Moldovan head of state delivers message on Famine of 1946 – 1947

President Maia Sandu has conveyed a message in the context of commemorating the victims of the famine caused by the Soviet regime in 1946 – 1947.

"Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had even their last grain of wheat taken from their attics, leaving them to die of hunger. This was a deliberate gesture, a barbaric way of subjugating the population," the head of state said.

The Moldovan president noted that, for decades, this tragedy had been passed over in silence. But collective memory cannot be erased and the truth must be told, Maia Sandu stressed.

"We cannot build a just future without acknowledging the injustices of the past and without keeping alive the memory of the hundreds of thousands of people killed by this crime. Hunger did not ask what language its victims spoke or what blood they carried," said the head of state.

The president emphasized that the country’s duty, as a united society, was to defend the truth, stand on the side of good and build the future with dignity, in peace, in a Moldova where such horrors will never again be possible.

According to the National Archives Agency, the famine of 1946-1947 was one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes which hit the current territory of the Republic of Moldova in the 20th century. It was not an unavoidable natural disaster, but a tragedy exacerbated by the authoritarian and repressive policies of the Soviet regime. According to data provided by the National Archives Agency, in just a few months, more than123,000 people died of hunger, accounting for about 5 per cent of the population of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. Proportionally, Soviet Moldova was the worst hit region in the entire Soviet Union, with a death  rate ten times higher than in Russia and five times higher than in Ukraine.