#Exhibit of the Month

One of the great technical achievements that revolutionized the idea of time and space, opening a new era in the history of communication, is telegraphy. It is based on the transmission of electrical signals through a cable over long distances, allowing people to communicate instantly. The telegraph spread very quickly and a network of wires stretched around the world.

In 1837, the American painter and physicist Samuel Morse invented the first electromagnetic device for telegraphy, patented in 1840. To send messages by wire, Morse developed in 1838 a simple code of dots and dashes, which represented the letters of the alphabet, known as "Morse code ".

Both Morse code and the telegraph machine were improved over time, with the telegraph becoming the most widespread system of communication and information transmission for more than a century, until the advent of the Internet. The telegraph system consisted of a series of stations repeaters along the transmission line route. Each station had an operator who received and transmitted messages by telegraph. The Morse machine transmitted about 25 words per minute, which were recorded in code on a paper tape. The operator in charge of transmitting the message would decode it and write it on paper using a special typewriter.

In Bessarabia, the telegraph entered in 1860: on April 8, the Bender telegraph station began its activity, and on April 24, the one in Chisinau, following the construction of the first Odesa-Chisinau-Leova telegraph line. Currently, telegraph services have been discontinued. The only ones who still use coded communication are radio amateurs.

The Morse telegraph machine shown comes from the Osinoostrovsky electrotechnical plant, Soviet Union, and dates back to 1934. The exhibit was restored by Mihail Culașco.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

“Testimonies from the GULAG: memory of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime”

Drochia District Public Library “Iulian Filip”

July 5 – 31, 2023

The establishment of the Soviet occupation regime in the territories to the left of the Prut River had dramatic consequences, which are still felt in the society of the Republic of Moldova. The repressive policies and forced Sovietization actions started with the adoption, between August 26 and November 4, 1940, of three decisions regarding the recruitment of 59.500 people, mainly from rural areas, as a workforce for the coal and steel industry in the USSR.

On June 12-13, 1941, in the 6 Bessarabian counties, incorporated into the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, 4.507 people were arrested and 13.885 people were deported. The second wave of deportations was carried out on July 5-9, 1949, based on a strictly secret decision of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, by which 35.796 people, of whom 11.889 were children, were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. On the night of March 31 to April 1, 1951, the third wave of deportations followed, this time on confessional grounds, with 2.617 people being deported, including 842 children, members of religious organizations considered by the Soviet state to be illegal and anti-Soviet.

The grain requisitions policy, established by the decisions of the Council of People's Commissars of the Moldavian SSR and CC of the PC(b) from Moldova, from April 9, 1945, obliges the peasants to hand over to the state imposed quotas of grain, and non-compliance with these decisions provided for the punishment according to art. 58 and 58-1 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR. The abusive policies of requisitioning grain from the peasants caused the Famine of 1946-1947. The number of people who died of hunger and disease between December 1946 and August 1947 varies between 115.000 and 250.000; adding to these another 350.000 victims affected by malnutrition; during the famine, many cases of cannibalism were recorded.

The photo-documentary exhibition "Testimonies from the GULAG: memory of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime" presents the testimonies of victims and survivors of political repressions and mass deportations during the Soviet period. The images and documents exhibited from the funds of the National Museum of History of Moldova and those recovered within the State Program "Recovery and historical valorisation of memory of the victims of totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR during the years 1940-1941, 1944-1953" present the horrors of the totalitarian-Soviet regime and the memory of this tragic historical period.

The exhibition was developed with financial support of the Program for the Development of Cooperation and Promotion of Democracy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania and is opened in the context of July 6 - Day of Commemoration of the Victims of Stalinism.