The actions taken by the Soviet Union in relation to the Bessarabians in 1940 cannot be called “liberation” as they represented “occupation”, the permanent expert of IPN’s project Igor Boțan stated in a public debate titled “Effects of the Iasi-Chisinau Operation 80 years later”.

According to him, in a province where 90% were peasants, with faith in God, those who blew up their churches could not be liberators and this is rather the behavior of occupiers. At the same time, 1944 saw the reoccupation because World War II was started by two partners, fascist Germany and the USSR, which then quarreled and became competitors.

Igor Boțan noted that in historical literature, especially in the states of Central and Eastern Europe, there has been a controversy with Soviet historians in Russia about the liberation-occupation dilemma since the communist period. “Those who liberate are honored and withdraw, and those who are liberated continue their lives freely as they consider appropriate. It was not the case. That’s why there is this controversy. As far as Bessarabia is concerned, things are much simpler to explain here. World War II began a week after the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Two states, which, although they were not allies, acted by common accord by dividing Poland, then occupying the Baltic countries, part of Finland and Bessarabia,” said Igor Boțan.

In the expert’s opinion, what happened was occupation because when they insist on the 1940 liberation, the people of Bessarabia say that they did not ask for any liberation. “The decision to join Bessarabia to Romania was taken by an absolutely legitimate body, equal to the legitimacy of Petrosovet in Russia. The Bessarabians were not citizens of the Russian Empire. The citizens of Bessarabia had the right to decide their fate,” he said.

Igor Botan voiced hope that the mentality of Moldovan fellow citizens will reach the capacity to condemn Nazism, and these will keep in memory the crimes of the Bolshevik/Soviet regime. He said that the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the commemoration of the victims of the communist and fascist, Nazi regimes. In Moldova, every year on August 23, the victims of World War II are commemorated and this event can become a landmark for rethinking things.

The expert argued that an unbiased attitude is needed based on the works of historians so as to better understand the period through which the population of Bessarabia went and in response to follow the right path, which is the integration into the EU, so that the Moldovans join the community of states that fight for peace and for the free development of peoples.

The public debate entitled “Effects of the Iasi-Chisinau Operation 80 years later” was the 40th installment of IPN’s project “Impact of the past on confidence- and peace-building processes”. IPN Agency implements the project with support from the German Hanns Seidel Foundation.