Implications for the development

CULTURA MEMORIEI ŞI PATRIMONIUL 
CULTURAL ÎN SOCIETATEA 
POST-TOTALITARĂ: POLITICI, 
PRACTICI ŞI PROIECTE 
DE VALORIFICARE ŞTIINȚIFICĂ

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Patrimoniul cultural de ieri: implicații în dezvoltarea societății durabile de mâine
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Anatol PETRENCU
doctor habilitat în istorie, profesor universitar 
Membru de onoare al Academiei Oamenilor de Știinţă din România
Universitatea de Stat din Moldova
email: [e-mail]
LOCUL ŞI VALOAREA MEMORIILOR OAMENILOR SIMPLI ÎN PATRIMONIUL 
UMAN. STUDIU DE CAZ: SATUL BASARABEAN, 1940
Summary. The place and value of the memories of ordinary people for human heritage. Case 
study: the Bessarabian village, 1940. 
On 27 March 1918, Bessarabia joined the Kingdom of Roma-
nia. One of the worst problems, inherited by the Bessarabians from the tsarist regime, was the agrar-
ian problem. After the national reunification, the Romanian State carried out the Agrarian Reform, 
resulting in the ownership of 357016 inhabitants with 1098045 ha of 1739 villages (P. Cazacu). In 
the USSR and in the communist Romania, the past of interwar Bessarabia was presented in gloomy 
colors. The propaganda aimed to demonstrate how in the “bourgeois-landlord” Romania the state 
impoverished the peasantry, and how the agriculture was in a permanent crisis. The differentiation of 
wealth, which took place in 1918–1940, was classified as a social regression of Bessarabia.
On 28 June 1940, the USSR annexed Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and Herta County. The So-
viets imposed their order, including the nationalization of the land. Wealthy people, especially those 
from the villages, were declared “exploiters of human labor by man” and, in June 1941, deported to 
Siberia. 
This article aims to examine the real state of affairs in the Bessarabian villages in the interwar pe-
riod, especially around 1940. An original source for achieving the proposed goal is the memory and 
testimonies of Gulag survivors, documented within the State Program “The historical research and 
investigation of the memory of the victims of the totalitarian communist regime from the Moldavian 
SSR during the years 1940–1941 and 1944–1953”.