In 1940, the region of Bessarabia was annexed by the
Soviet Union. The process of Sovietizing the region began
immediately. Policies that had been implemented over a
twenty year period in other Soviet Republics were applied
to Moldova in a matter of months. In June of 1940, the
first phase of nationalizing land and big enterprises was
initiated. The Communist party confiscated 259,000
hectares of land and temporarily distributed them to
landless peasants. As noble as this may sound, it
actually ended up depriving the peasants of their
livelihoods. Also in 1940, the nationalization of 487
industries began. It soon became evident that Stalin's
policies for Moldova would not differ from the other
republics. National culture and social organizations were
destroyed; furthermore, deportations, arrests,
executions, deliberately induced famines, and brutal acts
were carried out in Moldova. In addition, the number of
Moldovan schools was greatly reduced and there was an
increase in Russian schools. Romanian literature was
taken from the libraries and Romanian history was taken
from the curriculum. In 1940, 380 teachers from the
Ukraine and 500 teachers from Russia were brought to
Moldova to teach in the public schools.
In the beginning of 1941, hundreds of thousands of
Moldovan's were drafted into the Red Army. That spring
Moldovans were sent all over the USSR. Some younger
Moldovans were sent to a factory in the Urals to replace
those that had vacated their jobs because of the war.
Others went to work in the Kubaz mines, the Karaganda
coal mines, and in agriculture in Central Asia and
Kazakhstan. It was necessary for the Russian government
to move Romanians out of the Moldavian Republic so that
Russians could settle in their place. In order for the
Moldavian Republic to be a separate state, Russia wanted
all Moldova's ties with Romania to be severed.
Consequently, plans to obliterate the Romanian past were
immediately put into action. In Kishinev, the capital of
Moldova, the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral that had been
damaged in WWII was turned into the Central Exhibition
Hall for Moldova. Furthermore, a statue of Stephen the
Great that now sits in the middle of Kishinev was removed
from public eye. Another extremely significant event was
the collectivization of agriculture that began in 1950.
In 1928, there were around twenty million farms that were
privately owned primarily by peasants. Serfdom was
brought back by forcing these peasants to turn their
farms into collective or state farms. Stalin's primary
reason for collectivizing was political. He wanted to
promote divisions between the three sub-classes of
peasants that existed: poor, middle, and kulak. He tried
to turn the poor and middle classes against the kulaks
who were a little bit wealthier. Envy was the motivating
factor for throwing many kulaks off their farms and
assigning degrees of criminality to each kulak. Some were
killed, some were exiled, and some were sent to
concentration camps. At this time, Stalin also
implemented the First Five Year Plan, which projected
rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union. Furthermore,
the first significant human rights abuses in Soviet
Moldavia occurred when some 12,000 families or 40,000
people were forcibly moved to Kazakhstan for work in the
Virgin Lands Program. This type of forced migration was
typical of Stalin's dictates, and the legacy of his
programs still have an effect on these ethnic groups
today.
Additionally, the Romanian language that is spoken in
Moldova was also Russified by changing the Latin alphabet
to the Cyrillic alphabet. At this time, the language was
renamed Moldavian. The Romanian language was removed from
the schools and from the republican administration. Even
up until 1989, many people who supposedly spoke Moldavian
still had not mastered it. Nonetheless, the importance of
Russian culture was emphasized throughout Moldova and
Moldova's Romanian past was ignored. The complete
negation of Romanian culture shows the fear that the
Soviets had of not consolidating power in this republic
due to the strength of ethnic Romanian identity felt by
most of Moldova's inhabitants.
by senior
Elizabeth Blackwell James Madison University
College of Political Science
