Lably
Skip to content

History of Transnistria

  • 21 min read
  • 6 chapters
Transnistria as a geographic area
Spiridon Ion Cepleanu · Public domain

Related on Lably

Through History, Ancient history and Roman Empire

Lab · Class 5–9History ExplorerLab · Class 6–12Archaeology & DiscoveryLab · Class 10–12Handwriting RecognizerLab · Class 10–12Pixel Art Explorer

Before 1792

Antiquity

In ancient history, the area was inhabited by Thracian and Scythian tribes. Pliny the Elder names the Tyragetae, a Getae tribe living on an island of the Dniester (ancient name "Tyras"), the Axiacae living along the Tiligul River (ancient "Axiaces") and the Crobyzi, a Thracian tribe living beyond the Dniester.

At the mouth of the river, the Ancient Greeks of Miletus founded around 600 BC a colony named Tyras, which was located outside present-day Transnistria. It fell under the dominion of native kings whose names appear on its coins, and it was destroyed by the Dacians about 50 BC.

In 56 AD Tyras had been restored by the Romans and henceforth formed part of the province of Lower Moesia, which also included Dobruja (part of Romania) and northeastern Bulgaria. Romans settled colonists in Tyras and maintained some legionaries in the area (even in Olbia) until the 4th century.

Historian Theodore Mommsen wrote that "Moldavia and the south half of Bessarabia as well as the whole of Wallachia were incorporated in the Roman Empire".

All these facts confirm the creation of defensive earth dykes (called Trajan Walls) from the Prut river to the Tyras area, in order to defend these new territories of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, Mommsen wrote, "Bessarabia is intersected by a double barrier-line which, running from the Pruth to the Dniester, ends at Tyra and appears to proceeds from the Romans".

The Walls, which, three metres in height and two meters in thickness, with broad outer fosse and many remains of forts, stretch in two almost parallel lines... from the Pruth to the Dniester... may be also Roman.

In the Late Roman period, the extent of control and military occupation over territory north of the Danube in actual Bessarabia remains controversial. One Roman fort (Pietroasa de Jos), well beyond the Danubian Limes and near actual Moldavia, would seem to have been occupied in the 4th century AD, as were bridge-head forts (Sucidava, Barboşi, and the unlocated Constantiniana Daphne) along the left bank of the river. In this Roman fort, built by Constantine I, researchers have found even a thermae building in the 1980s.

In the 4th century the Goths conquered Tyras and Olbia on the coast, but the final destruction of those merchant cities happened with the Attila invasions one century later. The area of Transnistria was under the rule of the Goths, who, in the 4th century, were divided into the "Tervingi" and "Greuthungi" tribes, (traditionally identified with the Visigoths and Ostrogoths), the border between them being on the Dniester river.

Moldovan and Slavic settlement

Transnistria was an early crossroads of people and cultures, including the South Slavs, who reached it in the 6th century. Some East Slavic tribes (Ulichs and Tivertsy) may have lived in it, but they were pushed further north by Turkic nomads such as Pechenegs and the Cumans. In the 10th century, the "Volohove" (Vlachs, i.e. Romanians) are mentioned in the area of Danube in the Primary Chronicle. Indeed, some academics believe that on the coast between the Dniester and Danube rivers there was a romance speaking community until 1050 AD, that was destroyed by the Pechenegs

From Kievan Rus' to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Transnistria was inhabited mainly by the Cumans and wars against them may have brought the territory under the control of the Kievan Rus' at times around the 11th century. It became a formal part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 15th century. While most of today's Moldova came into the Ottoman orbit at this time, much of Transnistria remained a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 as part of Bratslav Voivodeship, save for short periods of Cossack Hetmanate in 1648–1672 as Bratslav Regiment and Ottoman Empire in 1672–1684 as Podolia Eyalet.

On the coast the Byzantines built a fortress in the area of the destroyed Tyras and named it Asprocastron ("White Castle" – a meaning kept in several languages, like in actual Ukrainian Bilhorod). In the 14th century the city was controlled and renovated by the Republic of Genoa, that established there a call and a counter trade until the Ottoman conquest. A small part of the population of this city escaped the Turkish invasion founding up north a small village that later become the actual city of Tiraspol, now capital of Transnistria.

Meanwhile, the Crimean Khanate conquered the southern portion of Transnistria south of the Iagorlîc/Jagorlyk river, which was included in 1504 in the region of Yedisan and was under the control of the Ottoman Empire until 1792. The northern part (North of the Iagorlîc river) remained under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as part of the historical region of Podolia (part of the Polish Kingdom until 1793). The border between the two states was set on a brook known in Moldavian chronicles as Iahurlîc and in Polish source as Jahorlik or Jahorłyk (today Iagorlîc, in Transnistria).

Moldavia started from its nucleus in Bukovina and soon reached Prut and by the end of the 14th century the Dnister, which was set as their easternmost border.

While there were some Moldavian military incursions beyond the Dniester in the 15th century, the earliest written evidence of Moldavian settlement beyond the Dnister dates from the 16th century: a 1541 letter written by Suleiman the Magnificent to Polish Sigismund II Augustus says that some of his Moldavian subjects plundered Tighina and Akkerman and then retreated and settled in the Polish territory.

Modern Era

While the territory beyond the Dniester was never politically part of Moldavia, some areas of today's Transnistria were owned by Moldavian boyars, being given by the Moldavian rulers. The earliest surviving deeds referring to lands beyond the Dnister date from the 16th century. Moldavian chronicle Grigore Ureche mentions that in 1584, some Moldavian villages from beyond the Dniester in the Polish territory were attacked and plundered by Cossacks. Many Moldovans were members of Cossacks units, two of them, Ivan Pidkova and Danylo Apostol, were hetmans of Ukraine.

Along with a nomadic Nogai Tatar population, the area was populated by Moldovans, Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians. In 1927, Columbia University Professor Charles Upson Clark, wrote that the lower Dniester was "an almost purely Romanian stream" with Romanian villages from Mohyliv-Podilskyi to Ovidiopol.

Sign in to keep reading

5 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

More in History by country, small region and city

Thirteen ColoniesBritish colonies forming the United StatesSlavery in the United StatesThe legal institution of chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of AfricansIndigenous AustraliansAboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander peoplesCrown colonyType of British colony directly administered by the British central governmentHudson's Bay CompanyCanadian retail business holding companyRacial segregation in the United StatesRacial segregation in the United States was the legally and/or socially enforced separatio