Both are large and relatively prosperous, have their own schools and kindergartens, and see no reason to share resources with their neighbor. There is also opposition in the village of Safyany to joining another new hromada. One villager said that they might agree to be amalgamated with nearby Izmail—but that is not currently on offer. In a third case, the small town of Vylkove on the Danube delta welcomed a new hromada. It was formed in October from Vylkove and surrounding villages.
Interviewed the month before, Matvei Ivanov, the then mayor of the town, said that there was a clear economic interest in creating a new community separate from the city of Kiliya to which it had been formerly attached. These different cases suggest that in Bessarabia, decentralization and amalgamation are welcomed only where there is a demonstrable economic interest, as in the case of Vylkove.
In many places, village heads are strongly resisting a process that they assert does not align with local needs. Locals in the Carnegie focus groups said that the public was not getting clear messages from the central government. They fear that decentralization will undercut their almost unchallenged economic and political authority in the region.
Uncertainty is compounded by a lack of information about what will happen when voluntary amalgamation is completed in Locals worry that the remaining towns and villages, which have not agreed to the process, will be forced into restructuring. Most of the law is not at issue. Controversy centers on article 7, which was changed at a late stage by a group of parliamentarians without public consultation.
Pursuing its own national agenda, the new Hungarian government even cited the law as a reason to block meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission. Language rights, and the status of the Russian language in particular, have been a political battleground in Ukraine since independence.
The law giving Russian the status of a regional language was unpopular in western Ukraine. The new law reverses that by prioritizing Ukrainian as the state language of all schools. Other languages can be used for instruction in primary schools, but their usage is restricted in secondary schools. Article 7 makes a distinction between three minority groups.
This apparently applies to Crimean Tatars and, in the Bessarabian context, perhaps to Gagauz. A Gagauz interlocutor interviewed in September was not aware of this distinction and said that Gagauz parents were alarmed by the new law.
A second category is speakers of official EU languages—thus covering the Bulgarians and Romanians of Bessarabia—who may continue to receive at least some of their secondary education in their native language.
They will only be able to study their first language as a distinct subject in secondary school, with all other subjects being taught in Ukrainian. This is likely to be the main battleground over the new law, in eastern Ukraine especially but also in Russian-speaking parts of Odessa Region such as Bessarabia. In Bessarabia, minority communities were poorly informed about the new education reform law and were alarmed by what they heard. Most interlocutors insisted they wanted their children to know Ukrainian so as to be able to receive higher education or get jobs in government service.
But they also pointed to a lack of professional capacity insufficiently qualified Ukrainian teachers in the province to cover all subjects and poor infrastructure dilapidated schools and poor-quality equipment , which would make a quick transition to full Ukrainian-language teaching unfeasible.
If there is serious political fallout from the changes, it is most likely to come from the downgrading of Russian, the traditional lingua franca of the region. These include economic neglect, misuse of resources, the disproportionate influence of local barons who have their own business agendas, and a lack of communication between the center and the regions. Other problems are specific to the region.
The issue is more that locals feel the impact of Kiev in negative terms—manifesting as consistent neglect. The decentralization process has been welcomed in much of Ukraine, as local budgets for healthcare and infrastructure have increased.
The issue of minority-language teaching in schools is sharply felt in Bessarabia, as it is in the Hungarian-speaking regions of Transcarpathia and in parts of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. Here timing is of crucial importance. Locals say that, in principle, they are happy to see their children make a transition to Ukrainian-language instruction so long as this happens over a long period. Most people in Bessarabia insist that the risk of outright conflict is low.
The problem comes when reforms are imposed from above. These issues are already being instrumentalized by local politicians who wield de facto power in their local fiefdoms. What will happen as Kiev tries to extend its post-Euromaidan nation-building agenda to hitherto largely neglected regions—both here in Bessarabia and elsewhere in Ukraine?
Locals have honed this tactic over many years to survive rule by governments in faraway capitals. However, ignoring government reforms is not a policy prescription for a democracy. Bessarabia needs more attention from central government, not less, so long as it is informed by local knowledge. A region with rich farming land that borders the Black Sea, the Danube, and the EU, Bessarabia has great but underutilized economic potential.
Its ethnic diversity should be a source of pride rather than anxiety. Targeted investment is part of the solution. Central government should work harder to direct funding to the struggling small farmers of the region, in partnership with the EU, which has invested in infrastructure projects such as the Odessa—Reni highway. Evans sees in this a sequel of the great increase in peasant proprietorship. I subjoin totals of the domestic animals in thousands :. The figures of reflect the two-year drought, which forced many farmers to sell or butcher their stock, for lack of forage.
There are besides a few thousand water-buffalo, and a few hundred donkeys and mules. Goats also are relatively scarce. Poultry-raising offers many inducements, and many eggs are exported to Germany. In , the official Russian figures gave over two million domestic fowl, over , geese, , ducks and about , turkeys.
Bessarabian wax and honey have been famous for centuries; and the government is promoting silk-culture, on the lines followed in the Banat. The Bessarabian hills were once heavily forested; but reckless exploitation under the Russian regime left the country almost treeless, and the war completed the devastation, since no other fuel was available.
The Roumanian Forestry Dep't has set to work to improve conditions, with Transylvania as a model. As a result of the scarcity of wood and the high freight rates for coal, I find in the Kishineff correspondence of the Bucharest financial journal, Argus, under date of Nov. Bessarabian lakes and rivers, and the Black Sea along its coast, are full of fish, particularly sturgeon whose roe, the caviar, is in great demand , carp, pike, pike-perch, herring, etc.
Fishing is under government supervision, and is capable of much development. The Russians never encouraged industry in Bessarabia; but efforts are now being made to establish woollen-mills and canneries, the raw material for both of which abounds in the country.
The largest industry, employing perhaps workmen, is that of the flour-mills; but there are only a score of modern establishments; less than a hundred use steam-power, some have water wheels, are driven by horses; there are nearly wind-mills, groups of which nestle on the edges of the hills overhanging the villages.
The Roumanian tobacco monopoly has built a large manufactory in Kishineff; there is one sugar mill, at Zarojani Hotin , which utilizes the beets of that region; and when one catalogues a few saw-mills, furniture factories, tanneries, soap works, brick-yards, breweries and distilleries, one exhausts the industrial achievement of the province up to date; the size of the establishments is shown by the Russian figures of , which listed industrial concerns, employing on an average 1.
But the worst legacy of Russian rule, after the astounding illiteracy, is the lack of means of communication. Here Bessarabia is precisely in the condition of our western prairie states before the coming of the automobile. My automobile expeditions in Bessarabia brought back to me prairie shooting-trips in Dakota 35 years ago; dirt roads or trails stretch across country, sometimes plowed completely through by some ambitious farmer, and often paralleled as in Macedonia on either side by tracks worn when the main road is impassable with mud; indeed, just as it was in Dakota, if you don't like the road, you turn in on the prairie itself.
In fact, in the muddy season the Bessarabian peasant habitually takes the hind wheels off his farm wagon, shortens it up and lets the main pole which connects the axles, drag in the mud. The Russians built only four paved roads in all Bessarabia miles from Kishineff to Hanceshti, 50 miles from Kishineff to Orhei, with a branch to Criuleni, 7 miles from Kishineff to Vorniceni and Nisporeni, and about 20 miles from Nona-Sulitza Czernowitz to Hotin. During the war, stretches were built also of the roads connecting Barlad, Zorleni and Basarabeasca, and from Baltz to Ungheni.
The Roumanian engineers are working on a project for about miles of paved highway connecting Kishineff with the main centers, and these latter with the nearest points on the Moldavian highway system. There is to be one north and south highway from Hotin to Ismail via Kishineff; another along the Dniester; a transversal from Jassy in Moldavia through Kishineff to Bender; three running east from the Moldavian centers of Dorohoi, Botoshani and Jassy; one from Copaceni to Soroca, and from Glodeni via Baltz to Floreshti; three in the south connecting Cahul, Bolgrad, Ismail and Galatz; two in the north connecting Baltz and Soroca with Orhei and thus with Kishineff ; one in the south beside the lakes, from Akkerman to Bolgrad; one from Akkerman to Bender; one along the Pruth ; and various connecting highways; miles are classed as "urgent.
The appropriation for Bessarabian highways in the budget was ,, lei; but the distress into which the country was plunged by the terrible crop failure of , coming after the drought of , led to much emergency work, and the program is being speeded up, particularly between Orhei and Baltz, Bolgrad-Ismail, Bolgrad-Reni and Soroca-Baltz. Within a few years, Bessarabia will be as well provided with highways as the other Roumanian provinces. The Russians discouraged the building of highway bridges across the Pruth, and in the Roumanians found only a few inefficient bridges of boats.
The highways and bridges, even in Bessarabia, will usher in this epoch, not follow in its train, as they did in our West, which Roumania so much resembles. The railway situation in Bessarabia in was especially difficult.
There were about locomotives, less than a hundred being fit for use; passenger coaches, plus 33 more out of repair; and out of freight cars and tank cars, only and were usable. The first task of the Roumanians was to reduce the gauge to normal -- 4 ft. My first trip to Bessarabia, in , fell in the midst of this process; the old Russian equipment was still in use; then a third rail was laid, so that normal gauge cars and engines could also use the lines; now, all is standard gauge, except for an English narrow gauge line, the status of which has been in the courts for some time; through sleepers run from Kishineff to Czernowitz and to Bucharest.
A glance at the map will show that the few railroads in Bessarabia were designed to connect the province with Russian centers, and for strategic purposes.
The Roumanians are now working on new lines, to connect Bessarabian centers with each other, to provide important towns now isolated, like Orhei, with railway service, and to connect the interior with the sea and with Moldavia. One important line, that from Kishineff south to Sacaidac Sahaidac , on the road from Bender Tighina to the Danube, is now finished; this eliminates the long detour over to Bender, dangerous also on account of possible Russian raids over the border.
Before the war, a Russian company provided water transport on the Pruth, Dniester and Danube, with some 25 or 30 tugs and motor-boats, and quite a fleet of barges; they carried some 16, car-loads annually, mainly grain.
Commerce is picking up again on the Pruth and Danube, but the Dniester remains closed, pending an arrangement with Soviet Russia. Business in Bessarabia is almost altogether in Jewish hands; of registered manufacturers, two were Poles, three Bulgarians, four Greeks, fifteen Roumanians, eighteen Russians, and Jews. Wholesale and retail business and money-lending are also mainly in their hands. When Kishineff was still Russian, pogroms occasionally took place; one of the older residents of Jassy told me they always knew in the old daps when a pogrom was about to occur, by the influx of Jews from Kishineff.
Since the Russian Revolution, there has been a constant Jewish immigration from the Ukraine into Bessarabia. While Roumania has never devised a quota system so as to keep out Jewish immigration, this inrush has been in the highest degree embarrassing these last few years, particularly in Bessarabia, where business conditions were bad; in Baltz, e.
Nevertheless these incoming Ukrainian Jews were given circulation permits, with which they could move about Roumania like natives, and obtain passports for abroad. It is calculated that over 60, entered Roumania and are now resident there.
I had occasion in , and to admire the relief and educational work done in Kishineff and other centers for these Jews, by Hebrew relief organizations and the Roumanian Government; I was impressed, at a service on March 21, , in the chief synagogue at Kishineff, to hear a patriotic address by the chief rabbi, expressing their gratitude to the government; the whole congregation joined heartily in the Roumanian national anthem.
Lawless elements in Roumania, with large help from outside, have fomented anti-Semitic feeling the past two years; such incidents as those of Teleneshti in Jane have received wide publicity; but that this feeling is not deep is shown by the testimony given by Morris Gest, quoted in the New York Times of August 14, -- "There i. All nationalities enjoy political freedom and social equality. The people are thrifty and hard working, and are making a good fight against the depression and havoc of the war.
Henry Moskowitz, in his report on Jewish Reconstruction , while deploring the vogue of political and social anti-Semitism, bore witness to the efficiency evident in the Jewish trade-schools of Kishineff, Bender and Orhei, and the progress of Jewish agricultural development; he reported that three gold medals were awarded in the Kishineff Exposition of to the Jewish relief organization, the "Ort," and that Queen Marie had personally thanked the officials.
The Roumanian character is naturally tolerant see p. It arose, curiously enough, in the medical schools. No discrimination exists in the Roumanian universities against the Jews, who form a very large percentage of students,, especially in the profession: schools, which have been overcrowded since the war.
Anti-Semitic students suddenly demander that Jewish corpses be provided for dissection in proportion to the number of Jewish students The rabbis forbade such use of Jewish bodies, and the battle was on.
It led to excesses, and has been regrettably exploited by clever politicians. Nevertheless the status of the Jew in Bessarabia has improved enormously since the Russian days of the province; one has only to read Cyrus Adler's book, or a few anecdotes in Prince Urusoff's.
They give a vivid picture of the wretched condition of the Bessarabian Jews a generation ago. The banking situation in Bessarabia, as in the other new provinces, was completely upset by the change in government; the chief banking institutions were branches of the great Russian banks, and it has taken years to wind up their affairs. At the present day, Bessarabia is served by branches of most of the leading Bucharest institutions; incidentally, they handle huge sums transmitted from the United States; many Bessarabian Jews who have found new homes over here, send much money back to their relatives; one Kishineff banker told me that this American money was a saving factor in the general business depression.
The Roumanian banking authorities have set their faces like flint against inflation, and depreciation of the currency; perhaps they have erred a bit in making legitimate accommodation rather difficult. But with the funding of the Roumanian debt by M. Titulesco in December , American capital will doubtless flow into Roumania, where it has an attractive field, and Bessarabian needs will be met.
From on, there was rapid development of cooperative societies in Bessarabia, together with savings banks and loan offices; in , there were loan societies, savings banks, 43 professional savings and loan societies, and 8 Zemstvo loan offices; these had assets of nearly 10,, rubles. There were also 89 government savings banks, with deposits of 9,, rubles. Today, there are toward of these cooperative institutions; these are divided between popular banks, with a paid-in capital of some six million lei, a reserve fund of over twenty million lei, and deposits of over 25,, lei.
I was given, as a typical case, that of Mireni Kishineff , a town of some people, where the town cooperative had a capital of , gold rubles before the war, and has only , paper lei today. They have to deal further with the difficulty of finding trained personnel at the low salaries they offer and complain that politics has found its way into that field also.
Nevertheless these cooperatives have a bright future, being already installed in a country where the farmers now own the land, and stand on the edge of that expansion which has changed our own West so completely during our lifetime. Doubtless American capital will flow into this course also, by way of Bucharest or the big banks in Kishineff, with their close New York affiliations.
Bessarabia, then, is a rich farming and grazing country; but its sad history is not due to its neighbors' covetousness of these privileges. Bessarabia has the doubtful advantage of controlling the mouths of the Danube, the greatest navigable river of Central and Eastern Europe, down which floats the traffic of Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Serbia, Roumania and Bulgaria; and she possesses on the Dniester a series of ports -- Hotin, Bender Tighina and Akkerman Cetatea Alba -- which are the nearest outlets to the sea for Poland and till the founding of Odessa the Ukraine.
So Bessarabia has always been a pawn in contests between Turks, Poles, Hungarians, Austrians and Russians for its strategic advantages. When our era opens, we find the Dacians established in this corner of Europe; Greek traders had settled along the coast, and penetrated inland; and Roman merchants and colonists were filtering in. The Dacians long defied the Roman Empire; Augustus had to give up his dream of subjecting them; but finally Trajan succeeded in A.
Parvan, Director of the Roumanian School of Classical Studies in Rome, has recently shown that knowledge of Latin must have been widespread in Dacia before the Roman conquest; in any case, whether there was Roman colonization on a large scale or not, Latin became the current spoken language of the country, as of Moesia and Noricum, the provinces which formed a connection with Italy.
This Latin has never died out. For a thousand years, no one ever wrote it; it was the despised dialect of shepherds and peasants, who lived under a dozen different governments, many more or less hostile to the language; but the tough conservatism of the Daco-Roman prevailed; religious propaganda, in Reformation daps, committed the language to writing; and during the nineteenth century, Roumanian had a stately literary development.
Roumanian poetry,, based on popular ballads, is especially melodious. This preservation of Latin, from the Adriatic out to the Black Sea, is the more astounding in that the Roman administration of Dacia lasted only about years.
Those were golden years, however-the period that Gibbon and Mommsen pronounced perhaps the happiest that civilized has ever known.
In those generations of peace and law, Dacia was a closely-knit province; excellent roads bound together Transylvania, the Banat, the Bucovina, Moldavia of which Bessarabia is the eastern half and Wallachia. These formed Dacia, just as today they form Roumania; their bond of union is the Roumanian language, the modern form of Dacian Latin.
Not merely is it the prevailing tongue over all this country, but it is spoken by hundreds of thousands more, in widely severed lands, from the Monte Maggiore in Istria, inland from Abbazia, down into the Pindus Mountains in Greece and out beyond the Dniester, in the Ukrainian territories which have recently been formed by the Russian authorities into the Moldavian Soviet Republic.
Indeed, Roumanian acquaintances of mine tell me that during the war they found Roumanian villages in Eastern Siberia; and some years ago in Bessarabia I fell in with a Russian land-owner who, after Denikin's collapse -- he had been an officer in his army -- made his way around through the Caucasus, and was astonished to come upon Roumanian villages there, where the peasants, he said, talk just as they do in Bessarabia. I emphasize the importance of the language a at the very start, because it has been a most important factor in the struggles for union of the different branches of the Roumanian peoples.
It would be interesting to follow the vicissitudes of Bessarabia after the departure of the Roman legions; but Vandals, Goths and Huns need detain us little. The invasions of the Slavs, in the sixth century, were more important. Daco-Roman and Slav must have been as closely in contact for centuries as are Russian and Roumanian peasants in Bessarabia today.
The language was enormously affected, adopting hundreds of Slav words, and even Slav sounds, constructions and syntactical usages, which give a strange cast to the language see pp. In any case, we must not forget that in Bessarabia, Slav and Daco-Roman have been in close and friendly contact for years. Last of the great invasions from the northeast was that of the Tartars, in the thirteenth century. After their power was spent, we discover three Roumanian principalities arising-Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia.
One of the early Wallachian rulers, Mircea the Old, of a family named Basarab, in a document of A. Tartars and Turks were so much impressed by the prowess of the Basarabs that they called their country Basarabia.
This term has been loosely used, sometimes covering even all Roumania, sometimes Wallachia, sometimes Moldavia, but in later centuries prevailingly either the whole district between the Danube, Pruth, Dniester and Black Sea in which sense we use it or the southern part of this region-the Budjak Bugeac. As the Moldavian principality grew in power, its rulers felt the need of a port; Hotin, which commanded a much-used crossing of the Dniester, was their first acquisition.
In a document of , we find mention of a Moldavian governor of Hotin, so that at the time when the Wallachians were established in the south of Bessarabia, the Moldavians were already in possession of its chief northern stronghold.
Alexander the Good of Moldavia, who came to the throne in , found the Tartars weakened by their great defeat of at the hands of the Russians, and drove them from Bender Tighina , which lay on the great highway connecting the interior with the Genoese port of Caffa Theodosia in the Crimea.
The Genoese had another port on the Dniester itself, Akkerman Cetatea Alba , for which they paid tribute to the Tartars. Alexander ousted the Tartars from this region also, some time before , and the Genoese of Akkerman became his tributaries; he confirmed them in all their rights.
Thus early in the fifteenth century, the whole bank of the Dniester became Moldavian. But Alexander was not satisfied. He wanted a port directly on the Danube; and shortly before , he secured Kilia Chilia , which was in the "Land of the Basarabs" -- Wallachia. This was another Genoese trading-center.
The Wallachian princes hated to lose their tribute, and fought for Kilia, but in vain. Alexander and Mircea made a treaty, by which the Sereth Suet and one of its upper affluent became the boundary between Moldavia and Wallachia. Moldavia was now in control of the whole region between Carpathians, Sereth, Danube and Dniester -- a country of some 36, square miles, of which Bessarabia made up almost a half. This little state was bordered by powerful enemies.
To the north lay Poland, anxious for an outlet to the sea. East were the Cossacks, who constantly raided Moldavian territory. Alexander fortified strongly Hotin, Kilia and Akkerman. But a more formidable foe attacked from the south. The Turks had already, in , defeated the Serbs in the Battle of Kossovo; in they conquered Bulgaria.
Bajazid turned north to punish Mircea for his presumption in aiding the Serbs; but Mircea routed him at the gates of Craiova Bajazid got his revenge two pears later, at the Battle of Nicopolis, and Mircea had to cede him Silistra and the coast of the Dobrudja. Then the Turks turned their attention to Moldavia, and attacked Akkerman. Alexander repulsed them; but while he was feverishly strengthening his border cities, the Hungarians and the Poles came to an agreement to divide Moldavia between them.
Poland was to have Bessarabia, Hungary Moldavia proper, with Kilia. Luckily this early partition of Moldavia never was carried out. To judge by the testimony of a French traveler, Guillebert de Lannoy, who came to Akkerman in from Poland, Bessarabia had a good police system. De Lannoy was robbed on the highway not far from Akkerman; within eight hours, the authorities had discovered the robbers, obtained de Lannoy's belongings, and brought the robbers before him all bound for execution.
After Alexander's death, several incompetent rulers frittered away their inheritance; one of them, Peter Aaron, in , three years after the fall of Constantinople, began paying tribute to the Sultan, of gold pieces a year. Hotin had been ceded to the Poles, and Kilia to the Hungarians. But in there came to the throne the most energetic of all the Moldavian monarchs-Stephen the Great.
His first achievement was the recovery of Hotin from the Poles. He paid his vassals who assisted him, with large grants of land in the desolate but fertile interior plains of Bessarabia; we have, e. The map of Bessarabia is covered with place names with such endings or names in -eshti or -eni , which commemorate similar land grants through the centuries.
Our own Southwest was parceled out by the Spanish monarchs after much the same fashion. Stephen next turned his attention to Kilia, which was now in Wallachian and Hungarian hands.
His first attack, in , was repulsed; but early in he succeeded in taking it, and in gratitude founded the famous monastery of Putna, in the Bucovina, which recalls today the magnificence of the Moldavian court. The Hungarians tried to recover Kilia, and Matthias Corvinus led his army well into Moldavia; but Stephen drove him back, and the Moldavian archers thrice shot Matthias himself, who bore the arrow-scars to his dying dap. Meanwhile the Tartars had crossed the Dniester and were ravaging Bessarabia.
Stephen fell upon them and captured their commander, brother of their Khan; and few were the survivors who succeeded in returning to the Ukraine. Deciding that he needed other fortresses on the Dniester between Hotin and Akkerman, Stephen built the stronghold of Orhei, on the Raut, a few miles from the Dniester; and as the crossing of Soroca was unprotected, he fortified that town also.
Stephen anticipated him by a rapid march, scattered his forces, and entered Bucharest, his capital, in triumph, in , setting another prince, a Basarab, on the Wallachian throne. Stephen drew them on to the edge of the great forest at Vaslui; his troops rushed out of the woods, threw the Turks into confusion, and drove them back over the Danube, enslaving great numbers of them Jan. Mohammed II, conqueror of Constantinople, vowed vengeance, and sent a Turkish fleet and Tartar army against Kilia and Akkerman; the fortifications of the latter were hurriedly strengthened and to this day one can read the inscription of , commemorating the raising of the "Great Gate," with the Moldavian ox and star upon it.
Stephen sought aid even from the Pest; the Genoese star had set, their traders having already been driven out by the Turks from Theodosia; he appealed to the Doge of Venice, in a letter which says: "I am certain that the Turks will again come against me this summer, to get my two cities Kilia and Akkerman.
Meanwhile I desire to be aided today, for the time is short, and does not allow us to make more extensive preparations. And Your Highness can consider that these two towns are the whole of Moldavia, that these two fortresses are a bulwark for Hungary and for Poland.
In the spring of Mohammed's preparations were finished; he crossed the Danube on a bridge of boats, and pressed forward into Moldavia. Stephen followed the same tactics as before; he led the enemy on to the edge of the forests; finally, on July 26, he gave battle, at a place called Vale Alba White Valley or Rasboieni.
Mohammed won the day, captured Suceava, the capital of Moldavia, and burned it. But the plague broke out in his army, which was short of provisions; Hotin held out and his Tartar allies were driven across the Dniester; so he compromised with Stephen, leaving him undisturbed in his possessions, but receiving the tribute agreed upon with Peter Aaron, which Stephen had not been paying. Stephen continued to pay this tribute all his reign; but he immediately set about restoring his fortifications; we possess another inscription at Akkerman commemorating his restorations in about And now the Wallachians again attempted to capture Kilia, both in and , but without success.
In , Mohammed died; his successor, Bajazid II, expressed his conviction that "Kilia is the key and the gate to the whole of Moldavia and Wallachia, while Akkerman is the key and the gate to all Poland, Tartary and the Black Sea.
The Black Sea was now a Turkish lake; the Turks held these two cities until late in the eighteenth century, when they again returned for a few decades into Moldavian possession.
The Turks contented themselves with a narrow strip of territory around these cities-the Sanjak of Kilia and the Sanjak of Akkerman-as they did with the cities they wrested from the Wallachians along the Danube-Orshova, Severin, Giurgiu, Braila and Ismail-and their later acquisitions from Moldavia of Bender and Hotin But they otherwise interfered little with the administration of the Roumanian principalities, which maintained their independence.
Indeed, the treaties drawn with the Turks at this time expressly forbid them to build mosques or own property in Roumanian territory, or to marry Roumanian women a.
No Turkish pashas ever ruled in Wallachia or Moldavia, as they did in Hungary. But they did have complete possession of these border cities which they had conquered, and of the adjacent sanjaks; these latter were however cultivated by Roumanian peasants, whom the Turks left undisturbed in their language and religion.
Bessarabia, then, never formed an integral part of the Turkish Empire. Except for these border sanjaks, Bessarabia remained part of Moldavia, which the Ports recognized as a sovereign state.
This point is so important, as affecting historic claims upon Bessarabia, that we must glance at the treaties just referred to-remembering that during this same period, Hungary was a Turkish pashalik for a century and a half, in which Mohammedan pashas governed, and Turks had every right and privilege, including that of building mosques and worshiping according to the forms of their religion.
But by the terms of the treaties with the Roumanian Principalities, the Turks bound themselves to respect the independence of their colleagues, rather than vassals. I use the text printed in Hamangiuls General Code of Roumania. The Princes, Christians, shall be elected to the Metropolitan and the boyars great land-owners. The Roumanians were to pay 10, gold pieces as tribute to the Sultan, in return for military protection; that however did not make them Turkish subjects, nor bring them within the Turkish Empire; for pears the United States paid a larger sum to the Bey of Barbary, for security against the pirates; that did not however make us his subjects.
The Turks shall not be able to buy or own land in Moldavia, nor settle in the country, nor have or build any kind of mosque. In , Turkish Pashas had ruled Hungary from Buda for over a century; the Pasha of Temeshvar governed the Banat; prayers rose to Allah from mosques all over the Hungarian plain; Roumania was almost entirely encircled by Turkish territory; yet this treaty also begins: "The Porte recognizes Moldavia as a free and independent country.
The people of Moldavia shall enjoy, as in the past, all their liberties. Mohammedan religious services shall be forbidden on all Moldavian territory Moldavia shall keep the title of an independent country. This title shall be reproduced in all communications addressed by the Ottoman Porte to the Prince. Rakovsky, and our own State Department. The inhabitants of this territory shall enjoy the rights and privileges assured to the Principalities The Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia shall continue to enjoy, under the suzerainty of the Porte and under the guarantee of the Contracting Powers, the privileges and immunities of which they are in possession There shall be no special right of interference in their internal affairs.
The Sublime Porte engages to maintain for the aforesaid Principalities an independent and national administration. Furthermore, the Convention of Paris, of Aug. To return to our narrative.
At first, Stephen had dreams of recovering his lost Bessarabian cities with Polish help, and even accepted Polish over-lordship ; but as he discovered that King Casimir was treating with Turkey behind his back, he broke his new alliance, and raided the Polish territory of Pocutia. Casimir's successor, John Albert, set out to chastise Stephen, and annex Moldavia; but instead Stephen defeated the Poles in his last great battle Dumbrava-Roshie, in , and annexed Pocutia to Moldavia, with the cities of Kolomea, Sniatyn and Halicz.
Stephen the Great died in Although he had lost Kilia and Akkerman to the Turks, he had done much for Bessarabia, and a number of its settlements date from his time. His successors fought among themselves for their inheritance; and one of them, Peter Raresh, had to meet in an overwhelming combination-the Poles attacking Hotin, the Tartars crossing the Dniester, and Soleyman the Magnificent, with a hundred heavy cannon, crossing the Danube and ascending the Pruth.
Peter was deserted by his vassals, the boyars landed proprietors ; the Sultan entered Suceava and set up a rival prince of Moldavia, while Peter took refuge in Transylvania. Soleyman next sent his janissaries to capture Bender-then, as today, called Tighina; after its capture, Soleyman built over its fortress, and called it in Turkish Bender-The Gate.
Then Soleyman succeeded in annexing also the Budjak; the boundary line of this district begins at Salcutza in the Botna Valley, runs due west, cutting the Cogalnic below Gradishte, and reaches the Ialpug above Javgur Javhur , following the Ialpug down to the border of the Sanjak of Kilia. The Turks had now succeeded in appropriating the eastern border of Bessarabia except Hotin , and the southern strip-Kilia and the Budjak.
But they seem to have had little influence on the life of most of Bessarabia, and even the Roumanian peasants in their sanjaks. Conversions to Mohammedanism, frequent in Bosnia, Albania and Bulgaria, seem to have been rare here, and religious persecution almost unheard-of. Paul of Aleppo, writing of the life of the Christians in these sanjaks, and especially about Ismail, remarks that it is "agreeable, both because the inhabitants can enjoy law and order, and because the taxes, except for the harach, are insignificant.
A number of Roumanian documents connected with the ordination of priests in these Ukrainian towns have been preserved, and some are published in vol. Up to this point, we have heard merely of the border cities of Bessarabia.
Not till have we any documentary evidence of the village of Kishineff, today its chief city. In , his great-granddaughter sold her rights to Kishineff to a certain Dragosh for Tartar zlotys. Dragosh's wife sold her claims to Kishineff in to Constantine Roshca for gold-pieces; and we learn from a document of that Basil Lupu of Moldavia granted the monks of the monasteries of St.
Vineri of Jassy and of Balicai in Jassy, that they should receive tithes "of all the bread and the vegetables and flag and hemp and revenues of Kishineff.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a period of slow disintegration for Moldavia and Turkey, but of rapid rise for Austria and Russia. Whereas the solicitude of the earlier rulers of Moldavia, in their anxiety to retain Bessarabia, had been to guard themselves against Poles and Tartars and Turks, new and more powerful neighbors now appeared on the scene.
The last great struggles of Turks, Tartars and Poles on Moldadian soil occurred early in the seventeenth century, culminating in a great defeat of the Poles; the Peace of Hotin restored this city to Moldavia, in Three years later another treaty stipulated that the Tartars should be expelled from the Budjak in southern Bessarabia; but the latter, under a talented leader, Cantemir Mirza, held out for over ten years; and later Tartar hordes which ravaged Bessarabia were so savage that a contemporary, the boyar Toader Ianovitch, states that "between Dniester and Pruth not a house was left.
Entering Kilia with his army, in the campaign against Cantemir Mirza, he is petitioned by the Moldavians there resident to build them a church; and the inscription commemorating the consecration of the church of St. Nicholas, under "John Basil Voyevode, by the grace of God ruler of the land of Moldavia," is still in existence.
He says that in the city there were houses of Tartars, with four mosques; in the extensive suburbs, houses of Tartars, with five mosques, and houses of "schismatics" of different nationality, with two orthodox churches, one of them built by Basil Lupu. Basil may also have built the church of St. Nicholas in Ismail, which Paul of Aleppo tells us had in , families, Roumanian and Bulgarian.
The Cossacks now supplanted the Tartars in the role of raiders from over the Dniester. They had just won their independence from the Poles, and were so redoubtable that Basil made a family alliance with their Hatman, giving his daughter Ruganda to the heir apparent, Timush. From FamilySearch Wiki. Introduction [ edit edit source ] Bessarabia is a historical region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the north and east and the Prut River on the west and the Black Sea on the south.
Category : Former Countries. Navigation menu Personal tools English. Namespaces Page Talk. Views Read View source View history.
0コメント