After the Russian Empire collapsed, returning home, to the motherland, was the only way out for Bessarabia and this thing happened. The national emancipation movement became more vigorous, doctor of history Ion Varta stated in a public debate held by IPN.
According to the historian, after the collapse of that empire, the Romanian national movement evolved into a national liberation movement. As a result of that revolution of February 1917, Russia became a republic with a modern democratic regime and was ahead of most of the European countries in this regard. In an empire consisting of captive nations, the granting of the freedom of assembly, the freedom of the press and other freedoms caused an implosion from inside and the empire collapsed before the eyes of the whole world at an absolutely spectacular pace.
Ion Varta noted that a real revolution happened in the collective mentality together with the coming of Lenin in Russia and the promotion of the idea that the soldiers should turn their arms against the own governments. The about 1 million Russian soldiers deployed on the Romanian front abandoned the military units, deserted from the battlefield and returned home. Bessarabia was a passage boulevard for those dissatisfied soldiers who robbed, killed, raped and so on.
The doctor of history said that Bessarabia, in the summer of 1917, as it turned into a passage boulevard for anarchist elements, witnessed a cruel slaughter. “There were probably thousands of killings. There are no exact statistics, but there are documents showing this and there are famous personalities who became victims of those elements of the Russian army,” stated Ion Varta.
The public debate entitled “Great Union of 1918: lessons for past, present and future” was the 24th installment of IPN’s project “Impact of the Past on Confidence and Peace Building Processes” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
