Union of Bessarabia With Romania - Greater Romania

Greater Romania

There were 86 votes for, 3 votes against and 36 deputies abstained. The first condition for agrarian reform was debated and approved in November 1918, and following this, Sfatul Țării voted a motion which removed all the other conditions, trusting that Romania would be a democratic country. This vote has been judged illegitimate, since there was no quorum: only 44 of the 125 members took part in it (all voted "for"). The Romanian government rejected most of these 11 points (conditions), which would cause later much discontent in this new province of Romania, Bessarabia.

The historian Bernard Newman, who traveled by bicycle through the whole of Greater Romania, claimed there is little doubt that the vote represented the prevailing wish in Bessarabia and that the events leading to the unification indicate there was no question of a "seizure", but a voluntary act on the part of its people.

In the autumn of 1919, general elections were held in Bessarabia to elect 90 deputies and 35 senators to the Romanian parliament - the Constituent Assembly. On 20 December 1919, the elected representatives ratified, along with their colleagues from the other historic provinces, the unification acts that had been approved by Sfatul Țării and the National Congresses in Transylvania and Bukovina.

During the peace talks between the Great Powers and Romania, on 1 February 1919, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George talked with Ion I. C. Brătianu and, after the withdrawal of the Romanian government's delegation, Lloyd George proposed that Romania's claims be analyzed by a territorial commission that would examine historical, ethnographic, geographic, strategic, but not political facts. The Territorial Commission on Romanian Affairs was formed, by which the representatives of the Big Four Powers presented their proposals and decided Romanian's territorial future. The commission was formed by Clive Day and Charles Seymour (USA), Sir Eyre Crowe and Alan Leeper (United Kingdom), André Tardieu and Guy Laroche (France), and Giacomo De Martino and Count Luigi Vannutelli-Rey (Italy). During the debates the only issue related to Romania on which the representatives agreed was that Bessarabia should belong to Romania. However, the United States refused to sign the Treaty on the grounds that Russia was not represented at the conference. The newly communist Russia did not recognize Romanian rule over Bessarabia, a stand that was tacitly accepted by many other countries such as the United States.

The union was recognized by the United Kingdom, France and Italy in the Treaty of Paris (1920). The treaty did not, however, come into force as Japan, one of the signatories, failed to ratify it. Soviet Russia was not represented as a party at the treaty conference. A mutual treaty between the Soviets and Romania was not signed due to the former's claims over Bessarabia. In the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928 and the Treaty of London of July 1933, the Soviet Union and Romania subscribed to the principle of non-violent resolution of territorial disputes. Transnistria, at the time part of the Ukrainian SSR, itself part of the Soviet Union, was formed into the Moldavian ASSR (1924–1940) after the failure of the Tatarbunar uprising.

The land reform passed by Sfatul Țării in 1918-1919 resulted in the rise of a middle class as the rural population of the region represented 80%. Together with peace and favorable economic circumstances, it produced a small economic boom, which allowed the region to catch up technologically with the rest of Europe. The majority of the political leadership of Bessarabia in 1918 supported lawful land reform instead of the expropriation of property promoted by the pro-Soviet elements. Land reform was more appealing to the local farmers, and was at least partly responsible for the consent the peasantry gave to the intelligentsia's plans for building a unified state for all Romanians. The literacy rate grew to over 40% by 1930; however, the region continued to lag educationally. In an attempt to alienate the Bessarabian ethnic minorities from the Russian influence, the Romanian authorities allowed education in any language desired; with time, while Romanian replaced Russian in cities, the authorities sought to reduce ethnic minority education and attract these people into Romanian classes.