Radio România Internațional

Tag: Soviet Union

  • Titus Gârbea, a witness to Scandinavian history

    Titus Gârbea, a witness to Scandinavian history

    During their lifetime, people may reach some of the most unexpected places and become witnesses to events they never thought they would witness. This is the case of the centenarian general Titus Gârbea, ‘a Romanian in northern Europe who witnessed the history of that region in the first half of the 20th century. Gârbea was born in 1893 and died in 1998, at the age of 105. He fought in World War I and was appointed military attaché in Berlin between 1938 and 1940, and from 1940 to 1943 he was military attaché in Stockholm and Helsinki. He served on the front in World War II, was decorated, and in 1947 he was put on a reserve duty status. From his position as diplomat, he was in contact with several personalities in the history of northern Europe such as King Gustaf V of Sweden and Alexandra Kollontai, the Soviet ambassador to Stockholm.



    The Oral History Center of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation had the opportunity to talk to Titus Gârbea in 1994, when he was 101 years old. The general recollected the moment when King Carol II appointed him Romania’s representative to Scandinavia: Finland is a small country, with four million inhabitants, but with hardworking and honest people, true to their word. King Carol II called me and said, Could you go to the Nordic countries ?! I was in Berlin on a very difficult mission, and at the same time I had missions in Bern, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. I said, Your Majesty, I can cope with the mission, but travel will be very expensive, because I will often have to travel by plane! And so, I was also appointed military attaché in the Nordic and Baltic countries, that is, about five or six more countries were added. I was always on the road! But I coped with the mission and sent very important information for our country and its future, because the Nazi danger had begun threatening our country too.



    Already familiar with the Nordic spirit, Gârbea travelled between the Swedish and Finnish capitals. But, in the Baltic States, occupied by the Soviets in 1940, he was not received in a way that he had expected: “My job required me to go to both Stockholm and Finland from time to time. The mission was very difficult, because Berlin was in control of the entire Europe. I was assigned to the four Nordic countries: Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. Additionally, I was also dealing with the three Baltic countries where we were seen as a black beast by the communists in those three countries. Our very good Estonian friends warned me: ‘Sir, don’t leave the house at night because the Russians, who are almost everywhere, are capable of doing very wicked things! Well, I survived, nothing happened, but I was the black beast.



    The eve of World War II caught Gârbea right on the demarcation line between the Poles and the Soviets who were ready to occupy Poland. There he became aware of the Soviet antipathy to the Romanians: In 1939, after Hitler’s Germany and Lenin’s Russia, side by side, simply crushed Poland, I was right there on the front. I went to Brest-Litovsk where the Russians were supposed to come. According to them, Brest-Litovsk was to remain in Russian hands, and the rest, in the west, in the hands of Germany. And when I arrived in Brest-Litovsk and got in touch with the Russians who had come there, given that we, as diplomats, had some freedom, one of the Russians, with a typically Russian rude attitude, told me: ‘You are going to have the same fate one day. He literally threatened me, despite my position of military attaché. I did not retort to his rude attitude. And indeed we had the same fate.



    In the same turbulent year 1940, Gârbea was in Sweden when the winter war between Finland and the Soviet Union began. Little Finland showed extraordinary heroism in the face of the Soviet giant that had invaded it. Gârbea wanted to highlight the Finnish courage and the sympathy that the whole world showed to the Finnish people: I was in Stockholm and Finland when this war broke out. From there I was following the Russian operations in Finland, during that very hard winter in 1939-1940, when the natural ally of Finland helped it a lot in the battle. But in the spring, when the thaw began, the huge number of big aircraft overwhelmed the poor Finland with a population of only four million. It was like a mosquito fighting a stallion! Because at that time, I must say, Russia was blamed and ostracized by the whole continent for what it had done, for having attacked poor Finland, with considerable troops, to occupy everything. It was nothing but one of the many horrendous actions taken by Russia, actions also taken against Romania, in 1877 and before.



    The Romanian Titus Gârbea witnessed history far from his country. But it was an equally personal history. (LS)

  • Panait Istrati, the man with no political leanings

    Panait Istrati, the man with no political leanings

    Panait Istrati was one the most complex Romanian writers. Born in the Romanian town of Braila in 1884, he is equally seen as a French writer. His work is influenced by a strong social message, laying a significant emphasis on the world of the proletariat and the disenfranchised. Istrati adhered to communism from the early days of his youth. However, he was one of the first to have broken away with its ideology after his visits to the Soviet Union. Professor Ioan Stanomir will now be explaining Panait Istratis political and intellectual affiliation.



    Panait Istrati veered towards communism having adopted a stance which was very familiar to a great many European intellectuals: the stance of dissatisfaction and social revolt. We should not forget that Panait Istrati was, over and above anything else, a socialist, he was very close to Cristian Rakovski, he bore witness to Romanias strikes in their early form at the turn of the 20th century, and that his family background was marked by hardship and marred by a dire social condition. All that had built into Panait Istratis intellectual character. And theres also something else we must take into account: he was very familiar with the French intellectual milieus, where he was viewed and rated as a voice for the downtrodden and the underprivileged. In that respect, Istrati and Gorki have diverging and similar destinies. Istrati was a communist, then broke with its ideology and turned lucid. Gorki befriended the Bolsheviks, supported them, he was a friend of Lenin, set off in exile in the early stages of the Bolshevik power, he returned and would be signed up by Stalin. Istrati and Gorki have something in common: European fame and an ideological commitment, the idea of a writer assigned to fulfil his mission by the social class he comes from.“



    In 1927, Istrati visited Moscow and Kiev. In 1929, he would travel to Soviet Russia again and it was then that the veil was lifted form his eyes, which basically meant the communist regime was far from what it advocated in theory. He wrote ‘Vers l’autre flamme. Confession pour vaincus, ‘To the Other Flame. Confession for the Defeated where he highlighted the communist regimes abusive actions and which came out as something utterly shocking. When the book was brought out, Istrati would be isolated and accused of fascism. Ioan Stanomir again.



    A trip to the Soviet Union is not necessarily a reason for an awakening, it could be an even greater opportunity to go blind once again. The exception confirms the rule, since there are very few travellers who, once they got to the Soviet Union, lacked the strength to go beyond the veil they themselves had put before their own eyes. Let us not forget Beatrice and Sidney Webb who visited the Soviet Union and returned with eulogizing and delirious texts about the Soviet Union. Let us not forget Herbert George Wells visited the Soviet Union and it looks like the visit had no impact whatsoever on his literary outlook. There are two names we need to mention as regards this so-called awakening. They are Panait Istrati and Andre Gide. Both reached the Soviet Union and both wrote books that placed them in a very delicate situation. Let us not forget the fact Istrati was mainly accused of betraying the cause of anti-fascism and the cause of democracy by bespattering the Soviet Union. The USSR was the main bulwark for the anti-fascist and democratic fight at that time, from the viewpoint of the communist imaginary.



    But it was against the Stalinist crimes and not the communist ideology Panait Istrati rose. An admirer of Trotski, he would write he no longer adhered to the revolution until that was made “with a pure, with a childs soul. Ioan Stanomir believes Istrati actually broke way with Leninism.



    Trotski was an armed prophet, he was armed against his own people. The Red Army, which Trotski created, was an oppressive tool used above all against the Russian people. It was the Red Army that destroyed the peasants class in the civil war. Trotski stood out as the anti-bureaucratic and anti-totalitarian alternative from the perspective of the radical left. Istrati broke with Leninism, better said, he noticed a huge rift existed between what leftists in general perceived as being Leninism and what the anti-Stalinist leftists perceived as being Stalinism. Istrati never denied his far-left convictions, its just that he took a step back, noticing that in Stalins Russia Leninist principles were disregarded. Panait Istrati, just like his peers, fell prey to a terrible illusion: the one stating that Leninism was different from Stalinism and that Leninism was not a form of totalitarianism.



    How did the communist regime in Romania use Panait Istrati? Ioan Stranomir.



    “Panait Istrati became an asset for the communist regime in Romania, mainly after the 1960s. It was not without good cause that such a thing occurred at a time when the French-Romanian cooperation was being strengthened. Its quite certain that Istrati was something the communist regime took advantage of, when the relationship with France was re-launched. Panait Istrati was a child of France, a Gorki of the Balkans promoted by the French, by the far-left literary circles, and French communists would come to Romania to shoot their productions and to engender a democratic-popular Romanian filmmaking industry. A wave of translations would follow, since part of Istratis texts were in French. If we take a look at the ‘Everymans Library collection which includes outlines of his life and work, we can notice the care with which the episode of Istratis apostasy is placed in a context, described as a transient spell, one which had been however balanced out by Panait Istratis substantial contribution to the workers movement.



    Just as history has shown, Panait Istrati was one of the defeated. A defeated man who, like many before him, pursued happiness for the oppressed but who only succeeded in sinking society into deeper misery.


  • Romania’s Balkan policy after World War Two

    Romania’s Balkan policy after World War Two

    Before 1940, Romania’s policy in the Balkans had been mainly focusing on cooperation and making alliances with various state entities. After World War 2, until the mid-1950s, Romania’s policy in the Balkans was controlled by the USSR and it was only after Stalin’s death in 1953 that Romania started its own initiatives in the region. The country tried to reach out beyond the barriers imposed by the post-war delineation in the Balkans, where Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania where under the communist grip, while Turkey and Greece had democratic regimes.



    Attempting to improve its international image, in the aftermath of its intervention against the anti-communist revolution in Hungary in 1956, the Soviet Union eased its grip granting some freedom to its satellite countries. In Romania’s case the Soviets took this process a step further by pulling their troops out of this territory in 1958. Romania wanted to make the most of this freedom and tried an economical and cultural rapprochement with its neighbours.



    In an interview with the Oral History Department, Valentin Lipatti, a former ambassador, essay-writer and translator, spoke about the initiative of denuclearizing the Balkans at that time.



    Valentin Lipatti: “Romania’s first major initiative after the war was Prime Minister Chivu Stoica’s 1957 proposal to denuclearize the Balkans. It was a major, daring initiative, which of course, slammed against a wall of rejection. Whereas Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were largely in favour of denuclearization or turning the Balkans into a region free of atomic bombs, NATO members Greece and Turkey stood against it, and the initiative, no matter how inspired, failed. It wasn’t completely buried, but kept dormant for a year or two. However, this idea of denuclearizing the Balkans got momentum and snowballed into a movement that eventually comprised other parts of the globe.”



    With the barrier between communism and democracy seemingly impossible to overcome, cultural cooperation proved to be the only way to cross it.



    Valentin Lipatti: “Concurrently with this governmental initiative, which proved difficult because it involved the military sector, and military issues were always the most prickly, a major cooperation process commenced in the Balkans, in the cultural field, consisting in exchanges in education, sciences and culture. But that was at non-governmental level only. And this kind of multilateral cooperation went on for years at this level, which was easier to accomplish and had only few obstacles. This is how a number of associations and organisations operated, such as the Balkan Medical Union, which had been founded between the two wars, the Balkan Union of Mathematicians as well as the younger International Association of South-eastern European Studies, set up in 1963. These professional associations and organisations maintained a sense of trust and cooperation in scientific areas and professional environments in the Balkans.”



    The Balkan Cooperation Committee, headed by Mihail Ghelmegeanu, was designed to coordinate cultural activities. However, its success was limited.



    Valentin Lipatti: “The Balkan Cooperation Committee, headed by Mihail Ghelmegeanu, was a non-governmental committee lobbying for peace. Such organisations were very much in fashion at that time. There was this idea, mainly coming from the Soviet Union, of holding world-level peace conferences, regional conferences for peace, against imperialism, and so on. In the Balkans, this Committee was set up, focusing on defending peace in the Balkans. It was a multilateral committee, but it did not have a large-scale activity. More important were those professional associations, of medical doctors, architects, archaeologists, geologists, scientists, historians, writers. Their efficiency was twofold. First, a specific cooperation project was established in a given profession, in the field of history, let’s say, or in the field of language studies, or in archaeology. It resulted in research studies, research activities, reviews, colloquia, a multilateral professional activity between the Balkan countries, between specialists from Balkan states. Thanks to this kind of cooperation, these professional circles maintained a climate of good neighbourhood, reliability, friendship and trust.”



    However, at a 1976 governmental meeting in Athens, focusing on economic and technical cooperation, the flaws of that kind of policy came to light.



    Valentin Lipatti: “The objective Romania was firmly pursuing, just like Yugoslavia, Turkey, and to a certain extent Greece, was to create some kind of follow-up. That is, to create an institutional framework, because one conference, a one-off event, good as it may be, doesn’t amount to much, people forget it. And in this respect, we had to face Bulgaria’s staunch opposition. Our Bulgarian friends claimed they had not been authorised to approve anything like this. Generally, a five-way consensus was quite easy to get. But it was enough for a country to veto, and the decision could not be approved. Bulgaria was voicing the Soviet Unions’ view, and at that time Moscow did not favour economic cooperation in the Balkans, which in time could get out of its control. It saw a common Balkan regional market as a threat, because Romania and Bulgaria were socialist countries, but Turkey, Greece, non-aligned Yugoslavia could take that cooperation to a direction the Soviet Union did not want it to go. So the Bulgarians were instructed to veto the follow-up. That blow below the belt dealt by the Bulgarians blocked the multilateral process for long, for quite a few years, actually.”



    The success of Romania’s policy in the Balkans during the communist years was limited. The clashing interests within the same bloc, as well as the different political regimes, were reasons enough to hinder Balkan regional cooperation.

  • The Trans-Dniestr War

    The Trans-Dniestr War

    The reforms initiated by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, known as perestroika and glasnost, in mid 1980s, have been to no avail for the Soviet Union. Its collapse in 1991 confirmed the bankruptcy of the system set up in 1917 following Lenins Bolshevik revolution. But the collapse of the Soviet Union has left room for armed conflicts. These conflicts were actually frozen or postponed although the Communist regime had intimated that brutal intervention had done away with the likelihood of conflicts being solved by armed intervention.



    The demise of the old Soviet system also meant rethinking the way in which Russia, the former USSRs successor, could maintain its leverage on the former Soviet republics. One of the methods was to encourage separatist movements. The first on the Kremlins list were Georgia and Moldova, Ukraine being considered still a faithful state to Moscow. As early as 1990, the self-styled republics of South Ossetia and Abhazia proclaimed their independence from Georgia while in Moldova there emerged the Trans-Dniester republic or Transdniester and Gagauzia.



    The proclamation of the Moldovan republic of Dniester on September 1990 after the Republic of Moldova had proclaimed its sovereignty on June 23rd 1990 opened the path for separatist movements. According to the 1989 census, in Trans-Dniester there lived 39.9% Moldovans, 28.3% Ukrainians, 25.4% Russians and 1.9% Bulgarians. After Moldova became a UN member state, on March 2nd 1992, the Moldovan president Mircea Snegur authorized the military intervention against the rebel forces, after they had attacked police stations loyal to Chisinau on the eastern bank of the Dniester river and in Tiraspol. The rebels, backed by the Soviet troops of the 14th army, consolidated their control on a large part of the disputed region. The outnumbered Moldovan army has never been able to regain control over Transniestr, despite mediations in the past 25 years.



    Mircea Druc was the Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova between May 25th 1990 and May 28th 1991. When the conflict broke out, he was one of the leaders of the opposition Christian – Democratic Popular Front, in the opposition. In his opinion, the war in Transdniestr could not have been avoided:



    I believe that the Russian – Romanian war on the Dniestr in 1992 was impossible to avoid, no matter how hard we would try now to put the blame on one party or another. The misfortune, for Besserabians and for those living on the left bank of Dniestr, was that the arsenals and the warehouses of weapons evacuated by the Soviet army from the countries of the former socialist camp had been left across the Dniestr. So, the place was full of armament from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria. The armament there was worth over 4 billion dollars. In 1989 and 1990, with Gorbachevs perestroika in full swing, the conflict between Tiraspol and Chisinau started, as Tiraspol, alongside other anti-Gorbachev and anti-perestroika forces could not admit that the Soviet Union was falling apart. They refused the simple truth that all empires disappear sooner of later. Until August 1991 they kept hoping they could save the Soviet Union. But all their hopes were scattered on December 5th 1991, when the presidents of Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine signed the document that made the USSRs dismantling official. According to Mircea Druc, the war also had a strong economic motivation that was as important as the geo-strategic one. Mircea Druc:



    “And then, something quite predictable happened. The interest groups in Chisinau were facing the dilemma of how to divide the Soviet heritage, the earnings of the collective farms (kolkhoz) and of the state-owned farms (sovkhoz) for which people living between rivers Niester and Prut had been working so hard, for over 50 years. In Transdniester, they used to talk about it in trivial terms, saying they would not allow the stupid Moldovans and the Fascist Romanians lay their hands on the 4 billion dollars. They used to curse Boris Eltin and other Russian leaders who had decided that everything on the territory of a former Soviet socialist republic was the property of that republic. They were determined not to share anything with anyone. So they decided to resist it. If it wasnt for this money, Chisinau and Tiraspol wouldnt have fought that hard and a third force would not have stepped in. I wonder why the Soviet troops and the center did not treat us, the Romanians from Bessarabia, the same way they treated the Baltic ‘aristocrats? In my opinion, they knew Romanians from Bessarabia were very determined and that bloodshed would be inevitable. But when there was an opportunity for Snegur to be given the 4 billions, they said no. Even Eltins democrats in Moscow decided to intervene with the 14th army. Eventually we found out that the entire arsenal had been sold and that Rutkoi and Cernomardin had decided where the money should go. 23 years later, theres nothing left, nothing to be shared.



    The conflict left 600 people dead on both sides. In 1992, following a convention on the conflicts peaceful resolution, signed by the Republic of Moldova and Russia, a status-quo was decided, which in fact meant a continuation of the conflict between Chisinau and Tiraspol.