Tatarbunary revolt
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The Tatarbunary uprising was a Bolshevik- initiated popular uprising in Romania that occurred around September 15-18, 1924. It mainly took place in and around the city of Tatarbunary , which is located in Budjak as the southern part of Bessarabia . Today the area belongs to the Tatarbunary Raion in Ukraine . The uprising was initiated by a pro-Soviet revolutionary committee. Their aim was to end the “Romanian occupation ” in Bessarabia and to create a Moldovan Soviet republic . A few weeks later, the Soviet Union founded the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic about 100 km away on the east bank of the Dniester .
background
After the First World War , relations between Romania and the Soviet Union were tense due to the "Bessarabian question". Before the war, Bessarabia was part of the Russian Empire and split off in the revolutionary turmoil of 1917 to join Romania in 1918. The Soviet Union did not recognize the Anschluss and viewed the split as a Romanian annexation . In order to improve the tense relations, talks between a Soviet and a Romanian delegation took place in Vienna in March and April 1924 . When the Soviets proposed a referendum in Bessarabia on the question of affiliation, the Romanians broke off the talks, pointing out that this had never happened in the Soviet Union.
A Soviet party committee was founded in southern Bessarabia in 1922, made up of the two Comintern agents Andrei Kliushnikov (Nenin) and Nicolai Shishman (Afanasiev) as well as the three locals Ivan Bejanovici (Kolţov or Pugaciov), Ivan Dobrovolski (Gromovcev) and Iustinish Almazov) existed. The group was not subordinate to the Romanian Communist Party , but directly to the Soviet Union. She organized revolutionary committees in the three southern districts of Bessarabia: Cahul , Ismajil and Cetatea Albă . They existed in 25 villages, mostly inhabited by Russians and Ukrainians, as well as in cities. The individual committees consisted of 20 to 30 people and a commander. Before and during the Romanian-Soviet talks in Vienna in 1924, Soviet agents infiltrated southern Bessarabia and made propaganda for a referendum. Weapons and ammunition were also brought into the country for a coming uprising. Although Romania's border with the Soviet Union was hermetically sealed, armed groups from the Soviet Union entered Bessarabia in around 100 cases via the Black Sea and committed attacks from 1921 onwards .
revolt
On September 11, 1924, another armed group from the Soviet Union invaded Bessarabia. Around 200 to 300 people came across Lake Sassyk in boats . In the small village of Nikolayevka , the group shot the mayor, his wife and the village clerk and set the mayor's office on fire. The local population, who were of Russian origin, was called to fight for freedom against Romanian rule. The insurgents then attacked further settlements in southern Bessarabia, which had since grown to 4,000 to 6,000 men due to the resident Russian and Ukrainian population. Among them was the market town of Tatarbunary with a population of 9000 , which became the center of the uprising. On September 15, 1924, insurgents occupied the official buildings of Tatarbunary and proclaimed a Free Soviet Republic of Bessarabia . In another village, the gendarmerie commander managed to escape to Sarata , where he mobilized volunteers among Bulgarian and Bessarabian German settlers to oppose the rebels. On September 16, 1924, the two parties engaged in a gun battle lasting several hours in Tatarbunary. The Deputy Interior Minister Gheorghe Tătărescu initially had Tatarbunary bombed. Romanian army units then retook the place on September 18, 1924. The Romanian army put down the uprising within three days. 3,000 people are said to have died and 1,600 people were arrested in the fighting, as well as in the army's subsequent punitive and cleanup operations.
Process and evaluation
Almost 500 of the 1,600 insurgents arrested had to appear before a military court from 1924 . At the end of 1925, the court sentenced 85 people. The heaviest sentences were life-long forced labor for one and 15 years of forced labor for two defendants. Another 23 people received prison sentences of five to 10 years; the remaining sentences between one and three years.
The Romanian authorities viewed the uprising as an act of terror by the Soviet Union to destabilize Romania and prepare for an attack by the Red Army . As a result of the uprising, in 1924 they banned the Romanian Communist Party . Even today, the Dutch historian and Eastern Europe expert Wim van Meurs sees the uprising as instigated by communist agitators from the Dniester region . The action was well timed between the failed Soviet-Romanian talks in Vienna in March / April 1924 and the proclamation of the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in October 1924. Although the insurgents had political slogans such as “Long live the Soviet power”, “Long live Soviet Bessarabia ”and“ We demand unification with Soviet Ukraine ”, Ukrainian and Russian authors today believe that the causes of the uprising were also social and economic. The Bessarabian protagonists of the uprising were almost exclusively of Ukrainian and Russian origin and economically far worse off than the local Romanian, Bessarabian German and Bulgarian population groups. An economic crisis prevailing in Romania at this time and a drought with famine are likely to have exacerbated the situation .
literature
- Ute Schmidt : The uprising of Tatar Bunar 1924 in: Bessarabia. German colonists on the Black Sea . German Cultural Forum Eastern Europe, Potsdam 2008, ISBN 978-3-936168-20-4 , ( Potsdam Library Eastern Europe - History ).
Web links
- The Tatar-Bunar Episode (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ^ Biographical encyclopedia on the history of Southeastern Europe: Tătărescu, Gheorghe