While Romanian documents identified categories of locals influenced by communist ideas as a passive component of the resistance, various modern commentators point to the overall unpopularity of communism in Bessarabia as accounting for the movement's marginality.

SSI agents warned that the Soviets could also reap the benefits of peacetime propaganda, "attract[ing] the worker and peasant masses from the enemy's army, as well as the [civilian] population, to the side of the revolution.

It recommended that personnel for underground work should be selected from the prewar members of the clandestine Bessarabian communist organization, and that partisan groups should include people with good knowledge of the language and local conditions.

[7] Romanian Army sources reported that most localities openly welcomed the new administration; more in-depth analyses by the Gendarmerie expressed concern about the "Bessarabian mindset", proposing that Soviet indoctrination had depleted the region of pro-Romanian sentiments.

[8] However, as noted by historian Igor Cașu, many PCM cadres opted not to evacuate the region, preferring Romanian occupation: "[they] had experienced the Stalinist Terror of the 1930s and knew what they could expect with the return of Soviet administration.

[20] In August, the head of Romanian Police in Bessarabia, Pavel Epure, asserted that whatever communists remained at large were "disoriented and paralyzed"—according to historian Piotr Șornikov, this assessment was correct, but mostly because PCM cadres had been informed of the massive defeats encountered by the Red Army.

[30][31] A group comprising Yury Korotkov, Iosif A. Bujor, Raisa Șafran and Maria Onufrienko was tasked with organizing a coordinating center in Chișinău, but the attempt to infiltrate them past the front line in mid-September 1941 ended in bloodshed.

[32][33] Another such attempt was organized by the Bureau of PCM's Central Committee, at the time residing in Donetsk, which selected nine veteran communists, both from the Bessarabian underground and the Soviet Moldavian administration, to create a clandestine republican party center.

[36][37] Informants contributed to the destruction of partisan cells formed by Trikolich, Georgy Besedin, Anatoly Prokopets, and Shoil Rabinovich, with members either imprisoned or executed (see Capital punishment in Romania), and always tortured beforehand.

According to historian Izeaslav Levit, regression was in part due to geographical factors: Bessarabia lacked the extensive forests found in other Soviet regions, and the Axis forces could easily clear the few existing ones.

In Cristescu's view, these constituted an "invisible army" consisting of two groups: an "active" one, which included partisan detachments and underground party cells, and a "passive" one reuniting the "communist-minded masses", both being equally dangerous to Romania's war effort.

[48] Factory workers often kept in their houses portraits of Soviet leaders or Marxist works, university employees avoided engaging in mandatory anti-Soviet propaganda, and schoolchildren refused to learn prayers.

[54] This phenomenon was also observed by Selbstschutz units, staffed by Black Sea Germans, which declared themselves directly interested in preventing Romanian abuse; the airing of such accusations would lead to diplomatic incidents between the two Axis governments.

The Headquarters sought to make use of hidden weapons and ammunition caches left behind during the previous Soviet retreat, and consequently designated Slobozia, Camenca, Tiraspol, Orhei, Bravicea and Hîncești as the main operation areas.

[61] In some cases, propaganda was non-communist in nature or origin—as with Ivan Ganea and other students at Soroca Agricultural School, investigated in late 1942 for having distributed leaflets calling on Moldovans to prepare for the Red Army's victory, and for having denounced local branches of the Iron Guard.

[65][66] The SSI chief in Reni reported that a large crowd gathered at the local station in June 1942 as trains carrying Russian POWs passed through the town, offering various products, fruit and cigarettes to the prisoners before being dispersed by gendarmes.

In Odessa, Tiraspol and other settlements near the Dniester clandestine organizations distributed increasing numbers of hand or type-written of leaflets reporting the progress of Soviet military operations and calling upon the population to hide livestock and grain, destroy bridges, and attack the occupation forces.

More arson attacks were reported in May by Chișinău's Regional Police Inspectorate: a state-owned sunflower oil refinery in Otaci was burned down, with simultaneous fires occurring in Izvoare, Albineț, Chirileni, Glodeni, Sculeni, Rîșcani, Pîrlița and Năvîrneț in Bălți County.

[88] Instigated by the Camenca communist committee, agricultural workers distributed hundreds of quintals of harvested corn and wheat to locals, instead of delivering them to the administration, hid twenty tractors set for evacuation to Romania, and managed to sow 4,256 hectares of winter wheat—despite a ban on such practices being imposed by Romanian authorities.

[96] One early success came by accident, when Romanian sappers in Dubăsari discovered Dmitry Nadvodsky's partisans attempting to obtain access to their weapons' cache; this led to a temporary suspension of resistance activity in that town.

[99] The SSI remarked in a report dated 30 November 1943 that the pro-Soviet propaganda was extensively distributed throughout Bessarabia and it began to attract "people who, although they are not supporters of communist ideas, act against" the Romanian administration, persuading locals to join partisan groups.

[120] A Romanian communist, Belu Zilber, claimed in his memoirs that he successfully pleaded with Antonescu himself to release Jewish party members from Vapniarka in Transnistria, noting that they were in danger of being mass murdered by the retreating Germans.

[58] As noted by Șornikov, the partisan movement failed in its goal of steering a pro-Soviet popular revolt, mainly because most able-bodied in Romanian-held areas had been conscripted for labor duty, while "the cities of Bessarabia were flooded with German and Romanian troops".

[151] Although a Glavan Prize was awarded annually by the Moldovan Komsomol,[151] commemorations of partisan service remained scarce, and historical works on the movement were delayed until the 1960s, when Simion Afteniuc published the first monograph.

Moraru contrasts his view with that of "Russian and Russified" historians, such as Levit, Dumitru Elin, Aleksandr Korenev, V. Kovalenko, Nikolai Berezniakov, A. Durakov and Petru Boico, who have acclaimed the partisan movement.

"[134] Moraru asserts that the PCM "represented the interests of the non-Romanian, non-Moldovan population", with partisan detachments made up of "Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and other nationalities"; he counts only twenty "Russified" Moldovans among the active participants.

[98] As noted by historian Gheorghe Nicolaev, 70% of wartime memorials in Soviet Moldova are for Red Army servicemen "mobilized [...] despite holding Romanian citizenship"; Bessarabian Bulgarians and the Gagauz were excluded from the draft.

[168] In October 1941, Antonescu publicly justified his mass deportation and selective extermination of Jews as an anti-partisan measure, noting that Romanian troops had seized "14–15-year-old Jewish children with pockets full of grenades".

[158] In the latter region, Jews became divided between those who collaborated with the Antonescu regime and those who fought against occupation: the Judenrat formed at Rîbnița was opposed by Nikolai L. Duvidzon and his Komsomol underground, who also sabotaged transports of grain from Ukraine to Romania.

[174] In his 1951 memoir L'homme qui voyagea seul, Romanian French exile Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu viewed the vast majority of Bessarabia's stay-behind partisans as Jews, and claimed to have collected evidence of this, such as their identity papers.