Nikita Salogor

Nikita Leontyevich Salogor (Никита Леонтьевич Салогор, Nichita Salogor or Salagor, Микита Леонтійович Салогор; 15 August 1901 – 24 June 1982) was a Moldavian and Soviet politician who served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia (PCM) in 1942–1946.

Of Romanian Ukrainian or Moldovan roots, he had a kulak mother, whom he openly denounced later in life.

Salogor's early career was in agricultural institutions of the Ukrainian SSR and the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, where he also advanced politically.

Salogor was born on 15 August 1901, though some of his official biographies had 1902.

His place of birth was Konstantinovka village, which was then part of Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (and is now in Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine).

Though described in official records as a poor peasant with only a secondary education, it remains attested that the Salogor family had "unhealthy" social origins according to Soviet class definitions, and for this reason Nikita cut off all links with his relatives.

According to his own words, he had stopped communicating with his mother in 1918, when she had remarried; in 1930, she would be caught up in the Dekulakization campaign.

Between 1921 and 1924 (that is, for much of the Russian Civil War and though the early months of the Soviet Union), Salogor was active in the Red Army's ranks.

From 1924, areas near Konstantinovka were absorbed by the Moldavian ASSR, set up for Romanians and Moldovans in the Ukrainian SSR; most of present-day Moldova, or historical Bessarabia, was at the time united with Romania.

Historian Lilia Crudu argues that Salogor, like his colleague Nicolae Coval, became a "Moldovan" or "Moldavian" only as a byword for his geographic origins in that area, where he also received his communist training; she notes that Salogor was not a native speaker of Romanian (or "Moldovan").

Similarly, ethnic Romanian author Ion Costaș sees Salogor and Coval as "ideologized beyond measure" and no longer belonging to a specific ethnic culture.

This is contrasted by another scholar, Igor Cașu, who notes that Salogor was an ethnic Romanian from Ukraine, and simultaneously a Moldovan—Cașu regards these as two complementary identities.

The label of "Moldovan" also appears in the nationality rubric on his political files.

Salogor moved to other areas of the Ukraine in 1924.

First employed as the manager of a cooperative credit enterprise, he held a variety of jobs in agricultural enterprises.

Salogor moved there in 1930, as part of a wave of new arrivals which were meant to infuse the local political structures with stricter Stalinism.

He was successively president of a raion-level union, a sovkhoz manager, and chairman of he Executive Committee (Ispolkom) of integrating uezd.

He was tasked with agricultural projects in Rîbnița and Ocna Roșie Districts (1933–1935), before being integrated into the political establishment of the Moldavian ASSR.

In 1937, Salogor graduated from the Ukrainian Academy for People's Commissars in the Food Industry and from Moscow's Stalin Academy.

The same year, he was elected a Moldavian deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and, by 1939, he was the Regional Soviet leader in Slobozia District.

Following the Soviet advance into Bessarabia in 1940, he joined the leadership of the Moldavian SSR.

He was by then a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which remained his only affiliation until 1940.

In late June 1940, Soviet forces occupied Bessarabia.

Most of the region was merged with areas previously included in the Moldavian ASSR, to form the Moldavian SSR, while the Budjak in the south, and Hotin County in the north, were incorporated with the Ukrainian SSR.

Salogor moved into the new republic, and became Junior Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia (PCM), serving under Piotr Borodin, from August or October 1940.

He was additionally head of the Orhei County Soviet.

In August–November 1940, Salogor was personally involved in the drive to recruit Bessarabian workforce for the Soviet industry.

Immediately promoted to Junior Secretary of the PCM, he was co-opted on its Politburo in early 1941, and took part in a workforce recruitment drive, which is described by historian Ion Varta as connected to the deportation of native Romanians.

Shortly after the German attack on the Soviet Union, Salogor and other PCM leaders withdrew to Soviet Russia, but still sought to exercise command over partisan units organizing in Bessarabia.

During this interval, Salogor was able to outmaneuver Piotr Borodin, taking up Borodin's position as First Secretary.

During the 1941 one-party legislative election, he became a Telenești deputy in the Supreme Republican Soviet.

He finally returned to Soviet Moldavia in March 1944, and joined the provisional government formed in Soroca.

During and after the region's reconquest in August 1944, he involved himself in reconstructing the party structures and investigating the spread of anti-communist resistance.

He also managed responses to the Moldavian famine, and set up the Moldavian State University.

Cultivating national communism and posthumously labelled a Moldovenist, Salogor advanced an irredentist project, hoping to increase the Moldavian SSR by incorporating the whole of Romanian Moldavia, as well as the Budjak and Bukovina (Greater Moldova).

These proposals threatened the Ukrainian SSR's territorial integrity, and were as such vetoed by Nikita Khrushchev.

Salogor lost his PCM positions shortly after, and sent to work as an agricultural manager in Krasnodar Krai.

He was allowed to return in 1950, when Moldavian Premier Gherasim Rudi assigned him minor positions in his cabinet.

His attempt to undermine PCM leader Nicolae Coval resulted in another demotion.

He was only included on the Central Committee in the 1970s, by which time he was already retired and ailing.