, 136 Brezhnev, Leonid Ilych 141, 143, 146, 150 Bucharest academy 47, 57, 67 capital of Romania 79, 108, 126 patriarchate 122, 163 Russian occupation 74 Treaty of (1812) 75, 81, 82, 105 Bugeac battalion 154, 165 region 1, 34, 38, 75, 81, 87–8, 124, 138, 149 Bukovina 72–3, 88, 111, 115, 133–4, 137–8, 146, 171, 197 Bulgaria 21, 25, 40, 62, 79, 114, 134 Burebista 7 Byzantium (see also Constantinople) 5, 8, 10, 14, 22, 29–30, 40, 41, 55, 66, 70 Çakir, Mihail 125 Calvinism 43–8, 48, 70 Campenhausen, Balthasar Freiherr von 64, 65 Cantemir, Constantin, prince 51 Cantemir, Dimitrie, prince as prince of Moldova 51–3, 69, 71 as scholar 4, 25, 46, 49–50, 52, 81, 120, 147, 191 Capitoline Wolf statue 127, 160 Căpriana monastery 2, 20, 39, 43, 97, 142 Carlowitz, Peace of (1699) 51, 55 Carol I (Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, king of Romania) 78, 108 Carol II, king of Romania 127, 128, 131, 133–4, 135, 141 Carpathian mountains 7, 8, 10–14, 24 Catholicism in Moldova 15, 24 spread of 10–12 Ceaușescu Nicolae 9, 142, 145–6, 161 Cetatea Albă (see also Akkerman) 14, 15, 22–3, 25, 27–8, 33, 77, 91, 126, 138 Chernenko, Konstantin Ustinovich 141 Chilia (Kilia, Kilija) fortress 23, 24, 26–8 port 14–15, 22, 34, 81 raia (Ottoman administrative region) 33, 34, 75, 87, 91

in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic 138 Chirtoacă, Dorin 175 Chișinău (Kishinev) capital of Bessarabia 90, 104–6 capital of Republic of Moldova 158, 165, 170, 171–2, 174–8 capital of Soviet Moldova 3, 29, 138, 142, 145, 148, 152 education and culture in 92–3, 95, 97, 98, 126–7, 147, 163 ethnic diversity 117, 148 in events of 1989–91 151–5, 157 origins of 10 1903 pogrom 106–8 in 1917 revolution 112–13, 115 Christian Democratic Popular Party 158–9, 163, 164, 170, 173 chronicles 12, 32, 45, 49, 147 Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea 121 Constanța (Tomis) 7, 108 Constantinople 8, 29, 55 Constantinople patriarchate 16–17, 19, 31, 39, 40–4, 50, 55, 63, 69 Cossacks 34, 38, 46, 158 Costin, Miron 32, 45, 49, 147, 158 Costin, Nicolae 32, 45, 49 Csángós 13 Cumania, bishopric 10 Cuza, Alexandru, prince of the United Principalities 78–9 Cyrillic alphabet 4, 119, 125, 130, 147, 149 Dacia 8, 9, 163 Daco-Roman continuity theory 9, 49, 65, 100 Danube river delta 14–15, 23, 75, 77, 79, 86, 138, 168 fortifications on 24, 33, 35 Roman frontier 7–10 de Martonne, Emmanuel 89, 117, 197 Democratic Agrarian Party 159, 160, 162–3, 164, 168 Descriptio Moldaviae 49, 52, 81 (see also Cantemir, Dimitrie) Dniester river as boundary 1–6, 16, 22, 50, 73–5, 82, 129, 131, 135, 136, 143 estuary 7, 14, 22, 81

Index fortifications on 23, 24, 26–7, 33, 35 pollution 150 Dniester Soviet Socialist Republic, Dniester Moldovan Republic (see Transnistria) Dobrovăț monastery 30, 43 Dobruja region 25, 34, 114, 134 Dodon, Igor 177, 179 Doncev, Ioan 98 Dorpat university 98–9 Dosoftei, metropolitan 43, 45, 48–9, 50, 69 Dragoș, prince 11–14, 32, 49, 190 Druc, Mircea 154, 158 Duca, Gheorghe IV, prince 50, 58, 69 economic development 103, 124, 125 education 44, 57–8, 93–5, 120–1, 126 environmental problems 150, 183–4 Erfurt, Treaty of (1808) 74 European Court of Human Rights 164, 167 European Enlightenment 56–7, 58–9 Eurovision song contest 1 Ferdinand I, king of Romania 123, 127 Filat, Vlad 176, 178 Filip, Pavel 178 Flemish traders 13, 14 flora and fauna 2–3, 64–5 France as cultural inspiration 68, 76, 77 role in international affairs 79, 112–13 freemasonry 58, 105 Gaburici, Chiril 178 Gagauz autonomy 151–2, 165–6, 168 Gagauz Yeri (Gagauz Land) 154, 161, 163, 172, 177 language and culture 124–5, 149 migration into Bessarabia 88 slavery 174 Galați 103, 125 Galeatovschi, Ioannichie 46 Garting, Ivan Markovich 83 Gazprom 165, 169, 173 Genoese merchants 14, 22, 23 German communities 13–15, 24, 46, 86, 95

233

Germany 41, 79, 80, 108, 110–14, 124, 131, 133–5, 161 Ghibu, Onisifor 110–11 Ghica, Grigore III, prince 58 Ghimpu, Gheorghe 146 Gigurtu, Ion 134 Giurgiu 33, 34, 38, 168 Giurgiulești International Free Port 168 Goga, Octavian 111, 128 Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich 150, 152, 155 Gordon, Charles (‘of Khartoum’) 78, 94, 102–3, 106 Greceaniî, Zinaida 174 Greeks (see also Phanariots) clergy 30, 43–4, 47–8, 70 colonies 7, 14 communities 86, 89 hostility towards 48, 66 language 19–21, 32, 46–8, 58, 67 1821 revolt 56, 91 Grossu, Semion 143, 150, 152 Grosu, Gurie 99, 122 Gypsies 49, 84, 105 Habsburg empire 51, 53, 59–60, 71–4, 88, 110–13, 115 Halippa, Pantelimon 99, 110, 111, 115 Hâncu, Iacob 98 Hasdeu, Bogdan 9, 101–2 Hassidism 90 Heraclid, Ioan II Iacob, prince 40–1 Herța region 133, 135, 138, 205 Hesychast tradition 20, 21, 70 Hotin (Khotyn) fortress 16, 23, 26–7, 33, 37, 52 raia (Ottoman administrative region) 52, 75, 91, 118, 138 town 10, 22, 52, 126, 138 human rights 167 human trafficking 165, 174, 179 Humor monastery 39 Hungary medieval kingdom 5, 10–11, 14–16, 22, 24, 26–9 under Ottoman control 33 and Romania 116, 134–5 Huși 25, 30, 121 Hussitism 24–5

234

Index

Iași academy 44–7, 57, 58, 67 capital of principality of Moldova 37, 42, 61, 79 cultural and intellectual life 108, 126, 127, 159 impressions of 65 monasteries and churches 42–3, 48, 70 printing in 48–9, 58, 63, 70, 71 Treaty of (1792) 73, 74, 75, 82 Iliașcu, Ilie 167 Iliescu, Ion 160, 171 Inculeț, Ion 112, 113 Inochentie, monk 96–7 Iorga, Nicolae 9, 56, 59, 61, 95, 108, 136 Ipsilanti, Alexandru 91 Ipsilanti, Constantin, prince of Wallachia 73–4 Ismail (Izmail) ethnic diversity 91 region 75, 77, 93–4, 95, 97, 118, 138 town 33–4, 64, 126, 138 Ivan III, grand prince of Muscovy 27, 29

Lăpușneanu, Alexandru IV, prince 37, 39, 40, 45, 69 Lațcu, prince 15, 16, 24 Latvia 151 League for the Cultural Unity of All Romanians 108, 110 League of the Archangel Michael 121 Leancă, Iurie 176–7 Lebed, Alexander Ivanovich 158 Lebedev, Pavel Vasilyevich 95–6, 97, 122 legal system 49, 58, 60 Lenin statues and portraits 145, 154, 179 Liberal Party 175, 176 Lipovans 86 Louis of Anjou, king of Hungary 11–12, 15, 16 Lower Moesia 8, 9 Lucinschi, Petru 143, 152, 159, 167, 169 Lupu, Vasile, prince 34, 35, 38, 41–50, 57, 70 Lviv city 15, 22, 23, 39, 45 Dormition Brotherhood 42, 45, 47

Jerusalem patriarchate 31, 40, 43, 44 Jews (see also Bessarabia, Chișinau, Hassidism, Zionism) culture and language 91, 127–8 destruction of 135, 138 John III (the Brave, or Terrible), prince 38

Madan, Leonid 130–1 Maramureș county 11, 12, 24, 190 Marghiloman, Alexandru 112, 113, 115 Mărțișor music festival 171, 182 Mateevici, Alexie 102, 151, 163 Mavrocordat, Alexandru 55, 56–7 Mavrocordat, Alexandru II, prince 73 Mavrocordat, Constantin, prince 56, 57–8, 60, 67, 76, 84 Mavrocordat, Nicolae, prince 47, 56–7, 60 mazâli (see also Bessarabia) 84, 101 Mehmed II, sultan 26, 27 metropolitanates Bessarabia 85–6, 92, 95, 99, 122, 142, 163–4 (see also Bănulescu-Bodoni, Grosu) Halych 12, 15, 16 Kyiv 16, 21, 44, 45–6, 70, 85 Moldova 16–17, 19, 23, 31, 37, 43–6, 48, 66, 122, 163 (see also Dosoftei, Suceava, Varlaam) ‘Ungrovlachia’ 19 Michael I (the Brave), prince 38, 69 Michael I, king of Romania 134, 137, 141

Kaba, John 101, 117 Kiselev, Pavel 76, 86 Kozak memorandum (2003) 172, 212 Krasnoselsky, Vadim Nikolayevich 180 Krupenski, Alexander 116 Krupenski family 82, 99, 104 Krushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich 139, 143, 147 Kuchuk-Kainarji, Treaty of (1774) 72, 73, 75 Kyiv academy 44, 45, 46, 47 agreement (2002) 172 city 5, 42, 50, 98, 102, 109, 111, 129 principality 13, 16, 188 land reform 57, 115, 123, 201 Lăpușna 24, 37

Index Moldova (Moldavia) definition of 1, 3, 8, 13–14 origin of name 13–14 Moldova, principality borders 22 ethnic diversity 13, 24, 46 and Europe 5, 14 foundation myth 11 and Hungary 15, 16, 27, 29 identity and character 3, 5–6, 64–6 Orthodox Christian refugees 30, 46 under Ottoman rule 33–7, 50, 52, 59–60 patronage 31, 41 and Poland/Poland-Lithuania 16, 22, 24, 28 1848 revolution 77, 78 and Russia 51–2, 69–72, 74, 76, 82 united with Wallachia 3–4, 78 Western cultural influences 45 Moldova, Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) attitudes towards Romania 141, 146, 151 collectivization of agriculture 140–1 deportations 139 ethnic Moldovans in 142, 143, 148, 149, 152 opposition to Soviet rule 146, 149, 150–1 Soviet legacy 164, 169, 170–1, 175, 182 territory and ethnic composition 138, 142, 148, 209 Moldova, Republic 1994 constitution 162–3, 166, 170 economic decline 164–5, 168–9, 173–4 and European Union (EU) 173, 175, 177, 181 Gagauz autonomy 161, 163, 165, 168, 172, 177 (see also Gagauz) independence declared 153–4, 157 nature reserves 183 organized crime and corruption 174, 177–8 out-migration 169, 175 protest movements 175–6, 177–8 and Romania 154, 159–61, 164, 173, 176, 178, 181–2 and Russia 158, 165, 166, 167, 173, 177 Russian language in 151, 159, 170

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Transnistrian war 157–9, 161, 163, 165–9, 172–3, 177 (see also Transnistria) and Ukraine 157, 160, 165, 168 Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) 129–31, 138 (see also Bessarabia) Moldovan language 4–5, 120, 130, 146–8, 151–3, 159–63, 171, 181 Moldovan National Party 110–11 Moldovița monastery 20, 39 Mongol-Tatar invasion 11, 16 Moruzi, Dimitrie, grand drgoman 73–4 Moscow patriarchate 70 Mount Athos monastery 21, 31, 40, 42, 43, 63 Movilă, House of 38, 39, 42, 50 Movilă, Petru 44–6, 70 Mușat, House of 16, 29, 35, 37 Neale, Adam 13–14, 64–5 Neamț monastery 16, 20–1, 23, 30, 70, 71, 78 Nicholas I, tsar 76, 92 Nicholas II, tsar 108, 111 Noul Neamț monastery 78 Old Church Slavonic 19–20, 32, 46, 48 Organic Statutes (1834) 76 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) 166, 168, 172, 175, 212 Orhei 24, 27, 117, 177, 178 Orheiul Vechi museum 2, 27 Orthodox Church in Bessarabia 83, 95–7, 98–9, 100, 122–3, 163 monasteries 2, 20–1, 30, 39–40, 41–3, 63 in principality of Moldova 5, 19, 39 in Republic of Moldova 163 as Romanian-language Church 48–9, 64 under Soviet rule 142 and Transnistria 137 Ottoman empire advance into south-east Europe 25–9, 33, 46 and Central Europe 50–1 imposes Phanariot rule 52, 59 Ovid 7, 81, 105

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Index

Păduraru, Petru 163–4 Paisie, monk 71 Paris, Peace of (1856) 77 Paris, Treaty of (1947) 137 Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) 168–71, 173, 175–6 Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova 177, 179 Payne, Peter 25 peasantry burden of taxation 36, 62–3, 84–5, 92, 123 landlessness 103–4 (see also land reform) language and identity 99–100, 113, 115, 117, 121 low levels of literacy 94–5, 96 superstitions and beliefs 64, 98 Pelivan, Ion 99, 101, 110, 111, 113 Petru I Mușat, prince 16, 20, 22, 29 Phanariots origin of name 55 reputation 59, 61 rulers in the principalities 55–8, 60–3, 66–7 Playing the Moldovans at Tennis (Tony Hawks) 1 Pocuția region 28, 29, 30, 188 Poland, kingdom of 15–16 Poland-Lithuania 22, 24, 26–9, 36–8, 41, 42, 44–7, 50, 69 Poltava 51, 71, 85 Popular Front of Moldova 151, 152–3, 158 Prut river as boundary 1–6, 8, 22, 52, 71, 76, 79, 81–2, 85–6, 116, 137 ‘cursed river’ 75 ‘flower bridge’ open border 154, 178 transport and communication 125, 154, 164 Pushkin, Alexander 105–6, 145, 148 Putin, Vladimir 2, 172, 173, 212 Putna monastery 27, 30, 32, 70, 73, 171–2 Rădăuți 16, 20 Rareș, Petru V, prince 33, 35, 37, 39, 43 răzeși 84, 101 (see also Bessarabia) refugees 119 Roman empire 8 Romania antisemitism in 128, 135

and Bessarabia 4, 100–1, 109–10, 116, 117, 119, 123–8, 135, 145–6 in First World War 112–16 foreign policy 80, 108, 111, 115, 117 idea of a national state 77–8, 101, 102 and imperial Russia 79, 80, 108 Jewish communities in 128–9, 142 kingdom 76, 78, 80 and Republic of Moldova 146, 159–64 and Third Reich 124, 131, 134–5 and Western Europe 80, 162 Romanian historiography 9, 109, 114, 136, 146 language 48–9, 92–3, 98, 120 (see also Moldovan language) ‘Latinity’ of 67, 100, 120, 160 nationalism 78, 100, 108, 111 Roșca, Iurie 170, 173 Rosetti, Radu 9 ruptași 84 (see also Bessarabia) Russian empire colonization policies 86–91 expansion 50, 51, 76, 81 and Ottoman empire 71–4, 79, 87, 92 protector of Orthodoxy 70 protector of the principalities 75–7 1905 and 1917 revolutions 98, 99, 110, 112 Russian Federation 158, 166 Russian language in Bessarabia (see also Bessarabia) 93–4, 100, 119, 121, 127 Saharna monastery 2, 62, 142 Sangheli, Andrei 158, 159 Șchiopul, Petru VI (the Lame), prince 40, 45 Schmidt, Carol 106 Sfatul Domnesc (princely council) 21, 31 Sfatul Țării (national council) 112–16, 123 Shevchuk, Yevgeny Vasilyevich 180 Shor, Ilan 177 Silistria, pashalik (Ottoman province) 34 Siret river 7, 10, 12, 14, 24, 75 Siret 13, 15–16, 24 Slavs migrations 13 and Romanian identity 9–10, 120 Smirnov, Igor Nikolayevich 152, 157, 158, 167, 180 Snegur, Mircea 153, 157–8, 159, 160, 161–2, 167, 169

Index Sobieski, John, king of Poland 51 Soroca 2, 27, 103, 178 Soviet Russia and Bessarabia 116–17, 118–19, 128–9, 131–4 language policy in Moldova 130–1, 146–8, 182 Soviet (Russian) 14th Army 144, 155, 157, 158, 166 Ștefan, Gheorghe II, prince 43, 48, 50, 69 Stephen III (the Great), prince ‘Athlete of Christ’ 27 defender of Orthodoxy 29–31 and Hussitism 25 inheritor of Byzantine imperial tradition 29 and the Ottomans 27–8 relations with Poland and Hungary 26–7, 28–9 subsequent reputation 127, 171 Stere, Constantin 101, 108, 112, 115 Sternberg, Yankev 128 Sturdza, Scarlat 82, 86 Suceava 13, 16–17, 23–4, 37, 39–40, 42, 73 Sucevița monastery 39 Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan 33, 37 Sulima, Dimitrie 93, 95, 100, 137 Țamblac, Grigore 19, 21, 32 Tatarbunar rebellion 119, 129 Tatars 13, 22, 23, 27, 34, 35, 38, 81, 87, 88 Thornton, Thomas 61, 62, 68 Thugut, Franz Maria von 72 Tighina (see also Bender) fortress 2, 22, 33, 155 town 10, 103, 104, 118, 152, 157–8 Timofti, Nicolae 176, 177, 179 Tiraspol 103, 129, 130, 138, 144, 149, 152, 155, 166, 179–80 trading routes 14, 22–3, 123 Trajan, Roman emperor 8, 65, 163 Transylvania Calvinism in 43, 48 Catholicism in 12 and Habsburg empire 51 and Hungary 10, 14, 134 and Romania 67, 78, 100, 110 Transnistria breaks with Republic of Moldova 154–5, 157, 166–7, 179

237

crime and corruption 179–80 identity politics 179 population 154 in Second World War 135–7 in Soviet Moldova 143–4 war in 157–8, 166 Trianon, Treaty of (1920) 116 tribes 7–8, 10 Tyras 7, 14 (see also Cetatea Albă) Ukraine (see also Moldova, Republic) and Bessarabia 114, 118, 138 identity 4–5 Orange revolution 173 and Russia 172, 177, 181 as Soviet Socialist Republic 129, 130, 138, 140, 143 United Council of Workers’ Collectives 151, 157 Ureche, Grigore 12, 32, 45, 49 Urusov, Sergey Dmitriyevich 96, 99, 100, 102–3, 104, 106 Varlaam, metropolitan 44, 46, 48–9, 70 Vărzăreşti monastery 20 Vienna Award (1940) 134 viticulture 2, 102–3 Vlachs 11 Vlad the Impaler, prince of Wallachia 26 Voroneț monastery 30, 39 Voronin, Vladimir 168, 169, 170–3, 175, 176, 182 Vorontsov, Mikhail Semyonovich 92 Wallachia and the Ottoman empire 25–6, 33–4, 52, 59, 74 principality 4–5, 14, 19–20, 23, 39–40, 53, 56–7, 60, 81, 91–2 unification with principality of Moldova 67, 76, 78–9, 101 Wilkinson, William 58, 60–5 Władisław I Jagiello, king of Poland 16, 22, 29 Zallony, Marc-Philippe 59, 61, 62 zemstvo local councils 104, 122 Zionism 107–8, 128

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