The Project of Publication in Chisinau of the Russian-Moldovan Newspaper “Star of the Prut”

Abstract. The published documents from the collections of the RSHA are of interest for studying the history of the Moldavian press in Bessarabia and the Moldavian national movement in the middle of the 19th century. They also show the attitude of the local and imperial authorities towards the attempts to organize a publication in Romanian/ Moldovan in Bessarabia. Bessarabian military governor M.L. Fanton de Verrayon supported the idea of a group of Bessarabian boyars headed by Ion Dabija and intended to use such a publication in the interests of the Russian government as a kind of “soft power” tool, seeing in the periodical a way to influence the minds of neighboring principalities, and in the Bessarabia. However, officials in Odessa and St. Petersburg did not share the enthusiasm of the Bessarabian governor, and the project to publish a Russian-Moldovan magazine was rejected.

Keywords: Bessarabia, Danube principalities, periodicals, propaganda.