#Exhibit of the Month

This is a challenge cup, which used to be awarded to the winners in sports competitions between the teams-members of the Dynamo Voluntary Sports Society, organized by the City Committee responsible for physical culture and sports in Chișinău.

The voluntary sports organizations (DSO: Dobrovol'noe sportivnoe obshhestvo) were created in the mid-30s of the twentieth century in the Soviet Union and over the years had spread in the socialist states. They brought together groups of amateur athletes from district, regional and republican enterprises and educational institutions based on the territorial principle. They were engaged in the education of the young generation in the field of physical culture, sports and tourism in order to solve the problems of the development of mass physical culture. The winners used to be awarded with diplomas, badges, sports medals of various categories and a multitude of sports cups.

The sports cup presented in this exhibition has the shape of a decorative vase and consists of three parts. The upper part, cylindrical in shape, consists of ten openwork components, the decor of which represents vines with bunches of grapes; it is topped with a hemispherical lid. The upper part is missing an element, usually a sculpture, symbolizing the field of athletics corresponding to the competition. The central part is shaped like a lidded bowl with richly ornamented handles. On its surface the inscription is engraved in Russian: City Committee for Physical Culture and Sports. Challenge prize in athletics among the teams of the Dynamo Voluntary Sports Society, Chișinău. 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951. The third part, which is the foot of the cup, has a band decorated in relief with stylized flowers and fruits with niello.

Accession: MNIM, FB-8736
Metal: silver-plated brass
Dimensions: 300 x 230 x 210 mm.

Virtual Tour

National Museum of History of Moldova

Chronological Axis

Period of Relative Autonomy of Bessarabia within the Russian Empire

(1812 - 1828)

In this period Bessarabia was a province having a special statute – the Ukase “On the Formation of the Bessarabian Oblast” of April 29, 1818, which specified the observance of certain peculiarities in governing.

According to the Senate ukase of March 15, 1828, Bessarabia was incorporated in the general system of the Empire. In the annexed territory there was created the Chisinau and Hotin Eparchy (the Ukase of the Holy Synod of 30 September, 1813) subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The first Metropolitan of the new eparchy was Gavriil Banulescu-Bodoni (1813-1821).

There were opened the Eparchial Printing-house (May 31, 1814), which served for printing religious books in the “Moldavian language”, the Chisinau Theological Seminary (1813), and district schools of gymnasia type (in Chisinau, Hotin, Tighina, Balti, Akkerman, Ismail). During this time a large colonization process begins in the south of Bessarabia.

- Memoirs of Major von Raan from Russian campaign in the years 1787-1790, in which Bessarabia is described as it was on the eve of annexation -