Episode 15: Bessarabia, a Contested Borderland and its Peoples

In this episode, Andrei Cușco, researcher at the “A.D. Xenopol” Institute of History in Iași, Romania, talks to Anca Filipovici at the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, about the history of Bessarabia and its various minority communities, from the 19th century to the dissolution of the Russian Empire, and during the interwar period. Andrei analyzes this region from the perspective of a “contested borderland” the status of which was disputed by both an imperial Russian and Romanian nationalist narrative. In this context, he demonstrates how ethnicity was affected by the consequences of post-imperial transition while revealing the continuities and discontinuities between rival imperial and national regimes, especially in regard to ethnic communities and interethnic relations.