Gheorghe I. Brătianu despre frontierele istorice ale Moldovei și locul Basarabiei în cadrul unității românești (Partea I)

More than seven decades after his physical disappearance, Gheorghe I. Brătianu appears as one of the most talented and fruitful Romanian historians, a fact due to the thorough education he had since his early childhood, his versatile erudition, the accuracy of his work, and to his interpretative flexibility. All these exceptional qualities ensured him a place of first rank in Romanian and universal historiography, a prestige undisturbed by the inexorable passing of the years. He believed in historical truth and in the fact that it would win, regardless of the fate of those who served it. For the scholar Gheorghe I. Brătianu, son of Ion I.C. Brătianu and Princess Maria Moruzi Cuza, Great Romania was not a fleeting idea, but an ideal for which he fought with the strength of creative ideas, but also literally, weapons in hand. At the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered and took part in the battles in the Trotuș valley (1917) and Bucovina (1918), being wounded twice. He also took part in the War for Reunification, taking part in the campaigns in Bukovina (1941) and Crimea (1942). As rightly appreciated by Acad. Șerban Papacostea (1993), „The action of Gh. I. Brătianu’s was straightforwardly carried out in the direction of the broad national interest conceived in the spirit of tradition and the historical mission assumed by his family. The sense of duty, supported by this tradition, inspired both his strength to resist the temptations of power when it strayed from its traditional national purpose, the determination to expose his life on the battlefield when the supreme interests of the nation were at stake and, above all, the strength not to abdicate from the creed of his life when he had to pay for this act of fidelity at the cost of his existence”.