Poles in Russian Bessarabia – stages and reasons for their inflow
Poles in Russian Bessarabia – stages and reasons for their inflow

Summary/Abstract: : Bessarabia is a historical region which constituted a part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Throughout the whole century of its functioning within the Russian Empire, Bessarabia retained its multiethnic and multicultural nature. The most important research problem to be dealt with in this article was to define the causes and stages of Poles’ influx to Bessarabia. It was a long and complex process, with certain subperiods noticed. Thanks to the research, several settlement waves were marked off. The first Polish traces in Bessarabia are preserved in the documents dating back to 1820. Unfortunately, these are mainly isolated sources. Thus, neither the structure nor the character of the then Polish migration to Bessarabia can be determine more precisely. Nevertheless, Poles are known to have been arriving in Bessarabia shortly after the Treaty of Bucharest had been signed in 1812. The policy of the Russian authorities, aimed at possibly the fastest inhabiting of this sparsely populated area, played an important role as one of the main goals of Russian politics as regards this region at that time. Poles were attracted to Bessarabia first of all by the announcement of the free purchase of land, as this right was limited for them in the western provinces of the Russian Empire.

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