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Constantinople appointed Greek-speaking phanari-ots to govern the region more directly.
The first clear, political separation between Bessarabia and western Moldavia (now incorporated into Romania) came with the Russian occupation of Bessarabia in 1806. This move precipitated a six-year war, after which the victorious Russian Tsar Alexander I was able to formally annex the land between the Prut and Dniester Rivers from the Ottoman Empire.
After a short period of relative autonomy from Moscow, Bessarabia underwent a process of Rus-sification, and the use of the Romanian language was barred from official use. The 1871 shift in Bessarabia’s status from that of imperial oblast to Russian rayon saw further restrictions on cultural and political autonomy in the region.
Due to significant immigration following the annexation of 1812, Bessarabia had become culturally cosmopolitan by the end of the nineteenth century. However, the region was an economic backwater; literacy remained very low and, despite the presence of some small-scale industry in the region’s capital-Chi?sinau-the area remained largely agricultural.
The collapse of tsarist rule during World War I enabled elites drawn from the Bessarabian military to act on growing nationalist sentiments by declaring full autonomy for the region in November 1917. Romanian forces capitalized further on the confused state of rule in Bessarabia and moved in to occupy the territories lost to Russia in 1812. A vote by the newly formed Bessarabian National Council saw the region formally unite with Romania on March 27, 1918.
During the interwar period, Bessarabia formed the eastern flank of Greater Romania. This period was characterized by an acceleration of public works, which combined with agricultural reform to stabilize the region’s economy. However, the significant minority populations (Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Turks) suffered under Romanian rule and were denied basic cultural rights, such as education in their native tongues.
The clandestine carve-up of Europe planned under the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939 implied that Germany had no interest in Bessarabia. This afforded the Soviet Union an opportunity to retake the region. In June 1940 the Soviet government issued an ultimatum to Romanian King Carol II, demanding that Bessarabia and northern Bukovina be brought under Soviet control. Although Carol II acquiesced in this demand, Romania’s alliance with Germany during World War II saw the land return to Romanian hands. Control was again returned to the Soviet Union following the collapse of the Axis. The six counties of Bessarabia were then merged with the Transnistrian region, east of the Dniester, to form the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Although Bessarabia dominated Soviet Moldavia geographically and demographically, communist elites from the Transnistrian region enjoyed the majority of political weight in the republic, due to their membership in the Soviet community since 1917 and the presence of a significant pro-Russian, Slavic minority. With Soviet industrial development concentrated in Transnistria, a growing so-cioeconomic divide emerged between this region and Bessarabia.
The collapse of Soviet rule and declaration of Moldavian independence in 1991 was followed shortly thereafter by a declaration of Transnistrian independence from the Republic of Moldavia. Although unrecognized, Transnistria remains tacitly independent in the early twenty-first century, leaving Bessarabia as the sole region under the control of the government of the Republic of Moldavia. See also: MOLDOVA AND MOLDOVANS; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
King, Charles. (2000). The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
(1693-1766), count, chancellor, diplomat, statesman.
Second son of a Muscovite noble family, Alexei Bestuzhev-Ryumin went abroad in 1708 with his older brother, Mikhail Petrovich (1688-1760), to study at the Danish noble academy and transferred to Berlin in 1710. Before diplomatic service in 1712 at the Congress of Utrecht, he concentrated on foreign languages, traveled in Europe, and presumably had a Muscovite education befitting offspring
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of an eminent father, Count Pyotr Mikhailovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin (1664-1743). With Tsar Peter’s permission he joined Hanover’s foreign service in 1713, visited England in connection with George I’s selection as king, and returned to Russia to announce the new British sovereign. Bestuzhev-Ryumin then spent four years in England. From 1717 he served the court of dowager Duchess Anna Ivanovna of Courland without pay for two years under his father. In 1721 he became minister-resident to the Danish court, where he followed Peter I’s rivalry with George I of England, Denmark’s competition with Holstein, and celebration of the peace ending Russo-Swedish hostilities, and received a miniature of Peter with diamonds that he proudly wore thereafter. He also helped develop a nerve- tonic known as “Bestucheff’s drops”; the formula sold several times until published by Catherine II in 1780.
In the years after Peter I’s death, Bestuzhev-Ryumin occupied diplomatic posts in northern Europe. At Kiel he discovered a copy of Catherine I’s testament supporting the Duke of Holstein’s rights to the Russian throne; for this he received the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky. He cultivated favor with Anna Ivanovna’s new regime, the empress serving as godmother to his three sons. He had married Anna Yekaterina B?ttiger (d. 1762), daughter of the Russian envoy to Hamburg. As Countess Bestuzheva-Ryumina she became court mistress in 1748, accompanied her husband into exile in 1758, and was buried at the old Lutheran church in Moscow.
Bestuzhev-Ryumin returned to Petersburg in 1740 and was promoted to actual privy councilor, named a cabinet minister, and awarded the Polish Order of the White Eagle. He apparently supported Ernst Johann Biron’s brief regency and, although sentenced to be quartered after the regent’s overthrow, he survived with the loss of all privileges and property before exile. Reinstated five months later, Bestuzhev-Ryumin assisted Elizabeth’s coup of December 1741 by composing the manifesto that proclaimed her reign. He was made senator and vice chancellor of foreign affairs and received his predecessor Andrei Osterman’s house in Moscow, back salary, and 6,000 rubles per year. At Elizabeth’s coronation in the spring of 1742 he joined father and brother as counts of the Russian Empire. Bestuzhev-Ryumin reached the pinnacle of power with promotion to chancellor in 1744 and count of the Holy Roman Empire, with an annual salary of 7,000 rubles and estates with 4,225 male serfs. He likewise received pensions and loans from foreign powers, Britain in particular.
Bestuzhev-Ryumin pursued a policy against Prussia and France while cultivating the maritime powers of Britain, Holland, and Denmark. He intervened in dynastic politics, too, initially opposing Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst as consort for crown prince Peter Fyodorovich. When the Seven Years’ War scrambled European international politics, Bestuzhev-Ryumin pressed a militantly anti-Prussian policy while countering French intrigues and secretly conspiring with Grand Princess Catherine to seize power in the event of Elizabeth’s sudden death. These involvements resulted in his arrest for treason in February 1758. He managed to warn Catherine and escaped death although banished to his estate of Goretovo, where his wife died on January 5, 1762, the same day Elizabeth expired. Peter III did not pardon him, but Catherine did, although she did not name any chancellor.
Bestuzhev-Ryumin returned to court in July 1762 and regained honors and property, the Hol-stein Order of Saint Anna, and an annual pension of 20,000 rubles. He twice proposed to proclaim Catherine “the Great,” but she declined the honor and soon cooled to his anti-Prussian views and quarreled with his sole surviving son, Andrei, whose death in 1768 ended the male line. Bestuzhev-Ryumin’s long and tumultuous career in high politics resulted in ambivalent assessments. The German soldier Manstein praised his industry while predicting his final downfall and denouncing despotic power, arrogance, avarice, dissolute lifestyle, treacherous character, and vindictiveness. In final exile and late in life Bestuzhev-Ryumin turned to religion. See also: CATHERINE I; CATHERINE II; ELIZABETH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anisimov, Evgeny V. (1995). Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia, 1741-1761, tr. John T. Alexander. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International. Curtiss, Mina. (1974). A Forgotten Empress: Anna Ivanovna and Her Era,
