Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia A church fresco depicting Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia between 1457 and 1504, and the most prominent Moldavian historical personality

Antiquity and early middle ages

In Antiquity Moldova's territory was inhabited by Dacian tribes. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south was intermittently under the Roman, then Byzantine Empires. Due to its strategic location on a route between Asia and Europe, Moldova was repeatedly invaded, including by the Bastarns, Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Kievan Rus', Pechenegs, Cumans, and the Mongols.

Principality of Moldavia

The Principality of Moldavia in 1483 The Principality of Moldavia in 1483

Tatar invasions continued after the establishment of the Principality of Moldavia in 1359,[1] bounded by the Carpathian mountains in the west, Dniester river in the east, and Danube and Black Sea in the south. Its territory comprised the present-day territory of the Republic of Moldova, the eastern eight of the 41 counties of Romania. Like the present-day republic, it is known to the locals as Moldova), the Chernivtsi oblast and Budjak region of Ukraine. In 1538, the principality became a tributary to the Ottoman Empire, but retained internal and partially external autonomy.

19th century

In 1812, according to the Treaty of Bucharest between the Ottoman, whose vassal Moldavia was, and the Russian Empires, the former ceded the eastern half of the territory of the Principality of Moldavia, along Khotyn and old Bessarabia (modern Budjak), despite numerous protest by Moldavians.[2] At first, the Russians used the name "'Oblast' of Moldavia and Bessarabia", allowing a large degree of autonomy, but later (in 1828) suspended the self-administration and called it Guberniya of Bessarabia, or simply Bessarabia, starting a process of Russification. The western part of Moldavia (which is not a part of present-day Moldova) remained an autonomous principality, and in 1859, united with Wallachia to form the Kingdom of Romania. In 1856, the Treaty of Paris saw three counties of Bessarabia, Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail, returned to Moldavia, but in 1878, the Treaty of Berlin saw the Kingdom of Romania returning them to the Russian Empire.

Upon annexation, after the expulsion of the little Nogai Tatar population of Budjak (Little Tartary), the Moldovan/Romanian population of Bessarabia was predominant.[3] The colonization of the region in the 19th century, generated by the need to better exploit the resources of the land,[4], and by the absence of serfdom in Bessarabia,[5] lead to an increase in the Russian, Ukrainian, Lipovan, and Cossack populations in the region; this together with a large influx of Bulgarian immigrants, saw an increase of the Slavic population to more than a fifth of the total population by 1920.[6] With the settling of other nationals such as Gagauz, Jews (Bessarabian Jews), and Germans (Bessarabian Germans), the proportion of the Moldovan population decreased from around 86%[7] to 52% by some sources[8] or to 70% by others[9] during the course of the century. According to the census of 1897, the capital Kishinev had a Jewish population of 50,000, or 46%, out of a total of approximately 110,000.[10] The Tsarist policy in Bessarabia was in part aimed at denationalization of the Romanian element by forbidding after the 1860s education and religious mass in Romanian. However, the effect was an extremely low literacy rate (in 1897 approx. 18% for males, approx. 4% for females) rather than a denationalization.[11]

Notes

  1. ^ Soldier Khan, Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
  2. ^
    • Following the Peace concluded in Bucharest, in 1812, a part of this territory was assigned to Czarist Russia
    • Selection of encyclopedias in Russian language on the Treaty of Bucharest
    • again "transferred/passed over to the Russian Empire
    • History of the Republic of Moldova: from most ancient times till our days - Association of Moldavian scientists "Milescu-Spataru" - Second reviewed and added edition. Elan Poligraf. 2002. pp. 95–360. ISBN 9975-9719-5-4. 
    • Stati V.:History of Moldavia. Tipografia Centrală. 2002. pp. 218–220. ISBN 9975-9504-1-8.  both use the phrasing According to the Article 4, Porta ceded to Russia the eastern part of the Moldavian Principality - the territory between Prut and Danube
    • Article 4 of the Treaty
    • what Britannica Encyclopedia concessions of Mahmud II , History of Moldova, History of Ottoman Empire, History of Russo-Turkish wars
    • what Columbia Encyclopedia sixth edition 2008
    • Batiushkov, P. Bessarabiia: Istoricheskoe opisanie (Saint Petersburg 1892)
    • Berg, L. Bessarabiia (Petrograd 1918)
    • Dembo, V. Nikoly ne zabuty: Kryvavyi litopys Besarabiï. Z ofitsiinykh dokumentiv (Kharkiv 1923)
    • Berg, L. Naselenie Bessarabii, etnograficheskii sostav i chislennost' (Petrograd 1925)
    • Babel, A. La Bessarabie (Paris 1926)
    • Uhlig, C. Die bessarabische Frage: Eine geopolitische Betrachtung (Breslau 1926)
    • Iorga, N. La vérité sur le passé et le présent de la Bessarabie (Bucharest 1931)
    • Nistor, I. La Bessarabie et la Bucovine (Bucharest 1937)
    • Mokhov, N. Ocherki istorii moldavsko-russko-ukrainskikh sviazei (s drevneishikh vremen do nachala XIX veka) (Kishinev 1961)
    • Istoriia Moldavskoi SSR, 1–2 (Kishinev 1965–8)
    • Smishko, P. Borot'ba trudiashchykh ukraintsiv prydunais'kykh zemel' za vozz'iednannia z URSR (1917–1940) (Lviv 1969)
    • Zelenchuk, V. Nasalenie Moldavii (Demograficheskie protsesy i etnicheshii sostav) (Kishinev 1973)
    • Jewsbury, G.F. The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia 1774–1828: A Study of Imperial Expansion (Boulder, Col, 1976)
    • Khotinskoe vosstanie (Sbornik dokumentov i materialov) (Kishinev 1976)
    • Moldavskaia SSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza, 2 (Kishinev 1976)
    • Meurs, W. van. The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography: Nationalist and Communist Politics and History-Writing (New York 1994)
  3. ^ Bessarabia by Charles Upson Clark, 1927, chapter 8: "The first Russian census after the annexation (1816) revealed a province almost solidly Romanian-of a population of about half a million, 921/2% Moldavian and Ukrainian, 11/2% Lipovans (Russian heterodox), 41/2% Jews, 1.6% other races."
  4. ^ Marcel Mitrasca, Moldova: A Romanian Province Under Russian Rule, Algora, 2002, ISBN 1892941864, pg. 25
  5. ^ Ion Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei, Cernăuţi, 1921
  6. ^ Bessarabia by Charles Upson Clark, 1927, chapter 8: "Today, the Bulgarians form one of the most solid elements in Southern Bessarabia, numbering (with the Gagauzes, i.e. Turkish-speaking Christians also from the Dobrudja) nearly 150,000. Colonization brought in numerous Great Russian peasants, and the Russian bureaucracy imported Russian office-holders and professional men; according to the Romanian estimate of 1920, the Great Russians were about 75,000 in number (2.9%), and the Lipovans and Cossacks 59,000 (2.2%); the Little Russians (Ukrainians) came to 254,000 (9.6%). That, plus about 10,000 Poles, brings the total number of Slavs to 545,000 in a population of 2,631,000, or about one-fifth"
  7. ^ Ion Nistor, Istoria Bassarabiei, Cernăuţi, 1921
  8. ^ (German) Flavius Solomon, Die Republik Moldau und ihre Minderheiten (Länderlexikon), in: Ethnodoc-Datenbank für Minderheitenforschung in Südostosteuropa, p. 52
  9. ^ Bessarabia by Charles Upson Clark, 1927, chapter 7
  10. ^ Jewish Moldova
  11. ^ Bessarabia by Charles Upson Clark, 1927, chapter 10: "Naturally, this system resulted not in acquisition of Russian by the Moldavians, but in their almost complete illiteracy in any language."]

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Need an webmaster? Click HERE

Video: Protest in Chişinău, Moldova, for democracy, April 2009

Technorati Tags:Technorati Tags: