Viktor Drozdov

The Tatarbunary Uprising—a peasant uprising organized by the Bolsheviks from September 15 to 18, 1924, in several villages in the Budzhak region, centered in Tatarbunary and aimed at destabilizing Romania’s domestic political situation—became one of the key themes in the Stalinist regime’s construction of official memory in the region. Commemoration of the event began in the early days of Soviet power. The 25th anniversary celebration became one of the most significant local political and ideological campaigns of 1949, marked by large-scale memorial, cultural, educational, and propaganda events. The proposed document is a local regulatory act that sets out measures to commemorate the Tatarbunary Uprising on its 25th anniversary. The joint resolution of the...

The minutes of the Izmail Oblast Architectural Commission meeting on December 28, 1949, record the discussion of the initial design for a monument to the “heroes of the Tatarbunary Uprising” in the village of Tatarbunary. A joint resolution of the Izmail Oblast Executive Committee and the Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) mandated its construction to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the event. The monument was placed in the village center during a solemn rally on September 18, 1949, at a grave prepared by Soviet authorities for the reburial of the fallen insurgents. This document exemplifies the practical application of Soviet monumental propaganda principles in the postwar era. The criticism...

The source presented here is an internal party report on preparing and executing celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Alexander Suvorov’s death—a large-scale commemorative event held across the Soviet Union on May 18, 1950. In addition to all-Union and republic-level festivities, local ceremonies honoring the Russian commander’s victories against the Ottoman Empire also played an important role in commemorating him. In this context, the Izmail Oblast occupied a special place in the celebrations, particularly the city of Izmail, which Soviet discourse of the time described as the “city of glory of Russian arms.” The commemoration practices in the Suvorov District deserve special attention; the district’s association with the general led local party and...

The article “Izmail (History of the Oblast and the City)” offers the first comprehensive account of the Ukrainian part of Bessarabia, or Budzhak, from the official Soviet perspective. Published in August 1945 as a series of installments in the newspaper Pridunayskaya Pravda, the article coincided with the first anniversary of the “liberation” of the Izmail Oblast by Soviet troops. The final installment appeared on August 26, the day of the official celebrations, which included the unveiling of a monument to Russian commander Alexander Suvorov in Izmail. Notably, the Soviet authorities entrusted the preparation of the historical material on the Izmail Oblast to Ivan Ivanovich Polosin, a professor at V. I. Lenin Moscow State...

The document presented here is a valuable source for studying the Soviet authorities’ memory policy in the Izmail Oblast during the early postwar years. The report details the activities of the newly established museum during its first year of operation and contains information typical of such administrative records—covering exhibition development, collection management, research, display, and propaganda work—while also outlining the institution’s priorities for the coming year. At the same time, the source allows us to trace how the heroic image of the Russian military commander Suvorov was constructed in the region—an image that became a central component of the official Soviet historical narrative. To establish the Izmail Suvorov Historical Museum, Soviet authorities enlisted...

The materials in the archive file below document the organization of the resettlement of Poles from the USSR in late 1945–early 1946, as well as the specifics of its implementation in the Izmail Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR. On July 6, 1945, an agreement was concluded between the Soviet leadership and the Provisional Government of National Unity of the Republic of Poland, granting persons of Polish and Jewish nationalities—who had held Polish citizenship before September 17, 1939, and resided in the USSR—the right to renounce their Soviet citizenship and move to Poland. To implement this agreement, a Soviet-Polish joint commission was established, which developed and approved instructions on the procedure for accepting and...