Description

This report provides an overview of political and economic conditions in Bessarabia (present-day Moldova) in the immediate aftermath of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the transfer of the province from Russian to Romanian control. The work is by Captain John Kaba, a U.S. Army officer who completed a two-month survey of the province in the spring of 1919 on behalf of the American Relief Administration. Headed by Herbert Hoover, the international mining engineer and future U.S. president who had organized volunteer relief efforts during World War I, the administration was established by the U.S. Congress in 1919 to provide humanitarian assistance and combat mass starvation in Europe after the war. The report includes information on the geography, population, economy, history, and political conditions of Bessarabia. The final page offers a succinct catalog of “The Outstanding Needs of the Province.” These are listed as: (1) peace, i.e., a treaty to settle definitively the political status of the province; (2) railroads; (3) roads; (4) factories to supply the needs of the province’s three million people; (5) agricultural implements; and (6) a merchant marine and piers and infrastructure repairs on the Black Sea ports to facilitate the export of agricultural products and the import of needed goods.