Moldova

Moldova is a capitalist state in Eastern Europe, formerly a Union Republic of the USSR and now the poorest country in Europe.

History

Moldavian SSR

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to establish Soviet power in the Bessarabia region. Such efforts were cut short when Romanian troops occupied the area, which prompted the Soviet government to denounce this move as illegal and not recognize Romania's control as legitimate. In the Soviet view, Moldavians were a distinct nation which was suffering under the Romanian occupiers, whereas the Romanian view was that Moldavians are Romanians and that the region was Romanian land unjustly seized in Tsarist times. In 1924 the Soviets created a Moldavian ASSR within the Ukrainian SSR as part of their efforts to cultivate Moldavian national feeling and emphasize Soviet claims to Bessarabia. The Red Army took Bessarabia in 1940 after an ultimatum to Romania, annexing the new lands to the Moldavian ASSR, which was reformed into an SSR. Given that the region had been under Romania's control for two decades, it was decided to carry out deportations of elements identified as belonging to exploiting classes as well as Romanian organizations like the National Liberal Party and the Iron Guard.

The immediate reason for the Red Army moving into the region in 1940 was because the Soviet leadership suspected, with good reason, that Romania would side with the Axis in a war against the USSR. Thus the Soviets used the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as a good opportunity to seize control of a region they had never recognized as legitimately under Romanian control to begin with (although they also took Northern Bukovina for good measure).

As Walter Kolarz noted in a 1952 work, himself an author who was no friend of the USSR, the Moldavian SSR's economy was negligible. The Soviet motives for reacquiring Bessarabia were political, not economic, and while there may have been some cynicism involved in promoting a Moldavian national identity to undermine Romanian claims, it is not like the Bolsheviks made it up out of whole cloth. From Kolarz's book Myths and Realities in Eastern Europe:

Many observers find the motive for this differentiation between "Rumanians" and "Moldavians" entirely in a Russian "divide and rule" policy; but this is only half the truth. . . .

The events of 1917-20 exposed the questionable validity of the Rumanian claim to Bessarabia and confirmed the presence of a peculiar political mentality among the Bessarabian population. In consequence of the political disorganisation which had arisen in Russia in 1917, Bessarabia had declared its independence, and had formed in the "Sfatul Tsarii" a parliamentary organism of its own, which at first stood for the incorporation of this frontier province into a federal democratic Russia. But after three weeks of military occupation by Rumanian troops this resolve was abandoned and the wish expressed for union with Rumania. This proposal, however, was made contingent on a number of conditions: autonomy for Bessarabia, admission of two Bessarabian Ministers to the Rumanian Central Government, free and secret voting and adequate representation for Bessarabia in the Rumanian Parliament; but even a proposal with so many qualifying clauses received support in public voting only from 85 members of the Sfatul Tsarii, whilst 3 voted against, 54 abstained and 25 were absent, including 6 deputies who had been shot by the Rumanian army of occupation. On November 26th, 1918, a session of the Sfatul Tsarii, attended by only 46 members out of 168, rescinded the original conditions of incorporation, "in the conviction that a democratic regime is guaranteed to all Rumanians."

During the years of Bucharest rule, the Moldavian-Rumanian population of Bessarabia and also the non-Rumanian nationalities of this area, repeatedly and vigorously expressed their discontent with the regime and the State imposed on them.

The enmity between the Moldavian populace and the Romanian state further manifested through attacks on the retreating Romanians by locals, especially by communists and ethnic minorities such as Jews and Ukrainians.

Starting in the 1960s, the Romanian Communist Party began to publicly dissent from the Soviet view in regard to Moldavia, portraying the region and its people as a historically integral part of Romania, publicizing a statement Marx had written denouncing the Tsarist seizure of Bessarabia, etc. This became one of the things that strained Soviet-Romanian relations in Gheorghiu-Dej's last years and under Ceauşescu.