An important publication will be published in the coming days and will be presented on Thursday, December 8, at the Old Parliament House – National Historical Museum. This is the book “Friends in Bessarabia (1821-1823) – Documents of the State Archive of the Odessa Region”, signed by the historian Lilia Belousova. Published already in Ukrainian, it is also published in Greek, containing 248 archival documents, as well as informative introductory texts and indexes of names and toponyms. The publication was initiated and supported by G. Polychronopoulos, President of the Greek-Ukrainian Chamber and the Museum of Friendship in Odessa.

“The archival sources under consideration,” notes the author, “are published for the first time in full and translated into Greek. As such, they provide new opportunities to illuminate various aspects of the philological movement, especially through the lens of biographical and genealogical research.”

The central figure in the documents is Lieutenant General Ivan Nikitich Inzov, the plenipotentiary governor of Bessarabia, an area bordering Moldavia separated by the Prut. Among the first published documents are his report to Emperor Alexander and his correspondence with I. Kapodistrias, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire. “Inzov’s law-abiding report,” writes Belousova, “contains a number of very important conclusions about the organization of the rebellion: Ypsilantis prepared his exit in complete secrecy, choosing a good reason for the need for his stay in Chistobio: recovery from his wound and pain due to the loss of his arm; the rebellion was being prepared not in Hisnobio, but in Odessa, where the intentions of Ypsilantis were known even before the passage of the Prut.

Local “Greek uprising”

“The Russian authorities, keeping the Friends imprisoned in fortresses, had to find a solution regarding the fate of the former revolutionaries and their stay in Russia.”

The revolution in Moldova, described in documents as a local “Greek uprising”, “unpleasant events abroad”, “riots”, “unclear and unfavorable conditions”, etc., had a great impact on Bessarabia, where a large number of people fled. after the battle of Sculeniu: “The Greek revolution in Moldavian Wallachia mobilized all the social strata of the region. The civilian population sought salvation on the Russian bank of the Prut. Moldovan peasants and gypsies began to come to Bessarabia en masse with their families, property and pets; merchants came to save their goods; Moldavian landowners and officials came here with their courts: family members, relatives, servants and property. […] The first services that accepted refugees were sanatoriums and customs. Due to recent plague epidemics, measures to monitor large numbers of people and decontaminate animals and food were a matter of life and death at the time. Many problems had to be solved along the way, even if the instruction and the law did not provide anything for such cases. […] Refugees and merchants interviewed at the border and customs were a very important source of information about the events that took place in Moldavia and Wallachia.

More than a thousand people were sent under military protection from purgatory to fortresses or prisons in Ismailia, Orgiev, Khotyn, Cilicia, Reni. “The Russian authorities, keeping Friends in prison in fortresses, had to find a solution regarding the fate of former revolutionaries and their stay in Russia,” the author notes. “One of the decisions was to release them on bail by local residents who agreed to take the prisoners under their supervision, on bail and present them at the first notification of the authorities.” Gradually, by 1823, most of the prisoners were released on bail.

A particularly valuable document is the “Name List of Friends, kept in the Orgievsky police station, in which the nationality and citizenship of each of them is recorded.” With its help, standard reports of state employees acquire new content, provide an opportunity to see “history in the face” and feel the spirit of the times. 1000 people are registered in the Directory. Its editor, according to the author, “made an attempt to systematize the data and explain the diversity by the origin and citizenship of the filics, their professions, their social position, their geographical origin. Of course, the conclusions cannot be considered representative, since only a certain group of members of the Friendly Movement is considered. To be precise, a group of persons detained along with participants in the revolution, who in turn were only partly members of the Filiki Etairia.

The Greeks, of course, were the main driving force behind the uprising in Moldova. On the list, 530 people declared themselves Greeks, the vast majority of them of Turkish nationality. However, Bilousova concludes: “In 1821, representatives of many ethnic groups fought in Moldova and Wallachia under the banner of Greece: Greeks, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, Ukrainians, Vlachs, Rusnaks, Gypsies, Poles, Albanians, Arnauts, Slavs, Hungarians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Germans, Italians, Jews, Turks, French, Spaniards, etc. They were united by Christianity, the idea of ​​national freedom, the desire for social equality, the geographical factor, common historical, cultural and spiritual traditions.”