Foto: Ocupația sovietică a Basarabiei/Wikipedia“Mother, these communists came and took everything from us: the hair on our heads, our land, our carts. Only one thing they could not take away from us. Our souls.”
(Eyewitnesses)
On June 28, 1940, the Soviet Union occupied the Republic of Moldova or Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina, now part of Ukraine, following an ultimatum to Romania. Under pressure from Moscow and Berlin, the Romanian administration and the army were forced to retreat from the regions to avoid war.
The occupation took less than a week, and ended on and July 3, 1940. It resulted in the incorporation of these regions into the Soviet Union. The occupation was a direct consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939.
Universul.net presents a statement from Prof. Valeriu Dulgheru, the Department Head of the Technical University of Moldova, who is also a member of La Maison Roumaine, a French non-profit association set up in 1982 to promote and develop cultural relations between France and Romania. It supports the anchoring of European values in Romania according to its website.
“Unfortunately, even today, after 85 years… this country called Bessarabia is struggling to escape the clutches of the rabid bear in the east. It is said that the Lord on the day of the Great Partition gave the Romanians the best lands, but for balance – the worst neighbors. In fact, the neighbor to the east becomes the neighbor of anyone if he wants, ” Prof. Dulgheru writes.
Just look at the recent statement made by Putin that “wherever the boot of the Russian soldier steps becomes Russian land”. This is how it has always been, the country that covers one-sixth of the Earth. This is what Russia did in 1812 when it tore from the body of the old Moldavia (Eds: Moldova previously known as Moldavia is partly in Romania and also in the Republic of Moldova)_ the most beautiful part of it – Bessarabia.
From then on, the Romanian people in Bessarabia suffered great problems, which continued for almost 200 years. But the biggest problem to befall the Bessarabians during the multi-millennial history of existence was without doubt the communist-Stalinist regime, brought by the bayonets by the Russian “liberators” on June 28, 1940.
Nothing can be compared with the pains, suffering, and tears of hundreds of thousands of children, women, old people who died in torment in the terrible famine organized by the communist regime in 1946-’47, when tens of thousands of innocent people experienced the Enkavedist death chambers in Stalinist prisons, far surpassing the diabolical methods, used those of the Middle Ages. Tens of thousands of deportees of which two thirds were women and children – absolutely innocent beings endured this suffering.
Who can alleviate the spiritual pains of the survivors of this ordeal? No one can return to them the youth wasted in vain, the health compromised by the inhuman treatment to which they have been subjected, their peace of mind, lost forever and replaced by a permanent painful anxiety. The eyelid of the past trembles, hiding its tear, and does not let oblivion sift over what has remained in the history of the Romanians in Bessarabia – the curse of the 1940s.
After the Kremlin presented Romania with an ultimatum to cede Bessarabia and north Bukovina, Marshal Ion Antonescu visited King Carol II, on July 1, and presented the Sovereign with a Memorandum in which he emphasized; “Your Majesty, the country is collapsing. In Bessarabia and Bukovina, heartbreaking scenes are taking place. Large and small units, abandoned by the chiefs and caught without orders, let themselves be disarmed at the first threat. The officials, their families and those of the officers, were left prey to the most terrible plague. Materials and military warehouses accumulated there by carelessness and maintained until the last moment, fell into the hands of the enemy.”
The most beautiful and richest treasure of Romania has been occupied again. Out of a population of 3,776,000 inhabitants (according to the 1930 census), in the territories occupied by the USSR, 2,078,000 (55%) were ethnic Romanians. Over 200,000 inhabitants of all ethnicities took refuge in Romania in the days that followed June 28.
It was the most terrible terror that this group of Romanian people has known in its entire period of existence. From the moment when the Russian boot stepped on Bessarabian territory, the Soviet plague overcame the Bessarabians, hell itself oved to Bessarabia. The crimes committed by the Stalinist Soviet regime, in the first months of the occupation, are unimaginable in their number and cruelty.
After the reoccupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the Soviet occupiers unleashed mass exterminations, arrest and deportation of the so-called “anti-Soviet elements” – intellectuals, religious workers, former officials, former members of political parties, but simply of all those who, in the opinion of the authorities, did not approve the new regime, sometimes to the point of absurdity (for example, in the case of teenager Vadim Pirogan – who was identified as an “enemy of the people” even though he was just 16?).
Immediately after the occupation of Bessarabia, on June 28, 1940, the communists went about establishing a “new life” in the only way they understood: arrests, deportations, executions, all of which were meant to ensure peace for the future government for many years to come. This happened in 1940, when the “favorable” situation (European democracy was trampled by the German boot and could not defend its former allies) allowed the USSR to satisfy its cravings, when under the same pretext.. when Bessarabia was populated mainly by Ukrainians and became part of the USSR.
This “Soviet paradise” with deportations, organized famine, and slavery, continued until 1991, when the Republic of Moldova declared its independence from the Russian empire.
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