Moldova has rejected Russian claims that an exhibition of train wagons, recalling successive waves of brutal Soviet deportations, is designed ‘to incite hatred of Russia’.
Moldova’s Foreign Ministry has denied Russian claims that an exhibition of two train carriages, recalling three waves of deportations of the local population during Soviet times in the 1940s and 1950s, is evidence of “Russophobia “.
Personal bellongings and photos of people who the Soviets deported from Moldova to Siberian gulags. Photo: Moldovan Government Facebook
“It is significant at the same time that the organisers of all kinds of exhibitions and stage and screen productions cordially honour the Romanian accomplices of Nazi Germany,” Russian ambassador to Moldova Oleg Vasnetsov said on Telegram.
Vasnetsov added that the exhibition was a “purposeful incitement of hatred towards Russia and everything Russian”.
He did not mention that the Soviet Union was an ally of Nazi Germany from September 1939 to June 1941.
In June 1940, when Moldova was part of Romania, Moscow issued two ultimatums to Romania, which ceded Moldova under threat of military invasion. In June 1941, Romania allied with Nazi Germany and started a counteroffensive to regain the territory.
At the end of world War II Moldova was made part of the Soviet Union. As in the Baltic states, the Soviets crushed resistance by deporting the local elite en masse to Siberia. Moldova did not become independent until after the collapse of the USSR, in 1991.
Photos, letters and memories of Moldovans deported by the USSR to Siberia in the second wave of deportation in 1949. Photo: Moldovan Government Facebook
Moldova called the Russian claims about the exhibition “completely unacceptable, which represent an attempt to distort the tragic historical events that our country has gone through”.
“We invite representatives of the Russian embassy to visit the wagons installed in PMAN to talk with the historians on duty – university professors, scientific researchers, and specialists in the field to find out the historical truth about the Soviet-induced famine and the massive deportations to the Gulags,” Moldova’s Foreign Ministry said.
Photos of the Moldovans from children to elders deported by the Soviet regime in labour camps in Siberia. Photo: Moldovan Government Facebook
The exhibition was launched on July 6, 69 years after the second wave of Sovet deportations from Moldova. Between 1941 and 1951, there were three waves of deportations, and historians estimate that the total number of deportees was between 80,000 and 120,000.”
Moldova’s Foreign Ministry urged its Russian counterpart to refrain “from comments or interference in the internal affairs of Moldova, including in church matters and our history”.
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