The Soviet ultimatum to Romania

At ten in the evening Moscow time on 26 June 1940, the Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, summoned the Romanian minister, Gheorghe Davidescu, to the Kremlin and handed him a statement from the Soviet government. The Soviet Union demanded the “return” of Bessarabia and the transfer to it of the northern part of Bukovina, and expected a reply the next day. Four days earlier France, a guarantor of Romania’s borders, had signed the armistice at Compiègne, and the Red Army had for a week been standing in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. For twenty-four hours King Carol II and his government searched for a way out, but no one was willing to back them. On 27 June Bucharest proposed talks, Moscow answered with a second ultimatum, and on 28 June, once Romania had given way, Soviet troops crossed the Dniester. Within six days the Soviet Union had occupied more than 50,000 square kilometres with almost 3.8 million inhabitants.

A question waiting for its moment

The Soviet Union had never recognised the union of Bessarabia with Romania in 1918. The secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939 recorded that the Soviet side “emphasises its interest in Bessarabia”, while Germany declared “its complete political disinterestedness in these areas”. On 29 March 1940 Molotov reminded the Supreme Soviet that an “unresolved dispute” existed between the two countries, although he gave assurances that Moscow had never raised the question of recovering the province by military means.

In reality military preparations had been under way since the spring. From mid-April to June the Kiev Special and Odessa Military Districts concentrated troops on the Romanian border. On 20 June the commander of the Kiev District, Army General Georgy Zhukov, received a directive from the People’s Commissar for Defence, Semyon Timoshenko, and the Chief of the General Staff: he was to be ready by 24 June for “a decisive offensive with the aim of routing the Romanian army and occupying Bessarabia”. The command of the Southern Front, comprising the 5th, 9th and 12th Armies, was formed from the district staff. According to Russian studies, the front numbered more than 600,000 men, some 2,400 tanks and over 2,000 aircraft. Two variants were prepared: if the Romanians refused, the 12th Army was to strike from Bukovina along the Prut towards Iași and the 9th Army from the south-east, so as to encircle the Romanian forces in Bessarabia; if they gave way, Soviet troops were to advance quickly to the Prut and supervise their evacuation.

Romania, which in 1939 had still accepted an Anglo-French guarantee and declared its neutrality, was by the spring of 1940 looking more and more openly to Germany for support. On 27 May it signed an agreement with the Reich linking oil deliveries to arms deliveries, and on 28 May, on hearing of Belgium’s capitulation, Carol II told the Crown Council that Germany would win the war and that Romania had to adapt to that. At the beginning of June Berlin let Bucharest understand that if it wanted German guarantees, it should first come to terms with the Soviet Union.

Talks with Berlin

Before Moscow approached the Romanians, it settled the matter with Germany. On 23 June Molotov told the German ambassador, Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, that the settlement of the Bessarabian question “brooked no further delay”. The Soviet government still sought a peaceful solution, he said, but was determined to use force if Romania rejected an agreement, and its demand also extended to Bukovina, which was inhabited by Ukrainians. Schulenburg, taken aback, pointed out that Romania supplied Germany with huge quantities of raw materials and asked that the decision be held back until Berlin replied.

Joachim von Ribbentrop’s reply, delivered on 25 June, was cautious. Germany, the minister wrote, was abiding by the Moscow agreements and had no interest in Bessarabia, but was concerned about the fate of the roughly 100,000 Germans living there. The claim to Bukovina, on the other hand, was “something new”: it had been an Austrian crown land, densely settled by Germans. Above all, however, the Reich had “the strongest” economic interests in the rest of Romania – oil and grain – and did not want the country to become a theatre of war. On the evening of 25 June Molotov retorted that Bukovina was “the last missing part of a united Ukraine”, and on the afternoon of 26 June he informed Schulenburg that Moscow would limit its demand to northern Bukovina with Chernivtsi (Cernăuți). The border was to run from the junction with western Ukraine along the Suceava river and then north-east to Hertsa on the Prut, so that the Soviet Union would gain a direct rail link from Bessarabia through Chernivtsi to Lwów (Lviv). When the ambassador suggested that returning the Romanian treasure, taken to Moscow during the First World War, would ease a peaceful settlement, Molotov replied that this was “absolutely out of the question”, since Romania had “exploited Bessarabia long enough”.

The demand for Bukovina went beyond the secret protocol. The region had never belonged to Russia: from 1775 to 1918 it had been part of the Habsburg monarchy, and in 1918 it had joined Romania. Its northern part, with a mostly Ukrainian population, did however border on Eastern Galicia, seized by the USSR in 1939, and that was justification enough for Moscow.

The note of 26 June

In the note handed to Davidescu the Soviet government stated that in 1918 Romania, “taking advantage of Russia’s military weakness”, had forcibly torn Bessarabia away from it, thereby violating “the centuries-old unity of Bessarabia, populated mainly by Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian Soviet Republic”. This was untrue: according to every census, including the tsarist one of 1897, the majority of Bessarabia’s inhabitants were Romanians (Moldovans). Now, the note went on, since “the military weakness of the USSR is a thing of the past” and the international situation demanded the swift settlement of questions inherited from the past, the Soviet Union considered it necessary that Romania return Bessarabia and hand over northern Bukovina, “whose fate is linked chiefly with Soviet Ukraine by a common history and a community of language and national composition”. Bukovina was to be compensation, “if only to a small degree”, for the “great damage” that 22 years of Romanian rule had done to the Soviet Union and the people of Bessarabia. A map with the new border line drawn on it was attached to the note. The Soviet government expected a reply within twenty-four hours, that is, on 27 June.

That same night Molotov informed Schulenburg of everything. Moscow expected Berlin to advise Bucharest “urgently” to give way, “since otherwise war would be unavoidable”.

27 June: two Crown Councils

The news reached Bucharest during the night. Early on the morning of 27 June Carol II conferred with the prime minister, Gheorghe Tătărescu, and the foreign minister, Ion Gigurtu, and then received the German and Italian ministers. He declared that he wished to resist and asked that their governments restrain Hungary and Bulgaria, which also laid claim to Romanian territory, from exploiting the situation. Mobilisation was proclaimed. Berlin’s answer, however, was unequivocal. At 10.30 a.m. Ribbentrop instructed the German minister in Bucharest to tell the Romanian minister: “In order to avoid war between Romania and the Soviet Union, we can only advise the Romanian Government to yield to the Soviet Government’s demand.” The Italians spoke in the same vein. Romania’s partners in the Balkan Entente – Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey – likewise promised no help.

The first Crown Council met at noon. It was attended by members of the government, former prime ministers, the king’s advisers and the Chief of the General Staff, General Florea Țenescu. Two Romanian armies, the 3rd and 4th, then stood on the eastern frontier, numbering about 450,000 men by Russian estimates, but poorly armed, with few tanks and an obsolete air force, and the country also had to guard its borders with Hungary and Bulgaria. According to surviving accounts, eleven participants voted to reject the ultimatum, ten to accept it and five for further talks, while Tătărescu declined to take a position. An evasive reply went to Moscow: the Romanian government declared that it was ready “immediately and in the broadest spirit” to enter into “a friendly discussion, by common consent, of all the proposals of the Soviet government”, and asked that a place and date for negotiations be set. Davidescu delivered it to Molotov late in the evening.

Molotov considered it “imprecise”, since it contained no consent to the cession of territory. Davidescu was told that if Romania did not accept the demands, Soviet troops would cross the border: the choice lay between a territorial concession and war. During the night of 27–28 June – after midnight Moscow time, according to Russian document collections – Molotov handed over a second note with a precise timetable. Within four days, counting from 2 p.m. Moscow time on 28 June, Romania was to withdraw its troops and administration from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and the Red Army was to occupy the evacuated territory over the same period. On 28 June itself Soviet troops were to enter Chernivtsi, Chișinău and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi (Cetatea Albă). Romania was responsible for keeping railways, rolling stock, bridges, depots, airfields, industrial plants, power stations and the telegraph intact, and disputed questions were to be settled by a mixed commission. A reply was expected by noon on 28 June.

The Romanians took their decision before the second note reached Bucharest. At 9 p.m. on 27 June the second Crown Council met. This time only six participants spoke in favour of resistance, among them the historian and former prime minister Nicolae Iorga. Nineteen (twenty according to some accounts), including the prime minister and the chief of staff, judged that an army standing alone against the USSR, and threatened by Hungary and Bulgaria, had no chance, and that a war might cost the state not two provinces but its very existence. One member of the council, Victor Antonescu, took no position. Carol II gave way. In his diary he described it as “a day of national shame”.

The Red Army moves in (28 June – 3 July)

At about 11 a.m. on 28 June Davidescu delivered the reply to Molotov: the Romanian government, in order to avoid the grave consequences that the use of force and the opening of hostilities in this part of Europe would entail, accepted the evacuation terms. The Romanians asked for the deadline to be extended, citing downpours and washed-out roads. That day the General Staff issued a communiqué on the acceptance of the ultimatum and an order to withdraw troops and offices behind the Prut, and the army was forbidden to respond to provocations. Fortifications built on the Dniester over twenty years were surrendered without a fight.

At 2 p.m. troops of the Southern Front crossed the Dniester and the border in Bukovina. Because Romania had given way, only part of the forces was committed, chiefly cavalry divisions and tank brigades, which followed close behind the Romanian rearguards. That same day Chernivtsi, Khotyn, Bălți, Chișinău and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi were occupied. On 29 and 30 June Soviet paratroops landed in the Bolhrad and Izmail area to cut the lines of retreat and prevent property from being carried off. By 30 June the Red Army had reached the Prut and the Danube, and at 2 p.m. on 3 July the border was closed. Many Romanian units failed to withdraw in time and were disarmed. A large rally was held in Chișinău, attended by the First Secretary of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev, and Marshal Timoshenko.

Soviet troops also occupied the Hertsa district, which lay within the Old Kingdom, in Dorohoi county, and belonged neither to Bessarabia nor to Bukovina. The ultimatum did not mention it, although the line Molotov had sketched on 26 June ended precisely at Hertsa. The Soviet side later described this as a “military error”, but in the mixed commission that met in Odessa it refused to give the district back. Romania never accepted this loss.

The withdrawal was chaotic. Columns of troops, fleeing officials and civilians mingled on the roads, while part of the local population, especially in the towns and among the minorities, welcomed the Red Army with flowers and red flags. Romanian reports spoke of columns being plundered, soldiers being disarmed and insulted, and even officers being killed. Many of them attributed these attacks to “Jewish gangs”. In 2004 the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania found that some of these reports were fabricated or exaggerated, and that those celebrating and attacking also included Ukrainians, Russians, Romanians, criminals released from prison and communists of various nationalities. The authorities and the censored press nevertheless made the Jews the scapegoat for a humiliation for which the Soviet Union was to blame. Humiliated soldiers took their revenge on civilians. On 30 June, at the railway station in Galați, Romanian soldiers opened fire on people, most of them Jews, waiting to leave for Bessarabia; the number killed is estimated at between several dozen and about 300. On 1 July in Dorohoi, right next to Hertsa, soldiers killed 53 Jews according to the official Romanian report, and between 165 and 200 people according to accounts from the local community. Similar crimes were committed on trains and in other towns of Moldavia.

According to Soviet figures cited by Russian historians, several dozen Romanian soldiers and a few Soviet soldiers were killed in skirmishes and incidents during the occupation of the provinces, and the Red Army detained more than 7,000 Romanian servicemen. Population movement went both ways: tens of thousands of people fled to Romania, while between 112,000 and almost 150,000, among them many Jews from the Old Kingdom, crossed in the opposite direction. According to Romanian figures, the occupied territory covered 50,762 square kilometres and had 3,776,309 inhabitants, more than half of them Romanians and the rest Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Bulgarians, Germans and Gagauz.

Place in the war

The ultimatum of 26 June was the last stage in carrying out the secret protocol of August 1939. Taking advantage of France’s defeat, the Soviet Union had in two weeks moved its borders forward from the Baltic to the Black Sea. On 2 August 1940 the Supreme Soviet created the Moldavian SSR from the greater part of Bessarabia and the former autonomous republic on the left bank of the Dniester, and incorporated northern Bukovina, the Hertsa district and the north and south of Bessarabia into the Ukrainian SSR. Nationalisation, arrests and executions followed, and on 13 June 1941 the deportation of several tens of thousands of people to Siberia and Kazakhstan. In the autumn of 1940 more than 120,000 Germans from Bessarabia and Bukovina were resettled in the Reich, many of them on land seized from Poland.

In Romania the loss of the provinces marked the beginning of the break-up of the state built in 1918–1920. On 1 July Carol II renounced the Anglo-French guarantee, on 4 July he appointed Gigurtu’s pro-German government, and on 11 July Romania left the League of Nations. This did not spare it further losses: on 30 August the Second Vienna Award gave northern Transylvania to Hungary, and on 7 September the Treaty of Craiova granted southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. On 6 September Carol II abdicated and power passed to General Ion Antonescu, who tied the country to Germany and in November joined the Tripartite Pact.

June 1940 was also a turning point in German–Soviet relations. Hitler regarded the Red Army’s arrival on the Prut, some 200 kilometres from the Ploiești oilfields, as a threat, and the question of Bukovina and of further Soviet interests in the Balkans resurfaced in November 1940 during Molotov’s difficult talks in Berlin. Recovering Bessarabia and Bukovina became Romania’s chief war aim: on 22 June 1941 its army marched with the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union and in July occupied both provinces, and Romanian and German units murdered most of their Jewish inhabitants or deported them to Transnistria. In 1944 the Red Army returned to the Prut, and the peace treaty of 1947 confirmed the border fixed in June 1940. Today’s states of Moldova and Ukraine share between them the lands occupied in those days.