Moldova - History
Few countries in the world have such clearly defined natural boundaries as Bessarabia, in reality a quadrilateral peninsula defined by the rivers Dniester or, in Roumanian, Nistru, in the northeast, the Pruth in the west, the Danube and the Black Sea in the south and southeast. Only for a narrow strip of land in the extreme northwest can Bessarabia be entered without crossing water. But these natural boundaries of the country were not, like mountains or deserts, barriers as well; they invited, rather than discouraged, invasion.
The history of the republic of Moldova is the history of two different regions that have been joined into one country, but not into one nation: Bessarabia and Transnistria. Moldova's location has made it a historic passageway between Asia and southern Europe, as well as the victim of frequent warfare. Greeks, Romans, Huns, and Bulgars invaded the area, which in the 13th century became part of the Mongol empire. An independent Moldovan state emerged briefly in the 14th century under celebrated leader Stefan the Great but subsequently fell under Ottoman Turkish rule in the 16th century.
To a great extent, Moldova's history has been shaped by the foreigners who came to stay and by those who merely passed through, including Greek colonists, invading Turks and Tatars, officials of the Russian Empire, German and Bulgarian colonists, communist apparatchiks from the Soviet Union, soldiers from Nazi Germany, Romanian conationalists, and twentieth-century Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Each group has left its own legacy, sometimes cultural and sometimes political, and often unwelcome.
The original inhabitants were Cimmerians, and after them came Scythians. During the early centuries of the Christian era Bessarabia, being the key to one of the approaches towards the Byzantine empire, was invaded by many successive races. In the 2nd century it was occupied by the Getae, a Thracian tribe, whom the Roman emperor Trajan conquered in 106; he then incorporated the region in the province of Dacia. Moldova's Latin origins can be traced to the period of Roman occupation of nearby Dacia (in present-day Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia), ca. A.D. 105-270, when a culture was formed from the intermingling of Roman colonists and the local population. Bessarabia was not incorporated in the Roman province of Dacia, but Roman influence made itself felt. Trajan's wall, partly still extant, was built to check the raids of the northern barbarians attracted by the treasures of Byzantium; and from that time on the line of Bessarabian history was determined by the fact that the province formed the back door, as it were, to Constantinople.
After the Roman Empire and its influence waned and its troops left the region in A.D. 271, a number of groups passed through the area, often violently: Huns, Ostrogoths, and Antes (who were Slavs). In the following century the Goths poured into this quarter of the empire, and in the 5th century it was overrun one after the other by the Huns, the Avars and the Bulgarians. Then followed in the 7th century the Bessi, a Thracian tribe, who gave their name to the region, and in the 9th the Ugrians, that is to say the ancestors of the present Magyars of Hungary, the country being then known as Atcl-kuzu. The Ugrians were forced farther west by the Turkish tribe of the Petchenegs in the loth century, and these were succeeded in the 11th century by the Kumans (Comani) or Polovtsians, a kindred Turkish stock or federation.
In the 13th century Bessarabia was overrun by the irresistible Mongols under the leadership of Batu, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. In this century also the Genoese founded trading factories on the banks of the Dniester. Bessarabia re-emerges from the Dark Ages at the end of the thirteenth century, already as a purely Roumanian country forming part of the domains of the House of Basarab, reigning princes of Wallachia or Muntenia. The Basarab rulers gave the province its modern name; but the term Bessarabia originally applied to the whole territory ruled by them.
In 1367 Bessarabia was subdued and annexed by the ruling prince of Moldavia. In the thirteenth century, Hungary expanded into the area and established a line of fortifications in Moldova near the Siretul River (in present-day Romania) and beyond. The region came under Hungarian suzerainty until an independent Moldovan principality was established by Prince Bogdan in 1349. Originally called Bogdania, the principality stretched from the Carpathian Mountains to the Nistru River and was later renamed Moldova, after the Moldova River in present-day Romania.
During the second half of the fifteenth century, all of southeastern Europe came under increasing pressure from the Ottoman Empire, and despite significant military victories by Stephen the Great (Stefan cel Mare, 1457-1504), Moldova succumbed to Ottoman power in 1512 and was a tributary state of the empire for the next 300 years. In addition to paying tribute to the Ottoman Empire and later acceding to the selection of local rulers by Ottoman authorities, Moldova suffered repeated invasions by Turks, Crimean Tatars, and Russians. During the 16th century it was in the possession alternately of the Turks and the Nogais or Crimean Tatars.
In 1812 Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected prince of Walachia and the part of Moldova that lay west of the Prut River, laying the foundations of modern Romania. In 1829 its frontier was pushed southwards so as to include the delta of the Danube. After the Crimean War, however, Russia ceded to Moldavia not only this later addition, but also certain districts in the south of the existing government, amounting altogether to an area of 4250 sq. m. and a population of 180,000. These two regions were united in 1861. Romania, which gained independence in 1878, took control of Russian-ruled Bessarabia in 1918. By the treaty of Berlin (1878) Russia recovered of this 3580 sq. m., with a population of 127,000.
In 1917, during World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, political leaders in Bessarabia created a National Council (Sfatul Tarii), which declared Bessarabia the independent Democratic Moldovan Republic, federated with Russia. In February 1918, the new republic declared its complete independence from Russia and, two months later, voted to unite with Romania, thus angering the Russian government. The Soviet Union never recognized the action and created an autonomous Moldavian republic on the east side of the Dniester River in 1924.
In 1940, Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), which established the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic by merging the autonomous republic east of the Dniester and the annexed Bessarabian portion. Stalin also stripped the three southern counties along the Black Sea coast from Moldova and incorporated them in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Romania sought to regain Bessarabia by joining with Germany in the 1941 attack on the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, German and Romanian troops crossed the border and deportations of the Jews from Bessarabia began immediately. By September 1941, most of the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina had been transported in convoys and force marched to concentration camps in Transnistria. About 185,000 Jews were in the Transnistria area in concentration camps by 1942 in abysmal conditions. Very few were left alive in these camps when the Soviets reoccupied Bessarabia in 1944.
In September 1990, the Supreme Soviet elected Mircea Snegur as President of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova. A former Communist Party official, he endorsed independence from the Soviet Union and actively sought Western recognition. On May 23, 1991, the Supreme Soviet renamed itself the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, which subsequently declared its independence from the U.S.S.R.
In August 1991, Moldova's transition to democracy initially had been impeded by an ineffective Parliament, the lack of a new constitution, a separatist movement led by the Gagauz (Christian Turkic) minority in the south, and unrest in the Transnistria region on the left bank of the Nistru/Dniester River, where a separatist movement declared a "Transdniester Moldovan Republic" in September 1990. The Russian 14th Army intervened to stem widespread violence and support the Transnistrian regime, which is led by supporters of the 1991 coup attempt in Moscow. In 1992, the government negotiated a cease-fire arrangement with Russian and Transnistrian officials, although tensions continue, and negotiations are ongoing.
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