The famine of 1946–1947, which killed around 130,000 people in Bessarabia, resulted directly from state policies. Historians Anatol Taranu and Igor Casu said on Rlive TV’s Consens National that the authorities emptied village granaries, leaving tens of thousands without food.
Igor Casu, director of the National Archives Agency, said the regime showed no regard for human life. Authorities focused more on grain collection targets than on people’s survival.
”Documents show that as early as September 1946, officials knew a harsh winter was coming. Still, they kept collecting wheat and sending it far from the region. Meeting the plan mattered more than saving lives. Aid arrived too late and in small amounts. The Soviet power cared more about sending bread from Stalin and writing thank-you letters to him than about feeding the people,” said Casu.
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Anatol Taranu added that, driven by zeal, the Soviet regime took farmers’ grain reserves—even though it was clear that war and drought had already left them with very little food.
”As historians, we have no document proving the Politburo formally decided to cause a famine. So, we can’t speak of a planned famine. But we can say that state policies objectively caused mass hunger and death. In that sense, the famine resulted because of deliberate state action,” Taranu concluded.
Nearly 130,000 people died of hunger and famine-related diseases between 1946 and 1947. According to British historian Michael Ellman, who analyzed Soviet archive documents, the Moldavian SSR suffered a death rate ten times higher than Russia’s and five times higher than Ukraine’s per thousand inhabitants.