The aggressive Romanism threatens to the world in Transdniestria

The book “Impact on the East: aggressive Romanism from the beginning of XX century to the present” was published in Transdniestria. It is the academic work over which the leading scientists worked: historians, political scientists, sociologists and philosophers. What is “aggressive Romanism”?, “How Transdniestrian Moldavian Republic lives today?”, tells the head of the Russian history department of the Institute of State and Law of Transdniestria State University, the Candidate of History, professor Nikolay Babilunga.

- Nikolay Vadimovich! Is it the truth, that there is no history course of the state in Moldova institutes and the students in Transdniestria study the history of Moldova?

- Really, there is only one institute where the students study the history of Moldova. It is the Institute of State and Law of Transdniestria State University where I have the honor to head the department of the Russian history. The history of Russia is taught under the Russian textbooks and the Russian standards, the history of Ukraine and history of Moldova is taught also. We consider the history of Russia as single whole history, as though it wasn't called.

And naturally enough that we teach the history of Moldova, but the one thing is interesting: this subject isn't taught in general anywhere. The history the Romanian is taught only in modern Moldova; it is curious that such course is absent even in Romania! It is any antiscientific course in general. The ethnos is not the state, here is the matter of more ethnographic things.

It is strict: we teach the history during the period from the lithic age till our time. And more, we still teach the history of Transdniestrian Moldavian Republic.

- More recently the book “Impact on the East: aggressive Romanism from the beginning of XX century to the present” was published, edited by you. Could you tell firstly about the book: what its structure, on what materials your conclusions are based?

- I headed the author's group which was engaged in book preparation. Three public organizations have acted as the initiators of the edition: the Union of the Moldavians, the Union of the Ukrainians and the Union of the Russian communities of Transdniestria. The general circulation of the book will make three thousand copies.

The book is made by analytical articles, sketches; we result the mass of documents which have found out in archives, memoirs of eyewitnesses. There are simply shaking documents – they transfer an epoch essence. Here is an example: the garrison commandant, captain Dumitriu during the Romanian occupation in 1918 in a place of Edintsy, has issued the order how the local population should behave, having met the Romanian gendarme. And here that it is written there:

“The Romanian officers should be welcomed by the population of a place of Edintsy
as follows:

1. Each passer-by should stop on a place, turn face to the chief and heroically, with a kind smile on the face to take off the cap from a head quickly and to make the deep bow to the earth.
2. For population training to this reception and for exact and strict order carrying out, the commandant cap will be rushes on a stick along the streets of the place at different time of the day and all inhabitants should to welcome it, according to the first point of the present order.
The control for its performance is assigned to the chief of a gendarme post Elifteresku”.

And such document, which is rather eloquent, is not single. There are a lot of them and we gave them in the book. We have passed along the villages from the north to the south, met the people, already elderly who remembered the years of occupation. And I will tell you that we haven't seen any person who would tell: what it was the fine time and how we were happy … But all told us about the horrors of occupation. The Romanian invaders treated the won people as the population which is liable to destruction or, at least, is worthy contempt and mockery. There was no a trace, which would speak about the presence of the civilized European nation.

- The present policy can be simply connected with history. What is a situation now in your opinion?

- The Transdniestrian Moldavian Republic has established itself as the state; moreover, our statehood unlike Moldova though it is not recognized by other countries, but is normal, working. And there is a doubled consciousness in Moldova today and the political class is split on two parts. One of them considers that there are no Moldavians - Stalin has thought up everything … The others are assured that they, their fathers and great-grandfathers were the Moldavians.

I will remind that the Moldavian hospodars Dmitry Kantemir, Stephen the Great, Alexander Lopushnyan considered themselves as the Moldavians! What the Romanians here?! They appear in XIX century in general.

When the so-called “Gorbachev perestroika” has begun in the Baltic States, Georgia and the other countries with “reviving national consciousness”, so the split went by a principle: we are the friends and they are the strangers, migrants and invaders. It has turned out in Moldova differently - the title nation here has appeared to be split by the efforts of the political class. Here there were not only the slogans in great demand which are thought out by a part of poets and writers (as Grigore Vieru's known slogan “Suitcase! Railway Station! Russia!” or “Russian Ivan, gather a suitcase!” but also have remembered the old fascist slogans of the Romanian Iron guard, - “The Russians are for Dnestr, the Jews are to Dnestr!” and “Let’s drown the Russians in Jewish blood!”). But as the insignificant part of local “creative” intelligentsia considered itself as the presents “grafted Romanians”, so there was an inevitable split in the most title nation. The majority of people consider themselves as the Moldavians all the same though the most active, I even would say, the loud part calls themselves as the Romanians. Their purpose is obvious – the association with Romania in the long-term future or the close future. All those political cataclysms which occur in Moldova also result from here.
As to Transdniestria, so we have no such: and the Moldavians, the Russians and the Ukrainians look forward equally, namely pro-Russian. And when they supported the creation of the republic, they supported Russia and integration. And our statehood is stronger, more fundamental in this sense. There are no splits and are not expected.

- The amalgamation of Romania and Moldova – whose is the project?

- Just there is a speech about it in the book. We allocate three waves of an aggressive impact the Romanians for the east.

- Really Drang nach Osten …

- Yes, it means “impact on the East” in the translation from German language -. That was the ancient slogan of the German knights and it then was widely used by Nazi propagation for a designation of German expansion on the east. But this slogan is forgotten already in Germany for a long time that you would not say about Romania. Romania has kept it as the political program. How many lands the Romanian state has obtained from Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary! But, as the documentary materials show, namely “the east policy” of Bucharest always differed by special irreconcilability, aggression and hatred, directed against the Moldavians, Ukrainians, Russians and other east neighbors.

It is all goes from XIX century. The Romanian bourgeoisie in its second half has been very aggressively adjusted in relation to the neighbors. There was an aspiration to create the mythical country Romania Мare. Do you remember what Ostap Bender has told to frontier guards, passing through Dnestr? He has told, “Long live, Great Romania! Trayasku Romania Mare!” And he has learnt this phrase specially, but it has not helped him – we remember what all has come to an end …

If to go into the history, so this movement has been arisen in the end of XVIII century in in several Protestant monasteries of Transylvania, which wanted to break Romania away from the orthodox world. Here all these baizes have begun, here are the roots. Prove that the Romanians are lineal descendants of ancient Romans and the name tells about it ostensibly. But actually the Gipsys were named so.

It is interesting to notice that those concepts of the Romanian history which have been arisen at this particular time aren't exposed to any critical understanding and they knock them to the young generation literally.

- You have told about the first wave and when was the second?

- The matter is of the period since 1918 and before liberation of Moldova by the Soviet armies. Then the factories and plants, schools and libraries were closed in the occupied krai, the books in the Russian were simply eliminated, even the pre-revolutionary classics. The land has been taken away from the peasants. All languages, except the Romanian have been forbidden and the Moldavians are declared not by separate independent ethnos, but the second-grade Romanians “spoiled” ostensibly by Slavic blood.

Any protest performances were cruelly suppressed. The quantity of the citizens of Bessarabia who subjected to repression were the hundreds thousands. One doctor was on 75 thousand inhabitants and Bessarabia has far overtaken all countries and regions of Europe of that time according to death rate. The population flight from krai has accepted unprecedented forms on the mass character.
The Romanians together with the Hitlerites have carried out the second attempt of “impact on the East” on June 22, 1941 and their appetites weren't limited only with Bessarabia and Bukovina at all. Having attached these territories to Romania and having transformed them into governorships, Bucharest has received the lands to the east from Dnestr, the so-called Transnistria, from Hitler in “time use”. Tiraspol has been defined firstly as the administrative center of a new governorship and then has been transferred to Odessa which has been named by invaders as “Antonescu”.

Then the Romanian armies ran from under Stalingrad to Bucharest without a stop. Ion Antonescu and his fascist clique have been shot as military criminals. Nikolay Chaushescu, naturally, couldn't show any territorial claims directly to the Soviet Union, but declared, “I was in Bessarabia before the war, but didn't see any Moldavians there”. And the Romanians continued to assert that there are no any Moldavians …

- The third wave could arise only because the great state Soviet Union has ceased to exist.

It has begun just in the agony of the so-called “Gorbachev perestroika” and the breakdown of the Soviet Union. First they were rather afraid to say that the Moldavians are the Romanians, argued on “the divided nation” which was under “colonial sovereignty” of Russia for many years. Romania, one of the most backward countries of Europe, the generous monetary streams have suddenly begun to flow on payoff of selling politicians of Moldova, journalists and writers, historians and political scientists, linguists and other false “elite” of national intelligentsia.

But now they have changed the tactics radically. They don't name the Moldavian people as the people of the second grade any more though continue to consider that as the self-evident fact. The large quantity of youth was trained at schools and universities of Romania, has received the corresponding ideological and world outlook injections. There is the exclusion of the Russian Orthodox Church from republic and the change of it to Bessarabian mother country which is a part of the Romanian machinery of state.

That is characteristic: the matter is not simply of free training in the Romanian universities of students from Moldova – they actively behave in the territories which were included once into the structure of Bessarabia (Chernivtsi, Khotyn, Izmail, Reni). The population is exposed to very strong processing there. That is, the soil for new territorial captures in the east actually prepares: the tactics has changed, but the strategic target remained the same.

- Will you continue the work?

- The author's group thinks now of the edition of the second volume of the book and also about the translation into the Moldavian and Ukrainian languages. It is very important work, after all the ideologists of the aggressive Romanism don't want to suffer the defeat once again and use the other methods now. The president of Romania Trajan Basescu has proclaimed nevertheless that in 25 years the border of Europe will pass across Dnestr and Moldova, certainly, will unite with Romania. But to reach the purposes, it is necessary to prepare all population, to transform their consciousness in tabula rasa that in translation from the Latin means “pure board”, as it is known. They also want to write on such board only that is necessary for them.

- Nikolay Vadimovich, you wrote in one of the articles that the referendum could become a solution of Transdniestria problem, the same referenda which have been held at civilized “fraud” of Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example …

- But the matter is that they don't want to spend a referendum categorically! That is the matter. Don’t they organize such referendum if have been assured of success?! I will give an example from history when in 1924 there were negotiations between the Soviet and Romanian delegations. And then the Soviet party has suggested to make a referendum under the aegis of the international organization. It is called as the League of the Nations … The essence was simple: let the people of Bessarabia define the destiny – whether they want to be as a part of the USSR or as a part of Romania, or to create the state? The Romanians have refused such variant flatly and have actually ruined the conference.

Why did they do that? Because they perfectly understand then and now, what will be a voting outcome. That's why they oppose the people rights to decide the destiny.

- Soon the presidential election will pass in Transdniastrian Moldavian Republic. Do you expect any surprises?

- The elections will pass according to the republic constitution. Five candidates struggle for a post of the president; there is a struggle between them now. It is the people of different views, but all of them are similar in one: our republic will be! There are no doubts in it. Any politician who would declare that Transdniestria should pass to Moldova and then to become the part of Romania under circumstances, would become a political corpse at that very moment as he has said these words.