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Persuasion and Paranoia—Romania's Rule in Bessarabia

Persuasion and Paranoia—Romania's Rule in Bessarabia

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Persuasion & Paranoia—Romania’s Rule in Bessarabia 71

Chapter 3 Persuasion and Paranoia—Romania’s Rule in Bessarabia 1918–44

On February 20, 1939 culture houses in and all over “Great­ er Romania” received a letter from the based Society for the Dis­ semination of Culture with instructions, how to celebrate the Day of the Constitution, following a week later. February 27 1939 marked the first anni­ versary of a new constitution. This new constitution was intended to free Ro­ mania from the political skirmish that had allegedly slowed the country’s development since the introduction of multiparty in 1918. It abol­ ished the separation of powers and gave the eccentric King Carol II dictatorial powers. Therefore, it is likely that most inhabitants of southern Bessarabia— now a of ethnic minorities in a fiercely nationalistic state—saw little reason to celebrate that day. But the letter, circulated to culture houses, men­ tioned article 4 of the constitution and advised culture house staff to specially highlight it during celebrations.1 Article 4 of the Romanian constitution of 1938 was not concerned with citizen’s rights; it was concerned with their obli­ gations. Among them, the article listed the obligation to be familiar with the constitution and to sacrifice oneself for the integrity, independence, and dig­ nity of the . The addressees of this appeal in the constitution were “all , without regard to their ethnicity and religious beliefs.”2 Since obligations were the same for all these groups, rights ought to be equal too, or at least this was claimed in the subsequent article 5.3 In fact, the constitution of 1938 opened the harshest years for ethnic minorities in southern Bessarabia and all of . Political instability created mistrust that could be used as a pretext to systematic ethnic discrimination and eventually to depor­ tations and genocide. This chapter looks at how the years of Romanian rule in Bessarabia from 1918–40 and again from 1941–44 further sharpened boundaries between ethnic groups and how these boundaries came to be used in order to determine whom to trust and who to oppress. During both World Wars, Bessarabia was fiercely contested between Bucha­ rest and Moscow. The region twice came under the rule of Romania, once after

1 F1023 D4 Direktivnye ukazaniya Bukharestkogo obshchestva po rasprostraneniyu kul’tury o rabote ochaga kul’tury v sele Nerushay, p. 5. 2 Toți Românii, fără deosebire de origine etnică și credință religioasă. 3 Constituția României din 1938, published in Monitorul Oficial, Nr. 48/27, February 1938.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004408029_004 72 Chapter 3 the First World War in 1918–40, and once during the Second World War 1941– 44. Bessarabia was also twice taken by the Union, once without blood­ shed following an ultimatum on , 1940, based on the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty between Nazi and Stalin, and once during the ’s campaign to push Hitler’s armies out of Eastern in summer 1944. The incorporation of multi-ethnic Bessarabia into Romania in 1918 meant that the Region for the first time became part of a . Under Romania’s rule, Bessarabians experienced a ferocious political competition between demo­ cratic forces and authoritarianism. The latter eventually prevailed when King Carol II proclaimed martial law to install himself as autocratic ruler in Febru­ ary 1938 and in 1940 was replaced by a far-right under , an ally of Hitler.4 Bessarabians also experienced a heated political debate over what status ethnic minorities—roughly a third of the popula­ tion—should have in the Romanian nation state. As we will see in this chapter, policies swung between attempts of integration of minorities and their exclu­ sion. By the time World War II reached Romania, those forces who champi­ oned exclusion and even ethnic cleansing, had taken the upper hand. Romania emerged as a victor from . Tsarist , which had held Bessarabia for most of the preceding century, imploded amidst revolu­ tionary upheaval. A bourgeois revolution succeeded in ousting the Tsar in Feb­ ruary 1917, but was followed by the Bolshevik in the same year. The country descended into a state of chaos and lost its grip over its west­ ern periphery. Bessarabia declared its independence from Russia in January 1918. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished and defeated soldiers roamed the country. Many of them had been stranded in Bessarabia marauding and causing havoc. Bessarabian authorities asked the Romanian army to restore order (Livezeanu 1995: 97). Russian troops, exhausted, divided, and engaged in a devastating civil war, were unable to secure the province. In March 1918 the parliament in Chișinău (Sfatul Țării), under a de-facto Romanian occupation, voted for union with the neighboring (Hausleitner 2004: 363). This union was ratified in a number of Paris peace treaties in 1919–20. The victorious European powers who gave their blessings to Romanian expansion, insisted Romania would have to give equal civil rights to all her ethnic minori­ ties, including the . The Romanian government only very grudgingly accepted this condition. The country’s first Prime Minister, Ion I. C. Brătianu,

4 The question whether to classify the Antonescu regime as fascist is debated, because Romania’s main fascist movement, the (Garda de Fier), had been eliminated by King Carol II and Antonescu in two waves of reprisals in 1938 and 1941. I follow the description of Radu Ioanid of the regime as “totalitarian, right-wing with unmistakable fascist features” (2010: 399). Another, more concise formulation would be “fascist-type dictatorship” (Calinescu 1993: 135).

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