When the Republic of Moldova became independent, the people didn’t know to show initiative and still waited for someone to give them orders. This is a reminiscence of the Soviet period, when all the actions were dictated by one command center, doctor habilitate of history Valentin Constantinov stated in an interview with IPN News Agency. According to him, the whole Soviet Union was based on terror and repression as the only method of keeping power.
Historian Valentin Constantinov said that when they came to Bessarabia, the Soviets repressed any trace of Romanian presence and imbedded the feeling of fear and inferiority in the native people.
“In 1944, together with the Romanian army, all the Romanians withdrew from Bessarabia, up to the last secretary of a mayor’s office. Several weeks before the war, it was decided to arrest all those who cooperated with the Romanian administration while Bessarabia was part of Greater Romania. In the Soviet Union, there was a thinking unit but Khrushchev came and exposed Stalin. Brezhnev then came and condemned Khrushchev for voluntary actions in the economy. Only Stalin didn’t expose Lenin even if they weren’t great friends,” stated Valentin Constantinov.
Even if the terror was an ordinary phenomenon in the Soviet period, the Russian propaganda managed to keep the population in an illusion of welfare and stability. All the leaders of the Soviet Union tried to keep power by repression. This phenomenon had been perpetuated for tens of years.
“In that period, they didn’t know much about repressive actions. They hushed up the nature of propaganda. When an explosion occurred in metro in Moscow, a terrorist act was committed but everything was hushed up. During the time of Khrushchev, the people expected the situation will change but it wasn’t meant to be. During the civil war, there was immeasurable anarchy, disarray in Russia. Order had to be made. But how? Through terror! They liquidated any democracy so as not to lose power,” stated the doctor habilitate of history.
Valentin Constantinov noted that Moldovan society still suffers because of its affiliation to the Soviet Union as the Soviet period deprived the people of any civic initiative.
“We do not have people who are able to act on their own. We have people who are waiting for orders from the central administration. It happened so also in the case of our Independence, when the people overnight woke up independent and didn’t know who would be giving orders to them.”
The interview entitled “Where does nostalgia for dictator and autocratic leaders of the USSR come from and what effects does it produce?” was held by IPN News Agency in the framework of the project “100 years of USSR and 31 years without USSR: Nostalgia for Chimeras” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
