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1812-1918 - Russian Bessarabia

Frederick the Great once said that when he wanted to annex a province he went and annexed it, and afterward hired professors to prove his right to possession. It may be entered to the credit of the late Imperial Russian Government that it did not hire professors to prove its title to Bessarabia, a Roumanian province which was under the scepter of the Czar for one hundred and six years, from 1812 to 1918. During this period Roumania had the right to Bessarabia, but Russia had Bessarabia. That Russia had a title in point of law did not occurred to Russians until after Bessarabia ceased to be a province of Russia in point of possession.

This was the outstanding fact of the controversy centering around the award of the Allied Supreme Council, in the autumn of 1920, confirming Roumania in the possession of Bessarabia, or rather confirming the reunion of that province with the Roumanian kingdom, effected by the free will of the Bessarabian population in the resolution of the Bessarabian Council on March 27, 1918. That award merits attention as one of the clearest examples of triumphant justice among the territorial readjustments consequent upon the Great War. Since 1812 Bessarabia had been a province of the Russian Empire. It was not, and had never been, a Russian province. There is perhaps in the whole history of European "Machtpolitik" no more glaring instance of sheer international robbery than this annexation. The wrong suffered by Bessarabia and her Roumanian motherland was all the more intolerable because it was practically unnoticed.

The year 1812 was the turning point in Bessarabian history. Pressed by the impending war with Napoleon, the Czar Alexander first prepared to make peace with the Turks at almost any price; but his commander-in-chief, Kutuzov, succeeded in bribing the Turkish negotiators, Morouzi and Ghalib Effendi, who thereupon suppressed a letter from Napoleon, encouraging the Porte to resist Russian demands. In his anxiety to end the war the Sultan ceded to the Czar the part of Moldavia east of the Pruth, and the Budjak-in other words, the whole of modern Bessarabia. The treaty of Bucharest was signed on May twenty-eighth, 1812, and the fate of Bessarabia was sealed for more than a century. When their treason was discovered, Morouzi and Ghalib were decapitated; "but so was Moldavia," mournfully remarks a Roumanian historian.

This partition of their country was a terrible disappointment to the Moldavian patriots who hoped that Russian victory would liberate them from Ottoman sovereignty. At first their apprehensions were mitigated by the liberal promises of the Russian government. Within a few years the Russian government, true to its methods pursued in Poland and Finland, inaugurated a policy of Russification and oppression. The basic law of 1818, by which the. Czar Alexander allowed national autonomy, equality of the Russian and Moldavian languages, and the perpetuation of the old Moldavian statutes, was revoked by Nicholas first in 1828. Russian officials were appointed to all posts. Russian schools and seminaries were opened, and the Roumanian institutions suppressed; the use of Latin characters was prohibited, and Roumanian books, if authorized at all, had to be printed in the Cyrillic script.

Certain sections of the upper classes yielded only too readily to this tendency of Russification. Some of the greatest families, with the characteristic zeal of the convert, became more Russian than the Russians themselves; and in our days we find men like Kroupensky and Purishkievitch, scions of originally Roumanian noble families of Bessarabia, among the most ardent supporters of Czaristic reaction. There were, however, men both of the nobility and the professional class, who kept their Roumanian nationality in spite of oppression and persecution; and these true Bessarabian patriots preserved the Roumanian tradition of the country unbroken.

The policy of Russification continued until the Crimean war, at the close of which European powers decided that Russia was not to have a base on the Danube delta. The treaty of Paris therefore recognized Moldavia's right to Bessarabia; but only the three southern districts, Izmail. Cahul and Bolgrad, with their mixed population, were actually reannexed. This makeshift settlement left northern and central Bessarabia, with its compact mass of Roumanian population, under Russian sovereignty; nevertheless it revived the hope for complete reunion. These hopes were shattered by the outcome of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. Although the Roumanian statesmen suspected from the beginning that one of Russia's chief aims was the recovery of all Bessarabia, they chose to ally their country to the Roumanian cause because they saw that the alternative, in case of a Turkish victory, would be the reincorporation of the whole of Roumania in the Ottoman empire. A treaty guaranteeing Roumania's territorial integrity with Russia, was concluded on April sixteenth, 1877.

The Roumanian army not only distinguished itself from the beginning of the war, but actually saved the Russian army from disaster at Plevna. This is attested by telegrams exchanged by King Carol and the Czar. There were patriots who hoped that as a reward Russia would restore the whole of Bessarabia to the Roumanian motherland. One may imagine Roumanian public sentiment when, on the conclusion of the Treaty of San Stef ano, the Roumanian government was informed that Russia demanded the retrocession of southern Bessarabia as! a matter of political necessity and Russian prestige, offering in exchange the marshy country of Dobrogea, south of the Danube delta. It was explained that the treaty guaranteeing Roumania's integrity was not meant to include Bessarabia.

Against this treachery the Roumanian government applied to the western powers for aid. And now followed the bitterest disappointment in all Roumanian history. At the Congress of Berlin, convened to settle the problems arising from the Russo-Turkish war, the Roumanian delegates, Bratianu and Cogalniceanu, were not even admitted to the discussions, but were heard only in an informatory capacity. Russia's demand was granted; southern Bessarabia was restored to the realm of the Czar. Bismarck achieved his will: a wedge of distrust and resentment was driven between Russia and Roumania.

The period of 1878 to 1905 embraces the darkest days of modern Bessarabian history. Russian tyranny held its uncontested sway; the upper classes succumbed to the lures of Petrograd and Moscow; the peasantry toiled in lethargy; the upholders of the Roumanian cause were imprisoned, sent to Siberia, or exiled abroad. The last vestiges of the old autonomy were abolished. The hopes of Bessarabian patriots were kindled for a moment by the period of quasiliberalism that followed the disastrous war with Japan in 1905. But in 1908 reaction was reentrenched, more safe and arrogant than ever.

At the outbreak of the Great War Bessarabian nationalists, like the liberals of western Europe, expected from Allied victory the dawn of a new freedom in Russia, and hoped that this free Russia would reward Roumanian support to the Allies' cause by the restoration of Bessarabia. The collapse of the Russian empire thwarted this hope, but allowed its realization in a different form. Immediately after the outbreak of the Russian revolution the movement for autonomy, long dormant, was revived in all the border provinces of the Empire inhabited by non-Russians. A national committee, established at Kishinev, began to work out plans for local self-government, agrarian reform, military reorganization, a Bessarabian budget, and guarantees of the rights of the non-Roumanian minority.

When, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks came into power, they at once denied the authority of the National Committee and threatened to set up a Soviet. As a result, the so-called "Sfatul Tsarei" (National Council) was formed and invested with the character of a Constituent Assembly. It comprised one hundred and forty-seven delegates, out of whom one hundred and five were Roumanians, the rest Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, and Bulgars, respectively fifteen, thirteen, two and four. On December fifteenth, 1917, the Sfatul Tsarei declared Bessarabia an independent republic. A week later the provisional government sent an urgent request to the Roumanian government for military aid against the Bolsheviki. Early in January the Bolsheviks invaded the country and took Kishinev, but a week later the Roumanian aid arrived and the province was cleared of the Reds. On March twenty-seventh, 1918, the Sfatul Tsarei proclaimed the union of Bessarabia with Roumania. The wrong of a century was righted.