An important event has taken place in the southwestern corner of the
former Russian Empire, in the rich province of Bessarabia, where
separatist tendencies have recently made themselves strongly felt. A
Berlin dispatch, dated April 11, announced that the Bessarabian Diet
had voted, 86 against 5, that Bessarabia should join the Kingdom of
Rumania. Thereupon, the Ukrainian Premier filed a protest in Russia
against this act, stating that the Ukraine must have her say in the
settlement of Bessarabia's fate in view of the fact that this province
has a large Ukrainian population and that the Ukraine is controlling an
important region on the Black Sea adjacent to Bessarabia.
The Council of the People's Commissaries was notified on April 9 that
the Province of Kazan, situated in the east of European Russia and
having a population of 2,000,000, had been proclaimed an independent
republic by the Congress of Peasants of that region.