EXPORTING SOVIET REVOLUTION: TATARBUNAR REBELLION IN ROMANIAN BESSARABIA (1924)

Abstract

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.