The Cultural Prelude to Bessarabia’s Union with Romania
The Cultural Prelude to Bessarabia’s Union with Romania

Summary/Abstract: – In the context of the democratic movements in Russia after the revolution of February 1917, the process of political emancipation carried out by the Bessarabian Romanians in 1917–1918 was supported by an ample movement of national revival and recovery of the ethnic identity. The cultural revival in the Bessarabian area was stimulated when Bessarabia (the Moldovan Democratic Republic) proclaimed, on 24 January 1918, its political independence following the vote in the Country Council, an event which opened new national and cultural horizons. In this new political context, the national cultural organizations, otherwise very modest, that existed in the area between the Prut and the Dniester rivers were supported by cultural institutions from Romania. The shows presented in Kishinev by the Iași National Theatre in the months of January and February 1918, as well as the concerts held before the Bessarabian audience by the Iași Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of maestro George Enescu in March 1918—on the same days when the Country Council voted for the declaration of unification of Bessarabia with Romania—represented a first occasion for the Bessarabian public to become familiar with the authentic Romanian cultural values from which they had been alienated during the century of tsarist occupation.

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