Editing History of Moldova (section)

==Part of the Russian Empire==
[[File:Russian Bessarabia, 1883.jpg|thumb|309x309px|[[Bessarabia Governorate|Gubernya of Bessarabia]], 1883|left]]
{{Main|Bessarabia Governorate}}

With the notable exception of [[Transnistria]], the territory of today's [[Republic of Moldova]] covers most of the historical region of [[Bessarabia]]. Until 1812, the term "Bessarabia" referred to the region between the Danube, Dniester, the [[Black Sea]] shores, and the [[Upper Trajan Wall]], slightly larger than what today is called [[Budjak]]. By the [[Treaty of Bucharest, 1812|Treaty of Bucharest]] of May 28, 1812 between the [[Ottoman Empire]] and the [[Russian Empire]] — concluding the [[Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812)]] — the latter annexed the eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia.<ref name="Mitrasca2002">{{Cite book|title=Moldova: a Romanian province under Russian rule : diplomatic history from the archives of the great powers |last=Mitrasca |first=Marcel  |year=2002 |publisher=Algora Publishing |isbn=1-892941-86-4 |page=6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mZogbSmBR-4C&pg=PA6}}</ref> That region was then called ''Bessarabia''.<ref>Mitrasca, pp. 10–11.</ref>

Initially, after being annexed by the Russian Empire, Bessarabia enjoyed a period of local autonomy until 1828. Organized as an imperial district (''[[Oblast#Oblasts of the Russian Empire|oblast]]''), it was governed by a "provisional government" with two departments: a civil administration and a religious administration, the former led by the aged Moldavian boyar [[Scarlat Sturdza]], the latter – by the archbishop [[Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni]]. On top of these was the Russian military administration of Governor General [[Ivan Markovich Garting|Harting]]. However, already in 1813, the civil administration was handed to the Governor General. In 1818, reform-minded Russian tsar [[Alexander I of Russia|Alexander I]] passed a ''Settlement of the establishment of the region of Bessarabia'' which divided the legal power between the tsar-appointed Governor General ([[Alexey Bakhmetev|Bakhmetiev]]) and a 10-member ''High Council of the Region'' with 4 members appointed by the tsar and 6 elected by the local nobility. In lieu of the older 12 ''lands'', the region was divided into 6, later 9 [[county|counties]]. In 1828 however, the conservative tsar [[Nikolai I]] abrogated the ''Settlement'' and passed a new regulation which endowed the Governor General with supreme power, with the regional council having only advisory functions and meeting twice a year. Article 63 of the regulation stated that all administrative personnel must know and perform their duties in [[Russian language|Russian]]. Nevertheless, Romanian language would occasionally appear in documents up to 1854.<ref name=nistor>Ion Nistor, ''Istoria Basarabiei'', 4th edition, Cartea moldovenească, Chișinău, 1991, p. 179-189</ref>

At the end of the [[Crimean War]], in 1856, by the [[Treaty of Paris (1856)|Treaty of Paris]], the southern parts of Bessarabia (including a part of [[Budjak]]) were returned to Moldavia, which organized the territory into the districts of [[Cahul]], [[Bolgrad]] and [[Izmail|Ismail]]. Consequently, Russia lost access to the [[Danube]] river. In 1859, the Principalities of [[Moldavia]] and [[Wallachia]] united and formed the [[United Principalities|Romanian United Principalities]], a vassal state of the [[Ottoman Empire]].

In 1870, the institution of [[zemstva]] was instated in the Bessarabian oblast. Cities, communes, counties, and the entire region would elect each a local council representing noblemen, merchants and peasants. They had substantial authority in economic and sanitary areas, including roads, posts, food, public safety and education. On the other hand, political (including justice courts of all levels) and cultural matters remained an exclusive domain of the Governor General and were used as a vehicle of [[Russification]]. With the accomplishment of these introductions, in 1871, Bessarabia was transformed into a governorate.<ref>Ion Nistor, p.190-191</ref>

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the [[Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)]] and the subsequent signing of the [[Treaty of Berlin, 1878|Treaty of Berlin]] granted independence to Romania.<ref name="Mitrasca2002"/> Although the treaty of alliance between Romania and Russia specified that Russia would defend the territorial integrity of Romania and not claim any part of Romania at the end of the war, the southern part of Bessarabia was re-annexed to Russia. In exchange, Romania was given [[Dobruja]], which was at the time part of the Ottoman Empire.<ref>Mitrasca, p. 23.</ref>

[[File:Colina Mazarachi.JPG|thumb|left|[[Măzărache Church]] in the 19th century]]

Public education was entrusted to the religious establishment of the region, which since 1821 had only Russian archbishops, and later also to the zemstvos. [[Dimitrie Sulima]] (Archbishop in 1821–1855), and [[Antonie Shokotov]] (1855–1871) allowed the parallel usage of both [[Romanian language|Romanian]] and [[Russian language|Russian]] in church, and did not take any measures to infringe upon the linguistic specifics of the region. With the appointment of [[Pavel Lebedev]] (1871–1882), the situation changed radically, and the language of the locals was soon purged from the church. To prevent the printing of religious literature in Romanian, Lebedev closed down the [[printing press]] in [[Chișinău]], collected from the region and burned the already printed books in Romanian (in the [[Romanian Cyrillic alphabet|Cyrillic alphabet]]). The following archbishops [[Sergey Lapidevsky]], [[Isakyi Polozensky]], [[Neofit Novodchikov]] eased some of Lebedev's measures to help quell the serious dissatisfaction of the population. The next Archbishop [[Iakov Pyatnitsky]] (1898–1904) discovered that his desire to popularize a Christian culture and a moral education faced a language barrier, and in 1900 convinced the [[Most Holy Synod|Russian High Synod]] to allow the publication of religious pamphlets in Romanian, while his follower Archbishop Vladimir allowed the printing of books, and from 1908 even of a regular religious journal "[[Luminătorul]]" by Constantin Popovici and [[Gurie Grosu]]. The last Russian Archbishops, [[Serafim Chichyagov]] (1908–1914), Platon (1914–1915) and [[Anastasy (Gribanovsky)|Anastasius]] (1915–1918) tried to preserve the privileged status of the Russian language in the church in Bessarabia, but did not introduce any new anti-Romanian measures. In 1918, after the installation of the Romanian administration in Bessarabia, Archbishop Anastasius refused to subordinate his eparchy to the [[Romanian Orthodox Church]], and was forced into exile.<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Leustean|editor-first=Lucian|title=Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, 1945–91|publisher=Routledge|year=2009|isbn=9780203865941|page=213}}</ref> The new authorities entrusted the archbishopric to the Bishop [[Nicodem de Huși]] from Romania, who appointed a local Archbishop [[Dionisie Erhan]]. Then the Clerical Congress on February 21, 1920, elected [[Gurie Botoșăneanu]] as the highest church official in Bessarabia, which afterwards was raised from Archbishop to Metropolitan.<ref>Ion Nistor, p. 224-244</ref>

[[File:Banulescu-Bodoni.jpg|thumb|150px|[[Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni]]]]

Under the protection of [[Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni]] and Dimitrie Sulima a theological school and a seminary were opened in Chișinău, and public schools throughout the region: in the cities of Chișinău, Hotin, Cetatea Albă, Briceni, Bender, Bălți, Cahul, Soroca, Orhei, at the monasteries of Dobrușa and Hârjauca, and even in several villages (Rezeni, Mereni, Volcineț, Nisporeni, Hârtop). In 1835, the tsarist authorities declared a 7-year deadline to transfer the education from [[Romanian language|Romanian]] to [[Russian language|Russian]]. Although the measure was implemented more gradually, since 1867, Romanian was purged entirely from the education. This had the effect of keeping the peasant population of Bessarabia backward, as witnessed by the fact that in 1912 Moldavians had a literacy rate of only 10.5%, lowest among all ethnic groups of the region (63% for [[Bessarabian Germans]], 50% for [[Bessarabian Jews]], 40% for [[Russians]], 31% for [[Bessarabian Bulgarians]]), with a record low 1.7% literacy rate for Moldavian women. Of the 1709 primary schools in Bessarabia in 1912, none was in the language of the main ethnic group.<ref>Ion Nistor, p. 249-255</ref>
[[File:Chisinau water carrier.jpg|thumb|left|[[Chișinău]] water carrier]]

After 1812, the newly installed Russian authorities expelled the large [[Nogais|Nogai]] [[Tatars|Tatar]] population of Budjak ([[Little Tartary]]),<ref>{{Cite web|url= http://www.goshen.edu/mqr/pastissues/apr00staples.html|title= Mennonite-Nogai Economic Relations, 1825–1860|url-status= dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130108093628/http://www.goshen.edu/mqr/pastissues/apr00staples.html|archive-date= 2013-01-08|access-date= 2009-09-01}}</ref> and encouraged the settlement of Moldavians, Wallachians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians and others through various fiscal facilities and exemption from military service.<ref>{{cite book|author-last=Figes|author-first=Orlando|title=The Crimean War: A History|publisher=Macmillan|year=2011|isbn=9781429997249|page=18}}</ref> The [[colonization]] was generated by the need to better exploit the resources of the land,<ref>Marcel Mitrasca, ''Moldova: A Romanian Province Under Russian Rule'', Algora, 2002, {{ISBN|1-892941-86-4}}, pg. 25</ref> and by the absence of serfdom in Bessarabia.<ref>Ion Nistor, ''Istoria Basarabiei'', Cernăuți, 1921</ref> German colonists from Switzerland (canton [[Lausanne]]), France, and Germany ([[Württemberg]]) settled in 27 localities (most newly settled) in [[Budjak]], and by 1856 [[Bessarabian Germans]] were 42,216. Russian veterans of the 1828–1829 war with the Ottomans were settled in 10 localities in Budjak, and three other localities were settled by [[Cossacks]] from [[Dobrudja]] (which got there from the [[Dniepr]] region some 50 years earlier). [[Bessarabian Bulgarians]] and [[Gagauz people|Gagauz]] arrived from modern eastern Bulgaria as early as the second half of the 18th century. In 1817, they numbered 482 families in 12 localities, in 1856 – 115,000 people in 43 localities. Ukrainians had arrived Bessarabia since before 1812, and already in the 1820s they made up one third of the population of the most northern [[Hotin county]]. In the following decades more Ukrainians settled throughout the northern part of Bessarabia from [[Galicia (Central Europe)|Galicia]] and [[Podolia]]. Jews from Galicia, Podolia and Poland also settled in Bessarabia in the 19th century, but mostly in the cities and fairs; in some of these they eventually became a plurality. In 1856, there were 78,751 [[Bessarabian Jews]] and according to the Imperial Russian census of 1897, the capital [[Chișinău|Kishinev]] had a [[History of the Jews in Moldova|Jewish]] population of 50,000, or 46%, out of a total of approximately 110,000.<ref>{{Cite web|url= http://www.jewish.md/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=50&limit=1&limitstart=7|title= Jewish Moldova|url-status= dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090113204102/http://www.jewish.md/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=50&limit=1&limitstart=7|archive-date= 2009-01-13}}</ref> There was even an attempt by the Russian authorities to create 16 Jewish agricultural colonies, where 10,589 people would settle. However within less than 2 generations, most of them sold the land to the local Moldavians and moved to the cities and fairs.<ref>Ion Nistor, p.197-214</ref> The various population movements saw an increase of the [[Slavic peoples|Slavic]] population to more than a fifth of the total population by 1920,<ref>[http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/clark/bc_8.shtml#bc_8 ''Bessarabia'' by Charles Upson Clark, 1927, chapter 8] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121212063455/http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/clark/bc_8.shtml|date=2012-12-12}}: "Today, the [[Bessarabian Bulgars|Bulgarians]] form one of the most solid elements in Southern Bessarabia, numbering (with the [[Gagauz people|Gagauzes]], i.e. Turkish-speaking Christians also from the [[Dobrudja]]) nearly 150,000. Colonization brought in numerous Great Russian peasants, and the Russian bureaucracy imported Russian office-holders and professional men; according to the Romanian estimate of 1920, the Great Russians were about 75,000 in number (2.9%), and the Lipovans and Cossacks 59,000 (2.2%); the Little Russians (Ukrainians) came to 254,000 (9.6%). That, plus about 10,000 Poles, brings the total number of Slavs to 545,000 in a population of 2,631,000, or about one-fifth"</ref> while the proportion of the Moldovan population steadily decreased. In absence of any official records on ethnic distribution until the late 19th century, various figures for the ethnic proportions of the region have been advanced. Thus, in the 1920s Romanian historian [[Ion Nistor]] alleged that, at the beginning of the Russian administration, Moldavians represented 86% of the population.<ref>Ion Nistor, ''Istoria Bassarabiei'', Cernăuți, 1921</ref> While according to official statistics speakers of Moldovan and Romanian accounted for 47.8% in 1897,<ref>{{in lang|de}} Flavius Solomon, ''Die Republik Moldau und ihre Minderheiten'' (Länderlexikon), in: Ethnodoc-Datenbank für Minderheitenforschung in Südostosteuropa, p. 52</ref> some authors proposed figures as high as 70% for the beginning of the 20th century.<ref>{{Cite web|url= http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/clark/bc_7.shtml#bc_7|title= ''Bessarabia'' by Charles Upson Clark, 1927, chapter 7|url-status= live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090111124939/http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/clark/bc_7.shtml#bc_7|archive-date= 2009-01-11}}</ref>