Comrat - Comrat

Comrat (Gagauz: Komrat; Russian: Комрат, Komrat) is the capital of the autonomous region Gagauzia in the south of the Republic of Moldova. The seventh largest city in the country (without Transnistria) with around 26,000 inhabitants based on a calculation as of January 1, 2014^[1] is mostly inhabited by Gagauz. Some factories process agricultural products.

background

The area around Comrat is a flat, undulating, uniform landscape with natural steppe grass vegetation and fields on which mainly cereals and sunflowers are grown. The city is at a height of 64 meters, the hills in the region reach up to 200 meters. The hills with deep black earth soils, the warm climate in summer and cold and damp in winter as well as the long frost-free period of up to 200 days are ideal for viticulture.^[2] In the cellars of Cahul, Comrat and smaller towns in the south, mainly sweet red wines and dessert wines are produced for export to Russia. The annual precipitation fluctuated in the period from 2009 to 2012 between 438 and 613 millimeters.^[3] In occasional drought years (1895 only 117 and 1928 only 222 millimeters of annual precipitation) there are crop failures.^[4]

history

According to archaeological studies, the area was already inhabited in ancient times. According to the historian Vladimir Nicu, the first source in which a village Comrat is mentioned comes from the year 1443. A few years earlier, in 1436, a village called Chișinău was mentioned for the first time. At that time the area belonged to the Principality of Moldova, whose eastern border at the Nistru was defended against invading Tatars, while the Ottomans controlled the Black Sea in the south. According to popular belief, a town was founded in the second half of the 18th century, with the year usually given as 1789. From the 1780s until the end of the 19th century, Orthodox Gagauz and Bulgarians from Bulgaria, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire, immigrated to southern Bessarabia, fleeing religious oppression. ^[5] With the peace treaty of Bucharest in 1812, Russia received the territory of Bessarabia up to the western border on the Prut. A policy of Russification followed, directed primarily against the Romanians living in the country. As a result of the Third Peace of Paris in 1856, the three southern Bessarabian districts of Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail, on whose eastern border Comrat lay, were reassigned to the Principality of Moldova. Romania's independence from the Ottoman Empire was recognized at the Berlin Congress in 1878, but the country had to return the southern Bessarabian districts to Russia.

The Russian governorate of Bessarabia remained until 1917. Between the world wars, Bessarabia was part of Greater Romania until the Soviet Army invaded in June 1940. In the Second World War, Bessarabia was under Romanian occupation from June 1941. After the Soviet reconquest in 1944, Bessarabia belonged to the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic until the independent Moldova emerged from it in 1991. In 1957 Comrat was officially granted city rights. In Soviet times there were dairy processing plants, wineries and a carpet factory in Comrat that produced carpets with the Moldovan national ornament.

Comrat is primarily considered to be the capital of the autonomous region Gagauzia known. At the end of the 19th century, according to Russian statistics, around 57,000 Gagauz lived in Bessarabia (referred to as "Ottoman Turks"); in the Romanian census of 1940 it was 98,172. The Gagauz were a long-term disadvantaged group in all respects and apart from certain efforts in the 1920s / 1930s and the opening of some Gagauz-speaking schools in the 1950s, they had found relatively little cultural independence. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a cultural movement emerged under the Gagauz, at the same time as the calls from intellectuals for reforms in Chișinău in 1998/1999, which demanded independence. From this came the political group in Comrat in 1989 Gagauz Halkı ("Gagauz people"), which consisted of several members of the regional administration and acted as a representative of the interests of the Gagauz. As the political tensions between the Moldovan Party founded in 1989 Frontul Popular din Moldova (“Popular Front of Moldova”) and the Russian government increased, the Gagauz leaders decided to work with a representative on the establishment of the Frontul Popular had participated in the autumn of 1989 to found an autonomous republic against the nationalist central government. The Gagauz Soviet Socialist Republic, based in Comrat, declared itself independent in August 1990. Their head of government was Stepan Topal, a former civil engineer who opposed the group Gagauz Halkı had prevailed. Only through the intervention of Soviet troops could violent clashes between Moldovan and Gagauz irregular fighters be contained. The tensions between the Moscow-friendly Gagauz and the Frontul Popular increased with Moldova's declaration of independence in 1991. Only the victory of the Partidul Agrar din Moldova (PAM) in the parliamentary elections in 1994, which sought better relations with Russia, ultimately paved the way to an agreement with the separatist Gagauz, who renounced full independence.^[6] The autonomous region founded in December 1994 Gagauz Yeri ("Gagauz place / place") within Moldova consists of the three cities Comrat as capital, Ceadîr-Lunga, Vulcăneşti and two dozen villages, whose settlement area, which is divided into several parts, is governed by an elected regional assembly that has extensive independence. Official languages ​​with equal rights are Gagauz, which was only an oral language during the Soviet era, Russian and Romanian.^[7] Between the central government and the Gagauz the expansion of the Gagauz University was agreed in 1994, which was opened in 2002 as the State University Comrat. In contrast to the breakaway region Transnistria, which was developed into a leading location for heavy industry and power generation during the Soviet period, Gagauzia still belongs to one of the poorest regions in Moldova and is financially dependent on Chișinău. Comrat received support from Bulgaria and Turkey, especially to build the university.^[8] Turkey also sponsored a library named after Ataturk.^[9]

getting there

Comrat is around 100 kilometers by road south of the state capital Chișinău on the right bank of the Jalpuch, which rises a few kilometers north of the city and flows straight to the south until it rises Ukrainian State territory flows into the Danube. The European route 584 coming from Chișinău leads 22 kilometers south of Comrat through the small town of Congaz Vulcăneşti and the border town Giurgiuleşti to the Romanian city Galați. To Cahul, the largest city in southern Moldova, the R38 branches off to the west south of Congaz. An alternative route that connects Comrat with Cahul leads from Comrat directly west to Cantemir, one of the eight road bridges over the border river Prut to Romania,^[10] and further along the river to the south. The closest border crossing to Ukraine is in Basarabeasca, 29 kilometers east of Comrat. The second largest Gagauz city Ceadir-Lunga is 35 kilometers southeast of Comrat. The city has no direct rail link. The next stop is Bugeac, 8 kilometers north, on the west-east route from 1917 completed Bârlad in Romania via Basarabeasca direction Odessa.^[11]

By plane

By train

By bus

In the street

By boat

mobility

Tourist Attractions

The approximately right-angled street plan follows the cardinal directions. The two main roads running north-south are the Strada Lenin and east of it the Strada Victoriei. The main streets of all Gagauz cities in Moldova are named after Lenin. The city's business life takes place around the central city park (Parcul Central), which is bounded by these two streets. The city park is characterized by the bright yellow facade of the Orthodox cathedral from 1820. The design of the central building with an octagonal drum above the main room and four corner towers, all of which are surmounted by onion roofs, is a simple takeover of the Russian style. The church has a separate gate with a barrel roof and a two-tier octagonal bell tower. From the State University (Universitatea de Stat din Comrat) Coming to the west, a short section of the pedestrian zone (Strada Galaţana) in the square. Opposite, at the Strada Victoriei, is the grocery and housewares market. The Strada Victoriei leads a few hundred meters north to the bus station in front of a large roundabout where the arterial road to Chișinău begins. The Gagauz regional parliament is a three-story rectangular building on Lenin Street north of the center. A number of busts of Gagauz personalities were erected in front of the university in 2006 on the occasion of the first world congress of the Gagauz - the second world congress also took place in Comrat in 2009.^[12] The city has two hotels and a modest number of restaurants in the center.

The canning factory is located on the eastern outskirts, separated from the center by the Jalpuch brook and a strip of meadows. A winery and other food processing companies have settled there.

Apart from the church, there are practically no historical buildings in Comrat. A local museum shows Gagauz culture. In the village of Beşalma, around 20 kilometers south of Comrat, is the Museum of the History and Ethnography of Gagauzia, which opened in 1966 (Muzeul Găgăuz de Istorie și Ethnography). It was named after its founder, Dimitrij Kara-Coban (1933–1986).

In contrast to the cities in northern Bessarabia, in which Jews made up an average of around 37 percent of the population around 1900,^[13] only very few Jews lived in Comrat: in 1930 there were 392 of 12,331 inhabitants. Accordingly, only a small Jewish cemetery remained. It is located immediately south of the R35 leading to Basarabeasca on the eastern outskirts behind the canning factory. The well-tended and fenced-in area contains around 50 tombstones from the 19th century to the present on an area of ​​less than 1000 square meters.^[14]

• 46.30232528.6561021  Muzeul Regional de Istorie şi Study (Local history museum), Lenin Street 162. Open: Mon.-Fri. 8.30 a.m.-5.30 p.m.last change: not specified
• 46.2993828.6570842  city ​​Parklast change: not specified

activities

shop

kitchen

nightlife

accommodation

• 46.30050228.6528511  Astoria (Астория), Strada Puşkin 34a. Tel.: 373 298 26 238. last change: Mar. 2019
• 46.29691428.6580522  Medelean, Strada Victoriei 127a. Tel.: 373 298 22 841. last change: Mar. 2019
• 46.28876328.6572313  Grand Hotel, Strada Kotovski 180a. Tel.: 373 298 23 741. last change: Mar. 2019

Learn

Work

security

health

Practical advice

trips

literature

• Klaus Bochmann, Vasile Dumbrava, Dietmar Müller, Victoria Reinhardt (Eds.) (Ed.): Republic of Moldova. Republica Moldova. A manual. Leipzig: Leipzig University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86583-557-4 .
• Andrei Brezianu, Vlad Spânu: The A to Z of Moldova. Lanham / Toronto / Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, 2010, Chapter Comrat, P. 99f.
• Charles King: The Moldovans. Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. Stanford (CA): Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 2000.

Web links

http://www.comrat.md - Comrat official website

Individual evidence