The events that happened after June 28, 1940 cannot be described as “liberation by the Soviet troops”, as various sources state. According to the permanent expert of IPN’s project Igor Boțan, the pro-Soviets in Bessarabia constituted about 10%, being especially from cities, representatives of minorities. But this does not mean that 100% of the population welcomed this act of occupation, the expert stated in a public debate staged by IPN News Agency.

“What kind of liberation were the Bessarabians waiting for?” asked the expert. “Especially when some of the peasants who cared a lot about traditional values were ‘freed’ by militant antichrists, who deported them and took everything from them.”

According to Igor Boțan, the occupation of 1940 differs radically from the Union of Bessarabia with Romania of 1918. “The abdication of the Tsar of Russia in March 1917 meant that the population of Bessarabia, which did not have Russian citizenship, but obeyed the Tsar, remained without the one whom it supposedly obeyed. At the same time, the People’s Council appeared in Bessarabia as a representative body that had the same legitimacy that the soviets in Russia had after the tsar’s abdication and had the right to decide the fate of Bessarabia. In such circumstances, the People’s Council had a free hand to decide the fate of Bessarabia, having the highest degree of legitimacy. That’s why the Union of Bessarabia with Romania was absolutely natural, legal and legitimate, while the act of 1940 was an absolutely illegal one.”

The expert also compared the Soviet invasion of Bessarabia in 1940 with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “In 1940, as can be seen from documents, the promotion of the world communist revolution was in the foreground. Now, in 2022, the invasion is the result of a resentment and the goal formulated by President Putin is to gather together the lands that they consider Russian lands,” said Igor Boțan.

In the expert’s opinion, the Soviet Union ended with dissolution because it was an unsuccessful project. “If the project collapsed, we have nothing to regret because it was built on criminal foundations. For the Bolsheviks, not the law as a tool mattered. What mattered for them was what they believed, that there is Marxism as a science and all the crimes they commit will be justified by the happiness that the people will obtain later. That happiness was described in George Orwell’s novels “1984” and “Animal Farm”. The author was inspired by what he personally experienced during the Spanish Civil War. By the way, he was a convinced socialist,” stated the permanent expert of IPN’s project.

The public debate entitled “June 28, 1940 between celebration and catastrophe” was the 39th installment of the project “Impact of the Past on Confidence and Peace Building Processes”. IPN Agency implements the project with the support of the German “Hanns Seidel” Foundation.