The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Emergence of the “Molodovan” Nation: Reflections After 70 Years*
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ISSN 2029-0225 THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE “MOLODOVAN” NATION: REFLECTIONS AFTER 70 YEARS* OCTAVIAN D. TICU Doctor, director, Institute of History and political science. Free Moldova University [email protected] The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact led to the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia from Romania. Immediately after the Soviet occupation, Bessarabia was to be joined to the Moldovan ASSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow and the Soviet Union had created for the Romanians from Bessarabia (intentionally presented as Moldovans) a ter- ritorial nation The present paper aims explicitly to analyze the Moldovan nation building policies during the Soviet period and the complexity of consequences which derived from Soviet occupation for the sense of Romanian identity in Bessarabia. Key words: Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Soviet Union, Romania, “Moldovenism”, Nation-Building, Bessarabia. NTRODUCTION The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, signed in Moscow in the early hours of 24 August 1939 (but dated 23 August), included a secret protocol di- viding Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, anticipating potential “territorial and political rearrange- ments” of these countries. Thereafter, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded their respective sides of Poland, dividing the country between them. Part of eastern Finland was annexed by the Soviet Union after 7 Octavian D. TICU an attempted invasion. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Es- tonia, Latvia, Lithuania and eastern and northern Romania. On 26 June 1940, four days after France sued for an armistice with the Third Reich, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum demanding Bessarabia and, unexpectedly, Northern Bukovina from Romania. Two days later, the Romanians caved to the Soviet demands and the Soviets occu- pied the territory. The Hertza region was initially not requested by the USSR but was later occupied by force after the Romanians agreed to the initial Soviet demands. Immediately after the annexation, Bessarabia was to be joined to the Moldovan ASSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow and the Soviet Union had created for the Romanians from Bessarabia (intentionally presented as Moldovans), a territorial nation with is own state apparatus and ruling elite which had the symbols of any sovereign state, with a national flag and seal, but without real sovereignty or the right to full political expression1. In this sense, the “imagined community” of the Moldovans for the first time took the form of physical and political meaning after June 1940. According to the scholars on ethnicity and nationalism, a range of factors like nostalgia for past life-styles, imperial mytho-moteurs, and language fissures create shifting ethnic identities2. This seems to be the argument in the case of the Republic of Moldova, once a Ro- manian land, annexed by the Soviet Union after the concluding of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Despite the contentions of the Romanian government that the Moldovans are Romanians and their language a Romanian dialect, the Soviets forged a distinct national identity for the Moldovans3, declaring them a separate nation and granting them union republic status. Even if after the fall of the Soviet Union many people expected the (re)union of Romania with Moldova, following the German path of unification, the Republic of Moldova insisted in stressing its own identity. In this sense it was only the demise of the Soviet Union that allowed the Moldovans to enjoy this real sovereignty and the right to full political expression, and to proceed into the state/nation building. After achieving independence in 1991, national elites proceeded with 8 THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE “MOLODOVAN” NATION: REFLECTIONS AFTER 70 YEARS the consolidation of the Moldovan political and national identity imi- tating the old principle “we created Moldova now we need to create the Moldovans”. The present paper aims explicitly to analyze the Moldovan nation building policies during the Soviet period and the complexity of con- sequences which derived from Soviet occupation for the sense of Ro- manian identity in Bessarabia. WHAT WAS THE SOVIET MOLDOVENISM? Moldova was a part of the Soviet Union for almost 50 years, the first state in history to be formed of ethnic political units, which confront- ing the growing of nationalisms by systematically promoting the na- tional consciousness of its nationalities and by creating for many of them the institutional forms specific to the nation-states4. The logic and the content of the Soviet nation-building policy were pointed out elsewhere and as is widely accepted that it was mainly focused on four attributes of the national forms: creation of the national territories; linguistic indigenization; creation and promotion of the native elites; and the supporting of the national culture5. In spite of the similarities in the implementation of the nation- alities policy across the Soviet state, we should admit that there was a sensible difference between the policy of indigenization followed during the interwar period toward the non-Russian nationalities and that of the postwar in the new acquired territories of the Baltic States, Western Ukraine, Belorussia, and the new created Moldovan SSR. Since all these territories knew previously either independence or other forms of state/nation building which strengthened the sense of their identity, they confronted an opposing force in the Soviet policy of nationalities. In their case from the very beginning it was about de- stroying rather than constructing, as was largely the case in the Soviet republics during 1920s, after which the stages of their indigenization was focused on their “sovereignty” rather than on identity modeling. The case of the Moldovan SSR was exceptional from the western Soviet pattern in that Soviet Affirmative Action aimed to create a nation 9 Octavian D. TICU whose sense of nation-ness had barely existed before, except in the sense of regionalism within the Russia Empire or Greater Romania to which the territory belonged previously. At this point the case of Moldova was more similar to that of the republics of Central Asia at the beginning of the policy of indigenization in the 1920s6 and it was distinct from the other republics of the western part of the Soviet Union, which had a strong sense of identity. In other words, the ingredients of the policy of indigenization like the creation of the national territory, linguistic indi- genization, the forging of the elites and the national culture, invoked by the scholars in the Soviet nation–building policies, were promoted in the Soviet Moldova case in order to stress the “Moldovan” primordial- ism and its distinctiveness from the Romanian one. In this case, according to George Schopflin’s pattern,7 we deal with the Baltics for instance as with traditional societies, which despite the Soviet experiences, preserved what they could from the past, but changed in unperceived ways as well during the Soviet period, while Moldova was a society brought in being by the Soviet Union, which owe to the Soviet nation building policy its physical creation, political status and even ethnic identity. Here, Soviet social engineering had gone so far as to create by fiat a language and an ethic group to justify the eponymous polity and defend it against possible claims by Roma- nia, to which it belonged between the wars. Adapting Terry Martin’s assertion, the Soviet Union inherited a confused Moldovan ethnicity and tried to transform it into a nation-state8. Since Soviet era boundaries are the main foundation on which the newly independent Moldova has to build its new political and nation identity, an analysis of the effect of the Soviet policy of nationalities in the Moldovan SSR would be very helpful for understanding current realities in the Republic of Moldova. HISTORICAL BOUNDARIES – SOVIET BOUNDARIES The Soviet understanding of nationhood was firmly based on the Sta- linist linkage between nationality, its territory and its indigenous po- litical elite. It is a well known fact as well that following Stalin’s own 10 THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE “MOLODOVAN” NATION: REFLECTIONS AFTER 70 YEARS definition of nation, Soviet authorities promoted an idea of nation as being fixed to territory. The major ethnic groups were assigned their officially recognized territories and organized into an elaborate ad- ministrative hierarchy of ethnic stratification, in which the fifteen So- viet republics represented the highest rank of statehood accessible to a Soviet nationality9. Even though scholars of Soviet nationalities assert that the Pied- mont principle was not a major Soviet motivation in policies of na- tion-building, they admits that in a single exceptional case – of the Moldovan Autonomous SSR – this principle was the main reason for the creation of a Soviet republic10. Since the Soviet Union never admitted the annexation of Bessara- bia to Romania, the Soviets created great pressure on the Romanian authorities through the organization, training, and financing of sub- versive action in Bessarabia. This pressure implicated the creation of Moldovan ASSR inside Ukrainian SSR in 1924, in what V. Zatonsky was calling “our own Moldovan Piedmont”11. Despite the small size and the dubious Moldovan ethnic character12, the newly created re- public received the status of an autonomous republic because of the future political perspectives of Moldova, i.e. the eventual annexation of Bessarabia. For the same reason, despite the protest of the Roma- nian communists, in the Moldovan ASSR was initiated the forging of a distinct Moldovan literary language and the cultivation of separate Moldovan national identity.13 The Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was created by the Su- preme Soviet of the USSR on August 2, 1940, allegedly on the initia- tive of the majority working people of the region14. Roughly speak- ing the creation of the Moldovan SSR was the result of the joining together of historical Bessarabia and the Moldovan ASSR, but not in their integrity.