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Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

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Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
Part of Genocides by the Soviet Union
LocationBessarabia and Northern Bukovina[1][2]
Date1940–1951[1]
TargetRomanians[1][2]
Attack type
Ethnic cleansing[2]
Deaths57,000 (19%–28.5% of pre-war Romanians in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina)[2]
Victims200,000–300,000 Romanians persecuted or deported to forced labor camps across the Soviet Union[2]
PerpetratorsSoviet Union[1][2]
MotiveEthnic cleansing[2] and crackdown on opposition[1]

The Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were a series of mass deportations of Romanians from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina between 1940 and 1951.[1] The deportations were conducted by the Soviet Union.[1] Historians said that Joseph Stalin ordered the deportations to crush certain opposition to his power.[1]

Overview

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Most victims of the deportations, which happened after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (northeastern Romania) in July 1940,[1] were sent to "special settlements" (Russian: спецпоселения) across the Soviet Union.[1] In June 2021, Moldovan historian Ion Varta called the deportations a "genocide in all law".[3]

Background

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Due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, the Romanian government was made to give up Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union in June 1940.[1] The deportations started after the Soviets took over Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.[1]

Romanian refugees after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

On June 12–13, 1941, 29,839 members of families of "counter-revolutionaries and nationalists" from the Moldavian SSR, Chernivtsi of Northern Bukovina, and the Ukrainian SSR's Izmail oblasts were deported to Kazakhstan, the Komi ASSR, the Krasnoyarsk Krai, and the Omsk and Novosibirsk oblasts.[4] Sergo Goglidze, an NKVD official close to Lavrentiy Beria, was liable for the deportations.[4]

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014)[5] estimated that 200,000–300,000 Romanian Bessarabians were persecuted or deported to forced labor camps between 1940 and 1941.[2]

As many as 57,000 did not survive.[2] Some historians claimed that the declassified Soviet archives did not support Prof. Rummel's estimation however.[6]

70 years since the first mass deportation of Bessarabians, 1941–2011. Post of Moldova, 2011.

On April 6, 1949, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee issued decision number 1290-467cc for the deportation of another 11,280 families from Moldavian SSR,[7] accusing them of being "kulaks" and "Nazi collaborators".[7]

11,239 families (35,050 persons) were deported on July 6, 1949.[7] In an official Romanian investigation in 2009, 40,000 persons were found to have been deported by the Soviets in total.[8] The deportations roughly ended in 1951.[9]

Monument to the deportees in front of the Chișinău Railway Station.
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Footnotes

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    References

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    1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Mawdsley, Evan (1998). The Stalin Years: The Soviet Union, 1929–1953. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719046001. LCCN 2003046365.
    2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Rudolph J. Rummel, Table 6.A. 5,104,000 victims during the pre-World War II period: sources, calculations and estimates, Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War, University of Hawaii.
    3. ↑ "Astăzi se împlinesc 81 de ani de la ocuparea Basarabiei de către Uniunea Sovietică" (in Romanian). Radio Chișinău. June 28, 2021.
    4. 1 2 "Nu se va întoarce nimeni și niciodată—aici vă vor putrezi oasele". NewsMaker (in Romanian). 12 September 2017. Archived from the original on 28 October 2020. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
    5. ↑ An American political scientist, a statistician and professor at Indiana University, Yale University, and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
    6. ↑ Caşu, Igor (2010). "Stalinist Terror in Soviet Moldavia". In McDermott, Kevin; Stibbe, Matthew (eds.). Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719077760. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
    7. 1 2 3 Panțîru, Tudor (2009). "Situația românilor din Kazahstan" (PDF) (in Romanian). Parliament of Romania. Retrieved March 14, 2021.
    8. ↑ Panțîru, Tudor (2009). "Situația românilor din Kazahstan" (PDF) (in Romanian). Parliament of Romania. Retrieved March 14, 2021.
    9. ↑ Vladimir Tismăneanu; Dorin Dobrincu; Cristian Vasile (2007), Comisia Prezidențială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România: Raport Final (in Romanian), București: Humanitas, p. 754, ISBN 978-973-50-1836-8
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