Moldovan Democratic Republic and the imperative of national unity (1917–1918)

Abstract

The present study argues that the Union of Bessarabia with the mother country, Romania, on March 27, 1918 gave expression to the natural tendency of Bessarabian Romanians to return to the ancestral hearth, representing in the complex circumstances of 1918 an authentic salvation not only for the national being in Bessarabia, but also for its consolidation and expansion democratic values throughout the Romanian space. The author emphasizes that the determining importance of Bessarabia's return its motherland made the dissolution of the Moldavian Democratic Republic perceived as a moment of inevitable separation, the popular hopes being tied to the Romanian state from now on. It is mentioned that the embryonic statehood of the territory between Prut and Dniester, as an expression of national self-determination, was a useful, important and legitimate vehicle and means in the complicated process of unchaining and finding the two banks of the Prut River. It is concluded that giving up a statehood that they did not have the resources to fully assume, which could become an easy prey for expansionist desires, the Romanians from Bessarabia, as well as the neighboring ethnic groups, have gained, instead, an entire country, part of the free European space.