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116-541: Moldovenism is a term used to describe the political support and promotion of a Moldovan identity and culture , including a Moldovan language , independent from those of any other ethnic group, the Romanians in particular. It is primarily used as a pejorative by the opponents of such ideas as part of the wider controversy over ethnic and linguistic identity in Moldova . Some of its supporters ascribe this identity to

232-684: A decrease of 45.1%. The eighteen villages in the Hlyboka Raion , the Novoselytsia Raion and the Hertsa Raion of historical Bukovina and the Hertsa area in 1989 with a significant Romanian-speaking populations, most of which declared a Moldovan ethnic identity in 1989, had 15,412 individuals who overwhelmingly declared their language to be Romanian in 2001 (55.91% of the local Romanian-speakers), and 12,156 who called it Moldovan in

348-521: A geopolitical reality after the First World War . Romania gained control over Bessarabia , Bukovina and Transylvania . The borders established by the treaties concluding the war did not change until 1940. The resulting state, often referred to as "România Mare" or, alternatively, as Romanian : România Întregită (roughly translated in English as "Romania Made Whole," or "Entire Romania"),

464-750: A government in exile. After the Soviet-organized Tatarbunary Uprising failed, in 1924 a Moldavian ASSR (MASSR) was created within the Ukrainian SSR , just east of the river Dniester that then marked the boundary between the Kingdom of Romania and the Soviet Union. For the purpose of giving MASSR its own identity separate from Romania, Soviet authorities declared the variety spoken by the majority of Moldavians to be "Moldavian language". The intellectual elites of

580-583: A group protested against being called "Romanians", affirming they were "Moldovans", while another group, led by poet Alexei Mateevici , supported the view that the Moldovans are also Romanians. In 1918, Bessarabia joined the Kingdom of Romania , following a vote of Sfatul Țării . The circumstance of the vote was itself complex, since the Romanian troops were present in Bessarabia at the request of

696-448: A key concern for Romanian culture and politics. The Romanian national ideology in the first decades of the twentieth century was a typical example of ethnocentric nationalism. The concept of "Greater Romania" shows similarities to the idea of national state. The Romanian territorial claims were based on "primordial racial modalities" , the essential goal of them was to unify the biologically defined Romanians. The nation-building based on

812-661: A mixture of Slavs and Romans , and sons of the Greek Orthodox Church ". In May 1917, at a congress of Bessarabian teachers, a group protested against being called "Romanians", affirming they were "Moldovans". Representatives of the Romanian-speaking population living in Podolia , and Kherson participated in the Bessarabian national movement in 1917 and early 1918, agitating for incorporation of

928-750: A new Cyrillic alphabet (the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet ) based on the Russian Cyrillic, rather than the older Romanian Cyrillic that ceased to be used in the 19th century in the Romanian Old Kingdom and in 1917 in Bessarabia. A survey carried out in the Republic of Moldova in 1992 showed that 87% of the Romanian (then known as Moldovan) speakers identified themselves as "Moldovans", rather than "Romanians". According to

1044-662: A number of prominent "autochthonists" were repressed, their books destroyed, and their neologisms banned. In June 1940 Bessarabia was occupied by the Soviet Union. Most of Bessarabia and about half of the MASSR were merged into a newly created Moldavian SSR, which became the fifteenth union republic of the USSR. A year later, in June 1941, Romania attacked the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa and retook Bessarabia (see Operation München ). Between 1941 and 1944, Romania also occupied

1160-436: A point of reference for nationalists , as well as a catalyst for various Romanian forces to achieve a single Romanian state. The Romanian revolution in 1848 already carried the seeds of the national dream of a unified and united Romania, though the "idea of unification" had been known from earlier works of Naum Ramniceanu (1802) and Ion Budai-Deleanu (1804). The concept owes its life to Dimitrie Brătianu , who introduced

1276-681: A policy of ethnic assimilation of the Romanians from Transnistria , then from the entire space of the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic . And now from the Republic of Moldova." On 22 January 2010, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched the book in Bucharest. At the release of the book, the Foreign Minister of Romania Teodor Baconschi said: We learn from Mr. Cojocaru's book that "Moldovenism" denies

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1392-421: A serious obstacle to a fruitful collaboration. Moldovans The variant Moldavians is also used to refer to all inhabitants of the territory of historical Principality of Moldavia , currently divided among Romania (47.5%), Moldova (30.5%) and Ukraine (22%), regardless of their ethnic identity. In Romania, natives of Western Moldavia identifying with the term generally declare Romanian ethnicity, while

1508-452: A spouse of the same ethnic groups; in contrast, 50% of the Romanians indicated a Moldovan spouse. While 91% of the ethnic Moldovans reported having Moldavian parents of either sex, among ethnic Romanians 52% indicated having a Moldovan mother (as opposed to 45% having a Romanian one), while 49% indicated having a Moldovan father (as opposed to 50% having a Romanian one). Also the major Moldovan political forces have diverging opinions regarding

1624-522: A study conducted in the Republic of Moldova in May 1998, when the self-declared Moldovans were asked to characterize the relationship of the Romanian and Moldovan identities, 55% considered them somewhat different, 26% very different and less than 5% identical. A poll conducted in the Republic of Moldova by IMAS-Inc Chișinău in October 2009 presented a more detailed picture. The respondents were asked to rate

1740-582: Is commonly used in Romania, and it poses territorial claims over the region of Bessarabia. It is also used in Moldova. As of 2024 Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) supports the unification of Moldova and Romania . While S.O.S. Romania leader Diana Iovanovici Șoșoacă proposed a law in 2023 for a project on the Romanian Parliament for the annexation by Romania of Northern Bukovina ,

1856-512: Is it Romanian or Moldovan? R: Now, it's Romanian. There is no Moldovan now. Then, it used to be Moldovan, but written with Russian letters. And now everything is in Latin (Mk38). Shestakova suggests that those self-identified Moldovans who see differences between Moldovan and Romanian tend to be from "the older generation". Opinion polling from the Chernivtsi oblast, as well as the discussions of

1972-577: The Agrarian Party of Moldova win an absolute majority in the Parliament. A poll conducted in the Republic of Moldova by IMAS-Inc Chișinău in October 2009 presented a detailed picture. The respondents were asked to rate the relationship between the identity of Moldovans and that of Romanians on a scale between 1 (entirely the same) to 5 (completely different). The poll showed that 26% of the entire sample, which included all ethnic groups, claimed

2088-468: The Liberal party of Moldova have criticised the census results, claiming Romanians comprise 85% of the population and that census officials have pressured respondents to declare themselves Moldovans instead of Romanians and have purposefully failed to cover urban respondents who are more likely to declare themselves Romanians as opposed to Moldovans. The previous 2004 census results reported that out of

2204-790: The Moldovan Orthodox Church , a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church , while a minority belongs to the Metropolis of Bessarabia , a branch of the Romanian Orthodox Church . Both bodies are in full communion , the dispute between them being purely territorial and revolves around the legitimate succession of the interwar Metropolitan See of Bessarabia. As of 2007, the Moldovan Orthodox Church has 1,255 parishes, while

2320-460: The Old Kingdom . The Romanian state promoted a common identity for all its inhabitants. Owing partly to its relative underdevelopment compared to other regions of Greater Romania , as well as to the low competence and corruption of the new Romanian administration in this province, the integration process of Bessarabia in the unified Romanian state was less successful than in other regions and

2436-528: The Russian Far East , where they migrated or were deported generations ago. Around 14,000 Moldovans live in Kazakhstan , mostly in the former capital Almaty , but also in some rural areas in the northern parts of the country. The largest share (47.5%) of the territory of the historical Principality of Moldavia together with all its formal capitals ( Târgul Moldovei , Suceava , and Iaşi ) and

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2552-473: The Russian Revolution . After declaring independence from Russia on 24 January 1918, the "Sfatul Țării" voted for union with Romania on 9 April 1918. Of the 138 deputies in the council, 86 voted for union, 3 against, 36 abstained (mostly the deputies representing minorities, 52% of the population at the time) and 13 were not present. The United Kingdom , France , Italy and Japan recognized

2668-658: The Slavic neighbours called Moldovans " Vlachs " or "Volokhs", a term also used to refer to all native Romance speakers from Eastern Europe and the Balkan peninsula . In 1812, the Russian Empire received the eastern half of Moldavia from the Ottoman Empire and named it Bessarabia . As the ethnonym "Romanian" was gaining more and more popularity throughout the remaining territory of Moldavia and Bukovina during

2784-465: The (Romanian) unitary national state six and a half decades ago was a brilliant historic victory of the long heroic struggle of the masses for creating the Romanian nation and the coming true of the age old dream of all Romanians to live in unity within the borders of the same country, in one free and independent state. The fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and

2900-440: The 1859 unification of Moldavia and Wallachia they gradually began using the term "Moldavians" for them, to justify the idea of Russifiers and Pan-Slavists to create an identity different from that of the Romanians of Western Moldavia . Historian van Meurs however indicates that some Russian official documents and scholarly studies in the 19th century actually continued to use both "Romanians" and "Moldavians" when referring to

3016-694: The 1920s, there was a dispute among the Soviet linguists between supporters ("Romanizators" or "Romanists") and opponents ("autochthonists", Russian: самобытники) of the convergence of the Moldavian and Romanian. The "autochthonists" strove to base the literary Moldovan on local dialects from the left bank of the Dniester. Neologisms , mostly from Russian, were created to cover technical areas that had no native equivalent. Then in February 1932, communists in

3132-596: The 1930s. Bessarabia declared its sovereignty as the Moldavian Democratic Republic in 1917 by the newly formed "Council of the Country" (" Sfatul Țării "). The state was faced with the disorderly retreat through its territory of Russian troops from disbanded units. In January 1918, the "Sfatul Țării" called on Romanian troops to protect the province from the Bolsheviks who were spreading

3248-635: The 19th century, its dissemination in Bessarabia, a more backward and rural province of the Russian Empire at the time, was welcomed mostly by the Romanian-oriented intellectuals, while the majority of the rural population continued to use the old self-identification "Moldovans". Some authors observe that the Russian officials also initially preferred to refer to the native inhabitants of Bessarabia as "Romanians" (or "Volochi"), but after

3364-572: The 3,383,332 people living in Moldova (without Transnistria ), 2,564,849 or 75.81% declared themselves Moldovans and only 73,276 or 2.17% Romanians. A group of international observers considered the census was generally conducted in a professional manner, although they reported several cases when enumerators encouraged respondents to declare themselves Moldovans rather than Romanians. The 2001 census in Ukraine counted 258,600 Moldovans and 150,989 Romanians. The self-identified Moldovans live mostly in

3480-415: The Chernivtsi region of Ukraine: "Some Moldovans use both names of the mother tongue (Moldovan or Romanian) and accordingly declare two ethnic affiliations". She recorded one statement that "I am Moldovan, but to be more precise, we should say I am Romanian". She also recorded an exchange that indicated that a respondent indicated that the language had been transformed from Moldovan to Romanian. "That language,

3596-602: The Constitution which states that "no ideology may be adopted as official state ideology". Moldovan historian Gheorghe E. Cojocaru , in his book Cominternul si originile Moldovenismului , claims that "Moldovenism" and its dissemination among the Romance speakers living east of the Prut are of Soviet origin. On the occasion, Moldovan politician and historian Alexandru Moșanu claimed that "The Moldovenist ideology appeared as

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3712-550: The Declaration of Independence of 1991. A significant number of intellectuals from Bessarabia considered themselves part of the Romanian nation in the passing of time. Amongst these prominent figures, there are the following ones: The resolution of the " Association of Historians from the Republic of Moldova " (AIRM) from October 28, 2009 in favor of teaching the history of Romanians in Moldovan schools reads "The people of

3828-749: The Deputies of the Romanians of Transylvania, and supported one month later by the vote of the Deputies of the Saxons of Transylvania . The Hungarians of Transylvania, about 32% at the time (including the Hungarian-speaking Jewish community), and the Germans of Banat did not elect deputies upon the dissolution of Austria-Hungary , since they were considered represented by the Budapest government of Hungary, nevertheless on 22 December 1918

3944-598: The French model of a unitary nation-state became an all time priority especially in the interwar and the Communist periods. The union of Michael the Brave , who ruled over the three principalities with Romanian population ( Wallachia , Transylvania and Moldavia ) for a short period of time, was viewed in later periods as the precursor of a modern Romania , a thesis which was argued by Nicolae Bălcescu . This theory became

4060-630: The Great has slept for centuries. In our moral energy and our valour lie the means of giving him back his birthright of a great and free Rumania from the Tisza to the Black Sea, and to prosper in peace in accordance with our customs and our hopes and dreams. (...) Part of the proclamation by King Ferdinand, 28 August 1916 Lucian Boia summarised the territorial extent of the nationalist dream as following: The concept of "Greater Romania" materialized as

4176-666: The Hungarian General Assembly in Cluj (Kolozsvár) reaffirmed the loyalty of Hungarians from Transylvania to Hungary. In the 1920 Treaty of Trianon , Hungary was forced to give up all claims over Transylvania and the treaty set the new borders between the two countries. In 1940, the Romanian state agreed to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union , as provided for by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between

4292-500: The MASSR and identified two dialects. One, similar to the spoken variety in Bessarabia, was chosen as the standard, to pave the way for the "liberation of the Bessarabians". Gabriel Buciușcanu , a Socialist Revolutionary member of Sfatul Țării who opposed the union with Romania , wrote a new grammar compendium in 1925, but it was considered too similar to standard Romanian grammar, and was quickly pulled out of circulation. In

4408-584: The MASSR received a directive from the Communist Party of Ukraine to switch Moldovan writing to the Latin alphabet . This was part of the massive Latinization campaign of minority languages in the USSR , based on the theory of Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr postulating the convergence to a single world language, expected to be a means of communication in the future classless society ( Communism ). This directive

4524-553: The MASSR were asked to standardise a Moldovan literary language based on the local dialects of MASSR, which are similar to Romanian. Until the 1920s the Russians did not argue that Moldovans and their neighbors in the Romanian Principalities somehow formed nations. One observer wrote in 1846 in the journal of the Russian foreign ministry that “the inhabitants of upper Bessarabia are essentially Romanians, that is,

4640-539: The Metropolis of Bessarabia has 219. Greater Romania The term Greater Romania ( Romanian : România Mare ) usually refers to the borders of the Kingdom of Romania in the interwar period , achieved after the Great Union . It also refers to a pan-nationalist idea. As a concept, its main goal is the creation of a nation-state which would incorporate all Romanian speakers . In 1920, after

4756-483: The Moldavians, as their overwhelming majority were illiterate peasants. Until the 1920s, Romanian historians generally considered Moldovans as a subgroup of the Romanian ethnos. After 1924, within the newly created Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic , Soviet authorities supported the creation of Moldovan language standards allegedly in order to prove that Moldovans form a separate ethnic group. In

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4872-567: The Moldovan SSR were subjected to the Communist ideology, with the aim of replacing the Romanian identity of the native population, with one newly created". The welcome message of the Union of Writers from Moldova is a quote from Mircea Eliade : "We invite you to become initiated in the literary life of Bessarabia, border Romanian land subjected to a long, too long terror of history". The national poet of Moldova and Romania, Mihai Eminescu

4988-476: The Moldovans from Bessarabia (the Republic of Moldova included) are usually called "Bessarabians" ( Romanian : basarabeni ). According to Miron Costin , a prominent chronicler from 17th-century Moldavia , the inhabitants of the Principality of Moldavia spoke Latin and called themselves "Moldavians", but also "Romans" (with the local form "rumân/râmlean") which, he notes, comes from " romanus ". Also,

5104-557: The Pan-Romanian Popular Front of Moldova , acting president Mircea Snegur moved close to the Agrarian Party of Moldova , a strong supporter of the Moldovan identity. During his visit to Bucharest in February 1991, he talked about "Romanians on both banks of the Prut River", however, during the presidential campaign in 1994, Snegur stressed in the speech Our Home the existence of a distinct Moldovan nation as

5220-403: The Republic of Moldova by William Crowther in 1992 showed that 87% of the Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose to identify themselves as "Moldovans", rather than "Romanians". The 2004 census results reported that out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova (without Transnistria), 75.81% declared themselves Moldovans and only 2.17% Romanians. A group of international observers considered the census

5336-409: The Republic of Moldova, "Our survey found that while 94.4 percent of the Romanians living in Moldova consider Moldovan and Romanian to be the same language, only half of the Moldovans (53.2 percent) share this view". According to Kateryna Sheshtakova, a professor at the Pomeranian University of Slutsk in Poland who did field research among the 15 self-identified Romanians and self-identified Moldovans in

5452-409: The Romanian and Moldovan translations of a Leonid Brezhnev speech from Russian and used them as a proof for the existence of two different languages. Mikhail Bruchis analysed this claim, and noticed that all the words of both translations are found in both dictionaries. Also, Iliașenco implied that "Moldovan" preferred synthetic syntagms , while "Romanian" preferred analytic ones. However, this claim

5568-446: The Romanian government violently repressed strikes and riots, notably the 1929 miners' strike in Valea Jiului and the strike in the Grivița railroad workshops . In the mid-1930s, the Romanian economy recovered and the industry grew significantly, although about 80% of Romanians were still employed in agriculture. French economic and political influence was predominant in the early 1920s but then Germany became more dominant, especially in

5684-479: The Romanian identity roots and that its favorite method is exaggeration and mystification; slang becomes literary language, and a region on the Dniester 's bank becomes a "state" with a distinct "Moldovan" identity. Marian Lupu , leader of the Democratic Party of Moldova and a well-known Moldovenist, rebuked him, declaring: Such Bucharest official statements are offensive to most of our population – disturb our relations, poisoning our common activities and become

5800-456: The Romanian, German, and Polish deputies unanimously voted for union, the Ukrainian deputies (representing 38% of the population according to the 1910 Austrian census) and Jewish deputies did not attend the council. The unification was ratified in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye . On 1 December 1918, the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia proclaimed the union of Transylvania and other territories with Romania in Alba Iulia , adopted by

5916-408: The Russian Empire was disintegrating, a Moldavian Democratic Republic was formed in Bessarabia. In 1918, after the Romanian army gained control of the region, Sfatul Țării proclaimed the independence of the Moldavian Republic and, later, voted for the union with Romania . Soviet Russia contested the outcome of these events and, in May 1919, proclaimed the Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic as

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6032-518: The Sfatul Țării as it was facing exterior threats and anarchy. By the time of the union, the peasants of Bessarabia, who constituted the majority of Romanian speakers in the region, clung to a Moldavian identity and did not undergo the same nation-building as the ones in Romania. Moreover, during the interwar, peasants in all regions of historical Moldavia (Bessarabia, Bukovina and Western Moldavia ) where more likely to identify themselves as Moldavians than city-dwellers. Several researchers who visited

6148-481: The Soviet Union and Germany . It also lost Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region , which were not mentioned in the pact, to the Soviet Union. It lost Northern Transylvania to Hungary, through the Second Vienna Award , and the Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria by the Treaty of Craiova . In the course of World War II, Romania, which was allied with the Axis Powers , not only re-annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, but also took under administrative control lands to

6264-453: The Soviet Union. The other side emphasizes the distinctiveness of Moldovans such as Moldovan historian and politician Victor Stepaniuc states that Moldovans have always been different from Romanians. Some claim that, for Bessarabian Moldovans, the long isolation from the rest of Romanians (between 1812–1918, after 1940) was "more than ample time [...] to develop [their] own separate national identity". After collaborating for several years with

6380-436: The Soviet authorities in the Moldavian SSR . Supporters of a separate Moldovan identity contend that the people of Moldavia historically self-identified as "Moldavian" before the notion of "Romanian" became widespread. The belief that Romanians and Moldovans in Bessarabia and the Moldavian ASSR (MASSR) formed two separate ethnonational groups, speaking different languages and possessing separate historical and cultural traits,

6496-417: The area around World War I, including the Romanian historian Ion Nistor and French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne testified that most Bessarabian peasants called themselves Moldavians. On the other hand, the small Moldavian urban elite was Russified to a large degree. Pan-Romanian nationalism was "almost wholly" imported into the region around World War I by propagandists from Transylvania , Bukovina and

6612-654: The armed conflict in Moldova was due to the Romanian ethnic nationalism, in other words, "the attempt to create a unitary, ethnic state with power concentrated in the hands of ethnic nationalists in what was actually a multiethnic society." Furthermore, Bucharest's behavior toward Ukraine did not change until 1997 when Romanian politicians realized that resolving border disputes was a precondition for NATO membership. Present-day Romanian irredentists (such as members of PRM ) aim to take possession of territories of northern Bukovina and Bessarabia . These regions currently belong to Ukraine and Moldova. The Russian presence and

6728-408: The collapse of the USSR. One side, rallying many prominent Moldovan intellectuals, such as Grigore Vieru , Eugen Doga or Constantin Tănase, argues that Moldovans have always been Romanians, even if the modern history separated them from the rest of Romanians. Moldovenism is thus regarded as a Soviet attempt to create an artificial nationality with the goal of ethnic assimilation of Romanians living in

6844-422: The concept of "Greater Romania", instead they wanted only equality with the other nations in Transylvania. The concept became a political reality when, in 1881, the Romanian National Party of Transylvania gathered Romanians on a common political platform to fight together for Transylvania's autonomy. According to Livezeanu the creation of Greater Romania with "a unifying concept of nationhood" started to evolve in

6960-405: The concept of Greater Romania stood behind Romanian foreign policy toward Moldova therefore expressed concerns about possible developments on Dobruja . In 1992, the issue on unification of Moldova and Romania was negotiated between the Romanian and Moldovan governments and they wanted to achieve it by the end of the year. However, the "unionists" lost their dominance in Moldova in the middle of

7076-409: The contents of the treaty until a general peace was concluded. Romanians! The war which for the last two years has been encircling our frontiers more and more closely has shaken the ancient foundations of Europe to their depths. It has brought the day which has been awaited for centuries by the national conscience, by the founders of the Romanian State, by those who united the principalities in

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7192-485: The creation of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Republic. Pavel Chioru , the MASSR People's Commissar of Education, argued that literary Romanian borrowed too many French language words during its standardization in the 19th century. According to Chior, this made it incomprehensible to the peasants both in the MASSR and Romania, demonstrating the division between the "ruling class" and the "exploited class". Soviet linguist M. V. Sergievsky studied linguistic variation in

7308-540: The delegates of the Meeting of the Leaders of the Romanophone Organizations from Ukraine of December 6, 1996, indicated that many of the self-identified Moldovans believed that the Moldovan and Romanian languages were identical. In 1989, in the Chernivtsi oblast of Soviet Ukraine, there were 53,211 self-identified ethnic Romanians who declared their native language to be Romanian, and 32,412 who declared it to be Moldovan. There were also 80,637 Moldovans who declared their language as Moldovan, and 1 who declared it as Romanian in

7424-450: The east of Dniester (parts of recently formed Moldavian SSR , and of Odessa and Vinnytsia oblasts of Ukrainian SSR ), creating Transnistria Governorate . Despite clear Ukrainian majority in the governorate's ethnic composition, demonstrated by a census conducted in December 1941 , Romanian government hoped to annex it eventually as a "compensation" for Northern Transylvania lost to Hungary . These territories were lost again when

7540-419: The economic downturn accompanying it led to a resurgence of nationalism in the region. Romania and Moldova, state comprising the bulk of Bessarabia which had become independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, confronted with their eastern neighbor, Ukraine . Bucharest and Chișinău announced territorial claims on Ukrainian lands (on parts of Chernivtsi and Odessa regions). Bulgaria surmised that

7656-510: The effects of the hundred years of political separation. Due to the inability of the government to solve the problems of the Transylvanian Romanians' integration and the effects of the worldwide and national economic depression , "the population gradually lost its faith in the democratic conception of Greater Romania". The Great Depression in Romania , which started in 1929, destabilised the country. The early 1930s were marked by social unrest, high unemployment, and strikes. In several instances,

7772-473: The eight counties that were once part of the Principality of Moldavia. The number of people, if any, who possibly declared themselves as Moldavians in this census is impossible to know, since "Moldavian" is officially considered a regional identity in Romania and respondents were recorded as "Romanians". The Romanian-speaking inhabitants of these counties generally refer to themselves as "Moldavians", but declare Romanian ethnicity. In 1998, Constantin Simirad ,

7888-468: The famous painted churches are located in Romania. The river Moldova (possibly, the origin of the name of the Principality, see Etymology of Moldova ) now flows entirely through Romania. After the Russian annexation of Bessarabia in 1812, and Austrian annexation of Bukovina in 1775, the rest of Moldavia united in 1859 with Wallachia and formed the modern Romania. According to the Romanian census of 2002, there are 4.7 million Romanian speakers in

8004-486: The former mayor of Iaşi founded the Party of the Moldavians (Partidul Moldovenilor) which later joined the Social Democratic Party . However, the party's declared objective was to represent the interests of the Moldavia region in Romania rather than any ethnic identification. In February 2007, a small group of Romanian citizens who created the "Moldovan/Moldavian Community in Romania" (Comunitatea moldovenilor din România) attempted unsuccessfully to gain recognition of

8120-479: The foundation of the state. The speech was immediately condemned by the intellectuals. Representatives of The Writers' Union, the Institute of Linguistics, the Institute of History, Chișinău State University , and other institutions declared the speech an affront to the true identity of the republic's ethnic majority and an attempt to further “an invention of the Communist regime” by erecting a “barrier to authentic Romanian culture ”. Nevertheless, Snegur's stance helped

8236-415: The heads of the Romanian Communist Party, as writing in his memo of April 1944: "the two parts of Transylvania should be reunited as an independent state." The Romanian Communist politicians' behavior were depicted as nationalist, and this circumstance brought about the concept of National Communism , which amalgamated elements of Stalinism and Fascism . According to Trond Gilberg the regime needed

8352-634: The identity of Moldovans. This contradiction is reflected in their stance towards the national history that should be taught in schools. Governing forces such as the Liberal Party , Liberal Democratic Party , and Our Moldova Alliance support the teaching of the history of Romanians. Others, such as the Democratic Party and the Party of Communists support the history of the Republic of Moldova. The diverging opinions are also reflected in

8468-579: The incorporation of Transylvania , Bukovina , Bessarabia and parts of Banat , Crișana , and Maramureș , the Romanian state reached its largest peacetime geographical extent ever (295,049 km ). Today, the concept serves as a guiding principle for the unification of Moldova and Romania . The idea is comparable to other similar conceptions such as the Greater Bulgaria , Megali Idea , Greater Yugoslavia , Greater Hungary and Greater Italy . The theme of national identity had been always

8584-532: The incorporation of Bessarabia through the Treaty of Paris . The United States and the Soviet Union however refused to do so, the latter maintaining a claim to the territory for the whole interwar period. Furthermore, Japan failed to ratify the treaty, which therefore never entered into force. In Bukovina , after being occupied by the Romanian Army, a National Council voted for union with Romania. While

8700-490: The language to be Moldovan and 24.0% consider it to be Romanian. In the Republic of Moldova, “more than half of the self-proclaimed Moldovans (53.5%) said that they saw no difference” between the Romanian and Moldovan languages according to a survey conducted by Pal Kolsto and Hans Olav Melberg in 1998 which also included the Transnistrian separatist region. According to Alla Skvortsova, an ethnic Russian researcher from

8816-709: The late 1910s. World War I played a crucial part in the development of Romanian national consciousness. The Treaty of Bucharest (1916) was signed between Romania and the Entente Powers on 4 ( Old Style )/17 ( New Style ) August 1916 in Bucharest . The treaty stipulated the conditions under which Romania agreed to join the war on the side of the Entente, particularly territorial promises in Austria-Hungary . The signatories bound themselves to keep secret

8932-473: The local nation-building process by promoting a Moldavian identity. Likewise, historian Charles King notes that the Moldovan peasant's view of his own national identity was not the product of Russian assimilationist policies but had instead remained virtually frozen since 1812. The Romanian researcher Irina Livezeanu further notes that the Russification policies did not greatly affect the identity of

9048-558: The local population, noting that the Russian policy which restricted the use of the Romanian language in Bessarabia was rather part of the general tendency of Russification and of promotion of a tsarist nationality policy as such. Van Meurs concludes that before the October Revolution the inhabitants of Bessarabia probably considered themselves "Moldavians" in a "natural, primarily local-territorial sense", and there had been no consistent government-sponsored effort to influence

9164-479: The medieval Principality of Moldavia . Others, in order to explain the current differences between Romanian-speaking inhabitants of the two banks of the Prut River , ascribe it to the long incorporation of Bessarabia in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union . Opponents, on the other hand, claim that Moldovans and Romanians are a single ethnic group and that the Moldovan identity was artificially created by

9280-527: The minority status for Moldovans from Romania. The organization was initially registered legally, but the decision was soon reverted. Around the same time, during a visit to Moldova , three delegates met with President Vladimir Voronin , who promised them his support. Being denied legal recognition, the Community eventually dissolved. The major denomination in Moldova is Eastern Orthodox Christianity . The majority of Moldovan Orthodox Christians belong to

9396-414: The number of ethnic Moldovans who declared their language to be Moldovan decreased by 23.31%. Among those who declared their ethnicity as Romanian or Moldovan, there was an increase in the number of people calling their language as Romanian from 53,212 to 107,953, an increase of 102.87%. By contrast, there was decrease in the number of such people who declared their language as Moldovan from 113,049 to 62,065,

9512-599: The number was no longer reported subsequently because it was below the numerical threshold for the public reporting of the ancestry groups. On 19 December 2003, the Moldovan Parliament, dominated by the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova , adopted a non-judicial political document called "The Concept of National Policy of the Republic of Moldova". The document claims that: This document faced criticism in Moldova as being "anti-European" and contradicting

9628-650: The official language "Moldovan", while the "Concept of the National Policy of the Republic of Moldova" (2003) adopted by the Communist-dominated Parliament distinguishes explicitly Moldovans and Romanians as ethnic groups, and so does the census of 2004 . On December 5, 2013, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova ruled that the Romanian language is the official language of this country, in agreement with

9744-492: The official state documents issued in successive legislatures. The Declaration of Independence of 1991 calls the official language "Romanian", and the first anthem adopted by the independent Republic of Moldova was " Deşteaptă-te, române " ("Awaken thee, Romanian!"), the same as the anthem of Romania . Mirroring different political configurations of the later Moldovan Parliament , the Constitution of Moldova (1994) calls

9860-399: The past, the terms "Moldovan" or "Moldavian" have been used to refer to the population of the historical Principality of Moldavia. However, for the inhabitants of Bessarabia living under the Russian rule, the term gained an ethnic connotation by the beginning of the 20th century: in May 1917, at a congress of Bessarabian teachers, a dispute arose over the identification of the native population;

9976-732: The problem of "Soviet annexed Bessarabia" . The Romanian organizations ignored the result of the Moldovan referendum on independence because the referendum did not ask Romanians in Romania. Romanian politicians blamed Russia and the Moldovan regime that unification became unreal. According to Edward Ozhiganov (Head of the Division for Ethnopolitical Research at the Analytical Center of the Federation Council in Russia),

10092-580: The region as there were schools and cultural organizations in regions inhabited by speakers of cognate Latin languages in the Balkans . Refugees flooded across the Dniester and special funds were put aside for housing and education. Nichita Smochină , an educator settled in Paris, founded the Associations of Transnistrian Romanians in order to assist 20,000 refugees from across the Dniester, and welcomed

10208-439: The relationship between the Romanian and Moldovan identities on a scale between 1 ( entirely the same ) to 5 ( completely different ). The poll showed that 26% of the entire sample, which included all ethnic groups, claimed the two identities were the same or very similar, whereas 47% claimed they were different or entirely different. The results varied significantly among different categories of subjects. For instance, while 33% of

10324-474: The republic. By the late 1970s, the number of Russian speakers in the Moldavian SSR had greatly increased. These changes contributed to the proliferation of Russian loanwords in the spoken Moldovan. While some Soviet linguists continued to deny the existence of a distinct Moldovan language, a new generation of Soviet linguists revived the debate in the 1970s. For example, one linguist, Iliașenco, compared

10440-487: The residents of the capital city (42%). According to a 2020 OSCE -sponsored study, among the population of Moldova, 20% of ethnic Moldovans secondarily identified as Romanians, while 68% of ethnic Romanians secondarily identified as Moldovans. When asked about their mother tongue, among ethnic Moldovans 69% identified it as Moldovan, 34% as Romanian, and 7% as Russian (multiple answers were allowed). The study indicated ethnic Moldovans are highly endogamous, with 87% reporting

10556-453: The role of "spiritual victimization" , turning it into "spiritual police ", was a radical and challenging task for the Romanian intellectuals because they had to entirely revise the national identity and the destiny of the Romanian nation. In accordance with this view, Livezeanu states that the Great Union created a "deeply fragmented" interwar Romania where the determination of national identity met with great difficulties mainly because of

10672-506: The same oblast. In 2001, in the Chernivtsi oblast of independent Ukraine, there were 105,296 self-identified ethnic Romanians who declared their native language to be Romanian, and 467 who declared it to be Moldovan. There were also 61,598 Moldovans who declared their language as Moldovan, and 2,657 who declared it as Romanian in the same oblast. Therefore, the number of self-identified ethnic Romanians who declared their language to be Romanian increased by 97.88% between 1989 and 2001. By contrast,

10788-517: The same or very similar identity was higher than the average among the native speakers of Romanian/Moldovan (30%), among the urban dwellers (30%), among those with higher education (36%), and among the residents of the capital city (42%). According to a study conducted in the Republic of Moldova in May 1998, when the self-declared Moldovans were asked to relate the Romanian and Moldovan identities, 55% considered them somewhat different, 26% very different and less than 5% identical. A survey carried out in

10904-540: The same year (44.09% of the local Romanian-speakers). The 2021 U.S. Census Bureau Estimate of the number of people born in Moldova was 52,107. The 2021 U.S. Census Bureau estimate results based on population surveys show 26,921 people born in the Republic of Moldova (51.66%) who identified themselves as being of "Romanian ancestry". In 2000, according to the U.S. Bureau, there were 7,859 people of Moldovan ancestry, regardless of their place of birth, including 7,156 first ancestry and 703 second ancestry self-identified Moldovans;

11020-691: The southern and northern areas of historical Bessarabia (specifically in the Budjak region of Odesa Oblast and in Novoselytsia Raion of Chernivtsi Oblast ), whereas the self-identified Romanians live mostly in Northern Bukovina and Hertsa region of Chernivtsi Oblast . In Russia , 156,400 Moldovans have been counted in the 2010 Russian census . They are concentrated mostly in Moscow , but also in some rural areas in Kuban , southern Siberia , and

11136-486: The strongly nationalist attitude because of the social, economic and political challenges. After the retreat of the Soviet troops from Romania in 1958, the national ideology was reborn, however it raises questions about its reconcilability with internationalist communism . Nicolae Ceaușescu fancied the idea that the creation of Greater Romania was the fruit of the end of the nation-formation process. The setting up of

11252-541: The tense political situation in Moldova also inflame their demands. Nevertheless, radicals make territorial demands on Hungary too. The Greater Romania Party (Partidul România Mare – PRM) is an emblematic representative of the aforesaid concept, though the conception is fostered also by other right-wing groups (e.g. the organisation of the New Right – Noua Dreaptă ). Today, the phrase " Bessarabia, Romanian land " ( Basarabia, pământ românesc , with several variations)

11368-716: The term "Greater Romania" in 1852. The first step in unifying Romanians was to establish the United Principalities by uniting Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859, which became known as Romania since the 1866 Constitution and turned into a Kingdom in 1881, after gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire . However, before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise , the elite of the Transylvanian Romanians did not support

11484-564: The territory across Dniester into the Greater Romanian Kingdom . The Romanian government never took significant interest in these demands, which would have implied large-scale military operations, and settled in the end to leave behind those areas, which became part of Soviet Ukraine after the Russian Civil War . The calls from Transnistrian émigrés continued into the 1920s asking for Romania to fund schools in

11600-521: The territory between the Dniester and Bug rivers (historic Transnistria ). By August 1944 the Soviets had taken back all the territories they lost in 1941, which remained in the Soviet Union until the latter's dissolution in 1991. During the first years of Soviet occupation, the term "Romanian language" was forbidden. The official language for use in Moldovan schools throughout the entire MSSR (both in Bessarabia and Transnistria) during Stalinist period

11716-579: The tide of the war turned. After the war, Romania regained the Transylvanian territories lost to Hungary, but not territory lost to Bulgaria or the Soviet Union. In 1948 a treaty between the Soviet Union and Soviet-occupied Communist Romania also provided for the transfer of four uninhabited islands to the Soviet Union, three in the Danube Delta and Snake Island in the Black Sea . After

11832-439: The two identities were the same or very similar, whereas 47% claimed they were different or entirely different. The results varied significantly among different categories of subjects. For instance, while 33% of the young respondents (ages 18–29) chose the same or very similar and 44% different or very different, among the senior respondents (aged over 60) the corresponding figures were 18.5% and 53%. The proportion of those who chose

11948-464: The two tendencies had been mostly non-scientific, since there were very few linguists in the republic; and that the grammar and the basic lexicon of the literary Romanian and Moldovan languages are identical, while differences are secondary and nonessential. Because the political situation in the People's Republic of Romania was now pro-Soviet, the planned convergence of the Romanian and Moldovan languages

12064-474: The war of independence, by those responsible for the national renaissance. It is the day of the union of all branches of our nation. Today we are able to complete the task of our forefathers and to establish forever that which Michael the Great was only able to establish for a moment, namely, a Romanian union on both slopes of the Carpathians. For us the mountains and plains of Bukowina, where Stephen

12180-508: The war, the concept was interpreted as "obsolete" because of the Romanian defeat. However, even the Communist politicians between 1944 and 1947 plainly supported the re-establishment of Greater Romania. Gheorghe Apostol 's reminiscence strengthens the view for the nationalist argument of the Communists at the negotiations with Stalin about the future of Northern Transylvania. In contrast with this view, Romsics quotes Valter Roman , one of

12296-429: The year. Bucharest admitted the existence of the two Romanian states (Romania and Moldova) and defined priorities in reference to this matter: "the creation of a common cultural space; the creation of an economically integrated zone; and gradual political integration" . The Moldovan Snegur government became more pragmatic and realized that the nationalist propaganda from Bucharest did not help their aims especially on

12412-445: The young respondents (ages from 18 to 29 years) chose the same or very similar and 44% different or very different, among the senior respondents (aged over 60 years) the corresponding figures were 18.5% and 53%. The proportion of those who chose the same or very similar identity was higher than the average among the native speakers of Romanian/Moldovan (30%), among the urban dwellers (30%), among those with higher education (36%), and among

12528-423: Was also endorsed by the Soviet Union. In 1812 the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Bucharest (1812) , by which Russia annexed the eastern part of the medieval Principality of Moldavia . This territory became known as Bessarabia. Between 1859 and 1866, Principality of Moldavia and the neighbouring Principality of Wallachia united into a single country called Romania . In 1917, when

12644-486: Was also proven wrong, as a book of Nicolae Ceaușescu (the political leader of Romania at the time) uses mostly "Moldovan" synthetic syntagms, while a book by Ivan Bodiul (the secretary of the Moldavian SSR ) uses mostly "Romanian" analytic syntagms. Bruchis' conclusion was that both translations were within the limits of the Romanian language. The debate surrounding the ethnicity of Moldovans has resurfaced after

12760-604: Was based on a local variety spoken in some areas of the former MASSR. The Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Moldova is assessing this period. In 1956, during the Nikita Khrushchev 's rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinist repressions, a special report was issued about the state of the Moldavian language. The report stated, in part, that the discussions of 1920-30s between

12876-457: Was born and lived outside of the territory of the current Republic of Moldova and considered himself Romanian. He is often quoted as saying We are Romanians, period. (Suntem români şi punct) . The 2014 census reported an estimated 2,998,235 people (without Transnistria ), out of which 2,804,801 were actually covered by the census. Among them, 2,068,068 or 73.7% declared themselves Moldovans and 192,800 or 6.9% Romanians. Some organisations like

12992-432: Was generally conducted in a professional manner, although they reported several cases when enumerators encouraged respondents to declare themselves Moldovans rather than Romanians. The 2014 census results reported that out of the 2,998,235 people living in Moldova (without Transnistria), 75.1% declared themselves Moldovans and 7.0% Romanians. The information about the language they usually speak indicate that 54.6% consider

13108-406: Was once again approved. During the entire period of Soviet rule, Moldovan speakers were encouraged to learn the Russian language as a prerequisite for access to higher education, social status and political power. Transfers of territory and population movements, including deportations of locals and state-encouraged immigration from the rest of the USSR, shifted the ethnic and linguistic makeup of

13224-584: Was passively sabotaged by the "autochthonist" majority, until Stanislav Kosior ( General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party) and several MASSR communists visited Joseph Stalin — who reportedly insisted on faster Latinization with the ultimate goal of the convergence of Moldavian and Romanian cultures, hinting at the possibility of a future reunion of Moldova and Romania within the Soviet state. Nevertheless, resistance to Romanization among communist activists persisted, and after 1933,

13340-473: Was seen as the 'true', whole Romanian state, or, as Tom Gallagher states, the " Holy Grail of Romanian nationalism". Its constitution, proclaimed in 1923, "largely ignored the new ethnic and cultural realities". The Romanian ideology changed due to the demographic, cultural and social alterations, however the nationalist desire for a homogeneous Romanian state conflicted with the multiethnic, multicultural truth of Greater Romania. The ideological rewriting of

13456-595: Was soon to be disrupted by the Soviet occupation. In 1940, during World War II , Romania agreed to an ultimatum and returned the region to the Soviet Union , which organized it into the Moldavian SSR . The Soviets began a campaign to return the Moldovan identity overt that of the rest of Romanian speakers, taking advantage of the incomplete integration of Bessarabia into the interwar Romania (see also Moldovenism ). The official Soviet policy also stated that Romanian and Moldovan were two different languages and, to emphasize this distinction, Moldovan had to be written in

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