Politica social-fiscală a Imperiului Rus în Basarabia în primele decenii după anexare
Social and Fiscal Policy Promoted by Russian Imperial Administration in Bessarabia in the first decades after its Annexation to Russia

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, based on archival and published sources, changes that have occurred in the social structure and tax submission of population from Bessarabia in the first years after its annexation to the Russian Empire are analyzed. The author finds that tsarism, in order to be able to keep possession of the newly annexed territory, used already known means of displacing of titular nation, widely used in national peripheries of the Russian Empire – changing demographic structure by colonizing land with foreign nations – Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Gagauzians, Germans, Greeks, Armenians, Jews etc.; denationalization of Bessarabian Romanians – Russification through education, state administration, policy of dispersed population, alienation of spiritual values of the people, and constitution of a cosmopolitan elite, based on another system of values, foreign to Romanian people etc. The author shows that a special mean in accomplishing of imperial social policy in Bessarabia, which was quite pronounced even in the first year after annexation, was the tsarism attitude towards different social categories, in particular by supporting secular and ecclesiastical owners, granting of land properties to Russian nobles, intense colonization of the territory etc., which in turn has generated a series of protests and assertions of the peasants and townspeople against this regime. As a result, the adverse effects of the social policy promoted by the imperial administration, occurred during the whole period of tsarist rule, and the consequences caused by truncation of the country and dismembering of Romanian people is felt even today.

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