Bessarabia and North Bukovina Liberated! Soviet Union Frees Millions From Oppression [handbill]

New York: New York State Committee, Communist Party, [1940]. 8.5x11 inch handbill, toned, minor edgewear. "Aug. 1940" penciled at bottom edge.

The Soviet Union had held that these territories were illegitimately occupied by Romania. In the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact, which had a secret section dividing territories between the Soviet Union and Germany, Bessarabia was placed in the Soviet zone. In the summer of 1940 a Soviet ultimatum led Romania to surrender the territory, and on August 2, 1940, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as part of the USSR. Here it is depicted as a welcomed liberation: "Another 3 million people have been saved from the hell of imperialist war by the Red Army! That fact stands out like a mountain peak. Turn your head as you will, there it is! Even the controlled capitalist press of our country was startled into carrying the echo of the great shout of joy that went up from the people of Bessarabia when they rejoined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They even had to write about the thousands of Jews who braved the knout and the sword to escape into the land where anti-Semitism is a crime and ghettos are an ugly thing of the past." The text goes on to say that in the US, by contrast, “ Out of the nation's capital pours an unending stream of laws to fingerprint, register and deport aliens - laws to deprive Communists, WPA workers, trade unionists of their civil rights - laws to emasculate the National Labor Relations Act and the Wages and Hours Act - laws to starve and chain the toiling people. In sharp contrast to the liberation of Jews by the Soviet Union is the rising tide of anti-Semitism and terrorism which the Federal Government has refused to stop as shown in its refusal to investigate Coughlin and its exoneration and praise of the Christian Front.” Urges the reader to vote Communist in the November elections.

Cat.No: 321312

Price: $50.00