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1812 and the Emergence of the Bessarabian Region: Province-Building Under Russian Imperial Rule

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1812 and the Emergence of the Bessarabian Region: Province-Building Under Russian Imperial Rule 1812 and the Emergence of the Bessarabian Region: Province-Building under Russian Imperial Rule by Victor Taki, King’s University College, Edmonton Abstract This article addresses the policies of the Russian authorities in Bessarabia in the two decades that followed the annexation of this territory in 1812. It examines the process of discursive and adminis- trative construction of the Bessarabian province from the territories that existed for centuries under different political jurisdictions. The article argues that the early Russian accounts of Bessarabia re- described these territories into a single whole, a province, whose exotic nature and population dis- tinguished it from other parts of the Russian Empire. The article further claims that each of the three consecutive attempts to define the form of administration of Bessarabia undertaken by the Russian authorities in the years following 1812 reflected a different perception of the province’s place within the imperial space. Thus, the initial idea to use Bessarabia as a conduit of Russian influence in Eu- ropean Turkey gave place to the vision of this province as part of Russia’s self-governing Western borderlands and finally to the re-definition of Bessarabia as part of New Russia. Without fully negat- ing its predecessor, each new vision and the accompanying administrative changes consolidated the discursive and institutional identity of Bessarabia, which ultimately enabled this province to outlast the empire that created it. ccording to the Bucharest peace treaty existed as identifiable geographical units dur- Aconcluded between the Ottoman Empire ing the moment of conquest. However, the and Russia on May 16, 1812, the river Pruth early history of Bessarabia suggests that this “from the point of its entry into the Principal- is not always the case. This article uses the ity of Moldavia to it confluence with the Dan- Bessarabian example to demonstrate that the ube as well as the left bank of the latter become imperial conquest sometimes contributes to a new border between the two empires.”1 the symbolic and administrative construction Having traced the new boundary, the treaty of new regions out of territories that had only nevertheless failed to provide a name for the been weakly connected to one another. territory that was to be incorporated into the The lands annexed by Russia in 1812 con- Russian Empire and it took several years be- sisted of three different types of territories. fore the annexed region came to be systemati- On the one hand, there were the eastern dis- cally identified as Bessarabia.2 Historians who tricts of the Principality of Moldavia located describe territorial conquests or annexations in the central and northern parts of the Prut- often assume that the territories in question Dniester interfluve. Populated primarily by the ethnically Romanian peasants, they had 1 See the text of the treaty published in a somewhat deficient social structure in com- Polnoie Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, ser. 1, vol. parison with the territories to the West of the 32, 316-322. Hereafter cited as PSZ. 2 The majority of modern historians trace Prut River, which constituted the historical the origins of the term “Bessarabia” to the Bassarab nucleus of the Moldavian principality. Few if dynasty of Wallachia, who ruled over the territory any Moldavian boyars resided east of the Prut, located between the lower courses of the Dniester, the Prut and the Danube during the fourteenth even though many of them had their landed century, before it became part of the Principality of properties there. The eastern districts of pre- Moldavia. Euxeinos 15/16 (2014) 9 Victor Taki 1812 Moldavia were also the least urbanized tion of the districts was thereby placed under and all of their twelve small towns were in the the authority of the Ottoman fortress gover- private ownership of boyars or monasteries. nors and became reaya - direct tax-paying This applied to the future capital of the Rus- subjects of the sultan. With time, this category sian Bessarabia – Chișinău, which was in the of the Islamic law came to designate not only possession of the Galata monastery in Con- the non-military inhabitants, but also, and ap- stantinople before 1812. The Galata monastery parently uniquely in the Ottoman world, the in turn was dedicated to Jerusalem’s Church territories on which they lived. The early mod- of Resurrection and thus administered by the ern period witnessed the alienation of more representative of the Orthodox Patriarch of Je- Moldavian territories to the east of the Prut rusalem. Overall, the peculiar social character into the reaya districts. In 1538, following Su- of the eastern districts of pre-1812 Moldavia leyman II’s campaign into Moldavia, the Ot- became reflected in their special administra- tomans constructed the Bender fortress on the tive status. While the districts to the West of Dniester, followed by Ismail (1595) and Reni the Prut were subordinated to the early mod- (1622) on the Danube and Hotin (1713), again ern Moldavian “ministers of interior” (vor- on the Dniester. Since the level of taxation in nici), the lands to the East were placed under the reaya districts could in fact be quite spar- the jurisdiction of special governors – serdari ing, the peasants had the possibility to escape - who reported directly to the Moldavian ho- from the mounting tax burdens in the remain- spodar.3 ing territories of the Moldavian principality The social and administrative peculiarity of east of Prut, which explained relative under- pre-1812 eastern Moldavia was reflected in population of these territories by 1812. its proximity to two other types of territory Another reason for the general scarcity of that composed the Prut-Dniester interfluve, population in Eastern Moldavia was the per- namely the Ottoman fortress districts and the manent presence of the Nogai hordes in the Bugeac steppe. Although the Moldavian hosp- southern part of the Prut-Dniester interfluve. odar Petru Roman established his rule over the Shortly after the emergence of the Crimean entire territory from “the (Carpathian) moun- Khanate and its transformation into a vas- tains to the (Black) Sea” in the late fourteenth sal state of the Ottoman Empire in 1475, the century, his successors’ control over its south- khans positioned themselves as successors of ern part proved to be tenuous and short-lived. Genghis Khan. In this capacity, the Crimean Already in 1484, Stephan III (1456-1504) had Girays managed to win the allegiance of sev- to cede the fortresses of Akkerman and Kilia eral Nogai hordes. This offered the Nogais and their adjacent districts in the mouth of the the possibility to settle in the steppe lands Dniester and the Danubian delta respectively along the northern littoral of the Black Sea. to the Ottoman sultan Bajezid II. The popula- One of these hordes settled in what the Tatars called Bugeac, or the Westernmost corner of 3 Chosen among the first-rank Moldavian the East European steppe (also known as the boyars, who were often the hospodar’s relatives, serdari were in charge of the Orhei, Soroca and Kipchak steppe) constituted by the confluence Lapușna districts of the Moldavian Principality of the Prut and the Danube. Located under and commanded a considerable paramilitary force the double suzerainty of the Crimean khans of 3000 cavalrymen. See P. P. Svin’in, “Opisanie Bessarabii,” Stratum plus, no. 6 (2000-2001): 381. and the Ottoman sultans, the Bugeac horde Euxeinos 15/16 (2014) 10 Victor Taki at times defied both (for example in the 1620s The first post-1812 decades were character- and the 1630s as well as at the beginning of ized by the persistence of the traditional to- the eighteenth century).4 At other times, its ponymies, as well as the economic and even lands constituted the powerbase of particular political ties to the Moldavian Principality. Crimean khans (such as Kyrym Giray, who Thus, the new border cut the old Iași district led the last Crimean raid into Russian territo- in two, separating the bulk of its territory on ries in the winter of 1768-69). The proximity the left bank of the Prut from its center in the of the Nogais and Tatars who had not entirely city of Iași (which was also the capital of the abandoned nomadic practices subjected the Moldavian Principality). Nevertheless, one of Romanian populated territories in the cen- Bessarabia’s districts retained the name of Iași tral and northern parts of the Prut-Dniester for years after the annexation. The same ap- interfluve to periodic devastations, the last of plied to the estates of the Moldavian boyars, which resulted in the burning of Chișinău in many of whom possessed land on both sides 1766.5 At the time of the Russian-Ottoman war of the Prut. In 1812, they were granted a three- of 1768-1774, the desire of the Bugeac horde year term, in the course of which they had to to maximize their independence led them to decide on their permanent place of residence enter into negotiations with the Russian gov- and sell their properties across the border. ernment, which sought to resettle the Nogais However, many of the boyars preferred to sit to the right bank of the Kuban river in order on the fence and secured several postpone- to weaken the Crimean khanate. 6 However, ments of the deadline. Inasmuch as the export only part of the horde left Bugeac at that time. of sheep and cattle to Istanbul constituted one Others stayed until the Russian-Ottoman war of the major sources of revenue in the region, of 1806-1812, when the military governor of the creation of the new border caused discon- Odessa Armand Emmanuel Duplessis, Duke tent among the local population, as reflected of Richelieu, mindful of security of his city, in smuggling that persisted throughout the organized their resettlement first into Russian period of the Russian rule.
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