How did the Russians try to retake Bessarabia in 1919? The case of the „revolt” in Tighina

In the conditions in which the Country Council from Chisinau voted, on March 27 / April 9, 1918, the declaration of Union of Bessarabia with Romania, on the entire territory of the former Russian government was installed by the Romanian army and administration. This event, although it led to a relative minimization of the anarchy of 1917, generated by the Russian Revolution, led at the same time to the emergence of radical groups of Bolsheviks. Present throughout the region and is supported by the Petrograd government, which wanted to recover the former province, their activity led to numerous clashes with law enforcement and in some cases, even served as a pretext for intervention by the Romanian Army.

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One such example was the town of Tighina, which between 1918 and 1919 became the headquarters of important regiments and brigades of border guards, especially since the town was a border crossing point. Starting with April-May 1919, the situation in the region became tenser and tenser, as Romanian and French forces were forced to retaliate against both attacks from Bolshevik Hungary and raids by the Red Army stationed in Ukraine.

The recovery of Bessarabia, a priority for Soviet Russia?

Also during this period, communist activist groups will implement a series of challenges against law enforcement, which will have to resort to a series of reprisals to restore public order. The aim was to discredit the Romanian army and administration in the eyes of the international community and to provide a pretext for the intervention of the Red Army in the area.

The recovery of Bessarabia was, therefore, a priority on the agenda of communist leaders, since the region served as a bridgehead for a possible intervention in the Balkans. In this sense, on May 1, 1919, Cristian Racovksi, the leader of Bolshevik Ukraine, addressed an ultimatum to Romania, requesting the evacuation of the army and administration within 3 days. However, the White Army's offensive against the Bolsheviks delayed these plans.

In this context, the events from 26 to 28 May 1919, which took place in Tighina, are also included. Although the recovery of the former government was no longer a priority in the context of the Russian Civil War entering an increasingly intense phase, the communist leaders in Bessarabia considered it necessary to initiate actions that would allow the entry of the Red Army into the region.

In this sense, the Bolshevik troops of the Red Army regiments stationed on the left bank of the Dniester, attacked Tighina on the night of May 26-27, 1919. At 3.30 in the morning, taking advantage of the negligence of the French allies, about two hundred Bolshevik soldiers crossed the Dniester by boat and entered the locality. Along with them, 60 French soldiers fraternized with the Bolshevik troops and abandoned their checkpoints.

Taking advantage of the lack of military forces in the locality, the invaders soon took over the railway, the post office and the telegraph. Some railway workers and residents even fraternized with the attackers. However, the "adventure" of the Bolsheviks across the Dniester was stopped by the intervention of several regiments from the Romanian Army, which entered the town in the evening of the same day, driving out the invaders across the Dniester.

In the following days, the Romanian and the French allied troops launched a counter-offensive, bombing Tiraspol and destroying the local train station.

Uprising for some, heroic struggle for others

These events have produced a debate among historians, their interpretation being significant depending on the regime that controlled the region. For example, Romanian and Western historians considered that the event would have been a Soviet military action carried out with the participation of some locals. The rating given to this event varies from "uprising" to "revolt" or even "military raid".

In the case of Soviet historians, the interpretation of the events started from the fact that the central role belonged to the locals, although the documents of the time attest to another fact. In fact, during the Soviet period, 50 years after these events, in 1969 a monument was installed in memory of those events, a monument that describes them as "a glorious page of the heroic struggle of working Bessarabia", a version sustained until today, in the region on the left bank of the Dniester.

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