Moldova

Abstract

In antiquity the territories that make up Moldova were inhabited by the Dacians. In 1359 the region was subsumed into the Principality of Moldavia, founded by Dragoş of Bedeu. From the 16th to 19th centuries Russia and the Ottoman Empire wrestled for influence. In 1812 the Treaty of Bucharest gave Russia control of eastern Moldavia, or Bessarabia (the area between the River Prut and the Dniester, which corresponds to much of present-day Moldova). The Ottomans ruled western Moldavia. In 1918 Romania absorbed Bessarabia, while the Soviet Union controlled the territory east of the Dniester from 1924. Bessarabia reverted from Romanian rule to become part of the Moldavian Socialist Republic within the USSR in 1940.