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Russian Colonialism and Bessarabia: A Confrontation of Cultures∗

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

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In the original plan (and original drafts) of this paper the attention was focused quite narrowly on colonial policies and the years 1878–1917. However, in the course of research and writing I became convinced that the period I chose to cover was not quite as felicitous, or convenient, as I believed it would, for unless I had access to archival material and put the primary emphasis on the bureaucratic (and mostly local) decision-making level I would not be able to carve for myself a field of research that could be presented in a comprehensible fashion. At the same time, while delving deeper and deeper into the subject, I confess that my interest shifted away from bureaucracy and its colonial policies to colonialism in the broader sense as an expression of certain cultural and demographic trends. My interest shifted because, first, I found it repeatedly difficult to distinguish between what could legitimately be labeled as policy and what was or may have been (who knows really?) merely an arbitrary decision, a momentary whim, of some guberniia or uezd potentate, or perhaps not even his but of his secretary who prepared the document and just pocketed a bribe of a few rubles in exchange for twisting the legal meaning of the decision one way or another. Second, even if I raised my focus above the local bureaucratic level, there would still not be much to chew intellectually. Poland, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Far East–yes, these were areas which attracted the attention of the more powerful minds in and outside of government and policies toward them were formulated in the context of interesting debates. But Bessarabia? Except for a few individuals who, especially at the time of its annexation, had high hopes for the role it might play in the future expansion of Russia, hardly anyone bothered with it. Why, until the turn of the century the St. Petersburg bureaucrats had a hard time even placing it on a map; they thought it was somewhere north.

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Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1974 , pp. 19 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the Study of Nationalities, 1974 

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References

Notes

1 In the period 1812–1856 Russia also exercised sovereignty over the Danube delta, that is, the Russo-Turkish boundary ran farther south, along the St. Gheorghe arm of the Danube. Besides this (and the much more important territorial shift of 1856–1878, about which later), there were in the course of the nineteenth century also some other, quite minor adjustments in the boundaries of Bessarabia.Google Scholar

2 One of the best geographic surveys of Bessarabia remains Lev S. Berg, Bessarabiia: Strana, liudi, khoziaistvo (Petrograd: “Ogni,” 1918). Various very useful and detailed data and statistics about nineteenth-century Bessarabia and the individual towns and villages can be found in Zamfir C. Arbure, Basarabia in secolul XIX (Bucharest: C. Göbl, 1898), and Pavel A. Krushevan, ed., Bessarabiia: Geograficheskii, istoricheskii, statisticheskii, ekonomicheskii, etnograficheskii, literaturnyi i spravochnyi sbornik (Moscow: Gazeta “Bessarabets,” 1903). The most detailed description is to be found in a book not now available to me: Zamfir C. Arbure, Dictionarul geografic al Basarabiei (Bucharest, 1904). The most detailed economic studies of Bessarabia are Ia. S. Grosul and I. G. Budak, Ocherki istorii narodnogo khoziaistva Bessarabii (1812–1861) (Kishinev: “Kartia Moldoveniaske,” 1967), and idem, Ocherki istorii narodnogo khoziaistva Bessarabii (1861–1905 gg.) (Kishinev: “Kartia Moldoveniaske,” 1972).Google Scholar

3 V. A. Urechia, Istoria Roanilor: Curs făcut la facultatea de litere din Bucuresci, după documenta inedite (13 vols.; Bucharest: C. Gobl, 1891–1901), Vol. 9, p. 706.Google Scholar

4 Farther south there are remnants of another, the Trajan wall which runs from the Prut, at a point somewhat south of Kagul (Cahul), eastward to the northern reaches of Lake Sasyk.Google Scholar

5 Among Western-language studies of Bessarabia which at least briefly discuss this problem are Charles Upson Clark, Bessarabia: Russia and Roumania on the Black Sea (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1927), Babel, Antony, La Bessarabie: Étude historique, ethnographique (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1926), and N. Iorga, Histoire des relations russo-roumaines (Jassy, 1917). The most comprehensive Western-language study of Romanian history, including the history of Bessarabia, is N. Iorga, Histoire des Roumaines et de la romanité orientale (9 vols. in 10; Bucharest: L'Académie Roumaine, 1937–44); see especially Vol. 3 (Les Fondateurs d'êtat), Vol. 4 (Les Chevaliers), Vol. 9 (Les Unificateurs). An interesting specialized study is Nicolae Iorga, Studii istorice asupra Chiliei si Cetatii Albe (Bucharest: C. Göbl, 1899); see especially pp. 60–76. Suprisingly, the official two-volume Moldavian-language Istoriia RSS Moldovenesht' (History of the Moldavian SSR), published by the Moldavian Academy of Sciences (2nd ed.; Kishinev: “Kartia Moldoveniaske,” 1967), has only a brief footnote on the subject of the origin of the name Bessarabia (Vol. I, p. 380). For a Bulgarian view, see Vl. Diakovich, Búlgarska Basarabiia; Istoriko-etnograficheski ocherk s spomeni za Generala Ivan Kolev (Sofia: “Radikal',” 1918).Google Scholar

6 Iorga, Histoire des Roumains et de la romanite orientale, Vol. 3, pp. 187–188, argues that the name Băsarăbă is of Cuman origin (from the word aba, meaning father).Google Scholar

7 Moldavia was founded and politically organized somewhat later than Wallachia and at the time was only a fledgling principality.Google Scholar

8 Turkish for “corner,” hence of (or in) the corner. The Bulgarians, and the Russians, too, have referred to this area as “the Corner” (ongūl, ogūl, ūgūl, ūgol). In fact, the Bulgarians consider that this “corner” of Bessarabia, which in the seventh century became a territorial base of their ancestors when they were migrating from the Volga, should be considered as the original hearland, or birthplace, of the medieval and also modern Bulgarian state. (See Memoire des Bulgare de Bessarabie, 1919 [Bulgarian Delegation document, Paris Peace Conference, 1919], p. 7, and Diakovich, op. cit., pp. 17 ff.) Budzhak was for a time an important base of the Golden Horde. Later, under the Turks, especially after 1538 and until the end of the eighteenth century, it was the home of the so-called Budzhak Tatars.Google Scholar

9 Cantemirio, Demetrio, Descriptio antiqui et hodierni status Moldaviae (1716?), first published in a German translation, under the title “Beschreibung der Moldau,” in Magazin für die Neue Historie und Geographie, Parts III and IV (Hamburg, 1769–70).Google Scholar

10 The latter map is reproduced in Babel, op. cit., between pp. 128 and 129. It is a valuable map because it traces in detail the boundaries of historical Bessarabia. According to it the northern boundary of Bessarabia ran in 1812 from the Dnestr just north of Bender (Tighina) westward toward the Prut but, before reaching that river, turned south at Karpineny (Carpineni); it then ran southward parallel to the Prut at a distance of some fifteen miles until it made a sharp turn west to join the Prut just below Kolibash' (Colibaşi). For the sake of comparison we may thus note that the boundary of the old (original, or historical) Bessarabia extended farther north than that of the southern Bessarabia which is now included in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.Google Scholar

11 “Les troupes Russes se retireront des provinces de la Valachie et de la Moldavie ….” “Traité de paix et d'amitié conclu â Tilsit le 25 Juin (7 Juilet) 1807,” Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoricheskago Obshchestvapt, Vol. 89 (St. Petersburg, 1893), pp. 49–62; on p. 57. Note: In some published versions of the Tilsit Treaty this Article is numbered twenty-two because Article 9 was stricken out at the last moment and consequently the numeration changed.Google Scholar

12 Letter of N. P. Rumiantsov, Russian Foreign Minister, to P. A. Tolstoi, Russian Extraordinary Minister in Paris, Nov. 8, 1807, in ibid., pp. 218–222. Also letter of Tolstoi to Rumiantsov, Man. 3, 1808, in ibid., p. 335.Google Scholar

13 Rumiantsov to Tolstoi, Nov. 26, 1807, in ibid., p. 260, emphasis added.Google Scholar

14 Aleksandr I to Tolstoi, Sept. 14, 1807, in ibid., p. 107. There were also other proposals for the settlement of the Russo-Turkish conflict; Bessarabia is explicitly mentioned in them but it is not clear whether it is meant in the narrow or large sense. Ibid., pp. 358, 359. For an excellent treatment of the negotiations surrounding the 1812 Bucharest Treaty between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, as well as of the background and subsequent development of Russian policy in Bessarabia seen from the perspective of Russian overall foreign-policy aims, see L. A. Kasso, Rossiia na Dunae i obrazovanie bessarabskoi oblasti (Moscow, 1913).Google Scholar

15 For the sake of accuracy it should be pointed out that there did exist in Bessarabia territorial islands which indeed were, in the political, administrative, and also cultural sense, apart from Moldavia. These were the fortresses of Kilia, Ismail, Akkerman, Bender, and Khotin (the last outside historical Bessarabia) which, with a small hinterland around them, were not only occupied by Ottoman troops but also under direct Ottoman rule and thus sharply contrasted in all respects from the bulk of the Moldavian and Wallachian territories in which–conforming to their vassal status established back in the fifteenth century, and by and large respected by the Porte–direct authority within the country could be exercised only by a Christian prince and his Christian boyars or other representatives, and Turks as well as Moslems in general were not permitted to settle, acquire land, build mosques, or marry local women anywhere within the Principalities. In 1538 the whole of historical Bessarabia (i.e., of the Budzhak) in fact passed legally under direct Ottoman administration (it became the raia of Akkerman [Cetatea Alba, Belgorod Dnestrovskii] in which a sangaic was established), Sultan Suleiman having imposed this concession on the Moldavian Prince Stephen Lăcustă; but for the next two centuries this area became a perpetual battlefield between the Turks, Tatars, Poles, and Cossacks, with the Russians coming somewhat later, and with the Moldavians joining the one or the other side depending on what their, or the Prince's personal interests dictated at the given moment. To the Turks complete direct control over southern Bessarabia was important because it eliminated a wedge thrust between their possessions (Dobrudja to the south and Tatar Ukraine to the north) and by the same token closed the circle of their firm contiguous control over the coastal territories around the whole of the Black Sea. – On the question of the 1538 annexation of Bessarabia, see Iorga, Studii istorice asupra Chiliei si Cetaii Albe, pp. 186 ff.Google Scholar

16 Kasso, op. cit., chaps. 2 and 3 (pp. 89–145), esp. pp. 107, 111, 122.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 193, 224, and passim; Berg, op. cit., p. 2. – Concerning the origin of the name one may note here a parallel between Bessarabia and Bukovina (Bucovina). The latter, too, was an integral part of Moldavia; the historical capital of Moldavia, Suceava, is located in what the Austrians were to call the Duchy of Bukovina. The term itself is first recorded in a document of 1482 and appears to have been a descriptive Slav word (Moldavian documents were written not in Latin but in Old Slavonic, which was the official Church language) for the northernmost part of Moldavia where the sub-Carpathian zone is covered by famous beechwood forests. (Beechwood in Slav languages is buk. Also from beechwood is derived the German name of Bukovina, Buchenwald; and in Romanian this area was often called Aroboroasa, meaning Heavily-Wooded-Land. Incidentally, there are many Bukovinas and Buchenwalds scattered over Slavic and German-speaking lands, e.g., the beechwood area in the northwest corner of Bessarabia has been called by the Russians Russkaia Bukovina.) Until the late eighteenth century, however, Bukovina did not denote a political or administrative area and even in the physiographic sense it was a vague term because beechwood forests are characteristic of the entire sub-Carpathian zone of Moldavia. When in 1774–75, the Austrians (under the dual pretext of needing a road connecting Galicia, freshly acquired from Poland, with Transylvania and of erecting a sanitary cordon to contain cholera allegedly spreading from the Danubian Principalities) carved here for themselves more than five and a half thousand square miles of territory, they at first toyed with the idea of calling it Komitat of Suceava, or Austrian Moldavia (to distinguish it from Ottoman Moldavia, which they coveted too), but then settled on the name Bukovina. – On the latter point, see I. Nistor, Un Capitol din Vieαta Culturală a Românilor din Bucovina, 1774–1887 (Academia Română, Discursuri de Receptie, XLIV; Bucharest, 1916), p. 7, and idem, Die Vereinigung der Bukowina mit Rumänien (Bucharest, 1940), p. 5.Google Scholar

18 Compact areas populated by Romanians east of the Dnestr can be found only till the Bug, some of them on the outskirts of Odessa; but isolated settlements extend as far as Crimea. See N. Iorga, Romînii de peste Nistru; Lămuriri pentru a-i ajuta in lupta lor (Iasi: “Neamul Românesc,” 1918).Google Scholar

19 The Ottoman Empire, too, played the role of a feudal protector. Whatever the disadvantages of the vassal relationship imposed on the Danubian Principalities, the Sultan's ability to control (most of the time) the Tatars provided the Romanian population a degree of security from the more outrageous depredations, which was something the local princes could rarely assure on their own. For a description of the terrible devastation of Polish territories that small but repeated Tatar incursions (which usually passed through Bessarabia) were causing as late as the seventeenth century, see M. Horn, Skutki ekonomiczne najazdow tatarskich z lat 1605–1633 na Ruσ Czerwona (Wroclaw, 1964).Google Scholar

20 To this day it is a characteristic of Romanian villages of the sub-Carpathian region that they are very long, spread for perhaps ten miles up and down some little valley; and hundreds of such villages are paired off as twins, both bearing the same name but with the qualification Lower or Upper added, and the Upper one is always the older–the original–village.Google Scholar

21 A similar phenomenon could be observed among Europeans migrating to America. They, too, showed a preference for settling not in an environment that could be said to be the most suitable, pleasant, and in general superior to the one from which the given group of immigrants was coming, but in one which appeared to them most familiar in terms of landscape and of the type of husbandry which could be practiced there and the technology it required. Briefly, they wanted to be able to feel and live in the new homeland as they did in the old one, which is why the Scotch settled in Nova Scotia, the Scandinavians in Minnesota, the Germans in Pennsylvania, and so on.Google Scholar

22 The lag which retarded the settling of some of the richest soils was not only cultural in the narrow sense but also technological and economical. To cultivate the heavy soil better ploughs were required than those the Romanian peasant utilized until well into the nineteenth century, and to plough in this area one had to hitch at least two or three pairs of good oxen, which was something few peasants had or could afford. Moreover, in this treeless region it was difficult if not impossible to practice the natural (autarkic) economy that was so essential for the survival and independence of the traditional peasant household. Periodical severe droughts which would completely wipe out a whole year's crop added another, dangerous risk. Thus the settlement of this area basically had to wait for the dawn of the capitalist, large-scale, cash-crop agricultural operations.Google Scholar

23 Two-thirds of the tribute in grain shipped from Moldavia to Constantinople prior to 1812 was produced between the Prut and the Dnestr, which incidentally illustrates the severity of the loss of Bessarabia for Moldavia. Kasso, op. cit., p. 191.Google Scholar

24 The Moldavians (Romanians) represent a case of irregularity (localistic distortion) in the just-described process in the sense that they did not become true agriculturalists before but only after, or during, their migration eastward. And to the extent that, because of cultural lag, they remained longer than either necessary or economically desirable a hybrid type, half-agriculturalists and half-pastoralists (and in part pseudo-nomads insofar as some members of the family would engage in semi-annual long treks with their flocks), they were at a disadvantage and in a weak position when forced to compete within an area with other migrants who had a longer tradition in the agricultural ways of life and who were therefore better prepared to take over and make good use of larger tracts of land.Google Scholar

25 See, e.g., A. Kuropatkin, Zadachi russkoi armii, Vol. I, pp. 492–494; Vol. II, p. 502.Google Scholar

26 Though that is how it was seen at the time in Russia, it was not quite literally true for the Baltic countries, annexed in the course of the eighteenth century, who were also Christian and either had ever before been a part of Russia in any sense (e.g., Estonia) or had only very remotely and indirectly ever been connected with it (e.g., Lithuania and Latvia).Google Scholar

27 Kasso, op. cit., pp. 197–198, 206.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., pp. 202, 211.Google Scholar

29 Since 1749 the Moldavian peasant had been personally free, which was why in Bessarabia in the official Russian terminology he was not khrestianin (as the Russian peasant was called) but tsaran (from Romanian tăran). Only Gypsies attached to the boyar's household were serfs. In 1858 there were 5,209 such serfs in Bessarabia. The peasants had the obligation to work for the boyar twelve days a year, give him one-tenth of all they produced, repair roads, bridges, dams, etc., and pay certain state taxes.Google Scholar

30 No reliable statistics exist for the period. For a discussion of Bessarabia's demographical and ethnographical data, see the very detailed study by G. Murgoci, La Population de la Bessarabie: Étude dėmographique (Paris, 1920). See also Ion G. Pelivan, The Movement and Increase of Population in Bessarabia from 1812 to 1918 (Paris, 1920); Kaba, John, Politico-Economic Review of Bessarabia (Washington, D. C., June 30, 1919); Facts and Comments Concerning Bessarabia, 1812–1940, compiled by a group of Romanian correspondents (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1940).Google Scholar

31 Kasso, op. cit., p. 207.Google Scholar

32 Krushevan, op. cit., p. 117.Google Scholar

33 Kasso, op. cit., pp. 203, 22–224. See also Ion G. Pelivan, Chronologie de la Bessarabie (Paris, 1920); idem, La Bessarabie sous le regime Russe (1812–1918), Part I (Paris, 1919).Google Scholar

34 Kasso, op. cit., pp. 209, 214.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., pp. 228–229.Google Scholar