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Bălţi, (pronounced), also spelled Beltsy is a city in Moldova. It is the second largest in terms of area and economic importance (after Chişinău), and the third largest city in terms of population (after Chişinău and Tiraspol). It is one of the five Moldovan localities having the status of municipalities. Bălţi, sometimes also called "the northern capital", is the major industrial, cultural, commercial centre and transportation hub in the north of the country. It is situated north of the capital Chişinău, and is located on the river Răut, a tributary of Dniester, on a hilly landscape in the Bălţi steppe.
History
Middle AgesIn 1421, the city was founded as a fair by Rimgaila of Masovia, a sister of Vytautas the Great of Lithuania and an ex-wife of the Moldavian Prince Alexandru I cel Bun [Alexander the Good]. At the time the territory belonged to the Dorohoi ţinut (land/county, later to Soroca county and, mostly, Iaşi county of the Principality of Moldova (Iaşi was the capital of the Principality from 1574 to 1859. A place of crossroads, Bălţi soon became well-known as a horse fair. In 1469, a Crimean Tatar invasion led by the khan Meñli I Giray burned the place to the ground, before being defeated in the Battle of Lipnic, about 100 km north. Bălţi was very slowly rebuilt. Eighteenth centuryDuring this failed military campaign the main headquarters of the Russian and parts of the Moldavian armies were established at Bălţi, due to its crossroads location.
The development of the town in the 18th century suffered also due to the fact that the country had to support the burdens of three invading armies, Ottoman, Russian, and Austrian, which clashed in 4 wars of a total duration of 16 years, during which they performed extensive regular requisitions to supply their troops, and established separate administration. Nineteenth centuryThe Treaty of Bucharest saw the Ottoman Empire ceding (without having such a legal right) to the Russian Empire the eastern half of Moldavia, including the town of Bălţi. Bălţi initially belonged to the Iaşi county. This, however, made Bălţi, with a population of 8,000, the administrative center of the county. Bălţi received formal city rights in 1818. The Russian tsar Alexander I, while passing through Bălţi during a visit to his newly acquired province, received news that his nephew, the future tsar Alexander II of Russia, was born. Overjoyed, he granted Bălţi official city status.
The ethnic composition of the city diversified with settlers arriving from Austrian Galicia, Ukraine and (fewer) from Russia proper, being offered land or seeking freedom of religion. A significant number of Jews (from Galicia, then in the Habsburg Empire) settled in Bălţi, and by the end of the century became first a plurality, then a majority. Twentieth centuryWorld War I periodThe city hosted a County Congress of Farmers, the largest of the kind in Bessarabia, on , which sent representatives to Sfatul Ţării. Two ad hoc groups of Russian army Cossack regiments were dislocated in the Bălţi county, and a 3,000-strong infantry detachment in Orhei, whose incompetent leadership resulted in extensive pillaging in Bălţi, Soroca and Orhei counties, with many dead, including several Bessarabian public personalities, which substantiated the outcry of the population. The committees of the two regiments stationed in Bălţi county adopted resolutions which called for continuous sacking until the solders would be given discharge papers. In December 1917, when the Directorate General for Armed Forces of the Moldavian Democratic Republic was formed, one of its first units was in Bălţi, where the Druzhina (a popular militia unit) no. 478 of the Russian Empire, composed almost entirely of Moldavians, and led by captain Anatolie Popa, was nationalized. In March 1918, the Bălţi County Council, along with the ones of Soroca and Orhei, submitted resolutions to the Sfatul Ţării, asking it to consider union with Romania. Inter-war periodIn the first part of the 20th century the economy expanded, and the city started to diversify. Many buildings in the town/city date from the inter-war period.
World War II periodAfter the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, a part of the city population was deported to Siberia (the largest deportation occurred on 12-13 June 1941, as well as the smaller ones, used the Bălţi Slobozia Railway Station as one of the major departing point for the cattle car trains with people deported from northern MSSR). In June 22 - July 26, 1941, the Romanian Army participated in the Axis offensive against the Red Army dislocated in Bessarabia, in the so-called Operation Munich, capturing Bălţi by July 1941. Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the German Reich Security Main Office, flew several fighter missions in his private modified Me109 from the Bălţi-City Airport in July 1941. Heydrich was shot down by Soviet anti-air fire over Ukraine, and barely escaped capture after having to swim for his life. Upon the Axis capture of the city, a 20-strong unit of the German SS Einsatzkommando D proceeded to murder ca. 200 Jews of the city over three days. The majority of the 15,000 Jewish population of the city managed to escape in the previous two weeks. The Soviet authorities organized their evacuation by railway, in cattle cars, to Central Asia, mostly to Uzbekistan. Although the majority have survived and returned to the city after the war, their life as refugees and on the road was highly subhuman, due to quasi-absence of regular supplies, normal housing, or useful employment opportunities. In August 1941, there were 1,300 Jews left in the city, and the pro-fascist government of Ion Antonescu has decided to deport them. In September 1941, they, together with other Jews from the county, were gathered in two created ghettos, in Răuţel and Alexăndreni, size ca. 3,500 each. In ca. 10 days, the ghettos were dissolved, and the Jews hastily moved, mostly during the night, to a concentration camp in Mărculeşi, size ca. 11,000. After two more weeks, this was also abolished, and the Jews were deported to occupied Transnistria. On February 27 - March 2, 1944, the Soviet army recaptured the city from the Axis, and eventually reclaimed the territory for the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets have created two camps in the city: a small POW camp within the present location of the military base, and a large concentration camp at the SE outskirts of the city, by fencing out several blocks of one-story houses, the Bălţi concentration camp. It contained up to 45,000 prisoners at a time, most of which were POWs, while others were arrested locals of military age who were discharged, due to light injuries, from the Romanian Army after fighting from several weeks to several months against Nazi Germany. In total, ca. 55,000 people have passed through this camp, of them ca. 45,000 Romanians (up to half of which were locals), ca. 5,000 Germans, ca. 3,000 Italians, ca. 2,000 Hungarians, Poles and Czechs.
Post-World War II periodIn 1944, with the return of the Soviet authorities, the policy of political and class persecution resumed. The largest of post-war deportations occurred on 5-6 July 1949, and included also 185 families from the city of Bălţi, and 161 families from the then suburbs. (The population of the city at the time was ca. 30,000.) Numerous people, especially youth, were also enrolled in labor camps throughout the Soviet Union. An anti-Soviet armed resistance group was active in the city during the Stalinist era. "Sabia Dreptăţii" ["The Sword of Justice"] was discovered by the NKVD in 1947, based at the Pedagogical Lycée (former Ion Creangă Lycée) in Bălţi. During the 1940s and early 1950s, the city has lost a significant part of its population to Stalinist repressions (political imprisonment and deportations), Romanian deportation of Jews (Holocaust), World War II, the Moldavian famine (1946-1947)[1] and emigration. After World War II, significant immigration occurred from all over the USSR in a move to rebuild the country, develop the industry and establish a local Soviet and party apparatus. In the 1980s many Moldovans from the northern countryside of moved to Bălţi. By the end of 1980s, most of the Jews of Moldova had migrated to Israel. The Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking group had by then reached 50% of the population of the city, with Moldavian-speaking representing the other 50%. During that time, the regional delegate to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was the Soviet marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, one of the most pre-eminent hard-liners in the Soviet power system. He was one of the close allies of the 1991 putchists that tried to overthrow Gorbachev. Fall of communism and independence of MoldovaDuring 1988-1989, the most effervescent period in Moldova's recent history, Bălţi was known as the "quiet city" of Moldova. Only a couple public demonstrations took place in the city during this period, none gathered more than 15,000. Most Baltiers, including Moldavian speaking opposed the drive for establishing the Romanian language as the only official language of the country. The former Soviet apparatus representatives have retained political control over the city administration, although some reforms have been done, just like everywhere in Eastern European countries. The municipal activity is done in Russian and Moldavian. The city also actively supports Ukrainian language and culture.
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