Moldova - World War II
In June 1940, Bessarabia (Eastern
Moldova) was occupied by Soviet forces as a consequence of a
secret protocol attached to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. On August 2,
1940, the Soviet government created the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
(Moldavian SSR), with its capital at Chisinau (Kishiyov,
in Russian), by joining most of Bessarabia
with a portion of the Moldavian ASSR (the rest was returned to the Ukrainian SSR).
Northern Bukovina, and southern
Bessarabia (bordering on the Black Sea) were taken from the new-formed Soviet Republic
and incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR, severely undermining the area’s
historical and economic integrity and leaving the Moldavian SSR landlocked.
In
June 1941, German and Romanian
troops attacked the Moldavian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR; the Nazis gave Romania, their ally, not only Bessarabia and
northern Bukovina but also the land between the Nistru
and Pivdennyy Buh (Yuzhnyy Bug, in Russian) rivers, north to Bar in Ukraine,
which Romania
named and administered as Transnistria. This arrangement
lasted until August 1944, when Soviet forces reoccupied Bessarabia
and Transnistria. A 1947 treaty formally returned
Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and Transnistria to
the Soviet Union, and the previous Soviet
administrative divisions and Russian place-names were re-imposed.
Moldova - Postwar
Reestablishment of Soviet Control
With the restoration of Soviet power in
the Moldavian SSR, Joseph V. Stalin's government policy was to Russify the population of the
Moldavian SSR and destroy any remaining ties it had with Romania. The Soviets massacred, imprisoned,
and deported to Siberia almost a million innocent people whose
"crime" was just that they were of Romanian origin. Secret police struck at nationalist groups. The ethnic
cleansing was especially directed against the Romanian intellectuals that
decided to stay in Moldova after the war (most of Romanian-speaking members of
middle- and upper classes had repatriated to Romania between 1940 and 1945).The Cyrillic alphabet was imposed on the
"Moldavian" language; and ethnic Russians and Ukrainians were
encouraged to immigrate to the Moldavian SSR, especially to Transnistria. The
government's policies--requisitioning large amounts of agricultural products
despite a poor harvest--induced a famine following the catastrophic drought of
1945-47, and political, communist party, and academic positions were given to
members of non-Romanian ethnic groups (only 14 percent of the Moldavian SSR's political leaders were ethnic Romanians in 1946).
The
conditions imposed during the reestablishment of Soviet rule became the basis
of deep resentment toward Soviet authorities--a resentment that soon manifested
itself. During Leonid I. Brezhnev's 1950-52 tenure as first secretary of the
Communist Party of Moldavia (CPM), he put down a rebellion of ethnic Romanians
by killing or deporting thousands of people and instituting forced
collectivization. Although Brezhnev and other CPM first secretaries were largely
successful in suppressing "Moldavian" nationalism, the hostility of
"Moldavians" smoldered for another three decades, until after Mikhail
S. Gorbachev came to power. His policies of glasnost and perestroika
created conditions in which national feelings could be openly expressed and in
which the Soviet republics could consider reforms.
Moldova - Increasing
Political Self-Expression
In this climate of
openness, political self-assertion escalated in the Moldavian SSR in 1988. The
year 1989 saw the formation of the Moldovan Popular Front (commonly called the
Popular Front), an association of independent cultural and political groups
that had finally gained official recognition. Large demonstrations by ethnic Romanians
led to the designation of Romanian as the official language and the replacement
of the head of the CPM. However, opposition was growing to the increasing
influence of ethnic Romanians, especially in Transnistria,
where the Yedinstvo-Unitatea (Unity) Intermovement had been formed in 1988 by the Slavic
minorities, and in the south, where Gagauz Halkо (Gagauz People),
formed in November 1989, came to represent the Gagauz,
a Turkic-speaking minority there.
The
first democratic elections to the Moldavian SSR's
Supreme Soviet were held February 25, 1990. Runoff elections were held in
March. The Popular Front won a majority of the votes. After the elections, Mircea Snegur, a communist, was
elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet; in September he became president of the
republic. The reformist government that took over in May 1990 made many changes
that did not please the minorities, including changing the republic's name in
June from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Soviet Socialist
Republic of Moldova and declaring it sovereign the same month.
Moldova - Secession of Gagauzia and Transnistria
In August the Gagauz declared a separate
"Gagauz
Republic" (Gagauz-Yeri)
in the south, around the city of Comrat (Komrat,
in Russian). In September, Slavs on the east bank of the Nistru River
proclaimed the "Dnestr
Moldavian Republic"
(commonly called the "Dnestr
Republic") in Transnistria, with its capital at Tiraspol. Although the
Supreme Soviet immediately declared these declarations null, both
"republics" went on to hold elections. Stepan
Topal was elected president of the "Gagauz Republic" in December 1991, and Igor' N. Smirnov
was elected president of the "Dnestr Republic"
in the same month.
Approximately
50,000 armed Moldovan nationalist volunteers went to Transnistria,
where widespread violence was temporarily averted by the intervention of the
Russian 14th Army. (The Soviet 14th Army, now the Russian 14th Army, had been
headquartered in Chisinau under the High Command of the Southwestern Theater of
Military Operations since 1956.) Negotiations in Moscow among the Gagauz,
the Transnistrian Slavs, and the government of the
Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova failed, and the government refused to join
in further negotiations.
In
May 1991, the country's official name was changed to the Republic
of Moldova (Republica
Moldova).
The name of the Supreme Soviet also was changed, to the Moldovan Parliament.
(click here to read more about Transnistrian crisis)
Moldova – Independence
During the 1991 August coup d'etat in Moscow, commanders
of the Soviet Union's Southwestern Theater of Military Operations tried to
impose a state of emergency in Moldova,
but they were overruled by the Moldovan government, which declared its support
for Russian president Boris N. Yeltsin. On August 27, 1991, following the
coup's collapse, Moldova
declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
In
October, Moldova
began to organize its own armed forces. The Soviet Union was falling apart
quickly, and Moldova had to
rely on itself to prevent the spread of violence from the "Dnestr
Republic" to the
rest of the country. The December elections of Stepan
Topal and Igor' Smirnov as presidents of their
respective "republics," and the official dissolution of the Soviet
Union at the end of the year, led to increased tensions in Moldova.
Violence
again flared up in Transnistria in 1992. A ceasefire
agreement was negotiated by presidents Snegur and
Yeltsin in July. A demarcation line was to be maintained by a tripartite
peacekeeping force (composed of Moldovan, Russian, and Transnistrian
forces), and Moscow
agreed to withdraw its 14th Army if a suitable constitutional provision were
made for Transnistria. Also, Transnistria
would have a special status within Moldova
and would have the right to secede if Moldova
decided to reunite with Romania.
Moldova - Toward Political
Accommodation
New parliamentary
elections were held in Moldova
on February 27, 1994. Although the election was described by international
observers as free and fair, authorities in Transnistria
refused to allow balloting there and made efforts to discourage the inhabitants
from participating. Only some 7,500 inhabitants voted at specially established
precincts in right-bank Moldova.
The
new Parliament, with its Democratic Agrarian Party of Moldova majority, did not
face the same gridlock that characterized the old Parliament with its majority
of Popular Front hard-line nationalists: legislation was passed, and changes
were made. President Snegur signed the Partnership
for Peace agreement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March
1994, and in April Parliament approved Moldova's membership in the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and in a CIS charter on economic
union. On July 28, Parliament ratified a new constitution, which went into
effect August 27, 1994, and provided substantial autonomy to Transnistria and to Gagauzia.
Russia and Moldova signed an agreement in
October 1994 on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria,
but the Russian government balked at ratifying it, and another stalemate
ensued. Although the cease-fire was still in effect at the beginning of 1995
and further negotiations were to include the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations,
there was little hope for progress in the near future toward settling the
dispute and getting the Russian troops to leave.
In
March and April 1995, Moldovan college and secondaryschool
students staged a series of strikes and demonstrations in Chisinau to protest
the government's cultural and educational policies. The students were joined by
segments of the local intelligentsia and later by workers and pensioners who
were protesting for economic reasons. The most emotional issue was that of the
national language: should it be Moldovan, as named in the 1994 constitution, or Romanian as most experts agree?
In
an April 27 speech to Parliament, President Snegur
asked Parliament to amend the constitution and change the name of the language
to Romanian. The government's final decision was postponed until the fall
because of the stipulation that six months must pass before a proposed change
to the constitution can be made. The student demonstrators declared a
moratorium on further strikes until September 6.
In
1995 Moldova
was still faced with substantial domestic social and economic problems, but it
seemed to be on the road to making progress toward the ideal of an open-market
democracy. The country's complex ethnic makeup and the political legacy of the
Soviet period continued to contribute to the government's difficulties, but the
fall from power of the extreme nationalists in the 1994 parliamentary elections
lowered ethnic tensions and allowed compromises to be made with the major
ethnic groups. With Russia
now a partner in negotiations on Transnistria and
with pledges by the new government to respect the rights of the country's
Russian-speaking populace, the threat of international hostilities has been
greatly reduced.
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