The situation of education for ethnic minorities in Bessarabia between 1917–1923

Abstract

The Tsarist policy in the field of education in Bessarabia was selective, aiming to restrict the establishment of schools with Romanian as the language of instruction and increase those with Russian as the language of instruction. In its policy of encouraging the colonization of Bessarabia, the Tsarist authorities nevertheless took measures to support education for certain minority ethnic groups, also adopting a different approach towards these groups. For minorities such as Germans or Jews, the creation of schools with instruction in their native language was permitted, whereas for Bulgarians, the schools were initially with Russian as the language of instruction. With the proclamation of the Moldavian Democratic Republic on December 2, 1917, the issue of nationalizing schools in Bessarabia was raised, as well as creating conditions for instruction in the schools of ethnic minority communities in their respective languages. Ultimately, the process of school nationalization in Bessarabia was carried out and completed within the Kingdom of Romania, where de facto and de jure conditions were created to ensure the educational process in the minority language for localities populated by ethnic minorities such as Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, and Bulgarians. Despite the prejudices that during the Kingdom of Romania, education in Bessarabia took place only in Romanian, the legislative documents relevant to the field of education in the interwar period confirm that the rights of ethnic minorities to study in their native languages were ensured.

Keywords

• state policy
• education system
• ethnic minorities in bessarabia
• nationalization of the school
• interwar school