Danubius International Conferences, 9th International Conference The Danube - Axis of European Identity

Peasants and Collective Farms in Southern Bessarabia: the Bloody Harvest of 1944-1953th

Liliya Tsyganenko
Last modified: 2019-06-18

Abstract

The restoration of Soviet power in Southern Bessarabia in 1944 raised before the communist administration the question of the speedily need to eradicate the “bourgeois ideology” and to spread the communist ideals in the region. The majority of the population of the region, which was represented by various ethnic groups (Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Moldovans, Gagauz, Albanians, etc.), wanted to preserve both national peculiarities and land ownership. However, neither the first nor the second did not answer the purpose of the communist government, which already had the bloody experience of "pacifying" the peoples by organizing hunger, deportations and repression. The inhabitants of Southern Bessarabia felt this fully in the period 1944-1953. On the basis of archival documents and memories of the direct participants in the events, we are trying to restore the historical truth about the events of those years.