 Russian and Ukrainian settlers were used to fill the vacant areas caused by the deportation of Romanians.In 1946–1947, as a result of the famine organised in the MSSR (according to some data of certain scientists; official data has not yet been published), around 300,000 died and many cases of cannibalism occurred.In addition, the population of the former MASSR, as a part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, also suffered from the artificial famine in the 1930s when several million people died in Ukraine ("see also Holodomor").