Beginning of the Liberation of Romania: on the Question of the Completion Date of the Uman-Botoshan Offensive Operation of the 2nd Ukrainian Front (1944)

The relevance of the research topic lies in the need at the current stage of aggravation of international relations to resist the increasing attempts to falsify the history of the Great Patriotic War, its course, results and results. The liberation mission of the Red Army in Europe began with the Uman-Botoshan offensive operation of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, during which Soviet troops reached the state border of the USSR and began to liberate Romania. The question of the completion date of the operation is associated with an objective assessment of its result, as opposed to a number of biased positions that exist in domestic and foreign historical science.

The purpose of the study is to establish the end date of the Uman-Botosha offensive operation of the 2nd Ukrainian Front (1944).

Objectives: to identify the existing chronology options for the Uman-Botosha operation in Soviet, Russian and foreign historiography, to compare and evaluate their validity.

Methodology. The research was based on the principles of objectivity, historicism and consistency. The author used a complex of general scientific and special historical methods in his work: analytical, critical, comparative historical, problem-chronological, retrospective.

Results. It has been established that in the research, encyclopedic, reference literature of the period of the late 1950s early 2020s. three different dates for the end of the operation appear: April 6, April 17 and May 6, 1944. In addition, a number of domestic and foreign historians introduced the concepts of the Targu-Frumos frontal offensive operation and the First Iasi-Chisinau strategic offensive operation, the scale and timing of the which do not coincide with each other, but overlap with the most common dating options for the Uman-Botosha offensive operation.

Conclusions. The author sees the possibility of resolving the subject-chronological problem that has developed in historiography in a new appeal to archival and published documentary materials.

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