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Nationalist Utopianism, Orientalist Imagination, and Economic Exploitation: Romanian Aims and Policies in Transnistria, 1941–1944

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Vladimir Solonari
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Abstract

Based on a wide range of sources, this article explores the aims, methods, and evolution of Romanian occupation policy in southwestern Ukraine and the local non-Jewish population’s reactions to it. It shows that the policy was more oppressive than is usually assumed and that it resulted in a substantial deterioration of relations between occupiers and occupied, especially in the countryside.

Type
World War II: Occupation and Liberation
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , Fall 2016 , pp. 583 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2016

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References

1 In 1941–1944, Finland occupied Eastern Karelia, which before 1939 was part of the Soviet Union. Its population at the time of occupation was estimated at around 85,000, mostly women, the elderly, and small children. See Olli Vehviläinen, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia, trans. Gerard McAlester (Basingstoke, 2002), 105. I thank Łukasz Sommer for bringing this information to my attention.

2 Alexander, Dallin, Odessa, 1941–1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory under Foreign Rule (Santa Monica, 1957)Google Scholar.

3 Alexander, Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945: A Study of Occupation Policies (New York, 1957)Google Scholar.

4 Ekkehard, Völkl, Transnistrien und Odessa (1941–1944) (Kallmünz, 1996)Google Scholar.

5 Herwig, Baum, Varianten des Terrors: Ein Vergleich zwischen der deutschen und rumänischen Besatzungsverwaltung in der Sowjetunion, 1941–1944 (Berlin, 2011)Google Scholar.

6 Dieter, Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum “Judenmord.” Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Mein, 1993)Google Scholar; Dieter, Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich, 1996)Google Scholar; Knut, Stang, Kollaboration und Massenmord: Die litauische Hilfspolizei, das Rollkommando Hamann und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden (Frankfurt am Mein, 1996)Google Scholar; Bernhard, Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weißrussland 1941–1944 (Düsseldorf, 1998)Google Scholar; Christian, Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschaft s- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg, 1999)Google Scholar; Karel C., Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 2004)Google Scholar; Manfred, Oldenburg, Ideologie und militärisches Kalkül: Die Besatzungspolitik der Wehrmacht in der Sowjetunion, 1942 (Cologne, 2004)Google Scholar; Norbert, Kunz, Die Krim unter deutscher Herrschaft (1941–1944): Germanisierungsutopie und Besatzungsrealität (Darmstadt, 2005)Google Scholar; Wendy, Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in the Ukraine (Chapel Hill, 2005)Google Scholar; Dieter, Pohl, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht: Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion, 1941–1944 (Munich, 2008)Google Scholar; Anton, Weiss-Wendt, Murder without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust (Syracuse, 2009)Google Scholar; Sven, Jüngerkes, Deutsche Besatzungsverwaltung in Lettland 1941–1945: Eine Kommunikations- und Kulturgeschichte nationalsozialistischer Organisationen (Konstanz, 2010)Google Scholar; Leonid, Rein, The Kings and the Pawns: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II (New York, 2011)Google Scholar; Laurie R., Cohen, Smolensk under the Nazis: Everyday Life in Occupied Russia (Rochester, 2013)Google Scholar. On the Italian policy in the occupied western Balkans, see Davide, Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War, trans. Adrian Belton (Cambridge, Eng., 2006)Google Scholar.

7 Ernest, Gellner, Nationalism (London, 1997), 3–4 Google Scholar, Gellner’s italics.

8 I more fully developed my understanding of the evolution the Romanian official definition of the nation from one based more on citizenship to one based more on ethnicity in the 1930s–early 1940s in Vladimir Solonari, Purifying the Nation: Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania (Washington, DC, 2010), part 1, 7–114.

9 Edward W., Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), esp. 16–19 Google Scholar. Said defined Orientalism as “a western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (3).

10 See in particular Larry, Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994)Google Scholar.

11 Vejas, Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present (Oxford, 2009), 1–10 Google Scholar.

12 One of the important recent books on Russian orientalism is David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, 2010).

13 This issue has only recently become the object of scholarly attention. Andrei Cuşco discusses it with great sensitivity in his (for now) unpublished book manuscript “Between Nation and Empire: Russian and Romanian Competing Visions of Bessarabia in the Second Half of the 19th and Early 20th Century,” esp. chapters 3 and 5.

14 For a comparative analysis of different methods of colonial rule, see David B., Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980 (New Haven, 2000), 277–99Google Scholar. On genocidal “excesses” during European colonialism, see Michael, Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge, Eng., 2004), 70–140 Google Scholar.

15 A number of recent books emphasize these major themes in the Nazi occupation policy in eastern Europe. See Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine; Mark, Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (New York, 2008)Google Scholar; Catherine, Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar. Hannah Arendt was the first to insist on this connection in The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951).

16 In 1941, the Romanians deported around 150,000 Jews and 20,000 Roma into Transnistria, where they were interned with local Jews in ghettoes and concentration camps. As a result of inhumane treatment, hunger, epidemics, and mass executions, between 105,000 and 120,000 deported Romanian Jews, 115,000 to 180,000 indigenous Jews, and approximately 10,000 Roma had perished by early spring 1944, when the Red Army liberated this area. International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Final Report (Iaşi, 2005), 382.

17 On Romanian persecution of Jews and Roma in Transnistria, see Jean, Ancel, Transnistria, 1941–1942: The Romanian Mass Murder Campaigns, vol. 1, History and Document Summaries, trans. Rachel Garfinkel and Karen Gold (Tel Aviv, 2003)Google Scholar. Vols. 2 and 3 of this title contain primary documents. A summary of Ancel’s argument is available in Jean Ancel, The History of the Holocaust in Romania, ed. Leon Volovici and Miriam Caloianu, trans. Yaff ah Murciano (Lincoln, 2011), 315–429. Armin Heinen off ered a substantially different interpretation of anti-Jewish violence in Romania in Rumänien, Der Holokaust und die Logik der Gewalt (Munich, 2007), esp. 127–162. Ancel’s reading of this tragic history can be designated as largely following an intentionalist paradigm while Heinen’s is consistently functionalist/structuralist. The Romanians’ persecution of Roma in Transnistria is little known. Although Viorel Achim’s book on the history of Romanian Roma has a chapter on the deportation of part of them into Transnistria in 1942, it has virtually nothing on their fate there. See Viorel Achim, The Roma in Romanian History (Budapest, 2004), 170–79.

18 Marcel-Dumitru, Ciucă and Maria, Ignat, eds., Stenogramele şedinţelor Consiului de Miniştri. Guvernarea Ion Antonescu, vol. 4 (Bucharest, 2000), 343 Google Scholar. Mihai Antonescu presided over this meeting of the council of ministers as he presided over all others when Ion Antonescu was absent, as in this case.

19 On the centrality of the Transylvanian issue to the foreign policy of Ion Antonescu’s government, see Holly, Case, Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II (Stanford, 2009). 20 Google Scholar. Ciucă and Ignat, Stenogramele, 5:717–18.

21 Ciucă and Ignat, Stenogramele, 4: 342–43Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., 344–45.

23 Ciucă and Ignat, Stenogramele, 6:205 Google Scholar.

24 Transnistria, May 28, 1942.

25 Odesskaia gazeta, February 12, 1942.

26 Derzhavnyi arkhiv Odes΄koi oblasti (henceforth DAOO), Fond 2242, opys΄ 1, sprava 692/1943, ark. 230–33, USHMM RG-31.004, reel 1 (Governor Gheorghe Alexianu’s report on the policy toward Transnistrian Moldovans, September 1943).

27 Arhiva Ministerului Apărării Naţionale (henceforth AMAN), Fond Marele Cartier General, Inventar N 019269 din 1972, dosar 41, f. 397, USHMM RG-25.003M, reel 4; and report of Ananiev Gendarmerie Legion March 1942, Arhiva Naţională a României (henceforth DANIC), Fond Inspectoratul General al Jandarmeriei (henceforth IGJ), dosar 18/1942, f. 55v., USHMM RG-25.010M, reel 13 (General Constantin Vasiliu, Inspector General of Gendarmerie, to Ion Antonescu, August 12, 1941, relating his instructions on the organization of the Service of Police, which included both gendarmerie and police, in Transnistria).

28 In February 1942, Ion Antonescu, as was demonstrated above, played with the idea of settling farmers from Romania in Transnistria, but almost immediately abandoned this vision and never returned to it.

29 For more about this census, including the methods employed to elicit the participation of ethnic Moldovans and the findings, see Solonari, Purifying the Nation, 314–18. Assessment of the number of citizens of the province comes from the activity report of the Directorate of Health of the Guvernământ for August 19, 1941–August 1, 1943, ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 519, vol. 1, f. 219.

30 Solonari, Purifying the Nation, 307–30. For Ion Antonescu’s ruling with respect to Transnistria, see Ciucă and Ignat, Stenogramele, 9:543–45.

31 Agricola, Cardaş, Colonizare românească Google Scholar. Academia de ştiinţe din România. Seria conferinţelor de documentare: problemele războiului şi ştiinţa (N.p., [1941]), 1.

32 Ibid., 3.

33 Agricola, Cardaş, “O pagină din economia Transnistriei,” Buletinul al Academiei de Ştiinţa din România 10 (1942): 323–34Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., 334.

35 Tsentral΄nyi Arkhiv Federal΄noi sluzhby bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii (henceforth TSAFSBRF), edenitsa khraneniia H-18767, vol. 1, ff . 116–117, USHMM RG-06.025M, reel 43 (transcripts of Pantazi’s interrogation in Moscow in June 1945). See also gendarmerie reports on the transfer in DANIC, Fond IGJ, 78/1943, ff . 30ff ; and Anton Golopenţia’s deposition in Anton Golopenţia, Românii de la est de Bug (Bucharest, 2006), 1:106–07, 114.

36 TSAFSBRF, edenitsa khraneniia, H-18767, vol. 1, ff . 116–17, USHMM RG-06.025M, reel 43 (transcripts of Pantazi’s interrogation in Moscow in June 1945).

37 For correspondence between the governor and the prefects of Râbniţa and Moghilău judeţe, see DAOO, Fond Р-2242, Оp. 1, Spr. 293. Here and elsewhere I indicate Romanian names for locales, I give Ukrainian names in parentheses.

38 DAOO, Fond Р-2242, Оp. 1, Spr. 293, ark. 10–11, 19. 39. Arhiva Naţională a Republicii Moldova (henceforth ANRM), Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 16, vol. 3, ff . 428–29, 440.

40 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 16, vol. 3, f. 488.

41 Cardaş, Colonizarea românească, 2.

42 Ibid., 3, 8.

43 Aurel Talasesco, L’agriculture et la colonisation italienne en Libye (n. p., 1941).

44 Ibid., 39.

45 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 632, vol. 1, f. 68. 46. Ciucă and Ignat, Stenogramele, 6:297.

47 Ibid., 458.

48 DAOO, Fond 2359, Op. 1, Spr. 9, 1941, ark. 28–31, USHMM RG-31.004M, reel 18.

49 Following French model, gendarmerie in Romania was a militarized police force charged with keeping order in the countryside while police did the same in urban areas. Both were subordinated to the ministry of interior.

50 Quoted from Molva, December 25, 1942. Molva (Chat) was a Russian-language newspaper that was officially allowed in Odessa.

51 Odessakaia gazeta, September 4, 1942.

52 Odessakaia gazeta, October 21, 1942.

53 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 518, f. 194.

54 See “Osvobozhdennaia intelligentsia,” Odesskaia gazeta, December 13, 1941; Vasilii K. Dumitresku, “Novyi poriadok v Evrope,” Odesskaia gazeta, January 16, 1942; A. K-ku, “Vozrozhdennaia Rumyniia i novaia Evropa,” Odesskaia gazeta, September 1, 1942; “Bol΄shoi rumynskii prazdnik: ob otkrytii zhenskogo litseia v Odesse,” Odesskaia gazeta, October 29, 1940 (a summary of a speech by Princess Alexandra Contacuzino); and Troian Herseni, “Zavoievateli ili osvoboditeli,” Odesskaia gazeta, October 31, 1942.

55 On the social and cultural history of Odessa see Charles King, Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (New York, 2011).

56 See “Pervaia godovshchina plodotvornoi i tvorcheskoi raboty Odesskogo teatra Opery i Baleta,” Molva, December 10, 1942. page number?

57 Ibid.

58 On Ion and Mihai Antonescus’ attending shows in Odessa Opera with their spouses, see Molva, December 10, 1942. On German Minister Pflaumer’s attendance, see Odessakaia gazeta, February 20, 1942.

59 Hermann, Binder, Aufzeichnungen aus Transnistrien (September–December 1942), mit einem Vorwort von Hans Bergel (Munich, 1998), 91 Google Scholar.

60 See interview with Vronskii in Molva, December 9, 1942.

61 See, for example, information General Staff ’s note on the “moods” of the population of Transnistria and Governor’s Alexianu’s comment on it ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 16, vol. 5, ff . 522–25, August–September 1943.

62 One finds echoes of the resentment the lower classes felt towards this new privileged group in the activity reports of some Soviet partisans. See DAOO, Fond 92, Op. 1, spr. 13, ark. 46.

63 Compare such praise of the Romanian opera Wedding in the Carpathian Mountains, staged in Odessa in Molva, December 10, 1942, and N. Borsaru’s disparaging reference on July 30, 1942, to the quality of theater troupes from Romania performing in Transnistria. Borsaru was the interim chief of the Guvernământ’s press. DAOO, Fond 2242, Op. 1, spr. 1644, ark. 162–63.

64 AMAN, Inventar N, S/6776, din 1976, dosar 410, USHMM RG-25.003M, reel 17, f. 215.

65 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 648, f. 116.

66 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 540, f. 13.

67 On Romanian suppression of Ukrainian nationalism in Bukovina, see Mariana Hausleitner, Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina: Die Durchsetzung des nationalstaatlichen Anspruchs Grossrumäniens, 1918–1944 (München, 2001), 156–57, 180, 344.

68 Andrej, Angrick, “Im Wechselspiel der Kräft e. Impressionen zur deutschen Einflussnahmene bei der Volkstumspolitk in Czernowitz vor ‘Barbarossa’ und nach Beginn des Überfalls auf die Sowjetunion” in Alfred Gottwald, Norbert Kampe und Peter Klein, eds., NS-Gewaltherrschaft : Beiträge zur historischen Forschung und juristischen Aufarbeitung (Berlin, 2005), 318–58Google Scholar.

69 See his note in resolution of February 18, 1942, on a report by the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie on the problem of Ukrainian irredentism in DAOO, Fond 2377, Op. 2, spr. 2, ark. 33, USHMM RG-31.004M, reel 20.

70 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 8, ff . 318–20.

71 DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 124/1942, f. 181, USHMM RG-25.010M, reel 17.

72 Arviva Ministerului Apărării Naţionale (AMAN), Fond Armata a 3-a, Inventar N S/6776, din 1976, dosar 410, USHMM RG-25.003M, reel 17, f. 119.

73 On national costumes as “tacit propaganda” of irredentism, see DANIC, Fond Ministerul de Interne, IGJ, dosar 24/1942 II, vol. 1, f. 203, USHMM RG-25.002M, reel 5. On “national songs” as a sign of the same, see DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 18/1942, p. 56v, USHMM RG-25.010M, reel 13.

74 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 518, vol. 1, ff . 198–201.

75 AMAP, Fond Marele Cartier General, Inventar N 019269, din 1972, dosar 3827, f. 247, USHMM RG-25.003M, reel 4.

76 DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 147/1942, f. 76, USHMM RG-25.10M, reel 20.

77 DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 84/1943, f. 153, USHMM RG-25.010M reel 27. The author’s signature is poorly legible.

78 Ciucă and Ignat, Stenogramele, 7:442.

79 Baum, Varianten des Terrors, 264–65; Sebastian, Balta, Rumänien und die Großmächte in der Ära Antonescu (1940–1944) (Stuttgart, 2005), 224–25Google Scholar. According to Mihai Antonescu’s data, bread rations in Romania in September 1942 were lower than in Germany by 20 grams per person per day. In 1941, they were 700 grams per person per day, but by September 1942, they had decreased to 250 grams daily. See the German transcript of Antonescu’s conversation with Hitler on September 26, 1942, in Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945 (ADAP), Serie E, Band 3, ([S.l.], 1974), 541. Please check this to make sure I have it correct.

80 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 58, ff . 213–16.

81 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 52, ff . 106–107.

82 DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 125/1942, f. 168, USHMM RG-25.10M, reel 17.

83 DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 125/1942, f. 200, USHMM RG-25.10M, reel 17, and dosar 147/1942 f. 78, USHMM RG-25.10M, reel 20.

84 DANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 16, vol. 3, f. 474. 85. A pretor was the head administrator of a raion, or district. ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 16, vol. 1, f. 43–46, a summary of Mehednţi’s paper prepared by clerks of the Ministry of Internal Aff airs.

86 See regulations for Transnistria issued by the Guvernămănt in DAOO, Fond 22442, Op. 1, spr. 1, passim.

87 Weekly unsigned report, probably of the General Staff second section, June 21, 1941, in ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 18, vol. 1, ff . 31–34.

88 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 19, f. 352–359.

89 See the list in ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 837, ff . 14–16. Mihai Antonescu issued the order to destroy documents related to the “evacuation” of goods from Transnistria because, as he put it, Russians and Hungarians could use them “to discredit Romania aft er the end of hostilities” at the Commission of Inquiry, which met to inquire into the activities of the Transnistrian guvernământ on February 26, 1944. See ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 58, ff . 213–239.

90 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 52, f. 113.

91 ANRM, Fond 706, Inventar 1, dosar 896, f. 72.

92 For Ion Antonescu’s order to replace Alexianu with Potopeanu, see Arhiva Serviciului Român de Informaţii (ASRI), dosar 40013, vol. 6, f. 440, USHMM RG-25.004M, reel 29. See Potopeanu’s March 15, 1944, order to withdraw from the region and stop Operation 1111 in ASRI, dosar 40013, vol. 6, p. 339, USHMM Rg-25.004M, reel 30.

93 DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 84/1943, f. 233, USHMM RG-25.010M, reel 27.

94 DANIC, Fond IGJ, dosar 84/1943, f. 432, USHMM RG-25.010M, reel 27F.

95 AMAN, Fond Armata a 3-a, Inventar N S/6776, din 1976, dosar 2208, f. 205–205v, USHMM RG-25.003M, reel 20.

96 On the popularity of partisans’ calls to sabotage the Romanian campaign of evacuation of goods and assets from Transnistria and the consequent growth of their ranks see, for example, activity report of the Shargorodskii raion underground cell, undated, probably 1944 or 1945, Tsentral’nyĭ derzhavnyĭ arkhiv hromad’skyh ob’iednan’ Ukraïny (TSDAGOU), F. 1 Op. 22, spr. 156, ark. 185; and the report of Iosif Ivanovich Vykhodtsev on the partisan activity in Peschanskii and Savranskii raion of Odessakia oblast, undated, probably 1944 or 1945, in ibid., spr. 473, ark. 86–87. (Names of raions are transliterated from their Russian forms used in the archival files).