History of Moldova - Part of The Russian Empire

Part of The Russian Empire

With the notable exception of Transnistria, the territory of today's Republic of Moldova covers most of the historical region of Bessarabia. Until 1812, the term "Bessarabia" referred to the region between the Danube, Dniester, the Black Sea shores, and the Upper Trajan Wall, slightly larger than what today is called Budjak. By the Treaty of Bucharest of May 28, 1812 between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire — concluding the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812 — the latter annexed the eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia. That region was then called Bessarabia.

Initially, after being annexed by the Russian Empire, Bessarabia enjoyed a period of local autonomy until 1828. Organized as an imperial district (oblast), it was governed by a "provisional government" with two departments: a civil administration and a religious administration, the former led by the aged Moldavian boyar Scarlat Sturdza, the latter – by the metropolitan archbishop Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni. On top of these was the Russian military administration of Governor General Harting. However, already in 1813, the civil administration was handed to the Governor General. In 1818, reform-minded Russian tsar Alexander I passed a Settlement of the establishment of the region of Bessarabia which divided the legal power between the tsar-appointed Governor General (Bakhmetiev) and a 10-member High Council of the Region with 4 members appointed by the tsar and 6 elected by the local nobility. In lieu of the older 12 lands, the region was divided into 6, later 9 counties. In 1828 however, the conservative tsar Nikolai I abrogated the Settlement and passed a new regulation which endowed the Governor General with supreme power, with the regional council having only advisory functions and meeting twice a year. Article 63 of the regulation stated that all administrative personnel must know and perform their duties in Russian. Nevertheless, Romanian language would occasionally appear in documents up to 1854.

At the end of the Crimean War, in 1856, by the Treaty of Paris, three districts of southern Bessarabia (including a part of Budjak) – Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail – were returned to Moldavia, and Russia lost access to the Danube river. In 1859, the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia united and formed the Romanian United Principalities, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1870, the institution of zemstva was instated in the Bessarabian oblast. Cities, communes, counties, and the entire region would elect each a local council representing noblemen, merchants and peasants. They had substantial authority in economic and sanitary areas, including roads, posts, food, public safety. On the other hand, political (including justice courts of all levels) and cultural matters remained an exclusive domain of the Governor General and were used as a vehicle of Russification. With the accomplishment of these introductions, in 1871, Bessarabia was transformed into a governorate.

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War 1877–1878 and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Berlin granted independence to Romania. Although the treaty of alliance between Romania and Russia specified that Russia would defend the territorial integrity of Romania and not claim any part of Romania at the end of the war, the southern part of Bessarabia was re-annexed to Russia. In exchange, Romania was given Dobruja, which was at the time part of the Ottoman Empire.

Public education was entrusted to the religious establishment of the region, which since 1821 had only Russian archbishops. Dimitrie Sulima (Archbishop in 1821–1855), and Antonie Shokotov (1855–1871) allowed the parallel usage of both Romanian and Russian in church, and did not take any measures to infringe upon the linguistic specifics of the region. With the appointment of Pavel Lebedev (1871–1882), the situation changed radically, and the language of the locals was soon purged from the church. To prevent the printing of religious literature in Romanian, Lebedev closed down the printing press in Chişinău, collected from the region and burned the already printed books in Romanian (in Slavonic Cyrillic alphabet). The following archbishops Sergey Lapidevsky, Isakyi Polozensky, Neofit Novodchikov eased some of Lebedev's measures to help quell the serious dissatisfaction of the population. The next Archbishop Iakov Pyatnitsky (1898–1904) discovered that his desire to popularize a Christian culture and a moral education faced a language barrier, and in 1900 convinced the Russian High Synod to allow the publication of religious pamphlets in Romanian, while his follower Archbishop Vladimir allowed the printing of books, and from 1908 even of a regular religious journal "Luminătorul" by Constantin Popovici and Gurie Grosu. The last Russian Archbishops, Serafim Chichyagov (1908–1914), Platon (1914–1915) and Atanasy (1915–1918) tried to preserve the privileged status of the Russian language in the church in Bessarabia, but did not introduce any new anti-Romanian measures. Left by the last Russian Archbishop on June 23, 1918, the archbishopric was entrusted to the Bishop Nicodem de Huşi from Romania, who appointed a local Archbishop Dionisie Erhan. Then the Clerical Congress on February 21, 1920 elected Gurie Botoşăneanu as the highest church official in Bessarabia, which afterwards was restored from Archbishop to Metropolitan.

Under the protection of Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni and Dimitrie Sulima a theological school and a seminary were opened in Chişinău, and public schools throughout the region: in the cities of Chişinău, Hotin, Cetatea Albă, Briceni, Bender, Bălţi, Cahul, Soroca, Orhei, at the monasteries of Dobruşa and Hârjauca, and even in several villages (Rezeni, Mereni, Volcineţ, Nisporeni, Hârtop). In 1835, the tsarist authorities declared a 7-year deadline to transfer the education from Romanian to Russian. Although the measure was implemented more gradually, since 1867, Romanian was purged entirely from the education. This had the effect of keeping the peasant population of Bessarabia backward, as witnessed by the fact that in 1912 Moldavians had a literacy rate of only 10.5%, lowest among all ethnic groups of the region (63% for Bessarabian Germans, 50% for Bessarabian Jews, 40% for Russians, 31% for Bessarabian Bulgarians), with a record low 1.7% literacy rate for Moldavian women. Of the 1709 primary schools in Bessarabia in 1912, none was in the language of the main ethnic group.

During 1812–1914, a series of colonizations were made in Bessarabia by the Russian authorities. German colonists from Switzerland (canton Lausanne), France, and Germany (Württemberg) settled in 27 localities (most newly settled) in Budjak, and by 1856 Bessarabian Germans were 42,216. Russian veterans of the 1828–1829 war with the Ottomans were settled in 10 localities in Budjak, and three other localities were settled by Cossacks from Dobrudja (which got there from the Dniepr region some 50 years earlier). Bessarabian Bulgarians and Gagauz arrived from modern eastern Bulgaria as early as the second half of the 18th century. In 1817, they numbered 482 families in 12 localities, in 1856 – 115,000 people in 43 localities. The above settlements were performed under the supervision of the Tsarist authorities. Ukrainians had arrived Bessarabia since before 1812, and already in 1820s they made up one third of the population of the most northern Hotin county. In the following decades more Ukrainians settled throughout the northern part of Bessarabia from Galicia and Podolia. Jews from Galicia, Podolia and Poland also settled in Bessarabia in the 19th century, but mostly in the cities and fairs; in some of these they eventually became a plurality. In 1856, there were 78,751 Bessarabian Jews. There was even an attempt by the Russian authorities to create 16 Jewish agricultural colonies, where 10,589 people would settle. However within less than 2 generations, most of them sold the land to the local Moldavians and moved to the cities and fairs.

Upon annexation, after the expulsion of the large Nogai Tatar population of Budjak (Little Tartary), the population of Bessarabia was predominantly Romanian. The colonization of the region in the 19th century, generated by the need to better exploit the resources of the land, and by the absence of serfdom in Bessarabia, 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. With the settling of other nationals such as Gagauz, Jews, and Germans, the proportion of the Moldovan population decreased from around 86% to 52% according to some sources, or to 70% by others during the course of the century. According to the Imperial Russian census of 1897, the capital Kishinev had a Jewish population of 50,000, or 46%, out of a total of approximately 110,000.