In this episode, Andrei Cușco, researcher at the “A.D. Xenopol” Institute of History in Iași, Romania, discusses the history of Bessarabia and its various minority communities, from the 19th century to the dissolution of the Russian Empire, and during the interwar period. Andrei analyzes this region from the perspective of a “contested borderland” disputed by both a Russian imperial and a Romanian national narrative. In this context, he shows how ethnicity was affected by the consequences of the post-imperial transition while revealing the continuities and discontinuities between the imperial and national regimes regarding ethnic communities and interethnic relations.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)