Conclusions The Slavic Dossier, Medieval Archaeology in the Soviet Republic of Moldova between State Propaganda and Scholarly Endeavor

The purpose of this book was to explain the circumstances that have led to the appearance in Moldovan Soviet archaeology of two different discourses on the place of the ancient Slavs in the history of the territory of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, and the role they played in the genesis of Moldovans and their culture. The first discourse reserves for the Slavs a leading role. According to such views, the Slavs were the main population that inhabited the territory of the MSSR, especially in the Middle Ages. Their cohabitation and fusion with the neo-Latin Vlachs, which entered the territory of the MSSR in the thirteenth or the fourteenth century, gave birth to the Moldovan ethnic group and its cul- ture. The protagonist of second discourse, the archaeologist Ion Hîncu, while accepting the idea that the Slavs had participated in the genesis of the Moldo- vans and of their culture, tride to accredit the idea according to which the Slavs were not the main ethnic group inhabiting the territory of the MSSR during the Middle Ages. According to Hîncu, since their establishment on that territory in the fifth or sixth century, the Slavs had coexisted with other ethnic groups, among which the Vlachs were the most important. According to Hîncu, those Vlachs did not come to that territory from anywhere else; they were natives to it. To achieve the goal set for this book, I have enquired about the socio-political and cultural contexts in which the two discourses appeared, the history of Moldovan archaeology, the personal profiles of the archaeologists involved, their formation, their theoretical and ideological attachment, and their rela- tionships and interactions between them inside and outside their field. For the reconstruction of the socio-political and cultural contexts, I have resorted to the analysis carried out by political scientists, historians, and sociologists. For the rest of our work, I have used publications, written sources, and oral testimonies pertaining to Moldovan archaeologists and historians, but also ar- chival documents. My analysis has been structured in three chapters. The first analyzed the process of institutionalization of Moldovan archaeology, its main features, as well as the theoretical directions that guided archaeologists who studied the Slavic problem. The birth of Moldovan archaeology dates back to the Second World War. It was in 1946 that the main archaeological institution of the MSSR

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004391437_006 The Slavic Dossier 243 was created—the archaeological section of the Moldovan Institute of History, Economy, Language and Literature. Subsequently, the Moldovan archaeol- ogy was subordinated to the Moscow Archaeological Institute. The Russian appearance of Moldovan archaeology was explained by the major role that archaeologists from Russian and Ukrainian research centers had in its insti- tutionalization. Russian was the main language in which local archaeologists studied, which also explains the phenomenon. The weak attachment of most local archaeologists to a pro-Moldovan national ideology was also invoked to explain that feature of the Moldovan Soviet archaeology. The “retrospective method,” with the so-called “ethnic indicators,” but also the use of analogies guided the study of the Slavic problem in the MSSR. Neither Moldovan ar- chaeologists nor other Soviet archaeologists conducting research in MSSR ever developed or used a Marxist or Marxist-inspired methodology. The search for Slavic remains in the MSSR began after the Second World War. The need to jus- tify the presence of that territory within Soviet borders inspired much of that research. But political utility was not the only reason. The existence of sources which suggested that that territory or some of its parts had been inhabited by the ancient Slavs also led to the development of such studies. However, until the early 1950s, Slavic archaeology in the MSSR remained under-developed, largely because of the economic difficulty that the Soviet state faced after the war, but also because of the absence of the Slavic archaeologists interested in working in the MSSR. Even Georgiĭ Smirnov, the first head of the archaeologi- cal section of the Moldovan Institute of History, Economics, Language and Lit- erature, paid attention to the Slavic problem as a strategy to privilege the study of the Scythians and Sarmatians, his own specialty. In the second chapter, I examined the activity and position of one of the main protagonists of the first discourse, the Moscow-based archaeologist Georgiĭ Fedorov. He trained the first generation of Moldovan medieval archae- ologists, those involved in the study of the Slavs. Fedorov first came to the MSSR in 1950 with the goal of locating the tribes of the Tivertsy and Uliches, and be- came, for the next 25 years, the leading Soviet archaeologist to study the Slavic problem in that republic. In the intimacy of his home, Fedorov was known for his anti-Stalinist position and for his sympathies for the dissident movement. Despite that, his scholarly output does not have any signs of non-conformism. Fedorov’s opinions on the main subjects of Slavic archaeology were in line with the pan-Slavic and Russian nationalist. His views on the location of Uliches and Tivertsy were an extension of the opinions of his former professor, Boris Ryba- kov, opinions regarded as the result of Rybakov’s close adoption of the Russian nationalist ideology. Until 1954, when the Russian nationalist discourse was at its peak, Fedorov strove with great zeal to find the earliest possible date at