Digital Archive digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org International History Declassified July 03, 1972 Moldavian Communist Party Central Committee, no. 210 s, to CPSU Central Committee, 'Proposal Regarding the Organization of KGB Organs in the Frontier Counties of the Republic' Citation: “Moldavian Communist Party Central Committee, no. 210 s, to CPSU Central Committee, 'Proposal Regarding the Organization of KGB Organs in the Frontier Counties of the Republic',” July 03, 1972, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AOSPRM, fond. 51, inv. 33, dosar 82, filele 1-4; Document No. 8 in Elena Negru and Gheorghe Negru, “PCM şi Naţionalism (1965-1989): Documente adunate în cadrul programului de cercetări effectuate de câtre Comisia pentru studierea şi aprecierea regimului tolitar communist din Republica Moldova,” special edition, Destin românesc, vol. 16, no. 5-6 (2010), pp. 51-53. Translated for CWIHP by Larry L. Watts. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116349 Summary: Request from the Moldavian Communist Party to send KGB officers to Moldavia in light of the “intensification of subversive activities directed against the republic by the special services and ideological centers of the Western countries,” of Israel, and of Romania. Travelers coming from Romania were deemed particularly dangerous because of their efforts “to inculcate our citizens with a nationalist spirit.” A “considerable part of them” smuggled in “materials and literature that are dangerous from the political perspective” while others “propagated the separate course of the Romanian leadership, the idea of breaking off the former Bessarabia from the USSR and uniting it with Romania.” Credits: This document was made possible with support from the Leon Levy Foundation. Original Language: Russian Contents: English Translation Scan of Original Document The Moldavian Communist Party CC requests that the CPSU Central Committee examine our proposal regarding the organization of KGB organs in the frontier counties of the republic. The necessity of creating such organs is determined by the intensification of subversive activities directed against the republic by the special services and ideological centers of the Western countries and Israel, which actively use Jewish Bessarabian émigré groups abroad and nationalist centers situated and acting in the capitalist countries. In addition, the anti-Soviet activity of Zionist organizations on Romanian territory has intensified, [as has that] of the traitors of the Moldavian people who had established themselves there in the post-war years. Many inhabitants of the republic have numerous kinship ties in Romania, their reciprocal migrations annually constitute 20-25 thousand persons. Numerous cases of the hostile preparation of Moldavian inhabitants during their stay in the SRR have been recorded, as well as attempts of the Romanian nationalists to transfer their anti-Soviet activity onto our territory. Many citizens of the SRR, finding themselves in Moldavia as tourists or with individual visas, propagate the separate course of the Romanian leadership, the idea of breaking off the former Bessarabia from the USSR and uniting it with Romania, seeking to inculcate our citizens with a nationalist spirit. Romanian television exercises a negative influence over the population from the frontier counties. The republic is actively visited by foreigners. Among those who arrive approximately 30 percent are persons of Jewish origin, having vast ties in Moldavia. In recent years, a great number of foreigners were identified who develop subversive activity on the territory of the republic, activity for which 19 foreigners, among them 10 Jewish emissaries, were expelled from the country. Annually, the state frontier of Romania is crossed by 170-180 thousand travelers from different countries. A considerable part of them are implicated in hostile activity and contraband, in the attempt to bring materials and literature that are dangerous from the political perspective. In 1970- 1971, 12,520 examples of such materials were confiscated, twice as much than in 1968-1969. In connection with the insufficient density of the military coverage of the state frontier with Romania and the lack of KGB organs in a series of frontier counties, there have been cases of illegal border crossing by some criminal elements. Beginning in 1968, 82 perpetrators were retained at the state frontier, including 64 persons who tried to leave the USSR illegally, 13 of whom were found criminally responsible, while several were convicted for treason to the fatherland. All along the frontier, on the territory of the republic, a significant number of persons have settled who have returned after serving time for state crimes, including former leaders and active participants in anti-Soviet organizations, as well as Germans in a situation that nurtures dispositions to emigrate. Under the influence of ideological subversion, in Moldavia the emigrationist and nationalist tendencies have intensified in the breasts of a certain part of the native Jews, which has led to the appearance of illegal groups, including of two anti-Soviet Zionist organizations, whose participants were found criminally responsible in 1971; cases of the dissemination of flyers, anonymous letters and inscriptions with hostile content have multiplied. Shortly, the process of judging the participants of the discovered illegal nationalist organizations “The National Patriotic Front for the Liberation of Bessarabia, Bucovina, and the counties of Tiraspol, Dubăsari and Râbniţa from Under the Russo-Soviet Yoke” and “The National Renaissance of Moldavia” will begin. Along with the arrested, two typewriters were found and confiscated and, edited in the Romanian language: 9 examples of the report of the first congress of “The National Patriotic Front,” 8 examples of the above-mentioned organization’s program, “the decisions” of this congress, 9 examples, as well as draft of letters to the SRR [Socialist Republic of Romania] government, the list of inhabitants of Moldavia who were persecuted by the Soviet organs and over 5 thousand pages with all sorts of notes under the form of treatises, studies, letters with a pronounced hostile tendency judging from their contents. The chiefs of these nationalist organizations have visited the Romanian Embassy in Moscow and sent letters, appeals, and so forth. In the name of the clandestine organizations that request “the return” of Bessarabia to the Romanian bosom, they met with fervent anti-Soviets, with counterrevolutionary Bessarabian Pan Halippa, the former Vice President of the Sfatul Ţării [National Council], and with [Ion] Pantea, the former War Minister of this organization, the mayor of the city of Odessa during the German-Romanian occupation in 1941-1944. Among the ensemble of measures realized by the Moldavian Communist Party CC, the local party organization and the ideological institutions of the republic regarding the intensification of political ideological work, and the patriotic and internationalist education of the working people, an important role in the struggle against subversive actions is played by the State Security [KGB] organs of the republic. However, of the 33 counties and 8 municipalities subordinated to the republic, KGB subdivisions exist only in 12, while at the same time, in five frontier counties out of eleven they are generally lacking. The great length of the state frontier with Romania (691.2 km) complicates the qualitative and timely resolution of existing problems, including those regarding the assurance of defensive operations along the state frontier. Taking into consideration all of these circumstances, there is a stringent need for consolidating the presence of the republic KGB in all counties, creating seven new supplementary structures in the counties of Briceni, Glodeni, Fălesti, Vulcănesti, Dubăsari, Călăraşi and Nisporeni, and increasing the number of operational personnel of the Committee for State Security (KGB) for the intensification of the fight against Zionism, which exercises an especially dangerous influence over the inhabitants of the republic. In connection with what has been shown above, the Moldavian Communist Party CC must examine the question regarding the creation in the republic of some new KGB apparatuses and consolidate existing KGB subunits that fight against the ideological subversions of the adversary. Along these lines, we request that the KGB at the Moldavian SSR Council of Ministers be supplemented with 59 state posts [positions], and 38 officers. MCP CC Secretary, I. Bodiul (signature) .