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1918-1940 - Romanian Bessarabia

Bessarabia, detached from the body of the Roumanian nation, was a problem, a sore on the European organism, a classic example of that manifest international injustice which is the breeder of wars. According to the official Russian census of 1897, forty-seven and one-sixth per cent of the Bessarabian population (total one billion, nine hundred and thirty-five million, four hundred and twelve) is Moldavian; but the official Russian census makers are notorious for partiality; and indeed, other Russian statistics, dated 1891, put the percentage of Moldavians at sixty-six. Of the two, the latter is the more likely figure. At the general elections in November, 1919, held on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage, seventy-eight deputies out of ninety elected were Roumanians, and twelve belonged to the national minorities -whose rights, by the way, are fully protected by law.

An interesting summary of testimony proving the Roumanian ethnic character of Bessarabia is a pamphlet by Ion G. Pelivan, ex-member of the Sfatul Tsarei, published in 1920 at Paris under the title of "The Right of the Roumanians to Bessarabia." Out of the twenty-three sources quoted, sixteen are Russian. They include statements by L. A. Casso, Russian minister of education, General Kuropatkin (of Japanese war fame) P. P. Semenoff-TianChiansky, vice-president of the Imperial Geographical Society, and a report of the Russian General Staff. This last named document, dated 1862, declared: "The Moldavians (Roumanians) form the chief part of the population, about three-fourths of the total number." In the face of this formidable array of evidence, historic and ethnographic, the Russian claim presented to the Allied Supreme Council was gathered around the argument that in 1812 Russia had acquired Bessarabia, not from Roumania, which then was not yet independent, but from Turkey. Applying the same argument to Austro-Italian relations, Austria would be entitled to Venice on the ground that that city was acquired not from Italy, which was not at the time independent, but from Napoleon!

Historically and ethnically a Roumanian land, Bessarabia today is again an integral part of the Roumanian state whose frontiers, for the first time in two thousand years, again coincide with those of ancient Dacia. Without the incorporation of Bessarabia the achievement of Roumanian national unity, which was the one aim of Roumania in the world war, would not be complete. At the same time the possession of Bessarabia, with its uniquely fertile black soil, its vineyards, and its wonderful water system, is economically vital to the new Roumania. It also insures for Roumania control of the Danube delta, which is a strategic as well as commercial necessity of the first order. It should not be forgotten that Russia craved possession of the province for this very reason.