Bessarabia Governorate in the context of "Treaty of Bucharest (1812)"

The union of Bessarabia with Romania was proclaimed on April 9 [O.S. March 27] 1918 by Sfatul Țării, the legislative body of the Moldavian Democratic Republic. This state had the same borders of the region of Bessarabia, which was annexed by the Russian Empire following the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812 and organized first as an Oblast (autonomous until 1828) and later as a Governorate. Under Russian rule, many of the native Tatars were expelled from parts of Bessarabia and replaced with Moldavians, Wallachians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Russians, Lipovans, Cossacks, Gagauzes and other peoples, although colonization was not limited to formerly Tatar-inhabited lands. Russia also tried to integrate the region by imposing the Russian language in administration and restricting education in other languages, notably by later banning the use of Romanian in schools and print.

The beginning of World War I saw an increase in national awareness among the Bessarabians, and, following the beginning of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Bessarabia proclaimed its own parliament, the Sfatul Țării, which declared the Moldavian Democratic Republic. Following a Romanian military intervention, with the Romanian Army firmly in control of the region, the Sfatul Țării voted for independence and later proclaimed, on April 9 [O.S. March 27] 1918, its union with the Kingdom of Romania. Although the unification was made under various conditions, all of these except the promise of an agrarian reform, which was carried out, were later abandoned by a minority of the Sfatul. Later, the Romanian administration swiftly dissolved the assembly and rejected the protests of the former deputies. In the peace talks after World War I, the European powers awarded Bessarabia to Romania, although the newly formed Russian SSR, and the United States never recognized this.

The Romanian Cyrillic alphabet is the Cyrillic alphabet that was used to write the Romanian language and Church Slavonic from the 14th century until the 1830s, when it began to be gradually replaced by a Latin-based Romanian alphabet. Cyrillic remained in occasional use until the 1920s, mostly in Russian-ruled Bessarabia.

From the 1830s until the full adoption of the Latin alphabet, the Romanian transitional alphabet was in place, combining Cyrillic and Latin letters, and including some of the Latin letters with diacritics that remain in the modern Romanian alphabet. The Romanian Orthodox Church continued using the alphabet in its publications until 1881.

Sfatul Țării ("Council of the Country"; Romanian pronunciation: [ˈsfatul ˈt͡sərij]) was a council of political, public, cultural, and professional organizations in the Governorate of Bessarabia in Tsarist Russia. This became a legislative body which established the Moldavian Democratic Republic as part of the Russian Federative Republic in December 1917. and then union with Romania in April [O.S. March] 1918.

Kherson Governorate, known until 1803 as Nikolayev Governorate, was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Kherson. It encompassed 71,936 square kilometres (27,775 sq mi) in area and had a population of 2,733,612 inhabitants. At the time of the census in 1897, it bordered Podolia Governorate to the northwest, Kiev Governorate to the north, Poltava Governorate to the northeast, Yekaterinoslav Governorate to the east, Taurida Governorate to the southeast, Black Sea to the south, and Bessarabia Governorate to the west. It roughly corresponds to what is now most of Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad and Odesa Oblasts in Ukraine and some parts of Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts.

The economy of the governorate was mainly based on agriculture. During the grain harvest, thousands of agricultural laborers from the parts of the Empire found work in the area. The industrial part of the economy, consisting primarily of flour milling, distilling, metalworking industry, iron mining, beet-sugar processing, and brick industry, was underdeveloped.

Podolia Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) of the Southwestern Krai of the Russian Empire. It bordered Volhynian Governorate to the north, Kiev Governorate to the east, Kherson Governorate to the southeast, Bessarabia Governorate to the south, and Austria to the west. Its administrative centre was Kamenets-Podolsky (Kamianets-Podilskyi), which later moved to Vinnitsa (Vinnytsia). The governorate covered areas of Ukraine's partially Khmelnytskyi and most of Vinnytsia Oblasts, along with the fractionally recognised state of Transnistria.

The Odessa Soviet Republic (OSR; Ukrainian: Одеська Радянська Республіка, romanized: Odeska Radianska Respublika; Russian: Одесская Советская Республика) was a short-lived Soviet republic formed on 30 January [O.S. 17 January] 1918 from parts of the Kherson and Bessarabia Governorates of the former Russian Empire.

47°02′15″N 28°48′16″E / 47.0376°N 28.8045°E / 47.0376; 28.8045

The Kishinev pogrom or Kishinev massacre was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev (modern Chișinău, Moldova), then the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire, on 19–21 April [O.S. 6–8 April] 1903. During the pogrom, which began on Easter Day, between 40 and 49 Jews were killed, 92 were gravely injured, over 500 were lightly injured and 1,500 homes were damaged. American Jews began large-scale organized financial help, and assisted in emigration. The incident focused worldwide attention on the persecution of Jews within the Russian Empire, and led Theodor Herzl to propose the Uganda Scheme as a temporary refuge for the Jews. A second pogrom erupted in the city in October 1905.