Eurasia Press & News
Next Monday, the Moldovan Parliament will hold an extraordinary plenary sitting to hear the report prepared by the Commission for Assessment and Condemnation of the Totalitarian Communist Regime in Moldova. The commission was set up on the initiative of Moldova’s Acting President, Parliament Chairman Mihai Ghimpu.
The sitting has been timed specially for June 28 – the day when 70 years ago the Soviet Army entered Bessarabia [the mainland Moldova], thus bringing it back into the borders of the Russian Empire as until 1918. The current Moldovan authorities regard this date as a tragic event in the nation’s history – as the annexation of Bessarabia by the USSR in 1940. Throughout the subsequent 5 decades until the independence, June 28 used to be marked here as the day of liberation of Bessarabia from the Romanian occupation of 1918-1940, and as a day of re-unification with the Soviet Motherland.
To get better prepared for the sitting (during which Ghimpu will hopefully stand up officially with his long-cherished proposal to finally condemn the Communist regime and outlaw Soviet communist symbols, in particular the hammer and the sickle), the majority Alliance for European Integration has decided to cancel the Parliament’s ordinary plenary sittings this upcoming Thursday and Friday.
Last June 1, team leader historian Gheorghe Cojocaru submitted to Ghimpu the commission’s report on the 1924-1991 communist regime in Moldova, and voiced an opinion that “communism must be condemned and accused by law for its crimes, genocide and terror”.
The commission also thinks that it is absolutely necessary to prohibit and outlaw the communist regime and its symbols in Moldova, and to root out the very word “communism” from the names of parties and organizations. The commission is proposing to erect a memorial complex in honor of fighters against the Soviet occupation and victims of Stalinist repressions and deportations.
The commission’s research review, a collection of documents, and the analytic Report proper on the historic and juridical assessment of the totalitarian communist regime have formed a heavy file over 1,000 pages thick. Nevertheless, Mihai Ghimpu promised he would scrutinize the file and offer it to parliament for consideration so as to “let citizens learn the entire truth about the Soviet reality”.
The opposition Communist Party has perceived the commission-foundation idea and Ghimpu’s desire to rub Soviet symbols away from the human memory as a clumsy and useless attempt to eliminate the Communist Party from the political scene as an early parliamentary election is approaching.
