Government of Romania

03/27/2023 | News release | Distributed by Public on 03/27/2023 09:13

The message from Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciucă on the occasion of the Day of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania

History teaches us that military aggression, illegitimate domination, and discrimination of nations cannot last. The peoples' aspirations, including the Romanian people, to live freely, dignifiedly, united, and democratically prove it. And these find their most concrete expression in the Great Union of 1918, which began on March 27 with Bessarabia's return to its motherland, Romania.

Torn from the principality of Moldavia for over 100 years, in 1812, by the Tsarist Empire, Bessarabia showed how strongly the Romanian spirit and a Romanian majority could endure, despite the forced russification. Then, in the harsh conditions of the First World War, when Romania was fighting against three great empires, the desire of the Bessarabian Romanians to live freely and united with the motherland became obvious.

The revolutions of February and October 1917 generated the conditions for the Romanian identity of Bessarabia to be reaffirmed and for Bessarabian Romanians to establish their representative and leading structures, among which the National Council (Sfatul Tarii), that ruled Bessarabia legitimately and legally, after the actual transfer of power from the Russian governors, in November 1917. And the steps towards the Union were made in a full manifestation of the principle of self-determination of peoples, with the broad public support of all citizens, in internationally recognized actions that culminated in the Union of Bessarabia with Romania, voted in the meeting of the National Council(Sfatul Tarii) attended by the then Prime Minister of Romania, Alexandru Marghiloman.

Ion Inculeț, Onisifor Ghibu, Vasile Stroescu, Pantelimon Halippa, and Constantin Stere were among the Romanian leaders who played a decisive role in achieving the union, showing that no empire can endure. Back then, Bessarabia returned to Romania, after 106 years. It would be forcibly separated again in 1940, occupied through an illegal and arbitrary act, concealed in a secret protocol of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. But even in this case, we have seen that the Great Power policy, the big deals at the expense of smaller states and European nations, or the spheres of influence of former empires cannot last. The Soviet Union dissolved at the end of 1991, although Russia finds it hard to loosen its grip on the territories it arbitrarily occupied, and even harder to get rid of the old tricks of the use of force. It proves it, today, through the full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine.

Today we pay tribute to those who achieved the Union of Bessarabia with Romania and paved the way for the 1918 Great Union, a few days after the promulgation in Chisinau of the law that establishes the historical truth of the Romanian as the official language in the Republic of Moldova, the second Romanian state. And we salute the current generation of politicians and cultural personalities who succeed to restore in Chisinau the foundations of democracy, Europeanization, and Romanian identity, undertaking the joint EU path.

Today it is our responsibility to maintain the unity of efforts to support the Republic of Moldova with everything it needs on its European path, for it to detach itself definitively from the harmful influence of Russia, and to fully record the liquidation of the consequences of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the shameful deal between Hitler and Stalin, the two murderers of the 20th century.