Becoming Romanian: The Transition of a Former Tsarist Policeman (1908–1925)

Abstract

With the disintegration of the Russian Empire, Romania annexed Bessarabia, a region on its eastern border, in 1918. The integration of the new region was implemented through a centralized process in which the security forces played a significant role. This article examines the beginnings of the Romanian police in Bessarabia, the main security force in its urban areas, focusing on the development of the police and its workforce. It presents a case study of one of the 14 police stations Romania opened there, focusing on the career of a former tsarist policeman and his various attempts to join the new police force. In this way, this study contributes to a better understanding of the role law enforcement played in building a homogenized Romanian nation-state, an issue that has been poorly researched. Relying on archival documents of the tsarist and Romanian administrations and building upon studies on police history which have tried to determine the degree of centralization of the new police systems, as well as using studies on post-imperial administrations that discuss the strategies the new states applied to integrate former imperial structures, I demonstrate that Romania built the police in Bessarabia from scratch and with the army's help. It selected its police workforce centrally and regarded loyalty as a key qualification. This was achieved not by selecting employees from among former tsarist civil servants or the local population, but by importing policemen from pre-1918 Romania. The beginnings of the Romanian police in Bessarabia reveal an institution in the making, conceived mostly as a career springboard for civil servants from other parts of the country, an institution that also sought to be independent from the army troops stationed there.