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| Abbreviation | Majadahonda |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1940 |
| Dissolved | 1941 |
| Type | anti-Soviet group |
| Location | |
Official language | Romanian |
"Vasile Lupu" High School Group (Romanian: Grupul de liceeni "Vasile Lupu") was one of the first organized anti-Soviet groups in Bessarabia in the wake of its occupation by the Soviet Union on June 28, 1940.
The resistance group was formed on 1 August 1940 by the students and some teachers of the Vasile Lupu high school in Orhei, which was renamed by the Soviets a Pedagogical School. The group, comprising about 32 members, had as its main goals the overthrow of Soviet power in Bessarabia and the reunification of Bessarabia with the Kingdom of Romania.
After a series of small actions, such as writing anti-Soviet slogans on public walls ("Death to the Stalinist occupiers!", "Go home, barbarians!", "Down with the executioner Stalin!", "Don't believe the bolshevik occupiers!"), and spread of anti-Soviet manifestos, they did an extrodinary achievement: during Christmas night 1940, they took down the Soviet red flags, and put up Romanian flags on top of several buildings in Orhei, including City Hall, the Romanian Communist Party building, and the NKVD headquarters. In January 1941, the NKVD managed to crack into the organization and arrest most of its members. The sentence was pronounced on June 24, 1941. [1]
Most of them were executed by shooting in Chișinău on June 27, 1941, according to a report of the Odessa Military Tribunal, signed Axelrod. Other members of the group:
The investigation was led by G. Goldberg, chief of the Orhei County Section of the NKVD, and was conducted by Konopekin, chief investigator, Terebilo, deputy, Cherepanov, Malinin, Morev, Nikitovich, Plotnikov, and Toporov, investigators. [2]
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic or Moldavian SSR, also known as the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, Moldovan SSR, or simply Moldavia or Moldova, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on 2 August 1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on 28 June of that year, and parts of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous Soviet republic within the Ukrainian SSR.
Orhei, also formerly known as Orgeev, is a city, municipality and the administrative centre of Orhei District in the Republic of Moldova, with a population of 21,065. Orhei is approximately 40 kilometres north of the capital, Chișinău.
Lipcani is a town in Briceni District, Moldova. It is also a border crossing between Moldova and Romania.
The Fântâna Albă massacre took place on 1 April 1941 in Northern Bukovina when up to 3,000 civilians were killed by Soviet Border Troops as they attempted to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania near the village of Fântâna Albă, now Staryi Vovchynets in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine. Although according to Soviet official reports, no more than 44 civilians were killed, but local witnesses assert a much higher toll, stating that survivors were tortured, killed, or buried in mass graves. Others were taken away to be tortured and killed at the hands of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Some sources have referred to the massacre as "the Romanian Katyn".
Pantelimon "Pan" Halippa was a Bessarabian and later Romanian journalist and politician. One of the most important promoters of Romanian nationalism in Bessarabia and of this province's union with Romania, he was president of Sfatul Țării, which voted union in 1918. He then occupied ministerial posts in several governments, following which he underwent political persecution at the hands of the Communist régime and was later incarcerated in Sighet prison.
Victor Zâmbrea was a Bessarabian painter.
Alexandru Baltagă was a Bessarabian Romanian Orthodox priest, a founder of the Bessarabian religious press in the Romanian language, a member of Sfatul Țării (1917–1918), a Soviet political prisoner, and, according to the Orthodox Church, a martyr for the faith.
Vasile Vasilievici Stroescu, also known as Vasile de Stroesco, Basile Stroesco, or Vasile Stroiescu, was a Bessarabian and Romanian politician, landowner, and philanthropist. One of the proponents and sponsors of Romanian nationalism in Russia's Bessarabia Governorate, as well as among the Romanian communities of Austria-Hungary, he was also a champion of self-help and of cooperative farming. He inherited or purchased large estates, progressively dividing them among local peasants, while setting up local schools and churches for their use. An erudite and traveler, he abandoned his career in law to focus on his agricultural projects and cultural activism. For the latter work, he became an honorary member of the Romanian Academy.
Isidor Sârbu, also known as Sîrbu (1887–1980), was a victim of dekulakization in the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR). Of Romanian heritage, Sârbu was born a citizen of the Russian Empire in Corjova, where he spent some fifty years of his life. Before the October Revolution, he had amassed a relatively large agricultural estate and was employing farmhands, leading him to be designated a kulak. Politically and socially marginalized by the MASSR, he sold most of his properties before the land collectivization of 1930. Sârbu was allowed to join the collective farm, and became one of its managers, but in 1933 lost his position and found himself arrested by the OGPU. He received a suspended sentence for theft, was stripped of his remaining property, and then reduced to supporting his wife and eight children as a day laborer.
The National Organization of Bessarabia "Arcașii lui Ștefan" was one of the organized anti-Soviet groups in Bessarabia right after World War II.
Vladimir Cristi (1880–1956) was a Romanian publicist and politician who served as State Minister in the Nicolae Iorga government between 16 January and 6 June 1932. Cristi was Mayor of Chișinău between 1938 and 1940.
Vasile Bârcă was a Moldovan politician, member of the Moldovan Parliament, mayor of Chișinău and minister during Greater Romania.
Andrei Găină was a deputy in the first Parliament of Bessarabia "Sfatul Țării" in the years 1917-1918, voting the Union of Bessarabia with Romania.
Vasile Gafencu was a Bessarabian politician.
Grigore Turcuman was a Bessarabian Romanian politician. As a member of Sfatul Țării, he voted the Union of Bessarabia with the Kingdom of Romania on 27 March 1918.
Ștefan Balmez was a Bessarabian Bulgarian politician.
Igor Cașu is a historian from the Republic of Moldova.
Olimpiada Bodiu (1912–1971) was a Bessarabian activist and member of an anti-communist resistance group in the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Alexandra Scodigor-Remenco (1897–1959) was a Romanian educator from Chişinău, Bessarabia. She founded an orphanage in 1929 that became a model institution for pre-school education in Romania. The orphanage was visited by Maria Montessori in 1938, when Alexandra Remenco was invited to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Pius XI.
The Moldovan resistance during World War II opposed Axis-aligned Romania and Nazi Germany, as part of the larger Soviet partisan movement. The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), presently Moldova, had been created in August 1940 after a Soviet annexation, and liberated by Romania during Operation Barbarossa. Moldovan resistance straddled across a new administrative border: in 1941–1944, Bessarabia was reincorporated within Romania as a semi-autonomous governorate, while areas across the Dnister were administered into a separate Transnistria Governorate. Shortly after the German–Romanian invasion of June–July 1941, the Communist Party of Moldavia (PCM) ordered the creation of a partisan network. The order was largely ineffective in creating an organized movement due to the rapid disintegration of Soviet territorial structures in Bessarabia. Some early organizers opted to abandon their posts, and Soviet attempts to infiltrate experienced partisans across the front line were often annihilated by the Special Intelligence Service. Nevertheless, partisan formations were still able to stage large-scale attacks on the Romanian infrastructure, at Bender and elsewhere. While Romanian documents identified categories of locals influenced by communist ideas as a passive component of the resistance, various modern commentators point to the overall unpopularity of communism in Bessarabia as accounting for the movement's marginality.