3
Igor Casu
From 1940 to the end of the Soviet Union, ten first secretaries succeeded at the Communist Party of Moldavia’s (CPM) helm (one being ad interim). Given the crucial role played by the Party leader in the architecture of power, it is essential to pinpoint what factors and criteria were behind the replacement and appointment of first secretaries. The top Party potentate was not only in charge of Party affairs but also supervised key governmental institutions such as the political and civil police as well as the army, making the titular Party boss a wielder of real power.2 While the first secretary’s authority in his fiefdom was almost absolute, especially after 1953, there were various institutional and informal checks-and-balance-type instruments to keep him attentive to the impact of his actions, if not accountable for them. The political police and their civilian counterparts along with any other ministry and agency had dual subordinations, both local and All-Union. That alone limited the Party boss’ structural grip on regional power (Harris, 2001). More like a former tsarist governor to a certain extent, or a viceroy in British India, the republic’s Party leader was the embodiment and guarantor of the Centre’s interests in the republic. At the same time, he was entitled to represent local interests at the Centre. Some have argued that representing the Centre’s interest in the union republics was the second secretary’s responsibility. That is true for some republics (Grybkauskas, 2014; 2016), but it was rarely the case in Soviet Moldavia. Viktor Smirnov, the Second Secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the CPM from 1984–1989, was an exception rather than the rule (Gorincioi, 2013, pp. 85–86; Smirnov, 2017).
This chapter will argue that the succession of the first secretaries in Soviet Moldavia depended much on the departing Party boss’s personality and achievements. The more successful he had been in office, the more chances he had to influence the process of appointing the person to replace him. Conversely, the less impressive someone’s legacy, the less he had a say over, let alone ability to dictate, the choice of a successor. Although there is a rich body of literature on centre-periphery relations and cadres’ policy, the issue of how the Party first secretaries succeeded each other has not been addressed in a systematic way regarding a non-Russian republic and for the whole Soviet period (Urban, 1989; Khlevniuk, 2003; Easter, 2007; Khlevniuk, 2007; Gorlizki, 2010; Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, 2020).
Creation of the Moldavian SSR
In contrast to the Baltic republics, the creation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) was proclaimed in Moscow on 2 August 1940 by the All-Union Supreme Soviet. The MSSR was the administrative product of the merging of the interwar Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) created in 1924 within Ukraine (Martin, 2001, pp. 274–275; Schrad, 2004) and Bessarabia, a Romanian territory, occupied by the Red Army on 28 June 1940. The MSSR comprised only six out of thirteen districts of the former MASSR and six out of nine counties of Bessarabia. The strategically essential territories on the Black Sea coast and Danube River mouth were annexed to the Ukrainian SSR.3 While these were the most ethnically mixed areas, the primary motive for this decision was the anticipation of Romania’s irredentism over the MSSR.4 The MASSR extended its grip over the Bessarabian part, and the capital was moved from Tiraspol to Chișinău. In this way, Pyotr Borodin, the former First Secretary of the MASSR, became the new Moldavian SSR’s Party boss. Borodin was an ethnic Russian. Born in 1905 in Dnepropetrovsk (Ukraine) and beginning his career as a worker (1923–1928), he graduated from a local construction institute (1929–1936). Borodin started his Party career at the CC of the Ukrainian Communist (Bolshevik) Party in Kyiv in 1938 and was appointed as the First Secretary of the MASSR the next year.5 As such, he was one of the Stalin era vydvizhentsy (promoted workers) elevated in the aftermath of the Great Terror of 1937–1938 following the execution of the previous Party elite who were charged with sabotage, espionage for Romania, and a policy of Romanianization.
Appointing Borodin as the top Party boss of the Moldavian SSR heralded a different elite recruitment pattern for the newly annexed territories following the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939. In Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the first secretaries were selected from those republics’ native underground interwar Communist parties (Zubkova, 2008, pp. 101, 145–153). In contrast, in the MSSR, nobody from the Bessarabian section of the clandestine interwar Communist Party of Romania, about 400 people in total, was co-opted into Party or government positions from 1940–1941 and after 1944. There was only one exception: Emilian Bucov, Deputy Chairman of the MSSR Council of People’s Commissars (government) between 1947 and 1951 (Varticean, 1982, p. 82; Casu 2000, pp. 47–50). The merits of the Bessarabian section for the local revolutionary movement were not officially recognized until 1989 (Casu, 2013b, pp. 277–299). Still, many Bessarabians members of the interwar Romanian Communist Party (PCR) made careers in Romania after 1944 (Crudu, 2018, p. 210).
In his correspondence with Moscow, Borodin dealt with various people depending on the issue in question. He addressed letters to Central Committee Secretary Georgii Malenkov regarding major issues such as the creation of three administrative districts within the capital city. In other matters, such as permission to appoint certain people to major Party offices, he communicated with Nikolai Shatalin, the chief of the CC All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) (VKP(b)) Cadres Department of CC, and Mikhail Shamberg, the Deputy Head of the VKP (b) Organizational Department. On grain collections and other aspects related to agriculture, Borodin engaged in correspondence with Politburo member Andrei Andreev, and Vyacheslav Molotov, the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars. Andreev, for instance, was asked what to do with 363 tradespeople, 122 priests, and 388 kulaks identified among the Red Army recruits in early June 1941. Pavel Leonov, from the Party Control Commission, was contacted regarding the accession of individual ex-members of the PCR to the VKP(b).6
When the war started on 22 June 1941, the Moldavian Party organization and government bodies evacuated to the rear in the Stalingrad region, where they endeavoured to act as a Party-State government in exile. In autumn 1941, the Red Army was requisitioning any means of transport for the war effort. Moldavian Party leaders stated that as representatives of the MSSR, their cars were not subject to requisitioning. The response was that a fully-fledged republic’s authorities required a territory in charge to be recognized as such.7
Meanwhile, Borodin became a member of the Military Council of the Southern Front (the future Stalingrad Front), but he tried to retain his position as First Secretary. His absence, however, had consequences. Sensing insubordination, he became violent toward his colleagues in the Moldavian Party organization. The remaining few leaders exempted from Red Army recruitment, all members of the former MASSR establishment and most native Moldavians of the ‘left bank’ of the River Dniester (Transnistrians), decided to demote Borodin in September 1942. Pending Moscow’s approval, Nikita Salogor, the second-in-command in the Moldavian CC from August 1940, was elected as interim First Secretary (Tărîță, 2017, pp. 158–159).8 Salogor led the Party organization for the next four years but was never officially endorsed by the Politburo in Moscow.
The territory of the Moldavian SSR was recovered in stages by the advancing Red Army from the retreating Germans and Romanians between March and August 1944. Over the next two years after Bessarabia was recovered, Salogor retained his position tacitly. On 18 July 1946, however, the Moscow Politburo named his nemesis, Nicolae Coval, Moldavia’s Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, as the new Moldavian First Secretary. While Coval was appointed Party boss, Gherasim Rudi became his successor as Head of the Government. Salogor, by default, remained the Second Secretary.9 On 18 November 1946, he was released from his duties in the CC Bureau (the highest administrative organization) altogether. Ivan Zykov, an ethnic Russian, former secretary for cadres, filled the Second Secretary’s position.10
Why was Salogor ousted?
It is not clear what might have prompted such a twist, the most surreptitious reshuffle within the top of the Moldavian Party in the post-war years. A glimpse into Salogor’s activity in the last four years as interim First Secretary can help unravel the conundrum, at least partially. He was responsible for coordinating sabotage and diversionary activities and the partisan movement in the Moldavian SSR during the war. He reported directly to Stalin about progress in this direction. While it is not known if Stalin read his reports, the rather modest achievements in sabotage and diversionary work in Moldavia involving members of the Moldavian Party could be one of the reasons for his downfall (Pasat, 2011, p. 103; Crudu, 2018, p. 199).11 Alexander Statiev (2008, pp. 743–770) has argued, however, that this was hardly a unique case. Instead, it was common for a partisan movement to fail in the new Soviet territories in comparison to the older ones.
There could be other explanations for Salogor’s fall from Moscow’s graces. His leadership abilities were relatively modest, but it seems he was more sociable and more willing to travel outside the capital and maintain contact with low-level officials than his successor. Being Moldavian from the ‘left bank’ and a poor speaker of his ‘native’ Moldavian/Romanian language, he was hardly a ‘national communist’.12 Still, he seemed to be dubbed as such – a cardinal sin for a Communist. In late June 1946, a few weeks before his downfall, Salogor sent a letter to Stalin regarding the republic’s borders, implying that Ukraine should cede Bessarabia’s southern and northern parts. The letter, signed only by him and not by Coval, was accompanied by rather sophisticated reports on historical, economic, and ethnic issues utilizing various sources, including Romanian and nationalist historiography.13 Yet, Salogor did not grasp that his bid to redraw the map at the expense of a neighbouring Soviet republic was a sensitive and cumbersome issue. Salogor’s letter to Stalin was accompanied by another one, signed by Fyodor Brovco, Chairman of the Moldavian SSR Supreme Soviet’s Presidium (the nominal Head of State). If Salogor’s plan was minimalist (a Greater Bessarabia), Brovco’s was maximalist (a Greater Moldavia, up to the Carpathian Mountains in the West). The timing seemed perfect and not a simple happenstance since the Paris Peace conference began on that date, 29 June 1946, when the letters were sent to Stalin. This time, Brovco demanded territories from Romania (Western Moldavia), which ended the war as a formal co-belligerent, but was treated as a defeated state such as Hungary or Finland. As radical as the idea might have seemed, it followed the Soviet ambitions in the interwar period and during the war to ‘unite the whole Moldavian people in one Soviet state’.14 Salogor and Brovco misread Stalin’s intentions, as he had already decided to halt further Soviet border changes and Soviet satellites states’ expansion in Europe (except regarding Germany and Berlin). Moreover, as Norman Naimark has argued recently, Stalin opted to return some territories seized in 1945 by the Soviets or Soviet allies (Naimark, 2019). In Moscow, nobody seemed alarmed by Brovco’s Greater Moldavia plan demanding Romania’s territories as he remained in office until 1951. Somebody was, however, anxious about Salogor’s project at the expense of Ukrainian territories (Southern and Northern Bessarabia), with his demotion ensuing shortly thereafter. It was a selective purge of an individual nature, and seemingly the initiator was Ukrainian Party boss Nikita Khrushchev, the most influential Ukrainian in the Kremlin (Fitzpatrick, 2016).
Between January and October 1947, Salogor took Party courses in Moscow, and between February and September 1948 was dispatched to Krasnodar as head of a small enterprise. By late 1948 he was already back in Moldavia at his own request. Except for a short period as deputy and then minister for construction between 1949 and 1951, he never received another respectable job befitting his former status, unlike others after their dismissal such as Coval, his successor, or Rudi, the Moldavian SSR Head of Government (Varticean, 1982, pp. 268, 534).15 Concomitant with a partial rehabilitation in 1949, Salogor was included in the Moldavian CC (there were around 100 members; at that time it was more of an honorary position). Although expressing numerous complaints to Moscow, including during his visits, Salogor never received an official explanation of what motivated his downgrading. In a telegram to Andrei Zhdanov in late December 1946, he asked him plainly to punish those responsible for his demotion.16 His later request for an All-Union personal pension was firmly declined. Still, Salogor received the prestigious status of personal retirement from the republican Party authorities in 1959. Bodiul, the seventh CC CPM First Secretary, seemed to empathize with Salogor and had him twice re-elected as a CC member in the 1970s before his death in 1981 (Varticean, 1982, p. 550).17 To conclude, Salogor’s demotion might have had complex motives, but it is apparent that it was triggered by the letter he sent to Stalin regarding the Moldavian SSR’s borders with Ukraine, which he alone signed. The person supposed to also sign the letter, Nicolae Coval, the incumbent Head of the Government, and Salogor’s immediate replacement, did not sign the letter even though his name was inserted into it.18 Salogor’s personal file preserved in the former CC CPSU archives in Moscow does not provide further answers to this question.19
Moldavia under Coval's command
Coval ran the Moldavian Party for the next four years (1946–1950). He was a Moldavian from the ‘left bank’ and three years Salogor’s junior. From 1945 he was Head of the Government (Council of People’s Commissars), the second most powerful office in the republic (Tărîță, 2017, p. 57).20 When Coval was appointed as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Moscow had just created a special CC VKP(b) Bureau for Moldavia, as in the Baltic republics a year before. Fyodor Butov, the Chairman of the Bureau for Moldavia, was seemingly Coval’s main patron in 1945 and 1946 (Pasat, 2011, p. 159).21 Overall, Coval proved to be no better a leader than Salogor, but he seemed more acquiescent. He was rebuked in February 1947 by Aleksei Kosygin, Deputy Chairman of the All-Union Council of Ministers (the Council of People’s Commissars was transformed into the Council of Ministers in March 1946), who visited the republic at the peak of the 1946–1947 famine in Soviet Moldavia. The excess death toll in Moldavia alone reached 123,000, making it the most lethal per capita in the USSR (Ellman, 2000, p. 613). Among the charges that Moscow directed against Coval was his lack of initiative and self-isolation from the republic’s leadership on the most crucial issue of organizing famine relief for the starving. He was, however, neither demoted nor even reprimanded (Țăranu et al., 1993, pp. 508–513). Coval could have been scapegoated for the failure to address the high mortality rate due to the famine and related illnesses but this did not happen. Nobody from the Party Bureau or the government, including Gherasim Rudi, the Chairman and Coval’s protégé, was held responsible for the human catastrophe in the republic. Furthermore, under Coval’s leadership the most extensive mass deportation took place in early July 1949. More than 35,000 people were forcefully transferred to Siberia and Kazakhstan.22 The fear that another deportation might be organized against those resisting collectivization contributed to the rapid increase in the collectivization rate. By November 1946, 80% of peasant households had been collectivized, up from 32% in July (Pasat, 1994, p. 46). With collectivization accomplished by 1950 through the application of mass terror against those labelled as class enemies, Coval’s mission seemed to have been fulfilled.
Now Moscow needed a new person to begin another stage of the Sovietization of Moldavia, which would not be tarnished by famine and deportations. Mikhail Turkin, plenipotentiary of the CC VKP(b) in Moldavia (a new post created in 1948 after the Bureau for Moldavia was dissolved), proposed Coval’s dismissal. The kompromat (compromising information on an individual gathered by the Soviet authorities to exert influence over them) against Coval was abundant, demonstrating the role played in removing Coval by Iosif Mordovets, the Moldavian chief of state security. Turkin’s report to Malenkov listed a wide range of errors committed by Coval, which raises the question of why it took so long to dismiss Coval. He was denounced for failing to verify whether Party decisions at the district level were fulfilled. In a series of districts, the Party organizations did not even discuss the orders coming from Chișinău, let alone implement them.
Moreover, Coval was charged with corruption and protection of high-level officials involved in thefts and other illegal activity. Coval was also charged with holding a conciliatory attitude towards nationalists and elites of the former Tsarist and Romanian regimes; for example, several professors at higher education institutions were ex-White Guards in the Russian Civil War. Others recommended their students read Romanian books, the latter running counter to language planning in Soviet Moldavia.23 To these allegations were added those related to Coval’s family. In December 1946, complaining to Aleksei Kuznetsov, the CC VKP(b) Chief of the Cadres’ Department in Moscow, Salogor pointed to Coval’s marriage with a prosperous Jewish tradesman’s daughter and alleged that Coval’s father and one of his brothers collaborated with the Germans and Romanians during the war.24
As Coval fell out of favour with Moscow, he was unable to have a say in the choice of his successor. Unlike Salogor, however, he staged a successful comeback as Head of Moldavia’s Gosplan (1960–1967) and simultaneously Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers between 1965 and 1967. He also received the same personal retirement status as Salogor (Varticean, 1982, p. 268; Denisov, Kvashonkin and Malashenko, 2004, p. 429).
Brezhnev enters the Moldavian scene
Leonid Brezhnev, the future General Secretary of the CPSU (1964–1982), was Moscow’s choice as the new Party leader in Soviet Moldavia. Sworn into office on 6 July 1950, Brezhnev was the first Party boss to be appointed without having anything to do with the Moldavian ASSR establishment or Bessarabia. Brezhnev was not connected in any other way with Moldavia, for example, through distant ancestry as was Ivan Bodiul (Moldavia’s First Secretary between 1961 and 1980). Being the first Party boss sent in from the Centre, Brezhnev’s short tenure of just two years brought a new leadership style and popularity that nobody was able to match previously or afterwards (save probably Lucinschi in his first months in office in late 1989–early 1990). On Khrushchev’s recommendation, Malenkov was behind this appointment, which opened the doors for Brezhnev to an All-Union career and implicitly paved his way to becoming the supreme leader of the Soviet Union (Sandle and Casu, 2016, pp. 122–155; Schattenberg, 2018, pp. 149, 152).
With Brezhnev as the First Secretary, Moscow halted the practice of dispatching plenipotentiaries to the Moldavian SSR to oversee the local Party and state institutions’ activities. The institution of the second secretary dubbed by Saulius Grybkauskas (2014, pp. 267–292) as the Soviet ‘governor general’ partially resurrected this practice a decade later in other republics. There is little proof that this worked in Soviet Moldavia or elsewhere under powerful first secretaries (Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, 2020). Though he was an official sent to represent the Centre, Brezhnev lobbied for the republic’s interests in Moscow as Butov had done as Chairman of the Bureau for Moldavia. An ethnic Ukrainian, Brezhnev changed his ethnicity as listed in his internal Soviet passport to Russian after leaving for Moscow in 1952 (Zenkovich, 2002, p. 43).25 He was sympathetic to allowing for national culture development and permitted the increasing use of Moldavian/Romanian in the public sphere. Brezhnev initiated the publication of a journal in Moldavian/Romanian specifically addressed to women, Femeia Moldovei (Moldavian Woman).26 Brezhnev’s popularity among women gave rise to well-known rumours of his affairs. He also promoted two women as ministers, Agripina Crăciun and Lucheria Repida, both ‘left bank’ Moldavians (Gorincioi, 2012, p. 16). He also asked Moscow to help establish the Faculty of Law at the State University of Chișinău to prepare specialists to meet local needs.27
While in Moldavia, Brezhnev developed a new, more friendly way of communicating with his immediate subordinates and people from all walks of life. At meetings of Moldavia’s CC Bureau, he was addressed informally by his first name and patronymic, ‘Leonid Il’ich’, instead of the more official form of address, ‘Comrade Brezhnev’ or ‘Secretary’. He established a unique way to socialize, unlike the other Communists, both with locals and those sent from the Centre. In contrast to Coval, he was charismatic and did not like office work. Instead, he preferred outdoor activities, including being in the fields with the peasants during the harvest and other agricultural work (Gorincioi, 2012, pp. 16–17). While not very familiar with the classical literature on Communism, he was nevertheless a true believer in his own right, more like Stalin, Khrushchev, and others. Yet, unlike them, Brezhnev was not fanatical. He was a compromiser rather than a confrontational person; rather than a harsh, insensitive boss, Brezhnev was a ‘let it be’ and ‘live and let live’ character, features that would surface more as General Secretary after 1964. This attitude contributed to the downfall of the Soviet regime in the long run as it encouraged indiscipline, incompetence, theft, embezzlement, and a sense of impunity (Schattenberg, 2018, pp. 835–858).
In more concrete terms, Brezhnev addressed his predecessor’s failures by working closely with local Party organizations to fulfil the orders of the republican and All-Union authorities. The activity reports of district Party organizations were often discussed at the Bureau. Tighter control over the implementation of the Moldavian Bureau’s decisions was one notable change made under Brezhnev’s leadership (Șevcenco, 2007, p. 131). A product of Stalin’s vydvizhentsy cohort, the future Soviet leader used the ‘carrot and stick’ approach in cadres’ policy, but more of the carrot than the stick. His slogan – ‘trust in cadres’ – made public in 1966, became the byword of his rule (Gorlizki, 2010, p. 676) but had already been put into practice in Moldavia between 1950 and 1952.
Simultaneously, as a Party soldier, Brezhnev intensified the fight against anti-Soviet elements to the extent that he devised an initiative for a new mass deportation of ‘class enemies’ to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Somewhat limited in its scope, the deportation plan revolved around those people who somehow escaped Operation South in July 1949, which targeted mainly kulaks and wartime collaborators. In this regard, Brezhnev’s proposition was analysed twice by the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in May and June 1952 but was not approved (Werth and Mironenko, 2004, p. 518; Tsarevskaia-Dyakina, 2004, pp. 677–678). Instead, fiscal pressure was to be the primary punitive measure against the remaining kulaks (Țsaranov, 1998, p. 78; Pasat, 2006, p. 333).
Brezhnev’s purportedly positive legacy in Moldavia results from his ability as a showman and manipulative statistician to present progress in the agricultural sector. One of the main successes usually attributed to Brezhnev is that kolkhozes became more affluent and more efficient just two years after the completion of the collectivization campaign. In reality, a closer look at kolkhoz performances shows that this was merely the result of the merger of larger kolkhozes from smaller, dispersed ones (Sandle and Casu, 2016, pp. 122–155). This was not, however, his doing since this was an All-Union campaign in this respect.
Brezhnev’s tenure in Soviet Moldavia is often presented uncritically. Susanne Schattenberg, in her biography of Brezhnev, an otherwise great accomplishment, depicts his time in Moldavia in a praising tone. Brezhnev appears almost as a ‘liberal’ leader, sympathetic to the cause of the poor peasants and Moldavians in general. While one can agree that he brought a new leadership style, utterly distinct from his predecessors, Brezhnev played a dutiful role in the Stalinist production. He was, for instance, a friend or at least maintained excellent relations with Iosif Mordoveț, ‘Moldavia’s Beria’, in charge of the local NKVD (political police) from 1944 to 1954. Mordoveț was involved in all repressive operations against ‘class enemies’ in post-war Soviet Moldavia, including one mass deportation during Brezhnev’s tenure, targeting Jehovah’s Witnesses in April 1951. That being said, it was coordinated at the All-Union level and so was not Mordoveț’s or Brezhnev’s initiative. Mordoveț was, however, a more than loyal executor of Moscow’s orders, being a Stalinist Chekist to the core with excessive zeal. Brezhnev knew the requirements of such work well and so appointed his own man, Simion Tsvigun, the future first deputy of Yuri Andropov’s KGB, as Mordoveț’s second-in-command. Thus, it is fair to say that Brezhnev’s leadership style, exhibited before as he climbed the ladder in Dnepropetrovsk and then again in Moldavia, was an integral part of his personality. Yet, this style was also partly performative. Not between 1950 and 1952 while in Moldavia, nor after 1964 as General Secretary was Brezhnev a hard-line Stalinist. He was, however, undoubtedly respectful of Stalin, scoffing at Khrushchev’s condemnation of the cult of personality, and partially rehabilitated the tainted image of the Soviet Generalissimus in 1965 (Bacon and Sandle, 2002, pp. 2, 16, 26; Edele, 2008, pp. 10, 18, 126, 175, 195). He could play the role of the ‘soft’ leader as he knew the others would play the ‘tough’ ones. Under Stalinism, and later, the one could not exist without the other. Brezhnev also supported Gherasim Rudi as Head of the Government, even though there was a lot of kompromat on his leadership style and massive corruption scandals. Brezhnev’s ally Mordoveț also favoured Rudi because of his weaknesses, readily available kompromat, and partisan background in the war (Crudu, 2018, p. 199; Schattenberg, 2018, pp. 54–55).28
Brezhnev’s lifestyle in Moldavia was very strenuous due to his frequent visits to district centres and kolkhozes and late working hours (emulating Stalin), which resulted in his first heart attack in June 1952 (Gorincioi, 2012, pp. 49–50). His health worsened further because of public attacks on his failures to deliver the promised harvests to the Centre. The main CPSU daily newspaper Pravda (Truth) published a series of articles targeting several republican and regional leaders, among them Brezhnev. The campaign was allegedly initiated by Malenkov, targeting Khrushchev’s supporters as the aging Stalin’s underlings jockeyed for position (Schattenberg, 2018, pp. 176–178).
Brezhnev spent most of summer 1952 at the Balaklava hospital near Moscow, recovering from a heart attack in June. In November 1952, he participated in the 19th CPSU Congress. Stalin approved of Brezhnev’s speech and manners and added his name to the newly enlarged Politburo (renamed the Presidium). As a man of the Centre finishing his tenure triumphantly, Brezhnev was the first departing Party chief in Moldavia able to appoint his successor. In his memoirs, Bodiul (2001, p. 60) contented that Brezhnev purposefully chose a feeble person to succeed him so that his legacy would look more impressive in contrast. Regardless, Dumitru Gladchi was the bleakest First Secretary in the history of the Moldavian SSR.
A drab parenthesis: Gladchi
It might be that Brezhnev’s departure was somehow unexpected, and Gladchi was chosen as a temporary solution before a permanent choice would occupy the position. Otherwise, Gladchi might not have been up to the task, but he was undoubtedly loyal to Brezhnev, seemingly unlike the Second Secretary, Boris Gorban’ (another ethnic Ukrainian). The latter was personally excluded by Brezhnev from a list of seven officials from Moldavia to participate in the 19th Party Congress in October 1952 (Schattenberg, 2018, p. 179). It again demonstrates the considerable prerogatives the first secretary wielded at that time in his fiefdom (Khlevniuk, 2003, pp. 255–267). Conversely, it could be that it was because the second secretary’s status in the republic was not yet consecrated in 1952 as Moscow’s ‘governor general’ (Grybkauskas, 2014, pp. 276–292). An important recent book on the power of the first secretaries in several Russian regions and a few national republics testifies to a continuation of the complicated relationship between the first secretaries and other subordinates, including the second secretaries throughout the post-Stalin period (Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, 2020).
Gladchi’s tenure was, except for the last First Secretary, Grigore Eremei, in 1991, the shortest and drabbest.29 At the same time, less is known about his tenure than any other in post-war history of the Moldavian SSR. Recent archival discoveries show a sudden and unexpected rise in linguistic nationalism in Moldavia following Stalin’s death and lasting until 1954 (Casu, 2014, pp. 77–91), diminishing in intensity in subsequent years. Only Bodiul (in office from 1961–1980) was successful in keeping linguistic nationalism at bay. Other republics witnessed the same phenomenon, unleashed by Beria’s condemnation of Russian chauvinism, Russification policies, and encouragement for the union republics to take more prerogatives into their own hands including over cadres’ policy (Prigge, 2015, pp. 31–40, 68–77; Smith, 2013, pp. 189–215; Loader ,2016).
Gladchi’s demotion in early 1954 arose from complaints sent to Moscow by various Party and government factions due to his failures to fulfil his leadership duties. Another charge directed against him was unsatisfactory cadres’ policy and inability to accept criticism (Șevcenco, 2007, p. 133). Moscow unexpectedly addressed these complaints by sending a Ukrainian, Zinovii Serdiuk to replace the Transnistrian Moldavian Gladchi (Pasat, 2011, pp. 236–237). Serdiuk’s appointment needs explanation because it was counter to the practice of appointing representatives of the titular nationality to the position of first secretaries in the non-Russian republics after 1953. It was perhaps logical, however, given the circumstances in Soviet Moldavia at that moment, seemingly similar to the re-election of a Russian in Byelorussia in June 1953 over a Byelorussian (Chernyshova, 2020). In this way, Khrushchev aimed to ‘kill two birds with one stone’. First, to diffuse the national revival in Moldavia, and, second, to use the opportunity to install a loyal person in the wake of the power struggle to succeed Stalin in Moscow. As the subsequent events confirmed, the voices of the republics’ Party leaders would be important ones.
Why Serdiuk?
Gladchi, the Moldavian incumbent Party boss, was unfit for the job, and the local nomenklatura (Party elite) was split in two, the ‘left bankers’ and others sent in from various republics, especially Russia and Ukraine. At the same time, the Bessarabian group was marginalized altogether. This made Khrushchev’s nomination of his close associate a relatively easy task, and indeed, it did not produce strong opposition. Serdiuk was the second ethnic Ukrainian to head the Moldavian Party (the first being Brezhnev) and he had previous regional leadership experience in Ukraine as a regional Party boss in Kyiv and Lviv. In his memoirs, Bodiul credits Serdiuk with helping to create the basis of a ‘well thought out and planned economy’ for the Moldavian SSR (Bodiul, 2001, p. 61). This statement is, however, not accurate because Serdiuk’s tenure oversaw the specialization of the republic’s economic, which endured for decades. In the agricultural domain, the economy’s main specialization – in vineyards specifically, fruits and vegetables, followed by cereals and other crops – was already decided between 1944 and 1948.30 Concerning industry, the focus on the food processing industry, including wine and canned vegetables and fruits, was agreed upon in 1952 during Brezhnev’s tenure (Katruk, 1976, p. 26).
There was reasonable economic progress between 1954 and 1961, following the specialization pattern established during the late Stalin period. As Bodiul counted on Brezhnev’s relationship after 1964, Serdiuk used his relationship with Khrushchev to lobby for local economic interests. In tackling nationalism, however, Serdiuk did not prove entirely successful. Still, he was not made responsible for this failure (see Michael Loader’s chapter, Chapter 1). Lavrentii Beria’s initiatives to give more rights to the republics in the cultural and linguistical domain survived his death in late 1953. Indeed, Khrushchev was obliged to cautiously tackle nationality policy, not to look overtly opposing what has been perceived by many, both contemporaries and historians in the Soviet republics, as a justifiable correction of the Stalinist legacy articulated by Beria after Stalin’s death (Smith, 2011, pp. 79–93).
Serdiuk’s departure in 1961 was a promotion. He became Deputy Chairman of the All-Union Party Control Commission, a vital organ which helped Khrushchev maintain power. Brezhnev sacked Serdiuk in 1965, precisely because of his close association with Khrushchev (Khlevniuk et al., 2009, p. 616).
Bodiul, a quasi-dictator for two decades
Ivan Bodiul, Serdiuk’s Second Secretary since 1959, took his place as First Secretary in 1961. Bodiul was Moldavian according to his passport but was born in 1918 in the Kherson governate of Ukraine. His ancestors left the Principality of Moldavia in the 18th Century and his family retained the language in a rather rudimentary form. This was not, however, a hindrance. On the contrary, he was perfect for his job as statistically he would be categorized as a Moldavian, following the unwritten post-Stalin rule that republican leaders should be of the titular nationality. Furthermore, he had already worked in the Moldavian SSR as inspector of the Council for Kolkhoz Affairs for the Moldavian SSR (1948–1951).
As a Brezhnev protégé, Bodiul was appointed as the First Secretary of the Chișinău City Party Committee in 1951. Rumours circulated that Bodiul had married one of Brezhnev’s former paramours and that it was Leonid Il’ich’s way of showing thoughtfulness by helping his ex-lovers meet prospective candidates (Gorincioi, 2012, pp. 92–93; Lucinschi, 1993, p. 50). This claim cannot be substantiated but Bodiul’s extremely critical assessment of his former patron provides an indirect hint that it might be true (Bodiul, 2001, pp. 51–61; Semichastnyi, 2002, p. 397).
Leading for almost two decades, Bodiul was the longest-serving Party boss in Soviet Moldavia. As his time in office roughly coincides with Brezhnev’s at the All-Union level, and he had very close relations with him, Bodiul is viewed by many as a representative of Brezhnevite ‘stagnation’ in Soviet Moldavia. Yet, Bodiul ruled for so long not just because he was Brezhnev’s man. Though in his memoirs, he claims Khrushchev and Serdiuk made him first secretary, later CC Party officials dismissed this claim and pointed instead to Brezhnev (Gorincioi, 2012, p. 48).
Bodiul’s character was very different from his patron’s. Initially trained as a veterinarian, he became doctor of philosophy (doctor filosofskikh nauk) in the 1960s when he was already the First Secretary. Later he published a book dedicated to integrating villages and cities in what has been dubbed ‘agro-cities’ (agrogoroda), one of so-called ‘developed Socialism’s’ central tenets as a preliminary stage in the building of a fully-fledged Communist society (Bodiul, 1980). His ambition went beyond the republic’s borders. Bodiul insisted top delegations from Ukraine and other union republics come to Moldavia to see his economic projects for themselves and to borrow his model of creating big agricultural enterprises to bring the village closer to the city. It is said that this annoyed Mikhail Gorbachev because he believed that his own Stavropol region served better as a model (Gorincioi, 2012, pp. 38–39).31
Bodiul’s economic successes were not impressive or long lasting. His economic legacy is relatively modest, judged against his claims of making the Moldavian economy a modern and developed one. By the early 1980s, the Moldavian economy was more dependent on satisfying the requirements and interests of the All-Union ministries and agencies than local ones. At the end of the 1980s, Moldavia’s economy ranked eleventh among the union republics, slipping from seventh place in 1964 (Casu, 2000, pp. 94–95).
Overall, Moldavia benefited from vast amounts of investment in agriculture and industry, being seemingly privileged in this regard, but that came at a price for local interests and prosperity (Casu, 2000, pp. 82–102). When, for instance, Bodiul raised the question of expanding local industry to face the growing problem of unemployment, the Centre approved more funds for Moldavia. Yet, when the new enterprises these funds paid for were ready to start working, the workforce was sent from outside the republic. This also shows the limits of lobbying the Centre and how All-Union interests prevailed to the detriment of local ones (Bahry, 1987).32
Bodiul was more successful in another domain. He was a warrior on the ideological front, similar to the fervour demonstrated by Khrushchev in the context of East-West confrontation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Bodiul had very strained relations with the intelligentsia, especially writers and poets. One of them was Ion Druță, the best and most known writer in Soviet Moldavia. His novel The Burden of our Goodness (1969) on post-war Soviet Moldavia touched upon the 1946–1947 famine in a sophisticated manner. Nevertheless, his publication was banned in Moldavia by Bodiul. Druță, however, enjoyed good relations with Moscow, where he moved in the mid-1960s (and still lives today); thus, his novels were published in large numbers. Bodiul was also helplessly raged against the All-Union Moscow scholars who did not consider Moldavian a language distinct from Romanian. Bodiul even quarrelled to no avail with the All-Union Chairman of the Cinema Union Aleksei Romanov over ideologically harmful films brought from neighbouring Romania via cultural exchanges. These examples shed some light on the limits of Party authority in cultural matters both at the local and All-Union levels (Casu, 2013a, pp. 89–127).33
Moldavia, Moscow, and Bodiul's departure
Following the Prague Spring in August 1968, Bodiul behaved as if he addressed the whole USSR in his long speeches, not only his Moldavian audience. Wider issues about the Cold War and competition with capitalism arose. He touched upon the non-interventionist position taken by Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania in the Czechoslovak crisis and initiated a fierce campaign against the Romanian leader’s local sympathizers. Reminiscent of a post-World War II Zhdanovshchina campaign, Bodiul branded them as ‘nationalists’ and ‘traitors to the Fatherland’, taking the opportunity to purge undesirable cadres and potential rivals such as Anatol Corobceanu, the highest ranking Bessarabian in the Moldavian government (Negru, 2011, pp. 127–151).34 In November 1970, Bodiul charged Corobceanu with not insufficiently struggling against Moldavian-Romanian nationalism, friendliness with people who were harshly criticizing Bodiul’s cadres’ policy, and the low representation of Romanian Bessarabians in the top state-Party positions.35 Moreover, sensing his importance in managing Soviet-Romanian tensions, Bodiul asked Moscow to replace his Second Secretary, Yuri Mel’kov, with Nikolai Merenishchev, because he and Mel’kov did not get along very well (Grybkauskas, 2016, pp. 85, 203; Gorincioi, 2012, p. 34).
Without any serious rivals and confident in his strong relations with Brezhnev, Bodiul became increasingly arrogant in the 1970s, not only with his subordinates but also in his dealings with All-Union officials.36 In December 1980, Bodiul left his post and moved to Moscow. It was the first instance in post-war Soviet Moldavian history of an incumbent Party leader deciding when to resign and what position to take up next. He became a Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers.
As one might expect, Bodiul also named his successor – Semion Grossu, the former Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR over the preceding four years (Lucinschi, 1993, p. 52).37 Grossu was an ethnic Moldavian-Romanian, the first Bessarabia-born top Party leader in Soviet Moldavia. He was born in 1934 in Satu-Nou, in southern Bessarabia, in the area that was annexed by Ukraine in 1940. He was the first top Party leader fluent in Romanian. During his tenure as Chairman of the Government (1976–1980) and nine years at the helm of the Moldavian Party (1980–1989), Grossu preferred to speak publicly in Russian. He was like Bodiul in his negligence of national culture, not very social, and lacked charisma. In 1988, when the intelligentsia asked for the reintroduction of the Latin alphabet and the introduction of intensive Romanian courses in schools, he initially opposed both efforts (King, 2000, pp. 120–144).38
Perestroika and the Moldavian Communist Party
From 1985, it was, of course, the Perestroika era, and Grossu could not act like Bodiul, so he was obliged to compromise. Grossu reluctantly accepted the reintroduction of the Latin alphabet, but he thought intensive Romanian language courses could be viewed as promoting local nationalism. He thus opted to also increase Russian language classes.39 In this, Grossu was the true embodiment of Bodiul and a perfect successor. Bodiul preferred Grossu because of his organizational abilities, his weak sense of national identity, and also because he had kompromat on him, including his social origin as an alleged kulak.40
In 1984, seemingly upon consultation with his patron in Moscow, Grossu asked to remove Second Secretary Merenishchev, whom he disliked because of his inactivity and habit of reading newspapers all day long. Grossu came to regret this initiative as Merenishchev’s replacement became his nemesis – the most unpopular man in Moldavia of the entire Soviet period, Viktor Smirnov (1984–1988). Smirnov was Yegor Ligachev’s protégé and was arrested in early 1989 for embroilment in the Rashidov affair while responsible for the Central Asian republics at Party headquarters in Moscow in the 1970s-early 1980s (Gorincioi, 2013, pp. 85–86; Smirnov, 2017; for more on the Rashidov affair, see Chapter 4).
In the summer and fall of 1989, numerous meetings organized by the Popular Front of Moldavia contested the hegemonic role of the Communist Party and Soviet memory politics. Civil society was galvanized against the regime by speaking freely for the first time about the making of Soviet power in Moldavia: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Red Army’s occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in 1940, the Great Terror in the Moldavian ASSR, the post-war famine, discrimination against ethnically Moldavian cadres, and so on.41 At the end of August 1989, about 100,000 people gathered at the historical Great National Assembly in downtown Chișinău. Later ideas contained in Popular Front’s resolutions were incorporated in both the declaration of sovereignty (23 June 1990) and independence (27 August 1991) (Chinn and Roper, 1995, pp. 291–325). With the declaration of Moldavian/Romanian as the official language on 31 August 1989 by the Supreme Soviet and the blocking of a military parade on 7 November 1989 (the anniversary of the October Revolution) by activists of the Popular Front, the Communist Party lost the leading position atop the power structure (King, 2000, pp. 120–121).
Grossu himself recognized that from late summer 1989, the centre of power moved from the Central Committee (the Party’s executive branch) to the Supreme Soviet (the legislative branch).42 Moscow was troubled by these developments and tried to impose a Party man as the legislative leader (Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet) by recommending Mircea Snegur, the CC secretary for agriculture. This was a way to outmanoeuvre the Popular Front candidate, Ion Hadârcă.43 The victor, however, was not the Party but Snegur who became a popular leader, not beholden to the Party. He became a public voice in his own right.
The violent clashes at the Ministry of Internal Affairs on 10 November 1989 aimed to release those arrested three days before for blocking the October Revolution Day parade was the last nail in Grossu’s political coffin. As Lucinschi (1993, p. 54) admits in his memoirs, the initiator of the change was Gorbachev himself – Grossu being the last top Party leader of a republic from the Brezhnev era to be still in office by 1989. Gorbachev’s choice of replacement was Petru Lucinschi, the Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan, the only Moldavian to serve as a ‘governor general’ in another union republic. Lucinschi was the second Bessarabian to be named as Party leader, and the first from the Bessarabian part of the Moldavian SSR (Grossu, as noted above, came from Ukraine’s south Bessarabia). He was born in 1940 and had a brilliant career, becoming First Secretary of the Moldavian Komsomol at the age of just 27, in 1967. Five years later, he was already the CPM CC secretary for ideology, which he followed with two years as First Secretary of the Chișinău City Party Committee (1976–1978). Owing to his relations with Sergei Trapeznikov (Head of the CPSU CC Department of Science and Educational Institutions) during his Komsomol tenure, Lucinschi was invited to work in Moscow as deputy chief of the CPSU CC agitation and propaganda department. Bodiul did not trust Lucinschi and thus did not oppose his departure (Zenkovich, 2002, p. 228; Lucinschi, 1993, pp. 46–52).
Lucinschi was a seasoned politician and brought a new leadership style, being open to various kinds of debate, including power-sharing with civil society. He was thus perceived as a ‘Moldavian Gorbachev’: a Perestroika man, a believer, eager for change – even though not very knowledgeable about where the USSR was heading (Gorincioi, 2013, pp. 87–92). The Lucinschi of 1989 was different in many respects to the Lucinschi of the late 1960s–early 1970s. He had been radical and prone to an excess of zeal in fighting against Moldavian-Romanian nationalists and any other ideological deviation. His youth and successful career tempered his desire for recognition. Yet, in the same fundamental ways he was ready to start a new role according to whichever way the wind was blowing. When he again left for Moscow in early February 1991 to become a CPSU CC secretary, the Soviet Union was living through its final months. After a few years in the shadows following the collapse of the USSR, Lucinschi made a comeback on the political scene of independent Moldova, becoming the Parliament’s speaker in 1993 and the country’s second President in 1996.
Grigore Eremei took Lucinschi’s post as First Secretary in February 1991. The party was in a shambles. A year earlier, Gorbachev had reluctantly agreed to renounce the Party’s monopoly on power. Eremei, an ethnic Moldavian-Romanian, born in 1935 in northern Bessarabia, was an old player on the Moldavian political scene since the 1970s. Bodiul, however, did not trust him during his tenure, and when he left for Moscow in 1980, he demoted Eremei from Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers to the much less prestigious Chairman of the Council of Trade Unions.
As First Secretary, Eremei changed his position on many issues. In 1989, for instance, as a member of the Yakovlev commission of the All-Union Congress of People’s Deputies, he had been very keen to condemn the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its impact on Bessarabia. In early July 1991, however, Eremei reacted negatively to an international conference summoned by the Parliament in Chișinău on the same matter. He not only complained to Moscow about what he dubbed as ‘anti-Soviet rage’ but asked for permission to set up a radio counterpropaganda campaign targeting Romania and the West on that issue.44 In this, Eremei was very much like Lucinschi, his predecessor, a man without strong convictions and an opportunist, temporarily devoted to the institution of which he was in charge. In contrast to Lucinschi, however, Eremei was less astute and no master of intrigue – he could not reinvent himself after the August 1991 Coup in Moscow.
Conclusion
Succession procedures in Soviet Moldavia were cumbersome. When a departing leader had the right credentials and his activity had been praised, he could have a say on who should succeed him (Brezhnev, Bodiul, Lucinschi). When the successor was named from the local nomenklatura, it was more likely that the leaving boss sent a good word about him to Moscow or even insisted that he was the best choice for continuing the policies and projects underway. Conversely, if the dismissed Party boss’s legacy did not look very impressive, he was not in a position to participate in the selection of his heir (Salogor, Coval, Gladchi, Grossu).
Whether the tenure of a republic’s Party leader was perceived as successful or the opposite can be inferred from their subsequent careers. The happiest scenario for a departing provincial leader was to be sent to be at the Central Committee’s disposition in Moscow. This usually meant that their next appointment would be to a similar position in another republic or reinserted into their former position before being sent to the periphery (Brezhnev). In some cases, serving for the first time as first secretary in a republic other than their own was the most direct way to jump to an All-Union career (Brezhnev, Serdiuk, Bodiul). Another possibility was to be named in a high All-Union party or government position, for instance, as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, followed by a more or less prestigious post in another government agency closer to retirement (Serdiuk, Bodiul).
The second most desirable outcome for a former republican Party boss was to be appointed as a minister at the republican level or to a similarly prestigious position (Gosplan, for example: Coval). The worst situation was relegation to a lower status. To be appointed, for example, to a second-rate position in a minor economic enterprise in another republic (Salogor). Falling into disgrace in the short run meant losing all symbolic status, such as a membership of the Central Committee or any other Party position. This entailed a further dishonour, such as the denial of an All-Union personal pension according to the semi-official custom (Salogor). Although a rare occurrence, both in the aftermath of World War II and after Josef Stalin died in 1953, this kind of treatment could be defined as an individual purge. It did not involve material deprivations for the ex-leader or his family members or any physical harm, arrest, or internment.
Some top Party leaders in Soviet Moldavia were indigenous, while others were sent from the Centre and were alien to the republic which they were appointed. In some instances, their appointment involved their first visit to Moldavia (Brezhnev, Serdiuk). Sometimes they shared their ethnicity with the titular nationality only in a formal way (i.e. Bodiul). As in any other union republic, the top Party leaders’ ethnicity in Soviet Moldavia was an important issue. Not because representatives of certain nationalities were more competent, generated better governance policies, or had propensity to prioritize local interests over the Centre’s interests. The issue of the first secretary’s ethnicity was essential in the self-perception of the regime itself. It touched upon the core of the legitimacy issue for the Soviet power in the national peripheries.
Notes
1 I would like to thank the German Historical Institute in Moscow for a two-month fellowship in 2018 that made it possible to work at RGANI, RGASPI, and other Russian archives.
2 Arhiva Organizațiilor Social-Politice a Republicii Moldova (Archive of Social-Political Organizations of the Republic of Moldova, hereafter AOSRPM), fond 51, opis 28, delo 58, list 55–57.
3 Arhiva Națională a Republicii Moldova (National Archive of the Republic of Moldova, hereafter ANRM), f. 2948, op. 1, d. 9, l. 1–2, 31–60.
4 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 4, d. 64, l. 1–4.
5 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 1, d. 32, l. 5; Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, hereafter RGANI), Personal Party File of Pyotr Borodin, No. 05319071 (1954).
6 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 1, d. 37, l. 15–18, 24–25, 40–42, 69–71.
7 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 1, d. 99, l. 1–113.
8 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 1, d. 32, l. 15; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 1, d. 101, l. 4; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 1, d. 100, l. 7.
9 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, hereafter RGASPI), f. 4, op. 5, d. 268, l. 78.
10 RGASPI, f. 4, op. 5, d. 283, l. 48.
11 RGASPI, Personal Party File of Nikita Salogor, No. 12795–445 (1973).
12 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 4, d. 111, l.16–35.
13 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 4, d. 64, l. 1–4, 7–18; RGASPI, f. 573, op. 1, d. 15, l. 17–30.
14 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 4, d. 64, l. 29–35; RGASPI, f. 573, op. 1, d. 15, l. 38–55.
15 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 9, d. 104, l. 65; RGASPI, Personal Party File of Nikita Salogor, No. 12795–445 (1973).
16 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 5, d. 61, l. 85–86, 100.
17 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 32, d. 73, l. 15.
18 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 4, d. 64, l. 4.
19 RGASPI, Personal Party File of Nikita Salogor, No. 06709–120 (1954); No. 12795–445 (1973).
20 RGASPI, Personal Party File of Nicolae Coval, No. 05259–678 (1954).
21 RGASPI, Personal Party File of Fyodor Butov, No. 0047–984 (1954); No. 06094–870 (1974).
22 Arhiva Serviciului de Informații și Securitate a Republicii Moldova, fostul KGB al RSSM (Archive of the Service for Intelligence and Security of Republic of Moldova, former KGB of MSSR, hereafter, ASISRM-KGB), Operation File IUG, 272.
23 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 9, d. 3, l. 92–110.
24 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 5, d. 61, l. 85–86.
25 http://liders.rusarchives.ru/brezhnev/docs/pripisnaya-knizhka-doprizyvnika-li-brezhneva-5-oktyabrya-1928-g.html (accessed 9 June 2020).
26 AOPSRM, f. 51, op. 9, d. 2, l. 38–39.
27 AOPSRM, f. 51, op. 9, d. 2, l. 148.
28 RGASPI, f. 573, op. 1, d. 43, l. 24–38.
29 RGASPI, Personal Party File of Grigore Eremei, No. 06675001 (1954).
30 RGASPI, f. 573, op. 1, d. 7, l. 30–33; RGASPI f. 573, op. 1, d. 14, l. 60–63, 76–78.
31 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 33, d. 83, l. 54–56.
32 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 33, d. 83, l. 77–89; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 29, d. 97, l. 14–15, 33–47, 133–135; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 25, d. 179, l. 15–21; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 28, d. 30, l. 15–69, 71, 82–85, 102; ASISRM-KGB, File No. 017122, pp. 25–67.
33 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 31, d. 93, l. 104–106; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 33, d. 46, l. 41–54; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 30, d. 57, l. 36–70.
34 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 31, d. 69, l. 4–36, 76–78.
35 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 28, d. 36, l. 51–67.
36 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 31, d. 99, l. 86–88; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 31, d. 100, l. 19–24.
37 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 53, d. 9, l. 1–13.
38 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 71, d. 445, l. 20–30, 42–136.
39 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 71, d. 445, l 22–30.
40 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 32, d. 94, l. 78–80; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 73, d. 122, l. 28–31.
41 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 73, d. 122, l. 23–31; AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 73, d. 125, l. 23–27, 40–42.
42 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 71, d. 445, l. 42–45.
43 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 71, d. 445, l. 42–61.
44 AOSPRM, f. 51, op. 73, d. 200, l. 4–6.
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