Author: J. S. GROSUL, A. A. SHEVYAKOV

Chisinau. "Kartya Moldovenyaske". 1970. 735 pp. The print run is 3000 copies. Price 3 rubles. 30 kopecks.

The peer-reviewed book is one of the most fundamental works published by Moldovan historians in the last decade. ¹ It is the result of many years of scientific research by the author's team and at the same time a generalization of the achievements of a large group of historians who studied certain aspects of the revolutionary movement in Bessarabia. Based on a large trove of documentary data from the archives of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Chisinau, Odessa and Chernivtsi, as well as materials from the Soviet and foreign press and memoirs of active participants in the revolutionary struggle in the region, the authors widely cover and deeply analyze the events in Bessarabia in 1918-1940.

For a long time, Romanian bourgeois-nationalist historians, and after them the bourgeois historiography of the West, maliciously falsified the events of 1918 in Bessarabia, trying to portray the overthrow of Soviet power in Moldova and the separation of most of its territory from the Soviet Republic almost as the realization of the "national ideal" of the Moldovan people.

One of the "works" that falsify the events related to the capture of Soviet Bessarabia by the Romanian military is a book by a group of Romanian emigrants published in Paris in 1967 under the title "Aspects of Russian-Romanian Relations. A retrospective view". Its authors continue to insist on some kind of Romanian rights to Bessarabia. They blatantly slander Soviet foreign policy, seek to whitewash the occupiers, present the liberation struggle of the people in Bessarabia in a false light, and slander the Communist Party of Romania.

The monograph emphasizes that the treacherous seizure of Bessarabia by the Romanian military is the initial stage of the conspiracy of international imperialism and internal counterrevolution against the Country of the Soviets. Royal Rumania was the first capitalist state to attack the world's first workers 'and peasants' republic. Exposing the falsifiers 'speculations, the authors cite convincing evidence that" the workers, peasants, and progressive intelligentsia have never recognized either the 'conditional' or 'unconditional ''annexation' of Bessarabia to bourgeois-landowner Rumania "(p.101).

The monograph shows that the occupation regime contributed to the transformation of the region into an agricultural appendage of Romania, a market for industrial goods of the metropolis, a source of cheap raw materials and labor. Having wrested Bessarabia from the common Russian market, the Romanian imperialists condemned its economy to degradation. "The peculiarity of the colonial situation of Bessarabia was that it fell into bondage to the ruling classes of an underdeveloped country with significant remnants of feudalism, economically subordinated to the monopolies of highly developed capitalist states" (p.209). The authors show in detail the process of curtailment of the Bessarabian industry: enterprises that could not withstand the fierce competition of Romanian industrialists were closed, and financing of industrial production was sharply reduced. Even the official Romanian statistics used in the book show a steady decline in the share of capital investment in Bessarabian industry compared to the total amount in Romania. In 1919, this share was 6%. in 1929 - 2.1%, in 1937-only 1.6% (p. 572). In 1933, Bessarabia received 25 times less loans than in 1914 (p. 390). The policy of deliberate liquidation of industrial production in the region by the occupiers is revealed in the monograph by analyzing data on the export of such large enterprises as the Bendery railway workshops, the Sphinx knitting factory, the tannery, and the Tarkanovsky textile factory from Bessarabia.

¹ Authors: N. V. Bereznyakov, I. M. Bobeiko, Ya. M. Kopansky (head of the author's team), U. G. Murzak, V. P. Platon. Editorial Board: A. S. Esaulenko, Ya. M. Kopansky, A.M. Lazarev.

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(Chisinau), textile and cloth factory (Ackerman), etc. Agriculture, which was the main branch of the region's economy, as shown by the authors, did not come out of a chronic crisis in the years under review: the yield of grain crops fell, the state of horticulture and viticulture, deprived of traditional sales markets, sharply worsened. The situation was no better in animal husbandry. According to the data given in the monograph, from 1916 to June 1940, the number of horses decreased by 19.3%, cattle - by 37.8%, sheep - by 26.7%, pigs - by almost half (p.576). The expropriation of the peasants led to the fact that by the time the region was liberated in 1940, almost 70% of peasant farms were on the verge of complete ruin or had already completely lost their land (p. 583).

The years of occupation also affected the situation of the masses of Bessarabia. Deprived of the rights and freedoms won as a result of the socialist revolution, the workers and peasants of the region were brutally exploited by Romanian and local landlords and capitalists, as evidenced by the facts analyzed by the authors. For 22 years, the occupiers made every effort to deprive the Moldovan population of Bessarabia of national identity, to force them to abandon their desire for liberation from social and national oppression and the restoration of Moldovan Soviet statehood. "The cursed Romanian boyars seek to destroy all our customs, language and culture of the Moldavian people, which have distinguished them from the Romanian people for centuries," said the appeal of the Union of Revolutionary Peasants of Bessarabia, which strongly opposed the Romanian policy of the invaders (p.368). The poverty and ruin of the masses, the regime of national and political oppression were supported by a system of brutal terror. "The term ' Bessarabian system', "the authors remind us," has become synonymous with savage arbitrariness, brutal reprisals and cruel mockery of workers " (p. 729). Beginning with mass executions in January 1918, the occupiers ended their inglorious reign with the mass shootings in Galac in 1940 of Bessarabians who wished to return to their liberated homeland.

It is not surprising that the invaders aroused the universal hatred of the masses of Bessarabia. Since 1918, the struggle of the working people has not stopped here, the main content of which was the desire to restore Soviet power and reunite with the socialist Homeland. The authors pay their main attention to this liberation movement. They were able to paint a vivid picture of the armed resistance of the working people to the treacherous invasion of the interventionists in January-March 1918. The revolutionary actions of the workers of Bessarabia against Romanian and international imperialism, as the book rightly emphasizes, were aimed at supporting the Russian revolution, expelling the occupiers from Moldavian land and restoring Soviet power in the region. The monograph reveals the role of V. I. Lenin, the Central Committee of the RKSCHB), the Soviet government in the struggle for Soviet power in Moldova, in organizing a repulse to the invasion of interventionists.

The years 1921-1928 were filled with tumultuous revolutionary events in Bessarabia. The culmination of the revolutionary process in this period was, as the authors emphasize, the Tatarbunar uprising, which took place under the slogan of restoring Soviet power in Bessarabia and the formation of the Moldavian Soviet Republic. The researchers were able to reveal the nationwide nature of this speech, which received a wide response far beyond the borders of the region. Analyzing the revolutionary movement in Bessarabia during the world economic crisis (1929-1933), the authors reveal the scope of the political struggle of the working people under the slogans: "Long live Red Bessarabia, reunited with the MASSR!", " Hands off the Soviet Union!". The monograph concludes that the revolutionary actions in the region, despite the brutal repressions of the occupiers, were almost permanent during the crisis. Considering the struggle of the workers of Bessarabia against fascism and the threat of a new war, for the liberation of the region in 1934-1940, the authors expose the goals of the Romanian fascists, who sought to force the Romanization of the region. The monograph notes that the specifics of the popular movement in this period was the interweaving of the anti-fascist struggle with the struggle against the invaders, for the reunification of the region with the Soviet Homeland.

The idea of the leading role of the Communists of Bessarabia in the liberation movement runs through the whole work. The authors managed to trace the process of formation and activity of the regional administration.

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a party organization. As is well known, it was established and operated until 1922 as an integral part of the RCP (b). The paper emphasizes that the communists of the province maintained direct contact with the RCP (b) even after they temporarily joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1922. The Bessarabian Communists rallied around them the advanced workers and peasants, the progressive intelligentsia. They not only skillfully conducted illegal work, but also used any legal opportunities. The monograph reveals the activities of organizations that worked under the leadership of communists: the Komsomol, unitary trade unions, the Union of Revolutionary Peasants, the Workers 'and Peasants' Bloc, Moprov cells, anti-war and anti-fascist committees.

The authors paid much attention to the struggle of the Soviet government for the restoration of historical justice - the reunification of Bessarabia with the Soviet Homeland. Earlier works by Soviet historians covered the efforts of Soviet diplomacy in relative detail, mainly in 1918 and 1924. In the reviewed work, the subsequent stages of this struggle are also considered. Bourgeois historiography and imperialist propaganda sought to portray every step of the USSR aimed at normalizing relations with royal Rumania as a rejection of the principled line on the question of Bessarabia. The materials cited by the authors refute these falsifications. The book describes in detail the revolutionary impact on the workers of Bessarabia of the success of socialist construction in the USSR, especially in the Moldavian ASSR.

The authors show the principled internationalist position of the Communist Party of Romania in the Bessarabian question, the support of the liberation movement in the region by the advanced workers of Romania. The monograph examines in detail the forms of solidarity of the Romanian proletariat with the struggling Bessarabia, from the creation of detachments of Romanian internationalists who participated in the armed struggle against the royal troops in Bessarabia in early 1918 (p. 61), to the popular demonstrations in Bucharest and Cluj in July 1940, whose participants welcomed the reunification of Bessarabia with the Soviet Homeland (p. 729). The policy of the ruling circles of Romania in the occupied region was strongly condemned by the IV and V Congresses of the Communist Party of Romania. "In Bessarabia, "the resolution of the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 1931 stated,"Romanian imperialism is trying to strengthen its position by intensifying the Romanization of Moldovans, who are declared" Romanians." The broad masses of the Moldavian peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie are just as oppressed as the Russian, Ukrainian, and Jewish populations. The Roumanian bourgeoisie itself does not in the least trust these "Roumanians" because of its mercy" (p.472).

The paper attempts to show the international movement of protest against the excesses of the occupiers in Bessarabia, the support of the proletarians and the progressive public of various countries for the aspirations of the working and peasant masses of the region to reunite with the Soviet Homeland. Such prominent figures of the international communist movement as G. Dimitrov, M. Kashen, V. Kolarov, W. Foster, such representatives of culture as A. Barbusse, R. Rolland, T. Mann and others declared their solidarity with the Bessarabian workers.

The authors come to a reasonable conclusion that "the incessant struggle of the workers of Bessarabia for their liberation and reunification of the region with the Soviet Homeland in 1918-1940 testified to the fact that the ruling circles of bourgeois-landowner Romania failed to realize the adventurist goals that they pursued by annexing Bessarabia, trying to Romanize it and keep it under their rule" (page 729).

The work, of course,is not without some drawbacks. These include the well - known disunity of materials related to the socio-economic history of the region. If they were concentrated in a special section and subjected to end-to-end analysis, the work would benefit. Important and interesting tables included in the monograph are not all properly analyzed.

Corresponding member Academy of Sciences of the USSR Ya. S. Grosul, A. A. Shevyakov

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