Union of Bessarabia with Romania
In the peace talks after World War I, the European powers awarded Bessarabia to Romania, although the newly formed Russian SSR, and the United States never recognized this.
However, the situation in Bessarabia would change after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union (USSR) and Nazi Germany, in which the latter expressed its disinterest in the region.
This allowed the USSR to send an ultimatum to Romania, which was now diplomatically isolated following the capitulation of France, the guarantor of its borders, on 26 June 1940 in which it demanded Bessarabia and also Northern Bukovina (which had not been agreed upon with Germany).
[6] Some Romanian historians claimed that a strong sentiment of frustration and resentment to the Russian control had started to appear before the beginning of World War I.
[7] World War I brought a rise in political, cultural and national awareness in the population, as 300,000 Bessarabians enrolled in the Russian Army formed in 1917, within bigger units several "Moldavian Soldiers' Committees".
March 27] 1918, Sfatul Țării decided with 86 votes for, 3 against and 36 abstaining (mostly non-Romanians), for union with the Kingdom of Romania, conditional upon the fulfillment of agrarian reform, local autonomy, and respect for universal human rights.
[12] The historian Bernard Newman, who traveled by bicycle through the whole of Greater Romania, claimed there is little doubt that the vote represented the prevailing wish in Bessarabia and that the events leading to the unification indicate there was no question of a "seizure", but a voluntary act on the part of its people.
On 20 December 1919, the elected representatives ratified, along with their colleagues from the other historic provinces, the unification acts that had been approved by Sfatul Țării and the National Congresses in Transylvania and Bukovina.
During the peace talks between the Great Powers and Romania, on 1 February 1919, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George talked with Ion I. C. Brătianu and, after the withdrawal of the Romanian government's delegation, Lloyd George proposed that Romania's claims be analyzed by a territorial commission that would examine historical, ethnographic, geographic, strategic, but not political facts.
The commission was formed by Clive Day and Charles Seymour (USA), Sir Eyre Crowe and Alan Leeper (United Kingdom), André Tardieu and Guy Laroche (France), and Giacomo De Martino and Count Luigi Vannutelli-Rey (Italy).
The actual process dragged out until the early 1930s, with the average allotted land falling short of the prescribed 6 hectares per eligible individual.
Under pressure from the large landowners in the original territories of Romania, the land reform required compensations to the former owners, in contrast with the earlier declarations of the Sfatul Țării which proposed expropriation of property or even socialization.
In a bid to gain legal recognition of the union, Romanian also concluded inter-governmental accords which offered preferential compensations to deposed owners of British, French and Italian citizenship.
In 1924, Pan Halippa, a strong supporter of the Union in 1918, criticized the Romanian government for transforming Bessarabia into an "inferno", where the "Moldavian people suffers and bleeds more than under the Tsarist regime".
[18] The status quo was changed 22 years later, when, as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (Article 4 of the Secret Annex to the Treaty), Nazi Germany agreed that it had no interest in Bessarabia, effectively yielding it to the Soviet Union.
[19] Under pressure from Moscow and Berlin, the Romanian administration and the army were forced to retreat from Bessarabia and from Northern Bukovina to avoid war.
