User:Moldopodo/History of Balti
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[edit] Raw Draft Version as copied from the Balti article on 19.12.2007
[edit] Middle Age
1421 The city is founded as a fair by Ringaila of Mazovia, a sister of Vytautas the Great of Lithuania and an ex-wife of the Moldavian Prince Alexandru I cel Bun [Alexander the Good].
At the time the territory belonged to the Dorohoi ţinut (land/county), later to Soroca county and, mostly, Iaşi county of the Principality of Moldova (Iaşi was the capital of the Principality from 1574 to 1859).
A crossroads, Bălţi soon became well-known as a horse fair.
1469 A Crimean Tatar invasion led by the khan Meñli I Giray burned the place to the ground, before being defeated in the Battle of Lipnic, about 100 km north.
Bălţi was rebuilt very slowly.
[edit] Eighteenth century
Since the 16th century, the Principality of Moldavia became a vassal to the Ottoman Empire. Although it preserved the self-rule, Moldavia had to satisfy ever increasing annual dues. In 1711, the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir, also a well-known historiographer and scientist of the time, impressed by the defeat of the Swedish-Polish king Charles XII at the Battle of Poltava (600 km east in eastern Ukraine) by the young Russian tsar Peter the Great, invited the latter to Moldavia in a bold move to try to end Ottoman suzerainty and reclaim the independence of Moldova. During this failed military campaign the main headquarters of the Russian and parts of the Moldavian armies were established at Bălţi, due to its crossroads location.
After 1711, the Ottomans no longer selected the Ruler (Prince) from the Moldavian nobility, instead sold regularly the throne for a number of years to Greek merchants from the Phanar district of Constantinople, which made profit by collecting higher taxes. (See also The Fanariot Époque)
1766 The prince Alexandru Ghica, one of a few local (and non-Greek) princes of that time, divided the Bălţi estate into two parts, awarding one to the Saint Spiridon monastery of Iaşi, and the other to the merchant brothers Alexandru, Constantin and Iordache Panaiti. Over the next decades, the three boyar brothers improved the locality of the town.
The development of the town in the 18th century suffered also due to the fact that the country had to support the burdens of three invading armies, Ottoman, Russian, and Austrian, which clashed in 4 wars of a total duration of 16 years, during which they performed extensive regular requisitions to supply their troops, and established separate administrations that imposed upon the Moldavians serfdom-like obligations to support the movements and encampments of the armies, notwithstanding punishments for performing these obligations for the other armies.
[edit] Nineteenth century
At the end of the fifth Russo-Turkish war, in 1812, the Treaty of Bucharest saw the Ottoman Empire ceding (without having such a legal right)[citation needed] to the Russian Empire the eastern half of Moldavia, including the town of Bălţi, which received the name Bessarabia. During 1812-1828, the Russians allowed substantial economic and cultural freedom to Moldavians, wanting to secure the new province. The new border has cut most of the Iaşi county, to which Bălţi initially belonged, from the city of Iaşi itself. This, however, made Bălţi, with a population of 8,000, the administrative center of the county.
Moreover, in 1818, the town received serendipitously formal city rights. The Russian tsar Alexander I visited his newly acquired province, and during his passing through Bălţi he received news that his nephew, the future tsar Alexander II of Russia, was born. Overjoyed, he granted Bălţi official city status.
In 1828, an administrative reform abolishes the autonomy of Bessarabia, and the administration changes from Romanian to Russian. At the same time, the number of counties of Bessarabia is reduced from 12 to 8, but Iaşi county is preserved. After 1860, education and mass in Romanian is banned. This policy, however, results in instituting a degree of alienation of Moldavians from the Russian administration, due to the absence of assimilation through education. while the literacy rate remains very low, comparing to the rest of Europe at the time.
1887 Iaşi county is renamed Bălţi county.
1889 The city becomes a railroad hub.
The ethnic composition of the city diversified with settlers arriving from Austrian Galicia, Ukraine and (fewer) from Russia proper, being offered land or seeking freedom of religion.[1]
A significant number of Jews (from Galicia, then in the Habsburg Empire) settled in Bălţi, and by the end of the century became first a plurality, then a majority.
[edit] Twentieth century
[edit] World War I period
On 17/30 May 1917, general Sherbachov, the Supreme Commander of the Russian Armies on the Romanian Front, by order 156370, consented to the request of the Moldavian Central Solders Committee of All Bessarabia to form 16 cohorts exclusively of Moldavian solders, commanded by Moldavian officers, and distributed them to all the counties of Bessarabia.[2][3] In September, their number was further increased in view of the sacking and violence provoked by the multiplication of the ad-hoc gangs of Russian army deserters. Although most of the gangs were small in size, there were also several large ones: two Cossack regiments dislocated in Bălţi county, and a 3,000-strong infantry detachment in Orhei, whose leadership failed, which resulted in extensive pillaging in Bălţi, Soroca and Orhei counties, with many dead, including several Bessarabian public personalities, which substantiated the outcry of the population.[4][5] The committees of the two regiments stationed in Bălţi county adopted resolutions which called for continuous sacking until the solders would be given discharge papers.[6] In December 1917, when the Directorate General for Armed Forces of the Moldavian Democratic Republic was formed, one of its first units was in Bălţi, where the Druzhina (popular militia unit) no. 478 of the Russian Empire, composed almost entirely of Moldavians, and led by captain Anatolie Popa, was nationalized. [7] In March 1918, the Bălţi County Council, along with the ones of Soroca and Orhei, submitted resolutions to the Sfatul Ţării, asking it to consider union with Romania.[8]
[edit] Inter-war period
In the first part of the 20th century the economy expanded, and the city started to diversify. Many buildings in the town/city date from the inter-war period.
1920s The seat of the Bishopric is moved from Hotin to Bălţi, and the Bishopric Palace is built (finished in 1933), with the effort of Visarion Puiu.
1920s The Saint Constantine and Elena Cathedral is built throughout (finished in 1932, officially inaugurated 1933, in the presence of the royal family)
1940 The city reaches close to 40,000 inhabitants. Cca. 45-46% were Jews, 29-30% Romanians, and the rest were Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Armenians.
[edit] World War II period
As a result of Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina,a part of the city population was deported to Siberia (the largest deportation occurred on 12-13 June 1941, as well as the smaller ones, used the Bălţi Slobozia Railway Station as one of the major departing point for the cattle car trains with people deported from northern MSSR).
In June 22 - July 26, 1941, the Romanian Army participated in the Axis offensive against the Red Army dislocated in Bessarabia, in the so-called Operation Munich, capturing Bălţi by July 1941.
Upon the Axis capture of the city, a 20-strong unit of the German SS Einsatzkommando D proceeded to murder ca. 200 Jews of the city over three days. The majority of the 15,000 Jewish population of the city managed to escape in the previous two weeks. The Soviet authorities organized their evacuation by railway, in cattle cars, to Central Asia, mostly to Uzbekistan. Although the majority have survived and returned to the city after the war, their life as refugees and on the road was highly subhuman, due to quasi-absence of regular supplies, normal housing, or useful employment opportunities. In August 1941, there were 1,300 Jews left in the city, and the pro-fascist government of Ion Antonescu has decided to deport them. In September 1941, they, together with other Jews from the county, were gathered in two created ghettos, in Răuţel and Alexăndreni, size ca. 3,500 each. In ca. 10 days, the ghettos were dissolved, and the Jews hastily moved, mostly during the night, to a concentration camp in Mărculeşi, size ca. 11,000. After two more weeks, this was also abolished, and the Jews were deported to occupied Transnistria. Less then one third of the deported Jews survived the Holocaust, which affected ca. 75,000 Bessarabian Jews, as well as many Jews in Bukovina and Transnistria.[9]
On February 27 - March 2, 1944, the Soviet army retook the city from the Romanians, eventually re-annexed the territory to the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets have created two camps in the city, a small POW camp within the present location of the military base, and a large concentration camp at the SE outskirts of the city, by fencing out several blocks of one-story houses, the Bălţi concentration camp. It contained up to 45,000 prisoners at a time, most of which were POWs, while others were arrested locals of military age who were discharged, due to light injuries, from the Romanian Army after fighting from several weeks to several months against Nazi Germany. In total, ca. 55,000 people have passed through this camp, of them ca. 45,000 Romanians (up to half of which were locals), ca. 5,000 Germans, ca. 3,000 Italians, ca. 2,000 Hungarians, Poles and Czechs.
1944 Fearing the repeat of the 1940-1941 political persecutions and deportations, thousands of people, including many intellectuals, flee to Romania. Like the other localities of Moldova, the city has largely lost its pre-World War II intelligentsia to fleeing from persecution.
[edit] Post-World War II period
In 1944, with the return of the Soviet authorities, the policy of political and class persecution resumed. The largest of post-war deportations occurred on 5-6 July 1949, and included also 185 families from the city of Bălţi, and 161 families from the then suburbs.[10] (The population of the city at the time was cca. 30,000.) Numerous people, especially youth, were also enrolled in labor camps throughout the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1944, most of the active age Moldovans in the recaptured territories were enrolled in the Soviet Army and were sent to fight in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Eastern Prussia, where ca. 1/3 perished, and 1/3 received injuries. These solders were disbanded in late 1946, at which time a famine occurred in the Moldovan SSR. This famine, which killed ca. 10% of the population, and left other 15-20% with dystrophia, was caused by war, a severe drought, insufficient labor force and Soviet practices of quasi-total confiscation of farmers' harvests and food reserves "for the needs of the State" (postavka requisitions). In 1949-1950, mass collectivization of farmed land was implemented. These events changed the social and economic background, and influenced the city, whose economy was dominated by marketing and processing of farm products.
At least one anti-Soviet armed resistance group was active in the city during the Stalinist era. "Sabia Dreptăţii" ["The Sword of Justice"] was discovered by the NKVD in 1947, centered at the Pedagogical Licée (former Ion Creangă Licée) in the Bălţi.[11][12]
During the 1940s and early 1950s, the city has lost a significant part of its population to Stalinist repressions (political imprisonment and deportations), Romanian deportation of Jews (Holocaust), World War II, the Moldavian famine (1946-1947) and emigration.
After World War II, during the period when the city was part of the former Soviet Union, there was significant immigration from all over the USSR in a move to rebuild the country, develop the industry and establish a local Soviet and party apparatus.
From 1950s to 1980s, many Moldovans from the countryside of northern Moldova moved to Bălţi. By the end of 1980s, most of the Jews of Moldova had migrated to Israel. The Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking group had by then reached 50% of the population of the city, with Moldavian/Romanian-speaking representing the other 50%.
[edit] Fall of communism and independence of Moldova
During 1988-1989, the most effervescent period in Moldova's recent history, Bălţi was known as the "quiet city" of Moldova. Only a couple public demonstrations took place in the city during this period, none gathered more than 15,000. The main reform-oriented part of the population was formed by the students and faculty of the local university, which regularly gathered indoors, sometimes numbering several thousands. A portion of the population of the city, mostly from among the Russophones opposed the drive for re-establishing the Romanian language as the only official language of the country.
The former Soviet apparatus representatives have retained political control over the city administration, although some reforms have been done. The municipal activity is done in Russian and Romanian. The city also actively supports Ukrainian language and culture.
1992-2007 Permanent or work-seeking emigration to Russia, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Spain, Greece, US, Germany, Israel, France, and a low natality rate have led to a 23% decrease in population, including a 45% decrease among ethnic Russians, 30% ethnic Ukrainians, 15% ethnic Moldavians.
