Bălți steppe

The Bălți steppe (German: Belzer steppe ) is an arid , treeless grassy landscape in the northwest of the Republic of Moldova . It belongs to the historical Bessarabia landscape and was also inhabited by German settlers in the 19th century.

The Bălți steppe is a hilly landscape and has partly fertile black earth soils . Forests and trees are only present in small areas. They are concentrated near the banks of the Dniester and Răut rivers as well as the numerous lakes and tributaries. All rivers flow in a south-easterly direction with a slight gradient and flow into the Black Sea . Most of the steppe rivers fall almost dry in summer. The climate of the area is continental , with hot, dry summers and cold winters.

The agricultural use of this steppe region includes the cultivation of grain (wheat and maize) and sunflowers; The breeding of horses, cattle and sheep is also important.

history

Historically, the bălţi steppe forms home to a Tartar -Völkerschaft of the tribe Association of Golden tray . Several centuries earlier, Bessarabia was under the rule of the Pechenegs . Around 1511 a creeping campaign of conquest began from the south under Sultan Bayezid II. The area was initially left to Tatar shepherds of the Nogaier horde . From the beginning of the 16th century until 1859, the Principality of Moldova , a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire , formed its western neighbor. This fertile area was the target of the Russian and Habsburg expansions in the 18th and 19th centuries. From 1812 the border between the Ottoman Empire and Russia ran along the Prut River . Russia established the Governorate of Bessarabia in the allocated area . The capital became the Central Bessarabian Kishinew (Chișinău). Mikhail Semjonowitsch Vorontsov became the governor general of New Russia and Bessarabia in 1823 .

Until the collectivization and mechanization of agriculture in the Soviet era, cattle were more common in livestock husbandry than horses. The Bessarabian farmers mainly used oxen as draft animals when tilling their arable land, but the immigrant Bessarabian Germans only used horses. German emigrants, whom the Russian Tsar Alexander I called into the country as colonists from 1813, ran as independent farmers on their own land.

literature

• N. Negrus (k. Austrian Viceconsul zu Belz): Communications on trade, industry and means of transport from the field of statistics in general, according to reports to the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Commerce . Ed .: Direction of administrative statistics. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1851, Conditions of Agriculture and Trade in the Russian Province of Bessarabia, p. 231-247 .

Coordinates: 47 ° 46 ′ 0 ″  N , 27 ° 50 ′ 0 ″  E