Bessarabia (Romanian: Basarabia; Russian: Бессарабия Bessarabiya, Ukrainian: Бессарабія Bessarabiya) is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west.

In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812, and ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the eastern portion of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal, was ceded to Imperial Russia and designated "Bessarabia". While this eastern part became the Governorate of Bessarabia, the western part of Moldavia united, in 1859, with Wallachia in what would become the Kingdom of Romania. For a short period between 1856 and 1878, two of the nine traditional counties of Bessarabia were also part of Moldavia and then Romania.

Three months after declaring its independence from Russia, in 1918, as the Moldavian Democratic Republic (shortly before the end of World War I); it united with the Kingdom of Romania. In 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. Subsequently, Romania joined the Axis Powers and recaptured it in 1941 and lost again in 1944. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border set along the Prut River was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II. The core part of Bessarabia was joined with parts of the Moldavian ASSR (Transnistria) to form the Moldavian SSR. At the same time, smaller parts of Bessarabia, in the south (two traditional counties; Budjak) and north (half of one county), were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR.

Aaron Lebedeff (1873–1960), a Yiddish theater star, was born in Homel, White Russia. In childhood he sang for the Hazzan, Borekh David. Having no interest in education, he was sent to learn a trade, but soon he ran away and began to play small roles in a Russian theaters in Boboysk, Minsk and other towns. When the Russian troup fell apart, he went back to Homel, taking part in amateur theater and opening a dance club. When Leyzer Bernshtein's troup arrived, he wheedled a place in it.

He was officially a chorister, unofficially a roadie/stage hand (pekl-treger). He dressed the actors and was a prompter. He finally debuted in Der Pipkiner rav and became the character actor he would remain, playing in different wandering theater troups across Russia. He was hired in Warsaw and became popular there as Der Litvisher Komiker (The Litvak comic). In 1912–13 he played in Lodz with Zandberg, then back to Warsaw; and at the outbreak of World War I, he was pressed into the Russian army and sent to Harbin, Manchuria, (1916), where he spent his time of military service giving concerts for the officers.

Sidor Belarsky, born Isidor Livshitz (February 12, 1898 – June 7, 1975), was a Ukrainian-American singer born to a Jewish family in Kryzhopol, Ukraine.

His recording of "Dem Milners Trern" ("The Miller's Tears"), a Yiddish folk song composed by M. M. Warshavsky, was featured in the Coen brothers's film A Serious Man. The song's subject is the expulsion of Jews from hundreds of villages in Czarist Russia.