THE ROAD TO MOLDOVA

Written by MOTORBIKE EUROPE Road Writers - Thursday, 24 March 2011 10:14

Moldova is sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, and lies deep in the countryside. Moldova is actually an agricultural country, and since the late Middle Ages, the Romanian principality Moldova was a vassal state, under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. The neighboring Wallachia had the same status, and during the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Tsar Alexander I captured the eastern part of the Principality of Moldova. The territory known as Bessarabia, and a narrow strip of land between Moldova and the Black Sea, was also captured. The whole of Bessarabia remained under Russian control until the Russian Revolution.

In 1920, Bessarabia was incorporated in the Kingdom of Romania, and remained under Romanian control until 1940, when the Soviet leader Stalin forced Romania to hand over Bessarabia, to the USSR.

During the Second World War, Romania fought on German side against the Soviet Union, and took over Bessarabia, and an area around the city of Odessa. Romania had to abandon this conquest again during the peacetime after the Second World War. The countryside west of the Dniester was predominantly agricultural, and Moldova was, in the Soviet era, best known for its production of wine.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, it was suggested from the Romanian side, to include Moldova in Romania, and this was one of the reasons for the subsequent Russian rebellion, in the Transnistria region.