How was Moldavian statehood reborn
History The original Moldavian principality was cut short in 1861, with its entry into Romania. The Moldovan Democratic Republic, proclaimed in December 1917 in Bessarabia, was absorbed by the same Romania. The revival of the Moldovan statehood occurred only in the USSR thanks to the decision of the Allied Center, which overcame the stubborn resistance of Kiev.
The ideas of creating the Moldavian Republic as part of the Soviet state began to speak out in periodicals and scientific works from the beginning. 20-s of the twentieth century. They were popular among Moldavian and Romanian political émigrés in the USSR, supported by members of Soviet elites of Moldavian origin. According to the memoirs of Marshal Semyon Budyonny, Grigory Kotovsky, at one of the meetings held in 1923, in the presence of Mikhail Frunze (probably the most senior Moldavian in the USSR of those times), said: “Only the Moldavian Republic will enable our people to overcome the heavy need and with the help of Russian the proletariat to build a bright life! I want to write a letter to the Central Committee about this, I dream to talk personally with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I am deeply convinced that Lenin will understand the aspirations of the Moldovans and will support us. ”
February 5 The Central Committee of the RCP (B) received a memorandum on the need to create a Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. The document was developed by an initiative group of ten people, including Grigory Kotovsky. The creation of the Moldavian Republic on the Left Bank of the Dniester (which was then completely controlled by the Ukrainian SSR) was justified by the expediency of “attracting the attention and sympathies of the Bessarabian population”, as well as the spread of the Soviet national policy to the Moldovans of Transnistria.
March 7 of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U supported the idea of creating a Moldovan administrative-territorial entity in Transdniestria, but only as an autonomous region within the Ukrainian SSR. After the internal affairs bodies counted just 147,4 thousand people in Moldovan settlements on the left bank of the Dniester, Kharkiv (until 1934 of the year is the capital of Ukraine) expressed more evasive attitude towards Moldovan autonomy. The resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U of 18 of April said: “Consider the creation of the Moldavian SSR inappropriate. Offer the NKVD to continue the further development of the question of the possibility of creating an administrative unit with a predominance of the Moldovan population ... ”
By the summer of 1924, the consideration of the issue of Moldovan statehood had moved to Moscow. The General Secretary of the RCP (B.), Joseph Stalin, instructed the main lobbyist of the Moldavian Republic, Mikhail Frunze, to work this question out. At that time, his military and political career went sharply up the hill: in 1924, Frunze headed the headquarters of the Red Army, was elected a candidate member of the Politburo and the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (B).
The military leader criticized the position of the Communist Party of Ukraine. “In the region of Transdniestria, I had to repeatedly visit in person, and I state that there is a continuous strip to the north of Tiraspol with the prevailing Moldovan population. As an administrative center one could give the city of Tiraspol, ”he wrote in his note addressed to Stalin. In conclusion, it was reported that the Moldovan population of Transnistria was very interested in the creation of autonomy and is awaiting a positive decision.
29 July 1924, the political decision to establish the Moldavian Republic was made. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (B) decided: “a) Consider it necessary, primarily for political reasons, to single out the Moldovan population into a special autonomous republic within the Ukrainian SSR and to propose the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to give appropriate directives to the Ukrainian Soviet organs. b) To invite the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to make a message to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP in a month about the progress of work on the organization of the Moldavian Autonomous Republic. ”
All R. August in Odessa, the Organizational Commission for the creation of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic began its work. She defined the boundaries of autonomy, organized a campaign among the residents of the republic being created. The initiative to create the MASSR found support among the Moldovan population on the left bank of the Dniester, and received wide media coverage.
19 September 1924 was decided by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U to form the MASSR within Ukraine, and a few days later (25 of September) Moscow approved this decision. When discussing in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the decision to create the MASSR was supplemented with a clause that the western border of autonomy was not determined by the Dniester (the actual border of the USSR with Romania before 1940), but by the Prut and Danube rivers (since the USSR considered Bessarabia a Soviet territory forcibly rejected Romania in 1918 year).
The legal formalization of the creation of autonomy took place at the session of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee in Kharkiv on October 12 of 1924. The structure of the Moldavian Republic included 11 administrative districts of the Ukrainian SSR, on whose territory more than 570 thousand people lived. Moldovans made up about 30% of the population of the MASSR, and most of the inhabitants (almost 58%) were Ukrainians and Russians. The city of Balta became the first administrative center of the autonomy, then the capital of the MASSR was Birzul and Tiraspol. Autonomy had its own government bodies, budget, legislation. The party organization of the republic received the status of the Moldavian regional committee as part of the CP (b) U.
The next step in the revival of the Moldovan statehood was made in the summer of 1940, when Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR, on the basis of which the Moldavian Union Republic was founded. In Soviet historiography, the opinion was completely dominated that the creation of the MSSR was the only possible outcome of the settlement of the territorial dispute over the Dniester-Prut area.
Meanwhile, a Soviet note to the Romanian government on the eve of the Prut campaign of the Red Army in June 1940 of the year accused the kingdom of violating the unity of Bessarabia, "inhabited mainly by Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian Soviet Republic." 29 June 1940, the day after Bessarabia came under the control of the USSR, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U Nikita Khrushchev arrived in Chisinau. He was the highest-ranking representative of the civilian authorities of the Soviet Union, speaking at the one hundred thousandth rally in the capital of Bessarabia.
With the consent of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), the Ukrainian party-state bodies quickly established control over the newly annexed region. On July 3, county committees of the Communist Party of Ukraine were established in Bessarabia, as well as executive committees of county workers' councils. The personal composition of the heads of these bodies was determined in Kiev, mainly from among the party and Soviet workers in the eastern and central regions of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as the Jewish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Of the 52 members of the county party committees, only seven were Moldovans. Only four Moldovans were included in the county executive committees (with their total number of 75 people). The Presidium of the Supreme Council of the MASSR was entrusted to approve the composition of only the volost and city executive committees.
The fact that the formation of the MSSR was not obvious at the end of June - the beginning of July 1940 was evident in the materials of the Soviet press. Here are excerpts from the article “Meeting of the Liberators” on the front page of Pravda in July 1 1940: “On June 29, Chisinau woke up earlier than usual. In the houses where the urban poor and the working people live, since the dawn no one has left. All took to the streets and squares. People stopped talking in a low voice, the sadness disappeared, covering for years the faces of hundreds and thousands of oppressed Ukrainians. Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish languages are loud. In many places, sings of Soviet songs, the Internationale.
On the second page of the same newspaper it was reported about the celebratory rally of Soviet writers in Kiev: “The first person to receive the floor was the poet-order-bearer Academician Pavlo Tychina.
“The historical task has been solved - Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina are attached to the Soviet land,” he said, and then spoke about the history of Bessarabia and Bukovina, all threads connected with the Ukrainian people, with its culture. ”
The ideologies of these publications echoed official statistics. The Soviet authorities could not accept the data of the Romanian population censuses, and according to the latest statistics of the Russian Empire, by the beginning of the revolutionary events of 1917, Moldovans did not have an absolute majority among the inhabitants of Bessarabia (their share was 47,6%). The Moldovan population dominated only three of the seven pre-revolutionary counties of the Bessarabian province. For objective reasons, this census did not take into account the demographic indicators of Northern Bukovina, which in 1940 entered the USSR together with Bessarabia, but until 1918, was part of Austria-Hungary. In this region, the Ruthenians and Ukrainians constituted an absolute majority.
Thus, of the three criteria for the formation of a union republic formulated by Stalin (the marginal position of the republic, the compact majority of the nationality giving the name of the republic, and the number of population exceeding 1 million people), Bessarabia corresponded to only two. In the case of the unification of Bessarabia and Transnistria (MASSR) in the united republic, the share of the Moldovan population became even smaller. Meanwhile, this union began immediately after the Red Army occupied the right bank of the Dniester. Soon after 28 June 1940, the powers of the Moldovan regional party committee, the government bodies of the MASSR were extended to Bessarabia. These party and state structures became the highest decision-making bodies for the liberated region for the transitional period. Everything went to the fact that Bessarabia will become part of the Moldavian Autonomous Republic, which, in turn, will remain part of Ukraine.
Ukrainian researchers studying the issue of joining Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in the 1940 year note that at least until July 6 in the Soviet press there was no material about workers' initiatives to declare Allied Moldova [v]. Joint appeals of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bols U) and the CPC of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as the Moldavian Regional Committee of the CP (B) U and the CPC MASSR, on the creation of the Moldavian SSR were made simultaneously (July 10). These appeals were addressed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and gave a start to mass demonstrations of workers in support of the creation of the Union Moldavian Republic.
Only the decision taken at the level of the Allied Center could change the initial plan for the integration of Bessarabia with Ukraine. Obviously, it was not taken at the initiative of the Ukrainian leadership. Indeed, during this period, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U professed offensive tactics in territorial disputes with neighbors. According to the memories of the head of the Communist Party of Belarus Panteleimon Ponomarenko, at the end of 1939, Nikita Khrushchev even tried to attach to Ukraine most of Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the western Belarusian cities of Brest, Pinsk, Kobrin.
2 August 1940, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved the law on the formation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and its admission to the USSR. On August 14, the Central Committee of the RCP (B.), On the basis of the Moldavian Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, established the CP (B) of Moldova. Work began on the creation of government bodies of the new union republic.
In July, 1940, the struggle for the territorial demarcation of Ukraine and Moldova. The Moldovan authorities offered the option of uniting the MASSR with all Bessarabia. In this case, Moldova would become the sixth largest republic of the Soviet Union with a population of 3,5 million people, second only to the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in terms of demographics. Initially, this project was supported in Moscow, but caused objections from the Ukrainian authorities. In addition, within the framework of this territory, the titular people of the republic would not constitute a compact majority.
As a compromise, Moldavia proposed to transfer to Ukraine three districts of the former MASSR, a number of territories in the north and south of Bessarabia with the predominant Slavic population, however, Izmail wanted to retain. The Ukrainian authorities insisted on the transfer of eight of the eleven districts of the USSR and Izmail to the Ukrainian SSR and access to the Danube.
As a result, the Ukrainian version of the distinction prevailed. The Ukrainian SSR acquired a large part of Transnistria (with the towns of Kotovsk and Balta), the northern and southern parts of Bessarabia with the cities of Khotyn, Izmail, Akkerman (in the future - Belgorod-Dniester), almost 190 km of sea coast and all the Danube during the Soviet territory (170 km) . The Ukrainian authorities were in such a hurry to consolidate the territorial acquisitions that they issued maps of the new borders of their republic even before the adoption of the relevant law by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in November 1940 of the year.
For obtaining the status of a union republic, Moldova paid a high price, while Ukraine became the main beneficiary of this transaction. The RSFSR, by the way, had no less rights to the South Obessarabian lands than the Ukrainian SSR. Even according to Romanian statistics beg. The 1930s of the Russians (including the Old Believers - Lipovans) were the most numerous ethnic group of Izmail district (about 29% of the population). In Izmail itself, the proportion of Russians reached almost 60%. In the neighboring Akkerman district about a quarter of the inhabitants were Russians (this is also the highest figure among ethnic groups). Nevertheless, the RSFSR claims to Southern Bessarabia did not present.
From the point of view of the Russian-Ukrainian relations, it looks curious how the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR argued its claims to the South Obessarabsky counties. The certificate of Mikhail Grechukha, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, for example, noted: “There are 368.252 people in Akkerman district, of which: 39,1% are from Ukrainians and Russians, 41,3% are from Bulgarians, Germans, Gagauz and Jews, and only 19,6% are Moldovans. Based on this, I believe that the Akkerman district should also be fully connected to the Ukrainian SSR. ” The number of a single Ukrainian population in this Black Sea county was only 14%.
The leaders of the Moldavian SSR 1940 – 1950-ies realized that the new borders within Bessarabia restrain the social and economic development of the republic. In 1946, a memorandum was sent to Joseph Stalin, the head of the Communist Party and the chairman of the Moldovan government, asking for the return of the southern and northern parts of Bessarabia to the republic. The appeal was argued by the absence of the Black Sea and Danube ports in Moldova, the lack of acreage, rich fish reservoirs, deposits of building materials, and brown coal. All this was abundant in the Bessarabian lands, which ceded to Ukraine. However, then, to revise the territorial delineation of Chisinau politicians did not have enough influence and perseverance.
Gerasim Rud, who headed the Council of Ministers of the MSSR in the post-war period, spoke about the circumstances of the participation of the Moldovan leadership in the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1946 in the year on the issue of republican borders. “The report at the Plenum was made by N.S. Khrushchev. The report proposed to approve the boundaries such as they now exist. Stalin leads the meeting. He asks: “Everybody agrees with such a holding of borders?” In response, one can hear: “What difference does it make, Joseph Vissarionovich? After all, these are administrative boundaries. We are one state. ” Closing the meeting, Stalin said: "Everyone is free, the Moldovan delegation, please stay." He approached each of us, asked how much and how we work, and then said: “And you agree with such a border? I give you one day. You can make your suggestions. The Central Committee will consider them. ” He further described cases when such proposals were and how the Central Committee reacted to them. And now none of us decided, - said G.Ya. Rud.
The ideas of creating the Moldavian Republic as part of the Soviet state began to speak out in periodicals and scientific works from the beginning. 20-s of the twentieth century. They were popular among Moldavian and Romanian political émigrés in the USSR, supported by members of Soviet elites of Moldavian origin. According to the memoirs of Marshal Semyon Budyonny, Grigory Kotovsky, at one of the meetings held in 1923, in the presence of Mikhail Frunze (probably the most senior Moldavian in the USSR of those times), said: “Only the Moldavian Republic will enable our people to overcome the heavy need and with the help of Russian the proletariat to build a bright life! I want to write a letter to the Central Committee about this, I dream to talk personally with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I am deeply convinced that Lenin will understand the aspirations of the Moldovans and will support us. ”
February 5 The Central Committee of the RCP (B) received a memorandum on the need to create a Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. The document was developed by an initiative group of ten people, including Grigory Kotovsky. The creation of the Moldavian Republic on the Left Bank of the Dniester (which was then completely controlled by the Ukrainian SSR) was justified by the expediency of “attracting the attention and sympathies of the Bessarabian population”, as well as the spread of the Soviet national policy to the Moldovans of Transnistria.
March 7 of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U supported the idea of creating a Moldovan administrative-territorial entity in Transdniestria, but only as an autonomous region within the Ukrainian SSR. After the internal affairs bodies counted just 147,4 thousand people in Moldovan settlements on the left bank of the Dniester, Kharkiv (until 1934 of the year is the capital of Ukraine) expressed more evasive attitude towards Moldovan autonomy. The resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U of 18 of April said: “Consider the creation of the Moldavian SSR inappropriate. Offer the NKVD to continue the further development of the question of the possibility of creating an administrative unit with a predominance of the Moldovan population ... ”
By the summer of 1924, the consideration of the issue of Moldovan statehood had moved to Moscow. The General Secretary of the RCP (B.), Joseph Stalin, instructed the main lobbyist of the Moldavian Republic, Mikhail Frunze, to work this question out. At that time, his military and political career went sharply up the hill: in 1924, Frunze headed the headquarters of the Red Army, was elected a candidate member of the Politburo and the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (B).
The military leader criticized the position of the Communist Party of Ukraine. “In the region of Transdniestria, I had to repeatedly visit in person, and I state that there is a continuous strip to the north of Tiraspol with the prevailing Moldovan population. As an administrative center one could give the city of Tiraspol, ”he wrote in his note addressed to Stalin. In conclusion, it was reported that the Moldovan population of Transnistria was very interested in the creation of autonomy and is awaiting a positive decision.
29 July 1924, the political decision to establish the Moldavian Republic was made. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (B) decided: “a) Consider it necessary, primarily for political reasons, to single out the Moldovan population into a special autonomous republic within the Ukrainian SSR and to propose the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to give appropriate directives to the Ukrainian Soviet organs. b) To invite the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to make a message to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP in a month about the progress of work on the organization of the Moldavian Autonomous Republic. ”
All R. August in Odessa, the Organizational Commission for the creation of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic began its work. She defined the boundaries of autonomy, organized a campaign among the residents of the republic being created. The initiative to create the MASSR found support among the Moldovan population on the left bank of the Dniester, and received wide media coverage.
19 September 1924 was decided by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U to form the MASSR within Ukraine, and a few days later (25 of September) Moscow approved this decision. When discussing in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the decision to create the MASSR was supplemented with a clause that the western border of autonomy was not determined by the Dniester (the actual border of the USSR with Romania before 1940), but by the Prut and Danube rivers (since the USSR considered Bessarabia a Soviet territory forcibly rejected Romania in 1918 year).
The legal formalization of the creation of autonomy took place at the session of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee in Kharkiv on October 12 of 1924. The structure of the Moldavian Republic included 11 administrative districts of the Ukrainian SSR, on whose territory more than 570 thousand people lived. Moldovans made up about 30% of the population of the MASSR, and most of the inhabitants (almost 58%) were Ukrainians and Russians. The city of Balta became the first administrative center of the autonomy, then the capital of the MASSR was Birzul and Tiraspol. Autonomy had its own government bodies, budget, legislation. The party organization of the republic received the status of the Moldavian regional committee as part of the CP (b) U.
The next step in the revival of the Moldovan statehood was made in the summer of 1940, when Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR, on the basis of which the Moldavian Union Republic was founded. In Soviet historiography, the opinion was completely dominated that the creation of the MSSR was the only possible outcome of the settlement of the territorial dispute over the Dniester-Prut area.
Meanwhile, a Soviet note to the Romanian government on the eve of the Prut campaign of the Red Army in June 1940 of the year accused the kingdom of violating the unity of Bessarabia, "inhabited mainly by Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian Soviet Republic." 29 June 1940, the day after Bessarabia came under the control of the USSR, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (B) U Nikita Khrushchev arrived in Chisinau. He was the highest-ranking representative of the civilian authorities of the Soviet Union, speaking at the one hundred thousandth rally in the capital of Bessarabia.
With the consent of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), the Ukrainian party-state bodies quickly established control over the newly annexed region. On July 3, county committees of the Communist Party of Ukraine were established in Bessarabia, as well as executive committees of county workers' councils. The personal composition of the heads of these bodies was determined in Kiev, mainly from among the party and Soviet workers in the eastern and central regions of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as the Jewish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Of the 52 members of the county party committees, only seven were Moldovans. Only four Moldovans were included in the county executive committees (with their total number of 75 people). The Presidium of the Supreme Council of the MASSR was entrusted to approve the composition of only the volost and city executive committees.
The fact that the formation of the MSSR was not obvious at the end of June - the beginning of July 1940 was evident in the materials of the Soviet press. Here are excerpts from the article “Meeting of the Liberators” on the front page of Pravda in July 1 1940: “On June 29, Chisinau woke up earlier than usual. In the houses where the urban poor and the working people live, since the dawn no one has left. All took to the streets and squares. People stopped talking in a low voice, the sadness disappeared, covering for years the faces of hundreds and thousands of oppressed Ukrainians. Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish languages are loud. In many places, sings of Soviet songs, the Internationale.
On the second page of the same newspaper it was reported about the celebratory rally of Soviet writers in Kiev: “The first person to receive the floor was the poet-order-bearer Academician Pavlo Tychina.
“The historical task has been solved - Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina are attached to the Soviet land,” he said, and then spoke about the history of Bessarabia and Bukovina, all threads connected with the Ukrainian people, with its culture. ”
The ideologies of these publications echoed official statistics. The Soviet authorities could not accept the data of the Romanian population censuses, and according to the latest statistics of the Russian Empire, by the beginning of the revolutionary events of 1917, Moldovans did not have an absolute majority among the inhabitants of Bessarabia (their share was 47,6%). The Moldovan population dominated only three of the seven pre-revolutionary counties of the Bessarabian province. For objective reasons, this census did not take into account the demographic indicators of Northern Bukovina, which in 1940 entered the USSR together with Bessarabia, but until 1918, was part of Austria-Hungary. In this region, the Ruthenians and Ukrainians constituted an absolute majority.
Thus, of the three criteria for the formation of a union republic formulated by Stalin (the marginal position of the republic, the compact majority of the nationality giving the name of the republic, and the number of population exceeding 1 million people), Bessarabia corresponded to only two. In the case of the unification of Bessarabia and Transnistria (MASSR) in the united republic, the share of the Moldovan population became even smaller. Meanwhile, this union began immediately after the Red Army occupied the right bank of the Dniester. Soon after 28 June 1940, the powers of the Moldovan regional party committee, the government bodies of the MASSR were extended to Bessarabia. These party and state structures became the highest decision-making bodies for the liberated region for the transitional period. Everything went to the fact that Bessarabia will become part of the Moldavian Autonomous Republic, which, in turn, will remain part of Ukraine.
Ukrainian researchers studying the issue of joining Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in the 1940 year note that at least until July 6 in the Soviet press there was no material about workers' initiatives to declare Allied Moldova [v]. Joint appeals of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bols U) and the CPC of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as the Moldavian Regional Committee of the CP (B) U and the CPC MASSR, on the creation of the Moldavian SSR were made simultaneously (July 10). These appeals were addressed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and gave a start to mass demonstrations of workers in support of the creation of the Union Moldavian Republic.
Only the decision taken at the level of the Allied Center could change the initial plan for the integration of Bessarabia with Ukraine. Obviously, it was not taken at the initiative of the Ukrainian leadership. Indeed, during this period, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U professed offensive tactics in territorial disputes with neighbors. According to the memories of the head of the Communist Party of Belarus Panteleimon Ponomarenko, at the end of 1939, Nikita Khrushchev even tried to attach to Ukraine most of Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the western Belarusian cities of Brest, Pinsk, Kobrin.
2 August 1940, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved the law on the formation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and its admission to the USSR. On August 14, the Central Committee of the RCP (B.), On the basis of the Moldavian Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, established the CP (B) of Moldova. Work began on the creation of government bodies of the new union republic.
In July, 1940, the struggle for the territorial demarcation of Ukraine and Moldova. The Moldovan authorities offered the option of uniting the MASSR with all Bessarabia. In this case, Moldova would become the sixth largest republic of the Soviet Union with a population of 3,5 million people, second only to the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in terms of demographics. Initially, this project was supported in Moscow, but caused objections from the Ukrainian authorities. In addition, within the framework of this territory, the titular people of the republic would not constitute a compact majority.
As a compromise, Moldavia proposed to transfer to Ukraine three districts of the former MASSR, a number of territories in the north and south of Bessarabia with the predominant Slavic population, however, Izmail wanted to retain. The Ukrainian authorities insisted on the transfer of eight of the eleven districts of the USSR and Izmail to the Ukrainian SSR and access to the Danube.
As a result, the Ukrainian version of the distinction prevailed. The Ukrainian SSR acquired a large part of Transnistria (with the towns of Kotovsk and Balta), the northern and southern parts of Bessarabia with the cities of Khotyn, Izmail, Akkerman (in the future - Belgorod-Dniester), almost 190 km of sea coast and all the Danube during the Soviet territory (170 km) . The Ukrainian authorities were in such a hurry to consolidate the territorial acquisitions that they issued maps of the new borders of their republic even before the adoption of the relevant law by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in November 1940 of the year.
For obtaining the status of a union republic, Moldova paid a high price, while Ukraine became the main beneficiary of this transaction. The RSFSR, by the way, had no less rights to the South Obessarabian lands than the Ukrainian SSR. Even according to Romanian statistics beg. The 1930s of the Russians (including the Old Believers - Lipovans) were the most numerous ethnic group of Izmail district (about 29% of the population). In Izmail itself, the proportion of Russians reached almost 60%. In the neighboring Akkerman district about a quarter of the inhabitants were Russians (this is also the highest figure among ethnic groups). Nevertheless, the RSFSR claims to Southern Bessarabia did not present.
From the point of view of the Russian-Ukrainian relations, it looks curious how the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR argued its claims to the South Obessarabsky counties. The certificate of Mikhail Grechukha, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, for example, noted: “There are 368.252 people in Akkerman district, of which: 39,1% are from Ukrainians and Russians, 41,3% are from Bulgarians, Germans, Gagauz and Jews, and only 19,6% are Moldovans. Based on this, I believe that the Akkerman district should also be fully connected to the Ukrainian SSR. ” The number of a single Ukrainian population in this Black Sea county was only 14%.
The leaders of the Moldavian SSR 1940 – 1950-ies realized that the new borders within Bessarabia restrain the social and economic development of the republic. In 1946, a memorandum was sent to Joseph Stalin, the head of the Communist Party and the chairman of the Moldovan government, asking for the return of the southern and northern parts of Bessarabia to the republic. The appeal was argued by the absence of the Black Sea and Danube ports in Moldova, the lack of acreage, rich fish reservoirs, deposits of building materials, and brown coal. All this was abundant in the Bessarabian lands, which ceded to Ukraine. However, then, to revise the territorial delineation of Chisinau politicians did not have enough influence and perseverance.
Gerasim Rud, who headed the Council of Ministers of the MSSR in the post-war period, spoke about the circumstances of the participation of the Moldovan leadership in the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1946 in the year on the issue of republican borders. “The report at the Plenum was made by N.S. Khrushchev. The report proposed to approve the boundaries such as they now exist. Stalin leads the meeting. He asks: “Everybody agrees with such a holding of borders?” In response, one can hear: “What difference does it make, Joseph Vissarionovich? After all, these are administrative boundaries. We are one state. ” Closing the meeting, Stalin said: "Everyone is free, the Moldovan delegation, please stay." He approached each of us, asked how much and how we work, and then said: “And you agree with such a border? I give you one day. You can make your suggestions. The Central Committee will consider them. ” He further described cases when such proposals were and how the Central Committee reacted to them. And now none of us decided, - said G.Ya. Rud.
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