Bessarabian question

The Bessarabian question, Bessarabian issue or Bessarabian problem (Romanian: Problema basarabeană or chestiunea basarabeană; Russian: Бессарабский вопрос or бессарабская проблема) is the name given to the controversy over the ownership of the geographic region of Bessarabia that began with the annexation of the region by the Russian Empire from the Romanian principality of Moldavia in 1812 through the Treaty of Bucharest and which continued with the independence and union of Bessarabia with Romania in 1917, the occupation and annexation of the region by the Soviet Union in 1940, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that caused the emergence of two new states that each controlled parts of Bessarabia: Moldova and Ukraine.

[1] Throughout the early Cold War, the issue of Bessarabia remained largely dormant in Romania.

[2] Starting with the 1960s, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nicolae Ceaușescu practiced a policy of distancing from the Soviet Union, but the debate over Bessarabia was discussed only in scholarship fields such as historiography and linguistics, not at a political level.

As late as November 1989, as Soviet support decreased, Ceaușescu brought up the Bessarabian question once again during the 14th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, where he denounced the Soviet invasion[6] and demanded the condemnation and annulment of all agreements concluded during the Second World War with Nazi Germany (implicitly the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), but without any modification of the borders of the European states.

Some Romanian nationalist groups claim the Ukrainian parts of Bessarabia and Bukovina despite the border between the two countries being solidified in a treaty in the early 2000s.