Browsing by Author "Cașu, Igor"

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CRIME ȘI JAFURI ALE SOLDAŢILOR SOVIETICI ÎN BASARABIA, 1944-1945.DATE NOI DIN ARHIVELE DIN CHIȘINAU
(Universitatea de Stat „Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu“, Cahul, 2019) Cașu, Igor
Tema legată de comportamentul soldaților sovietici în Basarabia în anii 1944-1945 nu a constituit încă obiectul unei cercetări aprofundate. În acest articol, încercăm să schițăm câteva repere tematice privitoare la acest subiect. Sursele care au stat la baza articolului provin două arhive din Chișinău, anumeArhiva Organizațiilor Social-Politice din Republica Moldova (AOSPRM)și Arhiva Ministerului de Interne a Republicii Moldova, fostulMVD al RSSM (AMAIRM-MVD).
DISCONTENT AND UNCERTAINTY IN THE BORDERLANDS: SOVIET MOLDAVIA AND THE SECRET SPEECH 1956–1957
(Routledge, 2014) Cașu, Igor; Sandle, Mark
This article examines reactions to de-Stalinisation in Soviet Moldavia between February 1956 and March 1957. The article is based on evidence from the archives of both the former Communist Party of Moldavia and the Moldavian KGB. It highlights the uncertainty there was at local levels because of the denunciation of Stalin. Local party reports demonstrate concern about the activities of religious activists, Western propaganda, nationalism and disaffected youth. The Hungarian revolution of 1956 caused the party to change tack, and to begin a clampdown. These reports highlight that Soviet rule had very shallow roots in Moldavia.
EXPORTING SOVIET REVOLUTION: TATARBUNAR REBELLION IN ROMANIAN BESSARABIA (1924)
(Routledge, 2020) Cașu, Igor
The Tatarbunar rebellion was a Soviet-inspired operation in South Bessarabia, Romania. I argue, against the grain of both Romanian and Soviet narratives, that the Tatarbunar uprising was an operation that, to succeed, it had to fail. For every involvement of Soviet secret services, as well as local social and ethnic grievances, the pattern of Soviet-inspired violent events in Romanian Tatarbunar in mid-September 1924 contrasts both to Soviet operations in Poland and Estonia that same year. The mass capture of their agents in Galicia in 1924 was also an immense embarrassment that, in conjunction with previous ones, determined the Soviets rescinding their active intelligence tactic in February 1925, in place since 1922. Romania, in turn, decided to create a robust military intelligence and counterintelligence institution to prevent such events in the future. Weeks after the Tatarbunar uprising, Moscow creates a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on Ukrainian territory to internationalize the Bessarabia question.
REVOLUȚIA SILENȚIOASĂ”: REVIZUIREA IDENTITĂȚII NAȚIONALE ÎN MOLDOVA SOVIETICĂ LA APOGEUL „DEZGHEȚULUI” LUI HRUȘCIOV (1956-1957)
(UPSC, 2015) Cașu, Igor
The article highlights the impact of Khrushchev’s Thaw on the question of national identity in Soviet Moldavia in the framework of the internal Soviet debates unleashed by the ‘Secret Speech’ and the subsequent Hungarian Revolution. The question of national identity was expressed by two groups, one representing the former GULAG returnees and the other the intellectuals or students socialized in the Soviet milieu. The position of the former was more radical and anti-Soviet, while the latter was milder and respected the status-quo , i.e. the Soviet regime, and only questioned some previously established traditions on what it meant to be Moldavian. Incidentally or not, the former position proved to be more long lasting, in some way prepared and anticipated the national agenda during Perestroika, in the late 1980s. The question of national identity emerged once again with a comparable fervour in 1968 subsequent to the Prague Spring and Ceaușescu’s refusal to support the Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia. In 1956 and 1968, the former Western borderlands – the, sters former Bessarabia, Western Ukraine and the Baltic States – witnessed what one could call a ‘revenge of history’. More exactly, in periods of crisis the links between these territories and the interwar political entities and their traditions were stronger than any time before or afterwards. The specificity of the Moldavian case is that it succeeded in 1955-1957 to resume if only partially the Romanianization process witnessed by the interwar Bessarabia and partially by MASSR . This article is based mainly on archival documents disclosed in the recent years from Chișinău based depositories. The first set of documents comprises reports from all districts of MSSR sent to Chișinău in the months following the ‘Secret Speech’ and Hungarian Revolution. They are located in the former Archive of the Institute of Party History within the Central Committee of Moldavia, reorganized in 1991 in The Archive of the Social-Political Organizations of the Republic of Moldova. The other set of documents consists of reports of the KGB of MSSR from 1956 and 1957, especially those concerning the attitudes labelled as nationalistic, and are located in the Archive of the Service for Information and Security of the Republic of Moldova, the former KGB of MSSR .
SOVIET STATE SECURITY AND THE COLD WAR: REPRESSION AND AGENT INFILTRATION OF THE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES IN THE MOLDAVIAN SSR, 1944 TO LATE 1950S
(Taylor and Francis, 2021) Cașu, Igor
While the Soviet state perceived all religion to be the opium for the people, in reality it promoted a differentiated policy towards religious groups. While Eastern Orthodox Christians were also persecuted, in comparison with other denominations they were generally treated more favourably. Due to several factors outlined here, Jehovah’s Witnesses were amongst the most repressed and were subject to mass deportations to the Gulag. This chapter, based on newly available archival material, highlights another aspect of the repression of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, namely the heavy infiltration of their networks in Soviet Moldavia by state security organs from 1944 to late 1950s. This strategy in some ways resembled the methods used by Soviet security organs against the armed anti-Soviet insurgents in Western Ukraine and the Baltics, especially in Lithuania. Agent infiltration of the internal enemy became one of the main strategies of the state security organs or political police after the Second World War. This chapter argues that ideology played an important role in the repression of so-called anti-Soviet elements, including religious groups, but that context and the agency of infiltrated groups also needs to be considered when seeking to understand these actions. I also outline how Soviet concepts and practices of repression were predated by other political regimes including, to a certain extent, those of Tsarist Russia.