[7] American professor and expert in Moldovan issues Charles King however considers the revolt, along with other similar rebellions in Romanian-administered Bessarabia, as modern jacqueries.

In December 1923, the sixth Conference of the Balkan Communist Federation adopted a resolution condemning what was called "Romania's expansionist nature".

The Romanian state was accused that in 1918, taking advantage of Russia's weakness, it attached "large parts of other nations that achieved a superior political, economical and cultural level".

The documents adopted at the conference mentions that the internal policies of the bourgeois states in the Balkans after World War I suffered a failure and in order to resolve the problem they proposed the right of self-determination.

The Soviet delegation immediately raised the Bessarabian question and diplomat Maxim Litvinov presented a plan to conduct a plebiscite in Bessarabia.

[13] On this basis, a few weeks later, on August 8, under the presidency of Vasil Petrov Kolarov – secretary of the Balkan Communist Federation – a plan of action was drafted for Romania which was set to be implemented by mid-September.

Even though the plan was complex, no significant events took place except for Tatarbunary and in the Danube port of Kiliia (Romanian: Chilia Nouă), where the uprising was quickly silenced.

Allegedly acting with instructions from the Intelligence Center in Odesa, members organized revolutionary committees in the three counties of Southern Bessarabia - Cahul, Ismail, and Cetatea Albă.

Using many tactics, also by offering money, he tried to win local intellectuals and personalities to the Soviet cause, as was the case with senator Iacob Belaushenco from Cahul.

[22] The first incident occurred at noon on September 11 when an armed group composed of 30 individuals, transported by boats, attacked the village of Nikolaievca (Romanian: Nicolăeni, now Mykolaivka) near the Soviet-Romanian border and at the shore of the Black Sea.

An outdoor fair was held in Nikolaievca and the attackers profited and looted the peasants, transporting the booty in three waggons to the nearby Black Sea marshes.

The first units arrived from Cetatea Albă in the evening of 16 September and engaged the rebels at the bridge between Tatarbunary and Bîlolîssia, mortally injuring Ivan Bejanovici.

Fighting continued around the village all day long until they retreated South to Nerushai where they would be supported by Leonte Ţurcan, who had a large stock of concealed weapons.

Then he tried to reach the Black Sea beach line at a place called Volcioc, near Prymors'ke (Romanian: Jibrieni), but the rebels were intercepted by a border patrol composed of 20 soldiers.

They hid in a corn field, but Batischcev left Nenin while he slept, taking with him 336,500 lei,[30] representing the remaining money robbed from the people of Tatarbunary.

As southern Bessarabia was in danger the land troops asked for help and rear admiral Gavrilescu Anastasie moved the whole Danube fleet to Vylkove (Romanian: Vâlcov) capturing many rebels, including important quantities of arms, munitions, machine guns, explosive materials, grenades, bombs and railway mines near Periprava.

Ţurcan also said that after Nenin went to Odessa then to Moscow, upon his arrival in Bessarabia, informed the committees that the Red Army promised to intervene when the revolution starts.

Another participant to the uprising, Dimitrie Sevcone, spoke about the meetings held by Nenin and Kolţov in which they talked about the connections between the committees and Grigory Kotovsky's army that also promised help.

[33] The trial attracted Soviet propaganda and international attention, with Romain Rolland, Maxim Gorky, Paul Langevin, Theodore Dreiser, and Albert Einstein, among others, speaking out on behalf of the defendants, while Henri Barbusse even traveled to Romania to witness the proceedings.

Opposition newspapers heavily criticized the authorities for the disproportionate response to the uprising and also accused the liberal Ion Brătianu government of intentionally overstating the communist fear in order to extend the martial law to the whole country transforming it into a feudal state.

French communist-militant Henri Barbusse attended the trial and wrote his famous book – Hangman (Romanian: Călăii) that caused serious international image problems for Romania.

Authorities of the Kingdom of Romania saw the incident as a mere terrorist action backed by the Soviet Union, that tried to destabilise the situation inside the country and prepared for a Red Army incursion.

[36] The rebellion was also condemned by the country's non-communist socialist groups; the Socialist Federation's Ilie Moscovici wrote in 1925: In Tatar Bunar, the Third International's agents provocateurs were involved, who, toying with the lives of Bessarabian peasants, wanted to prove to Europe that Bessarabians are in favour of the non-existent and ridiculous «Moldavian Republic».A few peasants in a few isolated communes could not chase away the gendarmes [...] were it not for a few agents provocateurs assuring them that the revolution had begun throughout Bessarabia or that the red armies had entered or were about to enter.

[37]The view was shared by the American scholar Charles Upson Clark, according to whom: [...] the Tatar-Bunar rebellion was simply the most striking example of a Communist raid, engineered from without [...] and not a local revolution against intolerable conditions due to Roumanian oppression, as it was represented to be by the Socialist press everywhere.

[2]Dutch professor Wim P. van Meurs, in his book dedicated to Bessarabia, considers the uprising as clearly instigated by communist agitators from across the Dniester and remarks that it was too well timed between the failure of the Vienna Conference and the proclamation of the Moldavian Autonomous Republic, moreover, for the Kremlin not to be involved.

[38] Ukrainian and Russian authors consider that main factors contributing to the uprising were of social-economic nature – economic crisis in Romania, the agricultural policy in 1921, the drought and famine of 1923/1924 and harsh administration.

[40] Ever since unification Bessarabia has been under martial law, because of numerous Soviet subversive actions, with censorship and all other forms of interference with normal life and with Romanian Government officials that were overzealous or incompetent, both military and civil.