This is the history of Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognised as part of Moldova. Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldovan–Ukrainian border, as well as some land on the other side of the river's bank.
Before 1792
Antiquity In ancient history, the area was inhabited by Thracian and Scythian tribes. Pliny the Elder names the Tyragetae, a Getae tribe living on an island of the Dniester (ancient name "Tyras"), the Axiacae living along the Tiligul River (ancient "Axiaces") and the Crobyzi, a Thracian tribe living beyond the Dniester.Pliny the Elder, The Natural History Chapter 26. Scythia
At the mouth of the river, the Ancient Greeks of Miletus founded around 600 BC a colony named Tyras, which was located outside present-day Transnistria. It fell under the dominion of native kings whose names appear on its coins, and it was destroyed by the Dacians about 50 BC.
In 56 AD Tyras had been restored by the Romans and henceforth formed part of the province of Lower Moesia, which also included Dobruja (part of Romania) and northeastern Bulgaria. Romans settled colonists in Tyras and maintained some legionaries in the area (even in Olbia) until the 4th century.
Historian Theodore Mommsen wrote that "Moldavia and the south half of Bessarabia as well as the whole of Wallachia were incorporated in the Roman Empire".
All these facts confirm the creation of defensive earth dykes (called Trajan Walls) from the Prut river to the Tyras area, in order to defend these new territories of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, Mommsen wrote, "Bessarabia is intersected by a double barrier-line which, running from the Pruth to the Dniester, ends at Tyra and appears to proceeds from the Romans".
In the Late Roman period, the extent of control and military occupation over territory north of the Danube in actual Bessarabia remains controversial. One Roman fort (Pietroasa de Jos), well beyond the Danubian Limes and near actual Moldavia, would seem to have been occupied in the 4th century AD, as were bridge-head forts (Sucidava, Barboşi, and the unlocated Constantiniana Daphne) along the left bank of the river. In this Roman fort, built by Constantine I, researchers have found even a thermae building in the 1980s.
In the 4th century the Goths conquered Tyras and Olbia on the coast, but the final destruction of those merchant cities happened with the Attila invasions one century later. The area of Transnistria was under the rule of the Goths, who, in the 4th century, were divided into the "Tervingi" and "Greuthungi" tribes, (traditionally identified with the Visigoths and Ostrogoths), the border between them being on the Dniester river.Peter J. Heather, The Goths, Blackwell Publishing,
Moldovan and Slavic settlement Transnistria was an early crossroads of people and cultures, including the South Slavs, who reached it in the 6th century. Some East Slavic tribes (Ulichs and Tivertsy) may have lived in it, but they were pushed further north by Turkic nomads such as Pechenegs and the Cumans.Robin Milner-Gulland, The Russians, Blackwell Publishing, p.44 In the 10th century, the "Volohove" (Vlachs, i.e. Romanians) are mentioned in the area of Danube in the Primary Chronicle. Indeed, some academics believe that on the coast between the Dniester and Danube rivers there was a romance speaking community until 1050 AD, that was destroyed by the Pechenegs
From Kievan Rus' to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Transnistria was inhabited mainly by the Cumans and wars against them may have brought the territory under the control of the Kievan Rus' at times around the 11th century.Charles King: "The Moldovans", Hoover Press, Studies of Nationalities series (Stanford University, 2000), page 179.John Haywood: Cassell Atlas of World HistoryPenguin Atlas of Russian History (Puffin, 1995)David Christian: A History of Russia, Mongolia and Central Asia, Vol. 1 (Blackwell, 1999) It became a formal part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 15th century. While most of today's Moldova came into the Ottoman orbit at this time, much of Transnistria remained a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 as part of Bratslav Voivodeship, save for short periods of Cossack Hetmanate in 1648–1672 as Bratslav Regiment and Ottoman Empire in 1672–1684 as Podolia Eyalet.
On the coast the Byzantines built a fortress in the area of the destroyed Tyras and named it Asprocastron ("White Castle" – a meaning kept in several languages, like in actual Ukrainian Bilhorod). In the 14th century the city was controlled and renovated by the Republic of Genoa, that established there a call and a counter trade until the Ottoman conquest. A small part of the population of this city escaped the Turkish invasion founding up north a small villageGenoese and Italians in Ukraine (in Italian) that later become the actual city of Tiraspol, now capital of Transnistria.
Meanwhile, the Crimean Khanate conquered the southern portion of Transnistria south of the Iagorlîc/Jagorlyk river, which was included in 1504 in the region of Yedisan and was under the control of the Ottoman Empire until 1792. The northern part (North of the Iagorlîc river) remained under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as part of the historical region of Podolia (part of the Polish Kingdom until 1793). The border between the two states was set on a brook known in Moldavian chronicles as IahurlîcSava, p.5 and in Polish source as Jahorlik or Jahorłyk[Geographical_Dictionary_of_the_Kingdom_of_Poland], 1880–1902, b.III p.372 http://dir.icm.edu.pl/pl/Slownik_geograficzny/Tom_III/372 (today Iagorlîc, in Transnistria).
Moldavia started from its nucleus in Bukovina and soon reached Prut and by the end of the 14th century the Dnister, which was set as their easternmost border.
While there were some Moldavian military incursions beyond the Dniester in the 15th century, the earliest written evidence of Moldavian settlement beyond the Dnister dates from the 16th century: a 1541 letter written by Suleiman the Magnificent to Polish Sigismund II Augustus says that some of his Moldavian subjects plundered Tighina and Akkerman and then retreated and settled in the Polish territory.Nistor, Vechimea..., p. 6-7
Modern Era While the territory beyond the Dniester was never politically part of Moldavia, some areas of today's Transnistria were owned by Moldavian boyars, being given by the Moldavian rulers. The earliest surviving deeds referring to lands beyond the Dnister date from the 16th century.Sava, p.4-6 Moldavian chronicle Grigore Ureche mentions that in 1584, some Moldavian villages from beyond the Dniester in the Polish territory were attacked and plundered by Cossacks.Grigore Ureche Letopiseţul ţărâi Moldovei, de când s-au descălecat ţara Many Moldovans were members of Cossacks units, two of them, Ivan Pidkova and Danylo Apostol, were hetmans of Ukraine.
Along with a nomadic Nogai Tatar population, the area was populated by Moldovans, Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians. In 1927, Columbia University Professor Charles Upson Clark, wrote that the lower Dniester was "an almost purely Romanian stream" with Romanian villages from Mohyliv-Podilskyi to Ovidiopol.
Russian Empire
In 1792, the southern part of Transnistria was ceded by Ottoman Empire to the Russian Empire. The part north of the Iagorlîc River was annexed by Russia in 1793 in the Second Partition of Poland. At that time, the population was sparse and the Russian Empire encouraged large migrations into the region, including people of Ukrainian, Moldovan, Polish, Russian and German ethnicity.
Russia began attempting to lure Romanian settlers (mostly from Moldavia, but also from Transylvania, Bukovina and Muntenia) to settle in its territory in 1775, after it gained the largely uninhabited territory between the Dnieper and the Bug.Nistor, Vechimea..., p. 14 But the colonization was to be in a larger scale after 1792/3, to Transnistria and beyond, when the Russian government declared that the region of steppes without population between the Dniester and the Southern Bug was to become a new principality named "New Moldavia", under Russian suzerainty.Nistor, Vechimea..., p. 16
Indeed, the colonization had reached in the previous century the Kyiv area (then known as New Serbia) and in 1712 even the Don river, with the Dimitrie Cantemir leadership.
Plots of tax-exempt land were distributed amongst Moldavian peasants, while 56 Moldavian boyars (belonging to famous families like Rosetti, Cantacuzino, Catargiu and Sturdza) received large estates which they helped colonize. Dozens of new villages were founded during this colonization stage, which lasted until 1812, when Russia integrated East Moldova and Transnistria ceased to be a borderland.Nistor, Vechimea..., p. 15-16
In the 1890s there were the following fully Moldovan villages in the Bug river area: Iasca, Gradinita, Sevartaica, Belcauca (in the direction of Ovideopol), Malaiesti, Floarea, Tei, Cosarca, Buturul, Perperita, Goiana, Siclia, Corotna, Cioburceni, Speia, Caragaciu, Taslic, Dorotcaia, Voznisevsca (on the Bug), Moldovca si Cantacuzinovca. Indeed, in 1893 according to official data there were 532,416 Romance speaking people (Moldovans and Wallachians) in Kherson and Podolia, 11,813 – in Ecaterinoslav, and 4,015 in Tauridia (Crimea).
1917–1924 During World War I, representatives of the Romanian speakers beyond the Dniester (who numbered 173,982 in the 1897 census) participated in the Bessarabian national movement in 1917/1918, asking for the incorporation of their territory in Greater Romania. Nevertheless, Romania ignored their request, as it would have required a large-scale military intervention.King, p.80
In May 1919, the local population of Bender began an uprising against Romanian rule. The uprising was swiftly suppressed by the Romanian Army together with a unit of French colonial troops.
At the end of World War I in 1918, the Directory of Ukraine proclaimed the sovereignty of the Ukrainian People's Republic over the left bank of the Dniester. After the Russian Civil War in 1922, the Ukrainian SSR was created.
Soviet Era
The geopolitical concept of an autonomous Communist Transnistrian region was born in 1924, when Bessarabian military leader Grigore Kotovski proposed the founding of the Moldavian Autonomous Oblast, which months later became the Moldavian ASSR (MASSR) of the Ukrainian SSR. Its area was 8,677 km2 and included 11 raions on the left bank of Dniester.
While the creation of ethnic-based autonomous polities was a general policy of the Soviets at that time, with the creation of MASSR the Soviet Union also hoped to bolster its claim to Bessarabia. Soviet authorities declared the "temporarily occupied city of Kishinev" as de jure capital of the |ASSR]
At that time, the population of MASSR was 48% Ukrainian, 30% Romanian/Moldavian, 9% Russian, and 8.5% Jewish. (see below)
In 1927 there was a massive uprising of peasants and factory workers in Tiraspol and also cities in the southern Ukrainian SSR (Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Kamianets-Podilskyi) against Soviet authorities. Soviet troops suppressed the unrest, causing around 4,000 deaths, according to US correspondents sent to report about the insurrection, which was at the time completely denied by the Kremlin official press."Disorder in the Ukraine?", Time, December 12, 1927.
During the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of Moldovan Transnistrians fled to Romania, the government of which set up a special Fund for their housing and education. A 1935 estimate put the number of refugees at 20,000.King, p.181