Talk:Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina/Archive 1

message: Should this article be merged with June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum? - Andrei 18:30, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Or parcelled out. Or retitled. Or something. Because less than half of this is about the Occupation. We could use something with a focus on the occupation, but seems to me like something of a POV fork (though I've reduced the POV) of a general history of Romania during the War. - Jmabel | Talk 05:07, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is very long already and I do not think that it ought to be merged, but they can both have the small 'see also' kind of links. - Pernambuco 01:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was not aware about the other article. I agree they should be somehow joined. This article is about the occupation and the consequences, if you want in reference to the population that was occupied. The other one is about the ulitmatum and the occupation, somehow in refernce to the country that lost some territories. Of course "see also" is ok, but I somehow feel Jmabel has a point with "POV forking". Even if the two "POVs" do not necessarely contradict each other, they are somehow situated geographically in differnt places :) One looks forward and to the left, the other looks forward and to the right. Will it be really too long? There are in several places, here and there, descriptions of excetly the same thing. If you would agree to merge, then what would be the new title? :Dc76 05:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, merge, as per comments left on Talk:June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum Turgidson 01:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge

message: I'm in the process of editing; there are a few changes I've felt quite confident to make, but others I want to discuss. 
* There is reference to Carol abdicating for the fourth time (a bit of a stretch, since at least two were abdications of his future claims not of a present crown). Offhand, I only count two prior abdications: once to marry Zizi Lambrino, once to go off to Paris with Lupescu. What is the third?
::He married Zizi and renounced as "heir to the throne" twice, in September 1918 in Odessa, and  in July 1919 in Romania. Then in december 1925, then in september 1940, just as you said. The last two were formulated "renounced to the throne". Even the forth time, he managed not to say the word "abdicated". Here is just an ad-hoc sourse found with google, but if you insist I am sure it is possible to find something in English, too.:Dc76 05:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you are right, the old formulation was incorrect. From yearly 1920s to late 1930s, the fascist idiology was gradially shifting, becoming more agressive. When the parties were not in power anywhere, and moreover hardly were known, they started with something resembling a national-Christian doctrine nowadays. Then they only advocated "not only jews". But as they got more confident, as closer to the power, they became more agressive. Among others, now it was "no jews". After Codreanu et CO's arrests and assacinations in 1938-39, the original "moderate" leaders were out. The new leaders did not remember the "not only jews" time. After 1939 it was a fascist party in the modern understanding of the word. But it was fascist as well before. What was shifting, was the fascist ideology. In Romania it became what we understand now by fascism in 1938. This is just to clarify things as outside observers, I am not not trying to justify their ideology. (But it is strange how people after WWII mostly blame everything on a handful of individuals. This party had real support, with real grass roots. It is easy for the society to blame a couple people and come "clean") Anyway, this is now out of the text of the article.:Dc76 05:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it was not totally communist, there were two parties with real support: Groza's own, based on his union (he was a left-wing union leader before), and a Hungarian minority left-wing party, both morally (but not ideologically) pro-communist. All the other parties in his coalition, communist included, did hardly have 1000 members. All pro-democracy parties were excluded (the three major were the cristian-democrats, the liberals, and the social-democrats). All the parties eventually were absorbed into the communist one. The idea is that unlike the government before, which despite a lot of Soviet troops in Romania, was (to practical possibility) independent, Groza's was taking orders (literarly) from the Soviets and the communists of Pauker and Dej. The change was very sudden. And the gradual absorbtion had effect only on the carrers of the people who were absorbed. The policy changed within months, in certain aspect within days.:Dc76 05:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Facts

message: Hi, Illythr. Someone pointed above the article June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum. I suggested to merge that article and this one. About your change: I don't think "Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina" should be replaced by "Romania". I think it is B&NB that suffered mostly. R lost territory, but that not so bad as being decimated. There were many refugies from B&NB to R, but these people meant a lot more for the territory they left than for the one they moved to.:Dc76
:And I think, it should be separate from the paragraph about France, because why then the other events are mentioned (Poland, Finland, the Blatics). I think it should be one sentence=one last paragraph of that section.:Dc76 14:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well my change was with the context of France - The passage says that first, France suffered and lost its territory and then it was the turn of Bessarabia/NB, so, one would assume that the turn was to lose territory. But Bessarabia was part of Romania, and thus was lost itself - to Romania. I sort of dislike the entire passage - it feels as if this passage belongs more to a history book, than an encyclopedia. For example, for the Jewish population, the Soviet annexation was a relief, as they were already second-class citizens in Romania by the time (I have no info on Russians during the period). --Illythr 00:41, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who suffered the consequences 

message: It looks like most of this article as well as the stuff from over there comes from the same Romanian source. Hmmmm... --Illythr 23:47, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you saying that the source is other than the one cited? Or are you questioning that it is a reliable source? Or what? - Jmabel | Talk 01:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, I'm thinking that if it's indeed the same source, it could be moved to that article as well. As for reliability, well, it did contain some highly POV text, but most of it was removed, AFAICS. --Illythr 22:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Same source 

message: *The number 3.5 million is relevant because it is a tiny territory. Bringing so many people at one time means keeping them in bad living conditions, and hence there will be more infections. It does not mean that all were infected. It is mathematical, that the more crowded it is (over a reasonable treshhold) the exponential of that is the likelihood of infections. And it does not matter if the actual number of infected people was 1% or 99%. 600,000 is used only as a comparison. Those 600,000 were already dense enough for the frontline. The soviet military leaders wanted to be sure, b/c a failure meant more or less 6 more months of war, hence the numbers. I did not mean to say anything abasing to the regard of soviet solders. The problem were the military planers who were relying on numbers instead of quality. Hence unavoidable side effects such as infections. I don't see the current formulation inappropriate, but if you tell me, perhaps it is. Any reformulation would obviously be welcomed by me.
: I think the 600,000 figure is still irrelevant in that particular sentence, as it is obvious that Bessarabia was not the final goal of the Soviet army. There were quite a bit more Axis forces in the Eastern Europe. In fact, the whole Iassy-Kishinev Operation took only some three weeks and was one of the most effective Soviet operations during the war. "The crowd" was already in Bucharest on August, 31. The 3.5M figure is probably also referring to future reinforcements passing through, as the standing Soviet forces were around 930,000-1,300,000 in strength. Demonstrating that the epidemics came from a very small number of infected troops is also quite difficult without the actual numbers at hand. "Many thousands" is suspiciously vague, as that can be anything in the reange of 2000-19000 people. A good source must be either very precise in such things, or at least explain, why an exact number is unavailable. Perhaps something like this:
"Epidemics within the passing Red Army troops had at times spread to the local populace and caused death of XXXXX civilians. --Illythr 20:13, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have exact numbers (and don;t have the time for this now). I have also no objection if you modify that passage. :Dc76 17:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Epidemics

message: Who is being quoted at “the enormous losses, that Romania's 20 year rule caused”? What language was the original in? I ask, because this is clearly not native English: English would not call for a comma before "that". - Jmabel | Talk 00:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds to me like quotation from the Ultimatum signed by Molotov. In that case the original language is Russian, and it shouldn't be difficult to find the original text (maybe even one of the already existing sources contains it?) The Soviet history books, taught in schools before 1989 had it, isn't that true? I'll try finding the source, but since I am not presently in Moldova or Romania, I can only rely on things available on internet. :Dc76 12:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Odd quotation 

message: This section is blatantly POV, because is basically blames Russification on Romanians, whereas the whole point was to deport all Romanian elites and then replace them with Communists. The refugees were mostly of the administration, but deportation touched peasants, small workers, etc. Dpotop 07:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Uh, blames? Are we reading the same section? The section is indeed POV, because it forgets to mention that those "outright criminals" were called to rebuild the entire country from ruins and develop its economy to surpass that of Romania. And so they did. But I don't think this can be found in sources whose explicit goal is to demonstrate how evil the Soviets were. No, I'm not a Communist and not even a sympathizer. :-P I'm just annoyed at how selective the history articles about Moldova are. --Illythr 12:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, the same. This section implies that the country was devoid of elites due to refugees to Romania. My impression is that those refugees were only the very big elites and the administration. My impression is that the problem was mainly due to the 2,000,000 Romanians deported to the Gulag or killed, cf. Antiromanianism#Soviet_politicide_and_ethnic_cleansing. Dpotop 12:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The deportations are mentioned in detail in the previous subsection. (without a single reference, I might add). --Illythr 12:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

text:  It may be useful to either link or add the info from over there, if the sources are good. --Illythr 12:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I added the references, and we must merge the two sections into a single one (we were editing at the same time). Dpotop 12:37, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

text: *Dpotop, you are talking about 1940-1956. Illythr, you are talking about 1956-1991. Can't you see guys you are talking about different things? Noone came in 1945 to build the economy, it stayed in ruins until late 1960s. And many nice people came in 1960s-1970s (true, the majority were not nice, but that's a totally different question about social groups), I mean professionals, who did not leave Moldova when it went through economic downturn in 1990s, as the "visitors" did - this actually proved, who's visitor, and who's come to stay and be part of the country. What better prove than the mother nature's design you want?:Dc76 17:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social and demographic consequences - blatant POV 

message: "29,839 deported to Siberia on 13 June 1941, 35,796 on 6 July 1949 and 2,617 on 1 April 1951 " The first two seem very high for a single day, are we sure it wasn't over a period of a few days or a week? Rich Farmbrough, 14:27 5  March 2007 (GMT).
::There were 3 major deportations. These are their dates. Of course it took time to gather people and send them. These are the dates NKVD went to their homes in the night, in all localities at once. You should read 29,839 as the number deported in 1941 (of course 1,000-2,000 on other small occasions throughout that year), not times 365 or whatever! :Dc76 17:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Nummbers and dates

message: Ok, then just say so: "politically left-minded and lichele". I only object if a given edit suggests that the population was 50%-50%, or something like that. It wasn't: the supporters were less than 2%, those ready to take arms agaist were maybe 25-30%, and the rest 70-75% (the vast majority of average and less the average - economically - peasants) were just asking themselves what's going on and how they could better addapt to the situation. I can not sourse such numbers, obviously, noone was taking a poll then. But all sourses indicate that is was not a 20% to 30% with 50% watching situation, or like that. The activists on one side were an ignorable minority from 4 million of population (population=3.776 mil in 1930, meaning approx. 4 mil in 1940) 2% would mean 80,000 - already by far an exageration. In Chisinau they had 500-1,000 supporters who took to the streets, out of 100,000+ urban population. Where did this whole "ethnicity" dispute came from? Even the most ardent anti-Romanian Ukrainians were opposed to incorporation into USSR - all that they wanted was at most incorporation of their villages into an independent Ukrainian state. They did not support Soviet takeover, but simply kept quiet to see what kind of consequences the occupation would bring upon their villages. The same about "white" Russians who fleed the civil war. The average Jew wanted equality of opportunities, access to public positions (and the example they were giving at the time were the first secretary of MASSR and of Dubasari raion just before 28 june), economic freedom, not a communist Jewish state in Bessarabia or a Holodomor-like administration. (The fact that one person defected from communists to the west to become Europa Libera's redactor only means that that particular person had something in his mind, simmilarly to wikipedia editors pushing time and time again their POVs - I fail to understand while instead of exposing that individual Goma makes remarks about a whole group of people, who do not share(d) that individual's POV.) I think one of the best sourses of population's state of mind in that period are Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya's memoirs - if you know Russian, I strongly recommended their reading, you will not regret the time, it's almost like a piece of art. :Dc76 00:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For starters, I picture it is much easier sourcing the notion that "not many people welcomed the Soviets" (in fact, I think that the Report itself indicates it somewhere). The issue here is about "who those people were", when: a. no poll was taken; b. virtually all allegations to have made on the subject were the work of Romanian authorities, are known to be false, and known to have been used in propaganda. So, in short: what you want to say is "few people", not "some communists and white trash" (if I call the FRN officials "lichele", it does not mean I expect people to agree with me that they were). What you should say is "around n% people", and do so based on a reliable source. Dahn 01:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

text: You lost me with the Free Europe remark and what it "proves", but I'm pretty sure that is not a conversation I want to have. Dahn 01:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: your last edit