23 August 1939 is a mourning day for Moldova and a sad date in its history, historian Demir Dragnev said at a roundtable meeting held on the occasion of 70 years of the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Info-Prim Neo reports. The administration of the URSS organized a number of secret, illegal operations and provocations against Romania in order to occupy Bessarabia in 1940. The Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was a major pillar in Stalin’s struggle aimed at destroying Romania and our county, historian Ion Negrei said. According to Doctor of History Mariana Taranu, Bessarabia was destroyed by rusification and sovietization and forced to serve the interests of the Soviet Union. Afterward, the population started to be terrorized, especially the intellectuals and priests. More than 270,000 Bessarabians were arrested, maltreated, judged and deported as a result of this occupation. The young people were taken to the USSR and forced to work. At the end of August 1940, over 42,000 young persons went to the USSR, Mariana Taranu said. Teacher Petru Tarhon, Habilitated Doctor of History, said that the battles from August 1939 for Bessarabians were battles for the liberation of the Romanian land, not for defending the Soviet motherland. “I was then in the fourth grade. I saw how the Soviet soldiers shot our people in the back, hit and crushed them under the tanks. They were merciless. But the Soviets did not speak about this. The historical works do not say the truth. Our people must know what happened in reality,” Petru Tarhon said. The Ribbentrop-Molotov pact signed in Moscow by the Soviet foreign minister Veaceslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim Ribbentrop was a nonaggression treaty between the USSR and the Nazi Germany. It was initialed before the start of the Second World War. In June 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina.