warned Romanians to shun the dissident preachers, who lacked "the godly gift of preaching God's law", be they Inochentists, "Tudorites" or Adventists. Interest in the activities of Inochenție's followers was kept alive by Romanian writer Sabin Velican, in his 1939 novel Pământ nou ("New Land"); it fictionalizes the movement's alleged sexual practices. Bessarabia's Inochentists fared badly during World War II. In 1941, the region changed hands between a Soviet administration and Nazi-allied Romania. The region's recovery through Romania's participation in Operation Barbarossa was welcomed by Romanian intellectuals. In a special issue of the official literary magazine, Revista Fundațiilor Regale, Orthodox theologian Gala Galaction paid tribute to "the Balta movement" as a Romanian mystical phenomenon, placing in doubt allegations made about the Inochentists' heretical stances. However, in summer 1942, Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu gave the order that virtually all conscientious objectors belonging to the Inochentist church to be deported to the concentration camps in Transnistria, together with the Bessarabian Jews and nomadic Roma. During the Antonescu years, Romanian Orthodox Church authorities also received help for setting up a special mission to Transnistria, which was designed to target local Inochentist and Baptist communities. Some Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses, taken together with the Inochentists, were deported from other areas to internment sites in Transnistria. At his 1946 trial, Antonescu acknowledged some of these measures: "Many Romanians, unfortunately, joined these sects in order to escape the war [...]. What was the spiritual basis of these sects? To avoid taking up arms and fighting. So when we called them up, they refused to lay their hands on a weapon. There was a general revolt, and so I brought in a law introducing the death penalty. I did not apply it. And I succeeded in getting rid of these sects. The more recalcitrant ones I seized and deported." Gulag and later revival After Bessarabia was again incorporated in the Soviet Union as the Moldavian SSR, the Inochentists gathered their ranks and established a new center in the city of Bălți. They were accused by the Soviet authorities of sabotaging the state plan for agricultural deliveries and resisting the collectivization of agriculture by withholding grain from the authorities. This was, however, a thing common to the Moldavian peasants of all religions. In a memorandum dated October 17, 1946, B. Kozachenko, the Vice-minister of State Security of the Moldavian SSR, reported that virtually every village in four districts